*
PRAYING WITH SAINT AUGUSTINE
Once I found the great love of my life,
I didn’t want to sleep in anyone’s arms —
it was difficult enough to fall asleep
in the arms of the Muse
wooing me, making me write it down.
She evicted men from my bed —
the tenderness of waking together,
the animal yawn and press —
Is this your knee or mine?
But sex would follow, the man
always prepared like a boy scout,
while I wanted coffee, my eccentric
yogurt –- and to go soul-deep
into a poem or a book.
Beauty so ancient and so new,
I exist because I have loved you,
I pray with Saint Augustine.
*
Not done with eros for the duration,
though in cat-lazy afternoon,
I tried to explain to my lover
the concept of the immortal soul.
The soul began in Egypt.
The earthly portion, ka,
lived on in the tomb.
The ba went to heaven;
now and then it visited the ka.
“It visited?” he asked.
“I bet they had sex.”
*
In old age, I wonder, what will I
remember? Pages I have
written, pages I have read?
Or will one of my souls
go back to where we used to walk
on the beach, holding hands —
the shimmer of the cliffs
mirrored in wet sand, in trembling
shallow pools — the rocks
weightless as dragonflies,
the chatter of the Muse drowned out
at last. Beauty so ancient and so new,
you exist because we have loved you,
we pray with Saint Augustine.
And we are holding hands.
~ Oriana
Actually, the most famous prayer of St. Augustine is “Make me chaste, but not yet.”
Augustine ponders the stolen pear, by Fra Angelico*
LERMONTOV'S “SUPERFLUOUS MAN”: A HERO OF OUR TIME
The Romantic poet and prose writer Mikhail Yuriyevich Lermontov (1814–1841) is often considered “a close second” Russian poet to Alexander S. Pushkin. Killed in duel when he was only 26 years old, during his short life he wrote over 30 long narrative poems and 600 short lyric poems, a novel, and five dramas. Inspired by Lord Byron, whom he greatly admired, Lermontov began writing poetry at the age of 13. Later he turned to prose fiction, trying his hand first with novels and then drama.
Despite his young age, he undertook ambitious literary works, producing a series of popular ballads, deeply moving dramas such as Ispantsy [The Spaniards], Strannyi chelovek [The Strange Man], and Maskarad [Masquerade], and a psychological novel, Geroi nashego vremeni [A Hero of Our Time], an intricate masterpiece, which earned him recognition as one of the founders of Russian prose.
As a young boy, Lermontov extensively read Russian and West European literature, became fluent in French and German, learned to play several musical instruments, and proved to be a gifted painter. In 1830, he enrolled in Moscow State University, where among his schoolmates were Vissarion Belinsky, Aleksandr Herzen, Konstantin Aksakov, and other notable individuals who were destined to become well-known Russian writers and literary critics.
Due to his difficult personality traits, Lermontov did not mix well with fellow students and had numerous altercations with his professors. After two years at Moscow State University, he withdrew and entered the elite Guards School in St. Petersburg. In his decision to pursue a military career he was partly following his paternal family tradition.
Upon graduation in 1834, he joined the Life-Guard Hussar regiment stationed near St. Petersburg, in Tsarskoe Selo, the country residence of the Russian imperial family and visiting nobility. But the military career, very tempting to young noblemen of the time, proved a challenge for Lermontov, who had to pursue his poetic and literary passions in secret, spending most of his time participating in army drills, drinking sprees, and a controversial life among aristocratic society, full of snobbery and favoritism.
His uneasy temperament as well as his poisonous wit and cruel humor would often earn him enemies. He was also highly critical of his time, his generation, and his country, which is powerfully reflected in his poetry and his prose, filled with bitter sadness, pessimism (often bordering on nihilism), and melancholy.
Lermontov was twice arrested, jailed, and expelled from St. Petersburg. On both occasions he was exiled to military duty in the Caucasus, at that time a battlefield of the Caucasian War (1817–64) waged by the Russian Empire against territories and tribal groups in Caucasus region. On the first occasion Lermontov had offended the authorities by writing a eulogy for Pushkin (the famous “Smert’ poeta” [Death of the Poet]) implying that Pushkin's death, in a duel in 1837, had been orchestrated by the tsar's regime and those close to the throne.
On the second occasion he got in trouble for fighting a duel with the son of the French ambassador to St. Petersburg. Tragically, in 1841, while again in exile, he fought another duel, with former fellow cadet Nikolai S. Martynov, by then a retired major in the Caucasus region. Lermontov publicly humiliated Martynov with his merciless satire of Martynov's affectation of Caucasian (Circassian) dress—complete with a dagger and a long sword—and manners.
Challenged to a duel, Lermontov allegedly made it known that he was going to shoot into the air. But on 15 July 1841 at the foot of Mashuk Mountain in Piatigorsk, Martynov killed Lermontov with his first shot. Perhaps Lermontov's death in a duel (like Pushkin's just four years earlier) was painfully pointless and avoidable. At the same time, it was fated, not only by his temperament, but by his desire to live wholly on his own terms as determined by his poetic and literary talents and his romantic yet critical approach to life, to his time, and to his own place in the world.
While nobody doubts Lermontov's significance as a poet and writer and many rightly recognize his great influence on later Russian literature, only a few acknowledge the deep philosophical character of his works and the important philosophical ideas communicated through his poetry and prose. To be sure, Lermontov's legacy cannot be labeled philosophical in the traditional sense, and it would be a mistake to identify him as a philosophical writer, which is usually associated with systematic thinking, logical consistency, and a clearly articulated body of ideas. We will not find this in Lermontov.
However, he is not lacking ideas and his thoughts are philosophically engaging. What makes his works so appealing from the point of view of academic and public philosophy is that they largely respond to recent and current events (e.g., “Borodino,” “Smert’ poeta,” “Tambovskaia kaznacheisha” [The Tambov Treasurer's Wife]) and are consistently grounded in the social and political reality of his time, providing highly valuable material for philosophical reflection.
Early Russian literature was intimately connected to the Europeanizing and liberal tendency of the 1825 Decembrist revolt, which was enthusiastically supported by Lermontov (and earlier by Pushkin, who, like Byron, served as Lermontov's spiritual and literary inspiration). He lived in an era of deep economic stagnation and the fierce political reaction that followed the failed uprising. Many intelligent and talented people became frightened and self-absorbed; their freedom-loving sentiments were banned and it was dangerous to express one's opinion.
As a poet, a confident aristocrat, and a true representative of his “lost” generation, Lermontov suffered from the inability to publicly express his ideas, thoughts, and desires. Wanting to be heard, he expressed his social anguish and moral distress through poetry and fictional prose. In his works, he appears as a solitary wanderer who is not understood by the crowd. His freedom-loving sentiments and bitterly skeptical evaluation of high society and the era in which he lived are embodied in his philosophical lyric poetry, such as “Duma” [Thought], “Ne ver’ sebe…” [Don't Trust Yourself …], and others.
He despises not only contemporary society, but also himself and his entire generation for young people's inability to think for themselves, to wholeheartedly feel the pain of others, and to do something of value to alleviate it. The best example of Lermontov's mature highly realistic yet critical view of himself, his generation, and his time is depicted in his perhaps most philosophical work, A Hero of Our Time, written in 1839 and published in 1840.
This partially autobiographical novel consists of five closely linked stories revolving around a bored and doomed young nobleman, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, the ultimate Byronic hero. The setting is the Caucasus, and the stories are narrated from various perspectives: that of the author, other characters, and even a journal kept by Pechorin. The five parts are structured to give a progressively fuller view of Pechorin, drawing his complex psychological portrait.
Lermontov portrays Pechorin as an intelligent yet highly manipulative, cynical, arrogant, and immoral young man who suffers from spiritual apathy and lack of faith. How could such a man be a “hero”? The irony is lost on Western readers unfamiliar with Lermontov's work, who take the novel's title rather literally, whereas Pechorin is not presented as a positive character or “hero” at all. Quite the contrary: Lermontov is ashamed of Pechorin, condemns him for his worthlessness and inability to do something that might be of benefit to others.
In Lermontov's introduction to A Hero of Our Time, he reveals the deep irony of the title: “Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances. A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression.”
Pechorin is not a hero or a model to live by. Rather, this is a highly realistic composite image of the whole generation and the troublesome time Lermontov endured. The author's ironic tone allows him to discuss a variety of political, social, and moral issues that remained out of touch to many Russian writers of that time. And he was able to achieve unprecedented results not only as a man of letter and novelist of great literary talent, but also as a thinker capable of original intuitions and deep philosophical reflections, powerfully demonstrated in this and other works.
The current issue is conceived as a new addition to a series of published journal collections devoted to Russian fiction writers such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, who are famous for their philosophical ideas and who produced subtle and acute philosophical literature. This new issue on Lermontov and his literary legacy offers a philosophical analysis of some of his well-known poetic and prose works, bringing to light important philosophical intuitions and topics central to Lermontov and his time.
Lermontov's legacy is indeed immense, but it remains largely unknown in the Anglophone world, especially in respect to recognition of the philosophical content of his thought. The current edition is a tribute to this man of letters and his contributions to the Russian cultural tradition, as well as an attempt to introduce readers to the philosophical dimensions of his works.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10611967.2016.1232553
from Wikipedia:
Pechorin is the embodiment of the Byronic hero. Byron's works were of international repute and Lermontov mentions his name several times throughout the novel. According to the Byronic tradition, Pechorin is a character full of contradiction. He is both sensitive and cynical. He is possessed of extreme arrogance, yet has a deep insight into his own character and epitomizes the melancholy of the Romantic hero who broods on the futility of existence and the certainty of death. Pechorin's whole philosophy concerning existence is oriented towards the nihilistic, creating in him somewhat of a distanced, alienated personality. The name Pechorin is drawn from that of the Pechora River, in the far north, as a homage to Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, named after the Onega River.
The Pechora River
Pechorin treats women as an incentive for endless conquests and does not consider them worthy of any particular respect. He considers women such as Princess Mary to be little more than pawns in his games of romantic conquest, which in effect hold no meaning in his listless pursuit of pleasure. This is shown in his comment on Princess Mary: “I often wonder why I'm trying so hard to win the love of a girl I have no desire to seduce and whom I'd never marry.”
The only contradiction in Pechorin's attitude to women are his genuine feelings for Vera, who loves him despite, and perhaps due to, all his faults. At the end of "Princess Mary" one is presented with a moment of hope as Pechorin gallops after Vera. The reader almost assumes that a meaning to his existence may be attained and that Pechorin can finally realize that true feelings are possible. Yet a lifetime of superficiality and cynicism cannot be so easily eradicated and when fate intervenes and Pechorin's horse collapses, he undertakes no further effort to reach his one hope of redemption: "I saw how futile and senseless it was to pursue lost happiness. What more did I want? To see her again? For what?”
Pechorin's chronologically last adventure was first described in the book, showing the events that explain his upcoming fall into depression and retreat from society, resulting in his self-predicted death. The narrator is Maxim Maximytch telling the story of a beautiful Circassian princess, "Bela", whom Azamat abducts for Pechorin in exchange for Kazbich's horse. Maxim describes Pechorin's exemplary persistence to convince Bela to give herself sexually to him, in which she with time reciprocates.
After living with Bela for some time, Pechorin begins showing his need for freedom, which Bela starts noticing, fearing he might leave her. Though Bela is completely devoted to Pechorin, she says she's not his slave, rather a daughter of a Circassian tribal chieftain, also showing the intention of leaving if he "doesn't love her". Maxim's sympathy for Bela makes him question Pechorin's intentions. Pechorin admits he loves her and is ready to die for her, but "he has a restless fancy and insatiable heart, and that his life is emptier day by day". He thinks his only remedy is to travel to keep his spirit alive.
However, Pechorin's behavior soon changes after Bela gets kidnapped by his enemy Kazbich, and becomes mortally wounded. After two days of suffering in delirium Bela spoke of her inner fears and her feelings for Pechorin, who listened without once leaving her side. After her death, Pechorin becomes physically ill, loses weight and becomes unsociable. After meeting with Maxim again, he acts coldly, exemplifying deep depression and disinterest in interaction. He soon dies on his way back from Persia, admitting before that he is sure to never return.
Pechorin described his own personality as self-destructive, admitting he himself doesn't understand his purpose in the world of men. His boredom with life, feeling of emptiness, forces him to indulge in all possible pleasures and experiences, which soon cause the downfall of those closest to him. He starts to realize this with Vera and Grushnitsky, while the tragedy with Bela soon leads to his complete emotional collapse.
His crushed spirit after this and after the duel with Grushnitsky can be interpreted that he is not the detached character that he makes himself out to be. Rather, it shows that he suffers from his actions. Yet many of his actions are described both by himself and appear to the reader to be arbitrary. Yet this is strange as Pechorin's intelligence is very high (typical of a Byronic hero). Pechorin's explanation as to why his actions are arbitrary can be found in the last chapter where he speculates about fate. He sees his arbitrary behavior not as being a subconscious reflex to past moments in his life but rather as fate. Pechorin grows dissatisfied with his life as each of his arbitrary actions lead him through more emotional suffering which he represses from the view of others.
The duel of Pechorin and Grushnitsky
Albert Camus’s novel The Fall begins with an excerpt from Lermontov's foreword to A Hero of Our Time: "Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances. A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression.”
Mikhail Lermontov
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“If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet."
"There are two men within me – one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reflects and judges him. In an hour's time the first may be leaving you and the world for ever, and the second? ... the second? …”
“I was prepared to love the whole world . . . I learned to hate.”
"Women love only the men they don't know.” 
Michail Lermontov's statue in Kislovodsk, overlooking the Caucasus region
PECHORIN AND DOSTOYEVSKY’S MAN FROM THE UNDERGROUND
V.I. Levin, in "Dostoevsky, the "underground paradoxist" and Lermontov", is the only literary critic who examines in detail the connection between "A Hero of Our Time" and "Notes from the Underground". Refuting the version of the identity between the hero and the author, the researcher believes that the "Notes" exposes the demonic, immoral personality of Pechorin, turning into a low and nasty figure of the "underground." Levin writes that the features of a demon and an extra person merged in the image of Pechorin, which led him to extreme individualism and an immoral attitude towards people and the world.
According to the critic, Dostoevsky opposes this, considering any manifestation of demonism unacceptable. Levin considers Dostoevsky's position radically and perceives Pechorin tendentiously and rudely. Between Notes from the Underground and A Hero of Our Time, we find not only a polemic, but also a kind of creative dialogue. The connection between these texts seems more complicated than it is stated in Levin's article.
Analyzing the degree of frankness of the characters to themselves, we came to the conclusion that Pechorin remains himself in all situations, but puts different accents in the process of achieving a particular goal in a conversation with different people. The “Man from the Underground” can also be sincere with himself, but this sincerity is given to him with difficulty — it is forced out. In his sincerity, the hero comes to the conclusion that he is "nothing", and therefore his revelation is bitter and painful.
The desire to “appear to be someone”, to make something of oneself, lies in the internal inconsistency of the characters. Pechorin's contradictions come down to his desire to kill his "feeling" half, to surrender entirely to the power of the mind. Pechorin raises rationalism to a cult, and it is he who determines most of his actions. But still, not outlived "heartfelt" impulses often pull the hero in the other direction, causing him to act impulsively and feel lost.
Both Pechorin and the "underground man" stand out among other people, but they cannot feel fulfilled be in the current life circumstances. In an effort to prove himself, to console his sick pride, the “underground man” gives himself up to the theory of “independent desire”, which is closely related to the concept of “the most profitable benefit”. The individualism of the protagonists, developed due to various aspirations, in both cases does not bear any fruit to the "heroes".
Many of Pechorin's "weak points" in Dostoevsky's vision are hypertrophied, mutilated, turning into the features of a person who is wounded, offended by the whole world, and consumed by his own malice.
A sensual beginning is found in Pechorin, but the hero is desperately trying to suppress it, drown it out, considering it "unsuitable", stinging. Like him, the "underground" in the depths of his soul is drawn to love, goodness, but he does not find a possible way out for them. All the hero's positive impulses are shattered by wounded pride, the desire for power. If Pechorin does not want to “be kind” (giving preference to feeling), then the “underground” simply cannot.
The fundamental concept in Pechorin's worldview is "freedom", and his experiments are aimed at finding its possible boundaries. Next to the concept of "freedom" is the problem of the existence of "predestination", as possible restrictions on the human will. In many episodes of the novel A Hero of Our Time, Pechorin is busy checking the existence of "fatum". However, the hero does not try to defeat fate, recognize it and go against it. He strives to explore and understand fate.
Going to meet fate, the hero thinks of himself as the executor of the inevitable sentence both in relation to himself and in relation to other people. If he knows that his love will inevitably collapse, then he will not wait until the feeling outlives itself and the situation resolves itself naturally. This shows Pechorin's pride. He wants love "eternal" or nothing. Destroying his feelings in the bud, not giving them development, the hero does not spare other people either.
In relationships with people, the "underground" also does not seek to limit his will. But if Pechorin's actions have a more philosophical orientation, then the rebellion of the "underground" is limited to recognizing its exclusivity, its intellectual and spiritual superiority over other people.
However, all the experiments set by Pechorin and the "underground" experiments, attempts to determine the limit of human capabilities or their personal ones, do not find a worthy way out. The hero of Lermontov, in view of his skeptical consciousness, cannot be sure of something for sure, and the “underground” one is not even able to guess about the possibility of the existence of a true, righteous path for him.
This is the tragedy of the heroes. Both the “underground man" and Pechorin are victims of unfulfilled ambitions and misunderstanding on the part of society. Both are doomed to loneliness. Given the ambiguity in the perception of the characters, their negative and positive sides, it is difficult to give them a specific description. The writers also took this into account, and therefore the very indication of the characters' personality is contradictory and ambiguous.
https://gejournal.net/index.php/IJSSIR/article/view/1340/1242
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HOW THE ORIGINS OF AMERICA’S IMMIGRANTS HAVE CHANGED SINCE 1850
The United States is the top destination in the world for people moving from one country to another. Over 70 million immigrants have arrived in the U.S. since 1965, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. About 18 million have come from Mexico, making up the largest wave of immigration from a single country to the U.S.
In 2022, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. reached a high of 46.1 million, accounting for 13.8% of the population. (This includes both legal and unauthorized immigrants.)
These immigrants trace their roots to virtually all countries around the world. The largest numbers hail from Mexico (10.6 million) and India (2.8 million). That’s different from a century ago: In 1920, the largest immigrant populations were from Germany and Italy.
Immigrant populations by the state
The share of immigrants varies widely among states, from 2% in West Virginia to 27% in California. In 2022, Mexican immigrants were the largest group in 29 states, while Indian immigrants were the largest group in six states.
Mirroring the national trend, the origins of immigrants living in each state have changed dramatically in the past century. In 1920, the largest immigrant groups in 29 states were born in Germany, Italy or Canada. And only six states had the same largest origin group in 2022 that they did in 1920: Arizona, New Mexico and Texas (all from Mexico) and Maine, Montana and Vermont (from Canada).
Why the immigrant population changed over the years
A more equitable U.S. immigration law. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened up legal immigration from Asia and Latin America. The law it replaced had favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe and mostly barred those from Asia.
Unauthorized immigration. Unauthorized immigration to the U.S. began to grow in the 1970s, which made the total number of immigrants go up. Most of those who came before 1982 acquired legal status after the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. However, unauthorized immigrants continued to come in large numbers.
Further changes in U.S. immigration law. A revision to the 1965 act in 1990 allowed more legal immigrants to enter the U.S. and provided alternative ways for people to immigrate, increasing the diversity of origins.
Where immigrants have settled over time
1840-1889
The first large wave of immigration to the U.S. began in the 1840s and lasted until 1889. During this time, more than 14 million immigrants came to the country. Most arrived from Northern or Western Europe; Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom alone accounted for 70% of the new arrivals.
From 1850 to 1880, Germany and Ireland were the largest immigrant origin countries in most states and territories. In 1860, Ireland was the largest origin country in 22 of the nation’s 39 states and territories.
By 1880, Germany was the largest origin country in 16 states and territories. Chinese immigrants were the largest group in California, Nevada, Oregon, and the Idaho and Washington territories. Mexicans were the largest group in Texas and the New Mexico and Arizona territories.
1890-1919
The next wave of immigration to the U.S. lasted from 1890 to 1919, when more than 18 million immigrants arrived. By then, over 60% came from Eastern and Southern Europe, with large numbers arriving from Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Poland.
1920-1964
The number of new immigrants fell dramatically in the years between World War I and World War II (1919 to 1939). As a result, the largest immigrant groups in each state did not change much for the next few decades.
In 1920, German immigrants were the largest group in 11 states, down from 18 in 1910. Immigrants from Italy and Russia became the largest groups in a growing number of states. At their peaks, Italians were the largest group in 10 states in 1940 and 1960, and Russians were the biggest in seven states in 1920 and 1950.
By 1960, the largest number of immigrants in most states came from Germany (17 states), Italy (10) and Canada (10).
1965-2007
Another wave of immigration began in 1965. Most immigrants in this wave came from Latin America (49%) or Asia (27%). Mexico alone accounted for about 25% of these new immigrants.
Large numbers also came from China, India, the Philippines, Central America and the Caribbean.
After 1990, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. started to grow quickly, from 3.5 million to 12.2 million in 2007. Most unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. at this time came from Mexico, which was also the largest source of legal immigrants.
These new legal and unauthorized arrivals led to major changes in states’ immigrant populations. Mexican immigrants became the largest group in an increasing number of states.
In 1980, Mexican immigrants were the largest group in 10 states, trailing German immigrants (19 states) and Canadian immigrants (11 states).
By 2000, Mexican immigrants were the largest group in 31 states, and Germans were no longer the largest immigrant group in any state. Immigrants from Cuba, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, the Philippines and India were the largest groups in 11 states.
2008-today
The onset of the Great Recession led to changes in immigration patterns. Mexican immigration to the U.S. slowed dramatically after 2007. As a result, the Mexican immigrant population stopped growing. Though Mexico remained the largest source of U.S. immigrants, Mexicans’ share of the immigrant population fell from 29% in 2010 to 23% in 2022.
Meanwhile, immigration from Asia increased rapidly. In the 2010s, there were more new arrivals from Asia than from Latin America.
The unauthorized immigrant population declined from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.2 million in 2019. Since then, though, the unauthorized immigrant population has grown again, reaching 11.0 million in 2022.
Mexico remained the largest country of birth for immigrants in 29 states in 2022, while India was the largest in six states. For the first time, the following origin groups made up the largest immigrant population in a state or district:
Ethiopians in the District of Columbia
Guatemalans in South Dakota
Hondurans in Louisiana
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/how-the-origins-of-americas-immigrants-have-changed-since-1850/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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THE GENDER GAP IN POLITICS KEEPS GROWING
For decades, we’ve seen a so-called gender gap in American politics. On average, men lean more conservative than women on a host of economic and social issues. As a result, marginally more men have tended to vote Republican and marginally more women have tended to vote Democrat.
Among younger Americans today, it seems that this erstwhile gap is quickly becoming a chasm.
More young men are skewing rightward, and further rightward compared to the rest of the electorate than was true for older generations. Meanwhile, more young women are skewing leftward, and much further to the left compared to the rest of the electorate than ever before.
Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus, but the deepening gender divide reflects the fact that partisan Republicans and partisan Democrats do increasingly inhabit what might as well be different planets. This polarization, and its correlation with sex, is constitutive of three problems in our politics that are creating even deeper crises in our broader culture.
First, although American politics includes an ever-increasing number of independents, partisan political affiliation is now a much more strongly held aspect of identity. As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein discusses in his 2020 book, “Why We’re Polarized,” our two major political parties have over the past 40 years become ever more strongly associated with various beliefs and markers of class, culture and education.
As late as the 1980s, for example, there were many pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats in Congress. Today, abortion is a near-ubiquitous litmus test for politicians in both parties, at least at the national level. When deeply held, culturally and religiously salient views on hot-button issues like this one acquire near-synonymity with political affiliation, that political affiliation itself inevitably takes on a deeper significance in people’s self-conception and identity.
Second, as each of our two dominant political camps develops an increasingly monistic attitude and culture, those identified with each have more trouble than they once did empathizing and cooperating with one another.
As late as 2016, a minority of partisans deemed those in the opposite political party more dishonest, immoral, and unintelligent than other Americans. By 2022, majorities of those identified with each political party viewed those in the other party in these unfavorable terms. Moreover, the cultural gulf between today’s Republicans and Democrats continues to widen. One can predict with a high degree of accuracy, for example, whether a given area is predominantly Democrat or Republican by observing its density of Whole Foods as compared to Cracker Barrels.
Third and finally, the disproportionate percentage of men in one of these increasingly insular and extreme camps and the disproportionate percentage of women in the other contributes to a landscape in which heterosexual Americans may find it more difficult to meet romantic partners who share their political and cultural values. This, in turn, furthers an already concerning decline in long-term partnership, marriage, fertility and child-rearing that negatively impacts the nation as a whole.
As economist Melissa Kearney argues in “The Two Parent Privilege” (2023), and as social science research has shown for decades, children do better across a number of indicators of well-being when they are raised in a home with two married parents. Moreover, married Americans are healthier and happier than unmarried ones in a host of ways.
Despite these realities, marriage in America has become ever more of a luxury good over the past decade. The far rightward drift of a substantial portion of young men in thrall to a crude social media version of misogyny exacerbates the perennial problem that a good man is hard to find. Meanwhile, hostility to marriage is axiomatic within feminism and the mainstream media it disproportionately influences.
Although this anti-marriage rhetoric is belied by high marriage rates among left-leaning college graduates, it finds unfortunate expression in the rising rates of single motherhood among those without college degrees.
In all, partisan polarization is bad for the nation; but partisan polarization that correlates ever more with sex is likely to prove even worse.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4468562-the-gender-gap-is-growing-and-it-bodes-badly-for-american-politics-and-culture/
. . . BUT PERHAPS THE REAL DIVIDING LINE IS MARRIAGE
But drill a little deeper, and the picture becomes a little more complicated.
Adding marital status to the mix, the GOP advantage among married men shoots up to 20 points (59% Republican to 39% Democrat) and shrinks among unmarried men to just 7 points (52% Republican to 45% Democrat).
But what most people don’t know is that among married women, Republicans still maintain a sizable 14-point advantage (56% Republican to 42% Democrat).
But if Republicans are winning married men by 20 points, married women by 14 points, and unmarried men by 7 points, then who is keeping Democrats competitive?
Single women are single-handedly saving the Democratic Party. By a 37-point margin (68% to 31%), single women overwhelmingly pulled the lever for Democrats.
This is why when President Barack Obama ran for reelection, his agenda was promoted through a slideshow that followed the “Life of Julia,” documenting how Democratic programs protect and provide for her throughout her life, without a father or husband ever in the picture.
It’s why President Joe Biden followed suit with his own Linda slideshow, depicting, again, how Democratic programs protect and provide for women throughout their lives, without a father or husband ever in sight.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1381175/democrats-and-republicans-arent-divided-by-gender-theyre-divided-by-marriage/
. . . from Brookings
In 2020, 42% of young men in Harvard’s poll identified as Democrats versus 20% who identified as Republican. Now, 32% are Democrats and 29% are Republicans, with the number of independents remaining relatively unchanged. Women over the same period have not moved as much. In 2020, 43% of young women in Harvard’s poll identified as Democrats, and 23% were Republicans. Now, 44% are Democrats, and 18% are Republicans.
There are other indications of a growing gender divide among young people that goes deeper than just politics. For instance, a longitudinal analysis by international research agency Glocalities between 2014 and 2023 highlighted the growing rift in Gen Z. It found that young women have become significantly more liberal and embraced “anti-patriarchal” values over the last decade, while young men have stayed relatively the same. Additionally, it showed that young men have been the slowest among all groups to move towards more liberal values over the nearly 10-year period.
Suffragette parade
Gallup recently studied the gender divide and found roughly 25% of men aged 18 to 29 identify as “liberal,” versus 40% of women in the same demographic—up from 28% in 2003. Men were found yet again to be relatively unchanged in their self-identification during that timeline.
The Survey Center on American Life’s findings also support a divide in self-identification, with young women being much more likely to identify themselves as “feminists” than young men. Only 43% of Gen Z men identify in this way, much less than Millennial men, while 61% of Gen Z women describe themselves as feminist compared to 54% of Millennial women and 49% of Generation X women.
The study also shows young men increasingly feel as though they are experiencing discrimination over the past four years. Nearly half of all men aged 18 to 29 said they felt this way, the highest of all male age groups surveyed.
Men in particular feel isolated. Brookings nonresident senior fellow, Richard Reeves, has studied the issue arguing in his book “Of Boys and Men” that rapid societal changes combined with a market shift from brawn to brain have left many men feeling bereft and without purpose. Reeves, a self-described “feminist”, does not make the argument that the liberation of women is a bad thing but instead suggests finding new roles for men and a redefinition of “masculinity” in this changing world.
Young men have repeatedly been found in recent years to be apathetic towards voting, with young women in recent election cycles constantly turning out to vote at higher rates than young men. Politically, this is good news for Democrats. After all, there are more women than men in the country, they make up a larger portion of the electorate, they are more motivated to vote, and vote blue.
From a societal perspective, it could signal potential danger if young men feel less tied to democracy and feel no need to participate in the democratic process while increasingly becoming disheartened with their social status. The incentive for change and action may be there, but not through democratic means.
This is made more disconcerting by the fact that this is coming at a time when democracy could yet again be in peril this election year. But what exactly are men experiencing which could make this scenario a potential reality? Well, young men are overwhelmingly the loneliest demographic, with 63% of men aged 18 to 29 reporting being single, compared to 34% of women in the same age group.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-growing-gender-gap-among-young-people/
Mary:
I think the increasing gender divide in politics is very much related to both changes in the definitions of masculinity and changes, whether actual or perceived, in issues of privilege and power. Increasing social change in the rights and opportunities available to women have made some men feel "discriminated against," Women's gains in social opportunity and equal rights have been perceived as diminishing opportunity and power available to men.
Traditionally male privilege is threatened by equal rights and opportunities for women. And this is not some dry and passionless argument. Look at what the fascist right wants to do, starting with eliminating woman's own personhood, her right to make decisions for her own body. In outlawing abortion they remove woman's right to control her body, denying her the power to control her reproductive organs, making them the property of the state — to monitor and control without her consent. These are draconian measures that basically define women as chattel, reduce them to their reproductive function, and eliminate body autonomy.
This is all an extreme reaction to men's perceived traditional right to hegemony. Made uncomfortable by "uppity" women refusing male authority they strike back by refusing her the most basic and essential of freedoms: the right to own her body. The laws, restrictions and punishments keep growing. Total abortion bans, pregnancy surveillance, denial of interstate travel, contraception bans, IVF bans.
This goes beyond nostalgia for the 50's. It is a program to create a dystopia that erases centuries of progress. We need a new definition of masculinity that does not depend on the subjugation of women, that values equality, that recognizes change as opportunity instead of loss. It may have seemed we were moving in that direction, just like we thought we were moving away from racism, but the lesson of Trump and the MAGA cult has been a radical negation of that progress, coming out of fear, disappointment, resentment, isolation, and frustration of those who fear their power and privilege threatened and eroding.
If we can't stop the radical Right we stand to lose all our hard won gains. There's too much at stake to be a mere audience.
Oriana: THE QUESTION IS NOT WHETHER A FETUS IS A PERSON, BUT WHETHER A WOMAN IS.
I went into shock when Roe was struck down. Talk about going against the will of the majority of voters. I have never voted to anyone who threatened the rights of women, and never will. I like the statement, “The question is not whether a fetus is a person, but whether a woman is.”
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WHAT MADE THE SOVIET UNION EFFECTIVE DURING WW2 MADE IT INEFFECTIVE DURING THE COLD WAR
A theory I heard that sounded compelling is that what made the USSR effective in WWII made it ineffective during the Cold War.
When Stalin took over, they shifted to a top-down command economy, which is effective at rapid industrialization and running a war economy, but not effective at delivering sustained growth over the long term. China does have a lot of state involvement in its economy but the USSR didn't even have privately-owned restaurants. They didn't have small or mid-sized private companies.
Even Marx and Engels were writing in their day that they thought socialism would be more of a transitional stage between capitalism and communism, which does imply a mixture, yet the USSR seemed to try to leap into the third stage. But this is Russia in the 1950s here. You can produce a lot of steel, and that command economy might have really helped the USSR win the war, but... why didn't they reform earlier?
I think part of it was because of Stalin. He ruled with an iron fist (think North Korea). But another paradox is that he reversed some of the radically democratic currents of the October Revolution for a centralized, personal dictatorship; yet he continued the radical economic program of the revolution -- which Thermidor in France did not do. The economic reforms of the French Revolution halted. Stalin went in a radical direction and it happened from the top down.
Senior party officials were privately aghast at the personality cult that developed around Stalin and scrubbed it as soon as he died — and the government did become less repressive after that (in comparison to Stalin). But they had also been so exhausted by the rapid change during this period, and so traumatized by the war they just lived through, that they decided on "no more experiments" and tried to keep things as stable as possible.
But it turned into a rather conservative and uncreative regime after that. And highly insular. ~ Duke Snokums, reddit
stsimonoftrent:
The Soviet satellites despised being under Moscow’s control. The forced collectivization, religious repression, cultural genocide, and Russification (displacement of native populations with ethnic Russians loyal to Moscow) pushed on them during the Soviet era wasn’t ever forgotten. All these ethnicities were held together under the threat of the Soviet army and the KGB and once the perceived threat of that was gone (or severely reduced) no one wanted to be in the Soviet Union. There’s nothing Gorbachev could have don’t to stop it and Reagan did everything he could to accelerate it. The Soviet system wasn't reformable.
citrusalex:
It used all of its insane oil profits to subsidize inefficient and uncompetitive industries, especially the military industry. Thing is, military equipment doesn't produce products that have an econonic multiplier potential. Tanks just sit in warehouses and do nothing. And it's very tricky to sell tanks for profits and there are few who will want to buy or to whom you will want to sell them.
This is similar to how Russia recently experienced a miniscule growth of GDP due to increased military spending. If you look at the highest growing industry it's "protective clothing" (read as military uniform). It has been almost entirely propped up by the state's money, and all those uniforms don't exactly propel the economy further by rotting in Ukrainian fields. If you want to understand Soviet or Russian economy better, you need to ignore macro-indicators like GDP and look at more objective indicators.
Check the efficiency of Soviet agriculture, life expectancy throughout the last 50 years of USSR compared to Western nations, how wealthy its population was, what sort of products USSR was producing and how much of them they were exporting abroad, how many households owned a computer and how many knew how to use them. You will find the numbers absolutely dreadful.
Agap8os: WE HAD NOTHING TO FEAR FROM THEM
Glasnost (“glassiness”= transparency) was not so much political liberalization as it was a relaxation of the secrecy that had pervaded the highest levels of government in the former USSR. Gorbachev translated it as “openness”, by which he apparently meant willingness to set aside a lot of the propaganda by which his predecessors had held the West at bay and tell them and his own people the unvarnished truth about their position in the world.
This was when we learned that the Big Red Scare about Russian nuclear superiority was a big lie. They never had anything close to what the United States has. They put much of their educational energy into scientific and military research precisely because they were so afraid of us. We really had nothing to fear from them.
Now that the socialist machine is defunct and super wealthy oligarchs like Putin are in power in Russia, we probably have something to fear. That guy seems just crazy enough to try and nuke the US. Under the Soviet system, that almost certainly would never have happened.
Splenda:
Authoritarian governments are becoming as antiquated as the divine rights of kings. The USSR was an authoritarian government built on rejection of monarchy and extreme inequality, but doomed to failure by its insistence on keeping the choice of leaders to itself. No country that prevents its people from choosing leaders can endure.
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My brain freezes when I try to grasp the concept I LIVE IN A FASCIST COUNTRY. ~ Anna Kocheniuk, Quora
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THE WAR GAME THAT COULD HAVE ENDED THE WORLD
Able Archer 83 was held at a time of heightened Cold War tension. Relations between Warsaw Pact and Nato-aligned nations were as bad as they had ever been. Earlier in the year, US President Ronald Reagan had branded the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” And, in September, Soviet pilots had shot down a Korean Airlines 747, killing all 269 people on board.
Meanwhile, both sides of the Iron Curtain were in the process of deploying medium range nuclear weapons – including cruise missiles based at Greenham Common in southern England – capable of striking targets within five minutes of launch. The world was on a nuclear hair-trigger.
According to the fictional scenario behind the Able Archer 83 war game, turmoil in the Middle East was putting a squeeze on Soviet oil supplies.
Meanwhile, Yugoslavia – which wasn’t aligned to either side of the Cold War – decided to back the West. The Soviet leaders in the game feared this would lead to a cascade of other eastern European countries following suit, switching allegiance from the Warsaw Pact to Nato, and putting the entire communist system at risk.
The imagined ‘war’ started when Soviet tanks rolled across the border into Yugoslavia.
Scandinavia was invaded next, and soon troops were pouring into Western Europe.
Overwhelmed, Nato forces were forced into retreat. A few months after the pretend conflict began, Western governments authorized the use of nuclear weapons.
Role-playing Nato forces launched a single medium range nuclear missile, wiping Ukrainian capital Kiev from the map. It was deployed as a signal, a warning that Nato was prepared to escalate the war. The theory was that this ‘nuclear signaling’ would help cooler heads to prevail.
It didn’t work.
By November 11, 1983 global nuclear arsenals had been unleashed. Most of the world was destroyed. Billions were dead. Civilization ended
Accidental Signal
Later that day, the Nato commanders left their building and went home, congratulating themselves on another successful – albeit sobering – exercise. What Western governments only discovered later is that Able Archer 83 came perilously close to instigating a real nuclear war.
“There’s evidence at the highest levels of the Soviet military that they were finding it increasingly difficult to tell drills from an actual attack,” says Nate Jones, director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive in Washington DC, an independent non-profit organization that advocates for open government. “We’re now amassing a collection of documents confirming that the Soviets were really scared the West would launch a nuclear strike.”
NATO troops conduct a staged military exercise in Norway in 1984
Based at George Washington University, the offices of the National Security Archive are stacked high with files and boxes of documents. Every shelf creaks with information that governments would rather have kept secret. Exposing the details of Able Archer 83 has taken Jones years of persistence.
“I remember [when I started] going to the archives and being laughed at, being told you’ll never see that as it’s highly classified,” says Jones. But after 12 years of filing freedom of information requests, complaining, chasing and badgering, in 2015, the efforts paid off. “I got this package in the mail, the key all-source intelligence report – and to make it even better, it arrived on my birthday.”
The document, produced in 1990 by the US President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is entitled “The Soviet War Scare.” With only a few short sections redacted, the 109-page report details the unintended consequences of Able Archer 83. It makes for sobering reading.
Unlike previous exercises, Able Archer 83 included encrypted communications and periods of total radio silence. There were also deployments on the ground. Some US air bases even practiced weapons handling – taxiing out of hangars with realistic dummy warheads.
Missile on parade in Red Square on the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution
Based on intelligence gathered in the months following the exercise, the 1990 report investigated the Soviet response. This included grounding flights, transporting nuclear weapons ready for deployment and assigning priority targets. There was also an unprecedented emphasis on civil defense measures. It had all the appearances of full-scale preparations for war.
The Soviet leadership didn’t believe Able Archer was an exercise, but instead a cover for a genuine first strike nuclear attack, and they prepared to retaliate.
“The war scare was real, and it’s very scary – an unprecedented military reaction,” says Jones. “We don’t want our enemies to think we’d launch a first strike when we have no intention of doing so.”
So how did an annual NATO military exercise get so badly misinterpreted? To investigate the answer, Jones and his colleagues have recently been scouring Russian sources including the KGB archive in Ukraine.
“We’ve found a confidential Soviet military journal from 1984 with a detailed analysis of Able Archer,” says Jones. “[It’s clear] from worried tones that the Soviet military was scared.”
In 1983, the leader of the Soviet Union was Yuri Andropov. A former head of the KGB and very much of the Soviet old-guard, he had risen through communist party ranks. But by the time he reached the top he was seriously ill. And seriously paranoid.
“There was a paranoia,” says Martin Chalmers, deputy director general of London-based security think-tank RUSI. “The Soviet leadership could remember the trauma of Hitler’s surprise attack in 1941 that almost destroyed the Soviet Union – that was the lens through which US policy was seen.”
“There’s a document I found of Andropov telling KGB officers: ‘your number one priority is not to miss a nuclear strike’,” says Jones. “KGB operatives were tasked with trying to detect this and report it every two weeks.”
But because their masters in Moscow wanted to hear there was potential for a first-strike, to please their bosses, that’s what the spies delivered.
“These people were close to the West, they lived in the West and knew there were no plans for a first strike but they reported what they were told to report,” Jones explains. “Moscow collected these reports and drew dire conclusions and, as this reporting was going on, Able Archer 83 occurred.”
It was a dangerously vicious circle. “It’s a failure of the Soviet system,” says Jones, “Soviet intelligence did not act rationally.”
But nor did Western leaders understand the dangers of simulating a first strike nuclear attack. “It was a lack of empathy combined with the nuclear arms race creating tension,” says Jones. “The [conventional Autumn Forge] exercise was right on the Soviet border and then you had the added dimension of these new decapitating nuclear weapons.”
Although the secret US presidential report on Able Archer 83 wasn’t published until 1990, within months of the exercise, the first hints of trouble were reaching British intelligence. Both Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan were shocked when they discovered that the Soviets believed they would authorize a first-strike attack.
Fortunately – and perhaps partly as a result of the war scare – over the subsequent months and years, tensions eased. And Reagan and new Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on a series of arms reduction treaties.
Far from being a terrifying footnote in Cold War history, however, Able Archer 83 is still relevant today. At the time of this article's publication in November 2018, rhetoric is once again ratcheting-up between Russia and the US, with concerns that global nuclear treaties are unraveling.
“The collapse of arms control will combine with the very real concerns that both sides see the other side as malign and possibly prepared to do some terrible thing in a crisis,” says Chalmers. “If a crisis comes along, the chances of a misunderstanding of the sort we saw in 1983 will be greater.”
Jones, who has been immersed in Able Archer 83 for most of his career, agrees. “As long as there are nuclear weapons, the danger of war through miscalculation remains.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-war-game-that-could-have-ended-the-world?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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UKRAINE: THE SPY WAR WITHIN THE WAR
The decades-long spy conflict between Russia and the West is intensifying over the Ukraine war. But what are Russia's intelligence services suspected of doing and how will their officials' expulsion from capitals affect Putin's clandestine overseas operations?
When Russia first targeted its military forces on Ukraine in 2014 it also unleashed its intelligence services on the West — from interfering with the US elections using cyber attacks to poisonings and sabotage in Europe.
But in recent months the spy war has intensified as Western countries have sought to hit back and inflict lasting damage on the ability of Russian intelligence to carry out covert operations. This is symbolized by the unprecedented expulsion of 500 Russian officials from Western capitals.
Formally, these officials are described as diplomats, but the majority are believed to be undercover intelligence officers. Some will have been carrying out traditional espionage — cultivating contacts and recruiting agents who can pass on secrets — something Western countries do inside Russia too.
But some were believed to be carrying out what Russians call "active measures". These range from spreading propaganda, to more aggressive covert activity. Poland said the 45 Russians it expelled were involved in actions to "undermine the stability" of the country.
Since 2014, Western intelligence agencies have been working to identify Russian spies involved in such activities. One of those is GRU Unit 29155 of Russian military intelligence, which is believed to be tasked with sabotage, subversion and assassination.
It took nearly seven years to find out the unit behind a huge explosion that tore apart an ammunition depot in a Czech forest in October 2014. They included some of those later involved in the UK's Salisbury poisonings of 2018.
The same team also tried to poison an arms dealer in Bulgaria who had stored weapons in the Czech depot — one theory was that the blast and poisoning was linked to his supply of weapons for Ukraine where the conflict had just begun.
Members of that unit were also involved in getting pro-Russian leaders out of Ukraine in 2014. It remains closely watched by Western intelligence.
Salisbury poisoning suspects:Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov
But man-marking individual spies is expensive work. While Western spies in Russia have long been subject to round-the-clock surveillance, their Russian counterparts in Western capitals have not.
"The larger the presence is, the more difficult it is to keep a lid on exactly what they are up to," one US official told the BBC.
But this may now be changing. Western officials say the recent expulsions are more than a symbolic gesture of protest but part of the wider push to degrade Russia's capacity to do harm. Some spy-catchers also say the mass expulsion is long overdue. The Russians have been laughing at us for our tolerance of their presence, says one official.
"We are trying to inflict a cost on Russia to reduce its offensive capabilities and its ability to project threat against its neighbors and the West," one official says. "A number of European nations have taken action to reduce the Russian intelligence service capability across Europe. All of these are steps designed to reduce its threats to us.”
Some countries are believed to have had a particularly significant presence. Berlin expelled 40 Russians. However, a Western intelligence official said they believed Germany had previously housed closer to 100 Russian intelligence officers, acting like an "aircraft carrier" for their operations.
Why has the UK not expelled anyone? Officials say all of them were kicked out after Salisbury and the only spies left are "declared" officers who act as liaisons for formal contacts. They are likely to be watched by MI5 for any sign they are carrying out any covert acts on the side.
In the US, expulsions are based on investigations into each individual. "All the determinations on who to expel are based on intelligence collected by the FBI based on what they are doing," explains a US official. Western countries have been co-operating to ensure anyone expelled cannot simply apply for a visa in another country.
Security officials say they believe the volume of expulsions over a short period will have a "debilitating" impact on Russian intelligence as it scrambles to work out how operations can be continued and who can be placed where.
Russia has retaliated by expelling Western diplomats. In practice, more of these are likely to be "real" diplomats rather than spies. One of the complaints from Western security services has long been the imbalance in the number of Russian diplomats in Western countries, and the proportion who are spies compared to those from the West serving in Moscow. Russia expelled 40 Germans but that makes up around a third of the entire diplomatic presence in its capital.
The invasion of Ukraine may offer other opportunities. Past events like the crushing of the Prague Spring by Moscow in 1968 caused disillusionment among some within the secret state in Moscow, opening the way for their recruitment as Western agents.
In Washington DC, the FBI has targeted online advertisements to people in close proximity to the Russian Embassy, according to a Washington Post report. They encouraged them to talk to the FBI, using footage of Vladimir Putin publicly embarrassing the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, the SVR.
Since 2014, Ukraine has also been the epicenter for a more brutal covert struggle, with each side trying to recruit and root-out spies but also with assassinations of high-ranking Ukrainian officials.
Western intelligence agencies and special forces have also been training Ukrainian counterparts for years, alongside more overt military assistance. They have helped catch Russian spies and offered training in covert action, including by the CIA's Ground Branch.
The spy battles could still escalate, particularly as covert activity presents one option for Moscow to target supply lines bringing in military aid for Ukraine. A missile strike on convoys or facilities in Poland would be highly risky as it could trigger NATO's Article 5 self-defense principle leading to all-out conflict.
But Western intelligence officials say they have concerns that the kind of sabotage operation seen in the Czech Republic in 2014 could be attempted in Poland given its key role as a staging post for supplies going into Ukraine.
These type of clandestine operations are often carried out by Russians who travel in and out of a country rather than diplomats. But embassies provide the enabling infrastructure for their activities to take place, one Western intelligence official explains.
And the hope will be that the large-scale expulsions will make that, as well as traditional spying, much harder now, not least because there will be fewer spies to keep tabs on.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61311026
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WHY RUSSIA DISLIKES WESTERN DEMOCRACY
BAZA Russian railroad bridge stolen
Baza means “base” in Russia. This is so base. A 60 ton railway bridge was stolen and sold for scrap metal in Russia!
Ryazan region. Local residents. Took apart railway bridge. And sold it for scrap.
There are only pillars left. Entrepreneurial perps even sold rail tracks! Come back for some concrete, too. And you might want to pump out spring water from the river to bottle.
Parts of the bridge were found at a scrap metal collection points in Ryazan. The police say they don’t know how to manage evidence that weighs 60 tons.
Rural residents cannot get to neighboring settlements. The damage is estimated at 300 million rubles. In Russia, they sell you a bridge.
Philosopher and ideologue Alexander Dugin opened up about the incoming future ushered in by delusional and deranged Putin in the eighth decade of his earthly existence.
“In Russia, it is necessary to ban all modern entertainment that ‘undermines’ traditional values,” he said.
How are people gonna amuse themselves?
“Round dances.” Young women hold hands and go in circles round and round. This exercise helps to prepare womb for childbirth and pick a mate to make at least five children.
Among other entertainments that are morally upright “traveling aground native land and pilgrimages to holy sites.”
As a negative example Dugin cited Russian youth comedy club KVN, which according to Dugin became a “poisonous matrix of degeneration.”
I’m trying to picture “poisonous matrix of degeneration.” Agent Smith in shades shooting a blowpipe with curare laced dart that causes wounded folks to take their clothes off and perform indecent acts in public.
The philosopher emphasized that “the sinister nature of this pernicious phenomenon” is noticeable in the example of comedians Vladimir Zelensky and Maxim Galkin, an anti-war critic and a registered foreign agent who once played in it.
Just eleven years ago Zelensky and Galkin co-hosted a New Year music show on Russia-1 TV channel. How quickly perception of things change in Russia.
Western style comedy clubs are out. Orthodox round dances in national costumes are in. As long as President Putin approves.
~ Misha Firer, Quora
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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
The pursuit of happiness — enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as one of our unalienable rights along with life and liberty — is in reality big and daunting. Sometimes, it can feel difficult to know where to start, especially when American culture and conventional wisdom tends to get it so wrong most of the time.
Having spent the last 10 years immersed in the science of happiness and writing my book “New Happy,” I know there are simple yet powerful, research-backed steps you can take to experience more happiness today. The more you practice, the more instinctive they’ll become.
These five small steps, sprinkled throughout your day, have the potential to transform it.
Share your feelings with others
It’s far better to share your emotions with someone you trust than to keep your feelings to yourself, research shows.
For example, sharing positive news with someone in your life can increase your own joy and give them a chance to experience it, too. If someone is there to hold your hand when you’re in pain, it reduces the intensity of your suffering.
Focus on the next step more than on the end goal
Pursuing meaningful goals is an integral part of living a happy life. But goals that feel overwhelming can lead people to procrastinate.
Remind yourself that you don’t have to achieve your objective today; you can just move a little bit closer. Every action you take and every forward movement you notice can enhance the hope and motivation you feel.
Start small. Set a timer and say to yourself, “For the next 10 minutes, I’m going to do something that moves me toward my goals.” For example, if your goal is to start your own business, brainstorm potential names or products until the timer goes off.
Perform an act of kindness
Helping other people is one of the most reliable and powerful ways to feel better. Kindness can positively affect your emotional and even physical well-being — lowering blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone.
Take a moment to think about who in your life is having a hard time and what you might do to support them. It can be as simple as sending a text message, sharing a funny video, dropping off a meal, or inviting them to spend time together.
Ask for help when you need it
The culture we live in, which I call Old Happy, teaches us that we need to do everything by ourselves. As a result, you might start to believe that asking for help means you’re “giving up” or “failing.”
But it actually shows you’re committed to persevering, improving, and growing. When you’re struggling, consider who in your life has done what you’re trying to do and what type of support you need. Then reach out and ask for it.
We wildly underestimate how much other people want to help us. Since performing acts of kindness makes people happier, you’re giving someone a chance to experience happiness, too.
Notice the good that is around you
Thanks to our brain’s negativity bias and Old Happy’s cultural conditioning, it’s all too easy to focus on what we don’t have: the promotion we haven’t gotten, the item we want to buy, or the ways in which we don’t feel good enough.
But studies show that the more you refocus your attention on what you do have, the more content you’ll be. So ask yourself: “What’s going right, right now?”
There’s a lot to be thankful for: a helpful colleague, a chat with a good friend, a delicious meal, or a beautiful sunset. You just have to pause and notice it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/29/little-things-to-do-daily-to-be-happier-happiness-researcher.html
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MORE MONEY, MORE HAPPINESS
the medieval "money-bags"
Money can’t buy happiness, of course. Of course. But it can really, really help.
Here’s the deal: For years, there’s been a popular theory in behavioral science research that people hit a kind of “happiness plateau” around the $75,000 a year threshold (or around $100,000 adjusted for inflation), and above that level, more money isn’t going to make you significantly happier.
But according to new research from Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, there is an “ever-increasing association between more money and higher happiness.”
Or, to quote the old adage: Mo’ money, mo’ yacht trips to Mykonos with your best friends and personal chef.
In short, Killingsworth said that the income threshold idea wasn’t wrong, per se. But his research suggests that if such a level exists, “it is considerably higher than incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.”
So that’s it, we solved it: If you want to be happier, just quadruple your income … LOL (I mean quadruple your income if you want to, but the happiness equation is, of course, a little more complicated than that.)
I called Dr. Killingsworth earlier this month to discuss his latest findings on the correlation between money and happiness, what the earlier science on the subject got wrong and why people need to focus on a “happiness portfolio.”
Killingsworth: At the broadest level, my research aims to understand what makes life worth living. Like, how do we understand the conditions of a good life; what makes people happy?
To do that, I collect large-scale data in the course of people’s everyday lives … That’s kind of the 100,000-foot view.
One of the things I’ve been looking at recently is this question of, is there a certain amount of money where, once you get to that, happiness stops changing? Is there sort of a threshold?
For a long time, researchers thought if people can get to that level — whether it’s $75,000, or $100,000 — then more doesn’t really seem to make a difference.
Nightcap: I’ve definitely heard of that one. I don’t think of myself as a particularly money-hungry person, but the idea always felt a little hard to believe. People with lots of money who don’t have to work sure look like they’re having a blast.
Killingsworth: Right. It looks like part of the reason researchers had found a sort of plateau was because of how they measured happiness. It was good for measuring happiness on the low end, but not above that. It’s kind of like how a dementia test measures whether people can do basic math or identify an animal. But a dementia test isn’t very good for differentiating the average person from a genius, because they’ll all get a perfect score.
A couple of papers I released in the last few years challenged that, and what I find with really high-quality data is that actually, happiness keeps rising.
Nightcap: I have a sort of cynical question. I wonder if part of the happiness for the very wealthy is that maybe their satisfaction comes from being so much further above the fray than everyone else? If the floor were higher and there were fewer poor people in the world, would the rich still feel so much happier?
Killingsworth: I think it’s not impossible that what you’re describing is part of what’s going on. But I’m reasonably confident that that isn’t the whole story.
Statistically, what I find is the most explanatory factor is that when people have more money, they feel a lot more in control of their lives. And I think that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t really stop at any magic threshold. More money gives you more choices. The fewer resources you have, the more constrained you are, you don’t have so many options.
Nightcap: Can you talk a little bit about how geography makes a difference here? The US has a pretty weak social safety net, and I’m wondering how it might change the calculus if you had less money but weren’t living on a knife’s edge.
My data is all from the US, so it doesn’t speak directly to what the pattern looks like in other countries. Certainly, I think it’s true that everywhere the happiness gradient is positive, it certainly makes sense that the gradient might be steeper in places where the stakes are higher. I totally share your intuition that the US in particular is an increasingly challenging place to be poor.
Nightcap: What do you think of the practical implications of your findings? Are we culturally reverting to a kind of Reagan-era greed?
Killingsworth: I would really want to be careful about that, for a few reasons.
Money is just one of a bunch of factors that explains why some people are happier than others. So even if more money really does cause people to be happier — my study is really just looking at the correlation between them all, though I think there’s a decent chance that that’s reflecting the causal structure — there’s tons of other stuff that’s also important.
A mistake that I think we should try to avoid is prioritizing money so much that we’re not doing all the other stuff that’s important.
I think people need to think about this more of kind of like a happiness portfolio.
There are other things that you can control, like spending more time with other people, getting into the gym more often or riding a bike, that are really pretty easy. Whereas, like, 5X-ing your income? That’s not so easy.
It’s more that you want to have the control, the freedom, the flexibility to be able to move through life. Making money is one way to do that. But there are other ways you can do it too, and one of them could just be by spending less.
Nightcap: So one last quick question: The secret to happiness. What is it?
Killingsworth: …I mean, I think part of the answer is, there’s no one thing. It’s actually a long list of things. I don’t know if I’m following your question correctly.
Nightcap: I’m just messing with you, sorry, it’s been a long week.
Killingsworth: You know, it’s the million-dollar question. It’s a little bit like asking, “What makes you healthy?” And you could say, well, washing your hands is good. But then, you know, eating vegetables is probably also good. And oh, by the way, getting some daily exercise, not living in an environment that’s really polluted, that would be good. Not having a job or family life that’s super stressful. And also, don’t be too lonely. … You can really build out a pretty long list before it starts feeling like well, OK, is the 71st thing really that important?
There isn’t one silver bullet — this one secret trick that the doctor is going to tell you is key. But it also means people have options about how they pursue happiness.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/business/money-happiness-study-nightcap/index.html
Giovanna1:
Happiness is fleeting so to be content by having a life of meaning—service to others, in the long haul, is more sustainable and rewarding over momentary success, like your first car, first house, first win, first million, or whatever you deem success.
cnn-user-bzmm5r MONEY CAN BUY TIME
Money buys time. What you choose to do with that time is up to you!
For example, if you could pay someone to do a chore, such as cleaning the house, grocery shopping, mowing the lawn, and you don't like doing those chores, what would you do with the time saved?
If time is our most precious commodity, then the more money you have, the more time you can buy.
Oriana: IF YOU HAVE TO WORK, YOU ARE NOT RICH
I remember something a Turkish classmate said that changed my perspective. I referred to someone as a “rich engineer.” She said, “If you have to work, you are not rich.”
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JESUS ASKS PETER AN ANNOYING QUESTION
John 21:15-23, New International Version
15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” 23 Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”
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Oriana:
It is not at all rare that the Jesus of the Gospels does not come across as a nice person. This reminds me of my shock, during a religion lesson, when the nun told about the wedding at Cana and how Mary says to Jesus: “Son, they have no wine.” And at first Jesus brushes her off: “Woman, what do I have to do with you?’ This startled me because I couldn’t imagine myself saying that to my mother. In fact, I couldn’t imagine ANYONE saying this to his or her mother.
Of course a theologian could figure out some sophisticated answer. But on a simple emotional level, there’s still a shock: this is not what one says to a parent. There is no doubt that a nice Jewish boy wouldn’t address his mother as “woman.”
True, Jesus has a reason: he states that his time “is not yet.” This is not yet the time for performing miracles and becoming a religious preacher. But that can be said nicely, even sweetly.
And ultimately Jesus does change the water into wine, sparing the host embarrassment — and it’s a very good wine, which receives a compliment. Mary’s compassionate remark — not a demand — bears fruit, so to speak.
Speaking of embarrassment, who wouldn’t be embarrassed if asked, not once but three times, “Do you love me more than these other people here love me?” The all-knowing god shouldn’t have to ask.
Charles:
Oriana:
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A PROTEIN CALLED REELIN KEEPS SHOWING UP IN BRAINS THAT RESIST AGING AND ALZHEIMER’S
A key protein that helps assemble the brain early in life also appears to protect the organ from Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging.
A trio of studies published in the past year all suggest that the protein Reelin helps maintain thinking and memory in ailing brains, though precisely how it does this remains uncertain. The studies also show that when Reelin levels fall, neurons become more vulnerable.
There’s growing evidence that Reelin acts as a “protective factor” in the brain, says Li-Huei Tsai, a professor at MIT and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
“I think we’re on to something important for Alzheimer’s,” Tsai says.
The research has inspired efforts to develop a drug that boosts Reelin or helps it function better, as a way to stave off cognitive decline.
“You don't have to be a genius to be like, ‘More Reelin, that’s the solution,’” says Dr. Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “And now we have the tools to do that.”
From Colombia, a very special brain
Reelin became something of a scientific celebrity in 2023, thanks to a study of a Colombian man who should have developed Alzheimer’s in middle age but didn’t.
The man, who worked as a mechanic, was part of a large family that carries a very rare gene variant known as Paisa, a reference to the area around Medellin where it was discovered. Family members who inherit this variant are all but certain to develop Alzheimer’s in middle age.
This PET image shows the brain of a Colombian man whose memory and thinking remained intact in his late 60s, even though he carried a rare gene variant that nearly always causes Alzheimer's in a person's 40s.
“They start with cognitive decline in their 40s, and they develop full-blown dementia [in their] late 40s or early 50s,” Arboleda-Velasquez says.
But this man, despite having the variant, remained cognitively intact into his late 60s and wasn’t diagnosed with dementia until he was in his 70s.
After he died at 74, an autopsy revealed that the man’s brain was riddled with sticky amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.
Scientists also found another sign of Alzheimer’s — tangled fibers called tau, which can impair neurons. But oddly, these tangles were mostly absent in a brain region called the entorhinal cortex, which is involved in memory.
That’s important because this region is usually one of the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s, Arboleda-Velasquez says.
The researchers studied the man’s genome. And they found something that might explain why his brain had been protected.
He carried a rare variant of the gene that makes the protein Reelin. A study in mice found that the variant enhances the protein’s ability to reduce tau tangles.
Although the research focused on a single person, it reverberated through the world of brain science and even got the attention of the (then) acting director of the National Institutes of Health, Lawrence Tabak.
“Sometimes careful study of even just one truly remarkable person can lead the way to fascinating discoveries with far-reaching implications,” Tabak wrote in his blog post about the discovery.
Reelin gets real
After the study of the Colombia man was published, lots of researchers “started to get excited about Reelin,” Tsai says.
Tsai’s team, though, had already been studying the protein’s role in Alzheimer’s.
In September of 2023, the team published an analysis of the brains of 427 people. It found that those who maintained higher cognitive function as they aged tended to have more of a kind of neuron that produces Reelin.
In July of 2024, the group published a study in the journal Nature that provided more support for the Reelin hypothesis.
The study included a highly detailed analysis of post-mortem brains from 48 people. Twenty-six brains came from people who had shown symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The rest came from people who appeared to have normal thinking and memory when they died.
Interestingly, a few of these apparently unaffected people had brains that were full of amyloid plaques.
“We wanted to know, ‘What’s so special about those individuals?’” Tsai says.
So the team did a genetic analysis of the neurons in six different brain regions. They found several differences, including a surprising one in the entorhinal cortex, the same region that appeared to be protected against tau tangles in the man from Colombia.
“The neurons that are most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s neurodegeneration in the entorhinal cortex, they share one feature,” Tsai says: “They highly express Reelin.”
In other words, Alzheimer’s appears to be selectively damaging the neurons that make Reelin, the protein needed to protect the brain from disease. As a result, Reelin levels decline and the brain becomes more vulnerable.
The finding dovetails with what scientists learned from the Colombian man whose brain defied Alzheimer’s. He had carried a variant of the RELN gene that seemed to make the protein more potent. So that might have offset any Reelin deficiency caused by Alzheimer’s.
At the very least, the study “confirms the importance of Reelin,” Arboleda-Velasques says, “which, I have to say, had been overlooked.”
A breakthrough made thanks to a Colombian family
The Reelin story might never have emerged without the cooperation of about 1,500 members of an extended Colombian family that carries the Paisa gene variant.
The first members of that family were identified in the 1980s byDr. Francisco Lopera Restrepo, head of the University of Antioquia's Clinical Neurology Department. Since then, members have taken part in a range of studies, including trials of experimental Alzheimer’s drugs.
Along the way, scientists have identified a handful of family members who inherited the Paisa gene variant but have remained cognitively healthy well beyond the age when dementia usually sets in.
Some appear to be protected by an extremely rare version of the APOE gene called the Christchurch variant. Now scientists know that others seem to be protected by the gene responsible for Reelin.
Both of those discoveries were possible because some members of the Colombian family have been examined repeatedly in their own country, and even flown to Boston for brain scans and other advanced tests.
“These people agreed to participate in research, get their blood drawn, and donate their brain after death,” Arboleda-Velasquez says. “And they changed the world.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/07/29/g-s1-13519/alzheimers-protein-reelin-brain-aging-amyloid-tau-memory
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BRAINWASHING — HOW THE BRAIN DISPOSES OF ITS WASTE
About 170 billion cells are in the brain, and as they go about their regular tasks, they produce waste — a lot of it. To stay healthy, the brain needs to wash away all that debris. But how exactly it does this has remained a mystery.
Now, two teams of scientists have published three papers that offer a detailed description of the brain's waste-removal system. Their insights could help researchers better understand, treat and perhaps prevent a broad range of brain disorders.
The papers, all published in the journal Nature, suggest that during sleep, slow electrical waves push the fluid around cells from deep in the brain to its surface. There, a sophisticated interface allows the waste products in that fluid to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which takes them to the liver and kidneys to be removed from the body.
One of the waste products carried away is amyloid, the substance that forms sticky plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
There's growing evidence that in Alzheimer's disease, the brain's waste-removal system is impaired, says Jeffrey Iliff, who studies neurodegenerative diseases at the University of Washington but was not a part of the new studies.
The new findings should help researchers understand precisely where the problem is and perhaps fix it, Iliff says.
"If we restore drainage, can we prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease?" he asks.
A brief history of brainwashing
The new studies come more than a decade after Iliff and Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish scientist, first proposed that the clear fluids in and around the brain are part of a system to wash away waste products.
The scientists named it the glymphatic system, a nod to the body's lymphatic system, which helps fight infection, maintain fluid levels and filter out waste products and abnormal cells.
Both systems work like plumbing in a house, says Jonathan Kipnis of Washington University in St. Louis, an author of two of the new papers.
"You have the water pipes and the sewage pipes," Kipnis says. "So the water comes in clean, and then you wash your hands, and the dirty water goes out.”
But the lymphatic system uses a network of thin tubes that transports waste to the bloodstream. The brain lacks these tubes.
So scientists have spent decades trying to answer a fundamental question, Kipnis says: "How does a waste molecule from the middle of the brain make it all the way out to the borders of the brain" and ultimately out of the body?
Part of the answer came in 2012 and 2013, when Iliff and Nedergaard began proposing the glymphatic system. They showed that in sleeping animals, cerebrospinal fluid begins to flow quickly through the brain, flushing out waste.
But what was pushing the fluid? And how was it transporting waste across the barrier that usually separates brain tissue from the bloodstream?
Waves that wash
Kipnis and his team began looking at what the brain was doing as it slept. As part of that effort, they measured the power of a slow electrical wave that appears during deep sleep in animals.
And they realized something: "By measuring the wave, we are also measuring the flow of interstitial fluid," the liquid found in the spaces around cells, Kipnis says.
It turned out that the waves were acting as a signal, synchronizing the activity of neurons and transforming them into tiny pumps that push fluid toward the brain's surface, the team reported in February in the journal Nature.
In a second paper published in the same issue of Nature, a team led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provided more evidence that slow electrical waves help clear out waste.
The team used mice that develop a form of Alzheimer's. They exposed these mice to bursts of sound and light that occurred 40 times a second.
The stimulation induced brain waves in the animals that occurred at the same, slow frequency.
Tests showed that the waves increased the flow of clean cerebrospinal fluid into the brain and the flow of dirty fluid out of the brain. They also showed that the fluid was carrying amyloid, the substance that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.
In a paper published a few weeks earlier, Kipnis had shown how waste, including amyloid, appeared to be crossing the protective membrane that usually isolates the brain.
Kipnis and his team focused on a vein that passes through this membrane.
"Around the vein, you have a sleeve, which is never fully sealed," he says. "That's where the [cerebrospinal fluid] is coming out" and transferring waste to the body's lymphatic system.
From mice to humans
Together, the new studies suggest that keeping the brain's waste-clearance system functioning requires two distinct steps: one to push waste into the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain, and another to move it into the lymphatic system and eventually out of the body.
"We've described them separately," Iliff says, "but from a biological perspective, they almost certainly are coupled.”
Iliff says many of the new findings in mice still need to be confirmed in people.
"The anatomical differences between a rodent and a human," he says, "they're pretty substantial."
But he says the results are consistent with research on what leads to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s.
Researchers know that the brain's waste-clearance system can be impaired by age, injuries and diseases that clog blood vessels in the brain.
"All of these are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease," Iliff says.
Impaired waste removal may also be a factor in Parkinson's disease, headache and even depression, Iliff says. So finding ways to help the brain clean itself — perhaps by inducing those slow electrical waves — might prevent a wide array of disorders.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/26/g-s1-6177/brain-waste-removal-system-amyloid-alzheimer-toxins
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SHINGLES VACCINE MAY REDUCE DEMENTIA RISK, TWO LARGE STUDIES SUGGEST
Two new studies suggest that getting a vaccine to protect against a painful case of shingles may be beneficial for memory, too.
An estimated 98% of US adults have had chickenpox and are at risk for shingles; both are caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is in the herpes family.
Herpes viruses are wily and can stow away quietly in the roots of nerves. They can reactivate during periods of stress or illness, or any time a person’s immunity is lowered. That viral reactivation can cause shingles, a rash that opens in a line around the trunk or down the neck or face. The pain from shingles varies from person to person but can range from tingling to searing, and it can go on for weeks.
Increasingly, researchers believe that some kinds of herpes viruses can also hide out in the brain and become active again when the immune system drops its guard. When they do, the theory goes, it may cause damage that promotes the development of dementia.
There’s no cure for shingles, but antiviral drugs can help treat it, and there are vaccines. In 2006, the first vaccine for shingles was licensed in the United States, Zostavax. In 2017, a stronger vaccine, Shingrix, became available. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends Shingrix over Zostavax for adults 50 and older.
Zostavax contained a live but weakened form of the virus, but Shingrix contains only part of it: proteins that sit on its outer surface. Both vaccines work by teaching the body to recognize and fight off the real virus when it begins to cause trouble.
In clinical trials, Shingrix was 97% effective at preventing shingles, compared with 65% to 70% effectiveness for Zostavax, depending on a person’s age. Shingrix also appears to give longer protection, although that’s still under study.
The two new studies make use of this history, looking back over the medical records of hundreds of thousands of people who were vaccinated with Shingrix and comparing how frequently they were diagnosed with dementia versus people who got other kinds of vaccines.
It’s difficult to eliminate all bias from observational studies like these, but the researchers tried to avoid one in particular: the healthy user effect. This holds that certain people — ones who are more likely to take care of their health — are also more likely to engage in a range of behaviors like going to the doctor regularly, exercising and getting vaccines. By the same token, people who are unvaccinated may be those who are too frail or sick to be vaccinated, or they may not have access to regular health care.
It’s that pattern of behaviors or personal circumstances, more than any one specific thing, that determines an individual’s risk for a number of diseases. If researchers try to compare vaccinated people with those who are unvaccinated, they run the risk of comparing two fundamentally different groups of people and falsely attributing any differences to vaccination alone.
Could a vaccine delay dementia?
The first study, which was published by the journal Nature Medicine, looked at dementia diagnoses in more than 100,000 people over 65 who got the Zostavax vaccine with about 100,000 65-and-older adults who got the Shingrix vaccine.
The researchers found that people who got Shingrix had a 17% lower chance of being diagnosed with dementia in the six years after their shots than people who got the less-effective Zostavax vaccine.
People who were vaccinated didn’t avoid dementia completely, but it did seem to be associated with a delayed diagnosis. On average, the researchers said, this represents about 164 diagnosis-free days, or about five months more time, in people who were eventually affected.
This kind of study can’t prove that the vaccines were directly responsible for the differences between groups. If further research proves that shingles vaccines do protect memory and thinking, “at a public health level that would be not a trivial finding whatsoever,” Harrison said.
Experts who were not involved in the study said it adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests shingles vaccines may help protect the brain.
“There was already some evidence that the old live vaccine was able to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease,” Dr. Andrew Doig, a biochemist at the University of Manchester, said in written comments.
It looks like the newer vaccine may be linked an even larger reduction in risk, he says.
“This is a significant result, comparable in effectiveness to the recent antibody drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease,” Doig said.
The association was stronger in women who got Shingrix, although it’s not clear why. Women had a 22% lower risk of developing dementia within the next six years compared with women who got Zostavax. Men had about a 13% lower risk.
The team next compared seniors who got Shingrix vaccine with those who got vaccinated against the flu and the combination of diptheria-pertussis-tetanus. The risk of dementia in those who got a Shingrix shot was 23% lower than in people who got a flu shot and 28% lower in people who got a tDAP vaccine, further supporting the idea that there’s something unique about being vaccinated for shingles that’s lowering dementia risk.
“It will be critical to study this apparent effect further,” said Dr. Sheona Scales, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, in written comments.
“While research into whether vaccines affect dementia risk continues, people should be aware that there are other factors that have definitively been linked to an increased dementia risk. These include things like smoking, high blood pressure and excessive alcohol consumption,” Scales added. And controlling those can make a difference in brain health, too.
A second study with similar findings
A second study, which is scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, uses a similar approach as the Oxford study, and its conclusions mirror those findings.
By mining the data on nearly 600,000 patients, researchers were able to compare the diagnosis of dementia in people 50 and older who were vaccinated against shingles – with either the older Zostavax vaccine or the newer Shingrix vaccine – against people who were vaccinated with Pneumovax, which protects against bacterial infections that cause strep throat and pneumonia.
After vaccination against shingles, people included in the study were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those who got only the Pneumovax vaccine.
After five years, people who got Zostavax were 8% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia and those who got Shingrix were about 20% less likely to have dementia as a diagnosis in their health records compared with people who got only a Pneumovax vaccine. This finding suggests that protecting against the shingles virus is responsible for the difference, rather than just vaccination alone or the healthy user effect.
This study also found that the new shingles vaccine was associated with a larger degree of benefit than the older one. People who got the Shingrix vaccine were about 23% less likely after five years to have a diagnosis of dementia compared with people who got Zostavax.
Although the findings are intriguing, the association needs more study before researchers can know for sure that the shingles vaccine is definitively behind the benefit.
“The data are at this point an indication for more study, rather than into a signal that we should change how we use the vaccine,” said Dr. Phil Dormitzer, who leads vaccine research and development for GSK.
So for the time being, the best reason to get a shingles vaccine is still to avoid the misery of shingles.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/health/shingles-vaccines-dementia-studies/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
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NO MORE HOT DOGS— CUT YOUR RISK OF DEMENTIA BY ELIMINATING PROCESSED RED MEAT 
Dementia risk rose by 14% when people ate about 1 ounce of processed red meat a day — the equivalent of slightly less than two 3-ounce servings a week — compared with people who only ate about three servings a month, a preliminary new study found.
The risk for dementia dropped by 20%, however, for people who replaced that small daily serving of processed red meat with a daily serving of nuts and legumes.
Processed red meats such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and deli meats often contain higher levels of sodium, nitrates and saturated fat. Eating higher amounts of these meats has been strongly linked to the development of colon and other cancers, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease and stroke, studies have shown.
The study was observational and can only show an association and not necessarily cause and effect, said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who was not involved in the study.
“However, the associations are very likely to be causal, because the principal risk factors for Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline are the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, with which processed meat intake is strongly linked,” he said in an email. Katz is the founder of the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.
Each additional serving of processed red meat increases the risk
An abstract of the study, which is under review for publication, was presented at the 2024 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia.
Every two to four years for over three decades, researchers captured dietary data from more than 130,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study, one of the largest investigations into the risk factors for major chronic diseases in women, and the complimentary Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which investigated the same risk factors in men.
Every two to four years for over three decades, researchers captured dietary data from more than 130,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study, one of the largest investigations into the risk factors for major chronic diseases in women, and the complimentary Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which investigated the same risk factors in men.
The men and women were asked how often they ate a serving of processed red meat, which could be two slices of bacon, one hot dog, two small links of sausage or kielbasa, and salami, bologna or other processed meat sandwiches.
The study participants were also asked how often they ate nuts and legumes, such as 1 tablespoon of peanut butter; 1 ounce of peanuts, walnuts or other nuts; an 8-ounce glass of soy milk; a half cup of string beans, lentils, beans, peas or lima beans; or a typical 3-ounce serving of tofu or soy protein.
“Those are anti-inflammatory foods, so you can imagine they have a lot of benefits in addition to reducing the processed meats with toxins, nitrates and sodium which are not good for you,” said Dr. Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Association, who was not involved in the study.
In addition to the 14% cognitive decline associated with approximately two servings a week of processed red meat, the study found an increased risk connected to each additional serving.
Each additional daily serving added an extra 1.61 years of cognitive aging for global cognition and an extra 1.69 years of cognitive aging in verbal memory, according to the study.
“Global cognition provides a broad overview of cognitive function. It can help to capture the overall impact of dietary and lifestyle factors on cognitive health,” said lead study author Yuhan Li, a research assistant in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in an email.
“Verbal memory refers to the memory for verbally presented information. It is an important predictor of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Li, who conducted the study while a graduate student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Award-winning food plans such as the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) are more of a lifestyle than a so-called “diet,” experts say. Both focus on simple, plant-based cooking, with the majority of each meal focused on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, and nuts and seeds.
Red meat intake is limited. Instead, the diets emphasize eating oily fish, which are packed with omega-3 fatty acids that are good for the brain, along with lean meats such as poultry and pork loin.
When you do incorporate meat, use small pieces of chicken or slices of lean meat to flavor a veggie-based meal, such as a stir-fry.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/health/red-meat-dementia-study-wellness/index.html
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ending on beauty:
I love the dark hours of my being
Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden
gathering him in its warm roots —
living the dream that the dead boy
lost in his sorrows and his songs.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly, modified by Oriana
Oriana:
I’ve posted this poem before — but poems need to be read more than once, and they affect us differently each time. You can’t step into the same poem twice.
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