*
THE SIGNAL
I’d listen to his heart, and he to mine:
one thing we always did in bed,
as if needing to receive a signal
of another life, naked and equally
endangered. He must have
forgotten that sound when he pressed
the gun to his temple, not quite
twenty-nine. He had a Russian
revolutionary look: his hair refused
to stay down, tense and alive,
prickling my fingertips
months after his burial.
My hands remember the hushed
prayer of opening his shirt,
the liturgy of each button.
I’d kiss his left nipple, undo
more buttons, kiss
the right one, slyly
dip my tongue in the birth
bowl of his navel. Then we
listened to each other’s heart
— though my mind
mistranslated every systole,
diastole as the survivor’s
loves me, while his rhythm
repeated loves me not.
~ Oriana
*
JANE AUSTEN’S POSSESSIONS
Small things can be almost sacred, as is Fanny Price’s “nest of comforts,” assembled out of bits and pieces in the old schoolroom at Mansfield Park—a faded footstool, a collection of family silhouettes, a sketch of her brother’s ship; objects none of which is considered good enough for display elsewhere. Or they can be slippery, unnoticed clues—in Emma, the spectacles whose loose rivet Frank Churchill is discovered mending with such fixed concentration in Miss Bates’s sitting room. The silver knife, relic of little dead Mary, over which Fanny’s sisters quarrel, is a disturbing accessory amid Portsmouth’s squalor.
Though, like Fanny’s amber cross, it possibly derives from something actual, an object Austen too may have lingered over: “has she a silver knife,” she enquires of Cassandra, June 30, 1808, anxious to provide an appropriate gift. In Persuasion, caught out by rain when walking in Bath, the comparative thickness of Anne Elliot’s boots is a topic to be dwelt on; Lady Russell staring through the carriage window is discovered to be watching out for a particular pair of curtains in a house across the road and not, as Anne supposes, for a glimpse of Captain Wentworth; during the musical evening in the Upper Assembly Rooms, Anne and Mr. Elliot hold between them a concert program from which she explains the words of an Italian song.
Hardy concluded from such stubborn materiality that “things take a hand in human destiny,” and that though she resists “symbolic manipulation of things,” “the intimate connection of things with their owners and donors is more personal in Jane Austen than in any other novelist before her, and perhaps after her too.”
There is, also, something compensatory in a regard for faded footstools, thick boots and window curtains. Mundane objects link Austen the novelist to the letter writer whose fixing upon “little matters,” as she describes them to Cassandra, April 18, 1811, turns the emptiness of the female day—having nothing significant to say (a common refrain in her letters of obligation)—into fruitful watchfulness and a kind of redemption through random detail: “not being overburdened with subject—(having nothing at all to say)—I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end,” she wrote January 21, 1801.
Accordingly, “I am still a Cat if I see a Mouse.” A woman’s letters, literally, are spaces to be filled, like household cupboards or drawers, and nothing that furnishes this end is wasted: “You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me.” The disconnected “nothings” of Austen’s domestic correspondence can take on the appearance of an inventory of the day’s passing moments. The domestic letter was her model for fiction, the shadow life of her novels. In her hands, the transfiguring challenge of the realist novel begins with the domestic letter: how and what do you write when you have so little to say?
Jane Austen is a tease. Her life coincided with the rise of a mass readership and a celebrity culture for the first time promoting women writers. Yet, in an age when even modest gentry families commissioned portrait miniatures and traveling painters were common, she, a writer with a growing lifetime reputation, has left no professional image. Her female contemporaries, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Macaulay, Frances Burney, Amelia Opie, Mary Shelley, Hannah More, Sarah Trimmer, all have splendid public portraits in oils, the work of professional painters, hanging in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), London. The only image from life to capture Austen’s face is this sketch made by her sister Cassandra, an averagely talented amateur. In the room where it now hangs, it is dwarfed by the grand likenesses of male Romantic poets with which it shares wall space.
Cassandra’s half-length sketch shows Jane, aged about thirty-five, at the beginning of her most intense period of novel writing: portrait of the artist as a middle-aged woman, perhaps? The image is lightly executed: there is no background; the dress, arms and hands are minimally, even clumsily, drawn. The eye is attracted to the only area of detail and finish: the face. In giving it definition Cassandra has used watercolor: warm brown for the hair, pale pink for the cheeks, mixed to a darker color to indicate shadows. She has taken pains to capture something particular in the expression. For the rest, the sketch appears unfinished. Was it abandoned out of a sense of failure or is the lack of finish part of its finished effect? The unfinished portrait drawing was a Regency fashion, as executed by professional society artists Thomas Lawrence and Richard Cosway, where the intention was to capture personality unawares, unstudied, as in life.
In 1932 the Austen scholar R.W. Chapman, answering an enquiry from Sir Henry Hake, director of the NPG, described “a horrid little sketch (head) by Cassandra reproduced somewhere. This cannot be of any importance.” The portrait is authentic. The product of an intimate and private connection between artist and sitter, its family provenance is watertight. Being private, its survival is a matter of chance rather than public endorsement. Austen’s niece Anna Lefroy, who lived closely with her aunt for more than twenty years, hated Cassandra’s sketch, describing “the figure” as “hideously unlike.”
All portraits, but most of all private portraits, evoke conflicting emotional responses, and Anna’s is an emotional not a critical response. For the audience of family and friends, each with their particular relationship and memories, the psychological space for interpretation is far narrower than for those who did not know the subject. With attention focused on personal attachment it becomes hard to see the image in other terms. You and I can look at Cassandra’s portrait differently, seeing something that chimes with our interpretation of Jane Austen; or for us the image can become the basis for interpretation. From here we begin to build a sense of who we think she was. This opens up a huge question: what is any portrait faithful to? 
Marianne's dancing slippers
These dancing slippers belonged to Marianne Knight (1801-1896), the seventh child of Jane Austen’s brother Edward and his wife Elizabeth. But Jane would have owned pairs just like them. In one of her absurd teenage stories, a fictional character Elizabeth Johnson recounts how she and her sister Fanny, having worn out several pairs of shoes in running across Wales, finally borrow a pair of Mama’s “blue Sattin Slippers” and, taking one each, “hopped home from Hereford delightfully.” Delicate, formal footwear for the evening and the ballroom, satin slippers would scarcely survive normal outdoor walking, never mind a route march through Wales. Social status and fashion conspired to make gentlewomen’s footwear of every sort flimsy. Dancing slippers were flimsiest of all, often disintegrating in the course of a single evening’s wear.
English country dances and French contredanses (in both of which the couples face each other in two long rows), Scottish reels, Irish jigs and hornpipes (in honor of Britain’s naval victories) all involved vigorous activity. A contemporary, Susan Sibbald, recorded how she danced so hard at one ball that a hole in her slipper left her with a bleeding foot. In his brief “Biographical Notice” of his sister, Henry Austen chose to include the detail that “She was fond of dancing, and excelled in it.” He attached the information to her posthumously published Northanger Abbey, a novel in which Henry Tilney, keen to educate, remarks to the heroine Catherine Morland that dancing, “a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening,” is a play version of marriage.
Balls move the plot along in Austen’s novels because, much like the novel itself, a dance is a codified art form and the space where relations between the sexes are tested. In Pride and Prejudice the dance might be private and by invitation only (Mr. Bingley’s ball at Netherfield Park), or a ticketed assembly held in the local town’s (Meryton’s) public rooms. Whatever the occasion, the dance floor measures the course of stories in which, as in Northanger Abbey, readers and characters “are all hastening together to perfect felicity.”
Both men and women would carry their dancing slippers in bags, changing into them only on arrival at the ball. Marianne’s pair does not have a left or right shoe. It was up to the owner to wear them in as suited best. Tie ribbons secured the slippers on the feet and could be crossed up the legs. The slippers’ smooth leather soles would be chalked to improve their grip on polished wooden floors. At high-society balls, an artist might be commissioned to chalk the floor itself in elaborate patterns that the dancers’ feet wore away over the course of the evening.
Tom Moore, poet friend of Lord Byron, describes one such dance floor chalked with the constellations: “At every step a star is fled, And suns grow dim beneath their tread!…Hours are not feet, yet hours trip on, Time is not chalk, yet time’s soon gone!” The dancing slipper is a token of life’s fleeting joys. From their fine condition, we must assume this pair was never worn; that they never eclipsed a moon or tripped across the Milky Way. But Marianne Knight will have owned other pairs—though, since like Aunt Jane she remained unwed, none of them danced her into marriage. Fashioned in white satin with square toes and tie ribbons, Marianne’s slippers date from the early nineteenth century. The heels are lined with chamois leather and the toes with linen; the soles are pigskin. Beryl Bradford, a descendant of Edward Knight, donated them to Jane Austen’s House in 1952.
*
A promise lies tucked inside a letter, nestling there like a secret; and writers thrive on secrets. Jane Austen wrote this letter, dated 26-27 May 1801, aged twenty-five, over two days from Bath to her sister Cassandra, on a visit to family friends in Berkshire. Jane and her parents had been in Bath only a few weeks; they were house hunting. She describes one property where the kitchen is damp and another with a gloomy aspect. “I have nothing more to say on the subject of Houses.” she adds wearily. Intriguing references to a Mr. Evelyn and his “very bewitching Phaeton” make us wish to know more: how far did she encourage the flirtation she hints at between them? And how did he acquire his reputation for danger? Did he use his flashy carriage, like John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, to seduce young women or was he really only driving into the countryside (unlikely as it sounds) to collect birdseed?
A postscript written, for economy’s sake, upside down between the lines of page 1 includes news of brother Charles, a junior naval officer. With his share of prize money from the capture of an enemy ship he has bought his sisters “Gold chains & Topaze Crosses.” Outside London, with its own postal service, postage—based on weight and distance traveled—was paid by the recipient. This acted as an incentive for the writer to fill every scrap of paper. Jane Austen invented a new voice for fiction: conversational and intimate. Though early experiments in the novel were written as fictional letters, her novels are the first to see in the domestic letter, filled with what she describes as “little matters,” a future for the novel as a study of life’s everyday events. Her letters are the shadow life of her novels. Topics tumble over one another in a freewheeling stream of views and gossip. The voice appears artless.
But, unpacked, letters, much like her chattering spinster Miss Bates from Emma, another “great talker upon little matters,” yield far more than at first appears. In her letters, and nowhere else, Austen speaks in her own voice. But that voice is mediated and performative, attuned to its implied reader. She must have written several thousand: as a dependent female in a large and dispersed family, this was one of her sociable duties. Women for centuries took on this task. Cassandra was her chief correspondent. Some time before her death in 1845, Cassandra distributed those letters she had kept as mementos among surviving family members.
Her letters are the key to everything: raw data for her life and the untransformed banalities which, magically transmuted, become the precious trivia of the novels. Occasionally, as here, they read like the preliminary jottings of a fiction-making mind—the artfulness of the talking voice that runs on. American Austen enthusiast Charles Beecher Hogan purchased letter and crosses in November 1926. He later gave the crosses as a wedding present to his wife. In 1974 Hogan presented letter and crosses to the Jane Austen Society. Since 2020 they have formed part of the Jane Austen’s House collection.
A life in banknotes
Jane Austen and money go together. When, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennet asks her sister how long she has loved Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth replies: “I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Readers have tried ever since to explain away that sentence. But the truth is Austen wrote novels that endorse the values of her and our commercial society. She makes acquisitiveness appear principled, by serving up that headiest of romantic cocktails, love and money—the seductive fantasy that we might have it all, mischievously inverted in W.H. Auden’s “the amorous effects of ‘brass.'”Her lifetime earnings of around £630 were modest by any contemporary standard; writing never provided her with financial independence. Despite mounting esteem, she earned far less than contemporaries Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Walter Scott, all now by comparison little read. “The Rich are always respectable,” Austen quipped. She, too, has always been respectable, but she would surely have relished the irony of that with her face.
On the Bank of England £10 note, she at last has what she craved: fame and money. So, here are three objects for one, lest we forget what Jane Austen knew: that without money there can be little happiness. The truth is: Jane Austen has always been right on the money. Henry Austen, Jane’s brother, established himself as army agent and banker in London in 1801, forming partnerships there with Henry Maunde and James Tilson, and with satellite country banks, including Gray and Vincent in Alton, Hampshire. There was little regulation of private banks at this time. An unissued note from the Alton Bank names a second Austen investor, Henry’s brother Frank. Between 1750 and 1921 local banks issued their own notes, as some Scottish banks still do today.
Long before this, in 1792, the sixteen-year-old Jane dedicated “Lesley-Castle” to Henry, who added a postscript to her dedication, as follows: “Messrs Demand & Co—please to pay Jane Austen Spinster the sum of one hundred guineas on account of your Humbl. Servant. H.T. Austen. £105:0.0.” Henry’s promise of extravagant financial reward taps into a theme running through his sister’s teenage writings: virtue is not enough; without money “a Girl of Genius & Feeling” is at the mercy of every social injustice.
Banknotes, often dubiously acquired, are plentiful in these early stories. Henry opened his bank at 10 High Street, Alton (about 2 miles from Chawton), in 1806. This note can be dated between 1807 and 1815. Always a chancer, Henry was declared bankrupt in March 1816, during the post-war financial slump. The note became worthless and Jane, with other family members, lost her deposits.
Bought by Jane Austen’s House at auction in February 1989, the note’s purchase price was £160. Pictured at the start of this entry is a canceled check for the sum of £38, 18 shillings and 1 penny made out from John Murray to “Miss Jane Austin.” Repeating the misspelling, Austen has signed the back “Jane Austin.” At a time when Walter Scott, the bestselling novelist of the age, was clearing annual profits of £10,000, this modest sum was all she received on sales of Emma, her fourth novel, a year after publication. Though dated October 21st 1816, Murray’s check was a four-month bill, not cashable until February 1817. Money was tight and, in order to bank it straightaway, Jane Austen had no option but to discount it at a loss, as details on the back show.
On September 14, 2017 the Bank of England issued the first polymer £10 banknote. A stylized Jane Austen’s face was chosen to adorn the back. The twelve-sided writing table used at Chawton Cottage also features in the note’s design. : Florence Nightingale featured on the £10 note from 1975 to 1992; Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer, on the £5 note between 2002 and 2016. The Bank of England polymer £10 could be in your pocket.
From Jane Austen in 41 objects by Kathryn Sutherland, 2025
*
THE CASE OF EVYATAR DAVID
Over the past few weeks, images of emaciated Gazan children have circulated the media. Global outrage has exploded over emerging evidence of widespread hunger that the pictures purportedly capture. The anger has led major U.S. allies, including France, Britain, and Canada, to say they will recognize a Palestinian state.
Amid these developments, it may seem cartoonish, even obscene, to say that in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the good guy. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth that’s incredibly easy to forget amid the day-to-day coverage of this terrible war.
If you need a reminder, consider what Hamas did on Saturday when the terrorist group released a video of Israeli hostage Evyatar David. Evyatar, who is 24 years old, has been held captive by Hamas for 667 days. He is shirtless, gaunt, and clearly starving. Or as his family put it: “a living skeleton, buried alive.” He tells the camera he hasn’t eaten in days.
In one section of the video, he is forced to dig a hole in the tunnel where he is being held. He says it will be his grave.
Hamas released this video because it wants to increase its leverage in negotiations. If the Israeli population becomes so heartbroken that they demand a hostage deal on any terms, then Hamas can go back to ruling Gaza, building up its forces using stolen aid, and preparing for the next October 7.
Another way to put it is that the terrorist group is running a highly effective campaign of information warfare, and Western media outlets are falling for it.
Take a recent article, by now much discussed, published by The New York Times. Relying on testimony from several doctors working in Gaza as well as the Gaza Health Ministry, the article states that deaths in Gaza from starvation are on the rise. One photo stands out: a mother holding an emaciated, skeletal toddler named Muhammad.
This photo was plastered on the front page of the Times. It made the rounds on social media. You almost certainly saw it. And importantly, it was the only photo in the article that clearly suggested starvation. The rest depicted hungry refugees trying to get food aid under chaotic conditions.
Then we discovered that the Times hadn’t used a photo showing the boy’s older brother, who clearly isn’t starving. And Muhammad wasn’t emaciated due to a lack of available food; he was born with cerebral palsy. Six days after the article came out, the Times issued an editors’ note, stating that the boy was born with unrelated health issues that account for his skeletal appearance, and removed his mother’s testimony that he was “born a healthy child.”
What other information might have been left out?
Think about what had to happen for the Times to publish that photo on its front page, without context. Semafor reported Friday that the Times originally chose a different photo of a malnourished child with cerebral palsy. Concerned that the child’s preexisting condition would undermine claims made in the piece, they swapped the photo for the one of Muhammad. Then it came out that Muhammad also had a prior disability.
How did this happen? In selecting the photo, journalists would have had to talk to the child's mother and doctor, who presumably withheld this crucial detail. The claims then had to survive fact-checking without anyone pointing out how strange it was to see one child emaciated and his brother right next to him, looking fine.
Then, after the true story was revealed, the Times would have had to call this doctor again and ask if he had left out the baby’s disease. And since the entire article is based on the testimony of similarly placed doctors, you have to wonder: How many of the doctors in Gaza who talk to Western journalists are making similar omissions? And if they are, how would we know? And isn’t it a strange coincidence that several of the photographs that have gone viral of suffering Gazan children are children who have serious genetic diseases.
This isn’t the first time misinformation has spread in Western media. Recall that after an explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry—which is part of Hamas’s political infrastructure—reported almost immediately that exactly 471 people had been killed by an Israeli bomb. The Times circulated this report without scrutiny.
Then it came out that the true death count was possibly less than half that number. The hospital wasn’t hit—it was the parking lot next to the hospital. And it wasn’t an Israeli bomb that caused the explosion, but a misfired rocket launched from Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
There’s no doubt that there is a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But the information pipeline between Gaza and the West is fundamentally broken, biased, untrustworthy, and weaponized against Israel. And the less skeptical that Western journalists are, the more sources like Hamas and the Gaza Health Ministry can disseminate misinformation without penalty, perpetuating the false narrative that Israel is the genocidal aggressor in a war waged against them by a group whose mission is, in fact, genocide.
None of this means that everything the IDF does is justifiable. It’s possible to agree with the goals of an army but condemn its methods. During the Civil War, the Union Army burned down 40 percent of Atlanta, including civilian homes. Some of that was unnecessary, even immoral. But the North was still the good guy. Not because it was the underdog, or because it suffered more war crimes than the South, but because its goal—to end slavery—was fundamentally just.
That’s the case with Israel. Israel’s goal is to live in peace with its neighbors. Throughout its 77-year history, it has agreed to half a dozen peace deals with the Palestinians. It voluntarily left Gaza in 2005. If it had any interest in wiping Gaza off the map, it could have done so any time in the last several decades.
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike in Gaza on July 17
Of course, as with any army, it’s not hard to find examples of IDF soldiers conducting themselves terribly. Israel’s March decision to cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza for more than two months—in an effort to pressure Hamas to release the hostages—was a strategic mistake. And the aid distribution experiment that finally began in May has been chaotic and, because of that, largely ineffective. There are credible reports of soldiers shooting civilians who were trying to get food and accidentally went into a prohibited zone. Some of these are tragic accidents. Others may be war crimes.
But there is a moral asymmetry here. When an IDF soldier goes berserk, he is subject to criminal punishment. Hamas’s entire reason for being—its entire mission—is a war crime. Hamas fighters don’t wear uniforms. They have stolen enough aid from civilians to survive in their tunnels for a prolonged period of time. They are completely unaffected by the suffering of their own people.
The greatest tragedy of this war is that the excesses of both the IDF and Hamas almost always fall on Palestinian civilians.
That’s by Hamas’s design. Is it Israel’s fault that its own civilians are incredibly well protected by defensive infrastructure, including the Iron Dome and bomb shelters? Is it Israel’s fault that Hamas has built one of the most extensive networks of underground bomb shelters in the history of warfare, but doesn’t allow its own civilians to enter them? Is it Israel’s fault that Hamas uses children as lookouts, thereby turning them into combatants under the international laws of war?
When we hold Israel alone responsible for the civilian death toll in Gaza—a death toll that is the direct result of Hamas’s barbaric style of warfare—we implicitly blame Israel for war crimes that were committed by Hamas.
Hamas’s strategy is to maximize suffering on its own side. It knows it cannot beat Israel on the battlefield, but it hopes that by putting its own civilians in harm’s way, it can galvanize world opinion against Israel and destroy the Jewish State in the long run. This strategy only works if the world blames Israel for the consequences of Hamas’s choices. Our moral confusion is Hamas’s chief asset.
***
The most serious charge made against Israel is one of genocide. It’s also the most absurd.
Genocide is the intentional physical destruction of a people in whole or in part. Israel’s aim in Gaza is not to destroy the Palestinian people as a whole, nor is it to destroy Gaza and Palestinians in particular. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that about 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza in 22 months of war. Israel says that about 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed.
Both may be exaggerating their numbers, but let’s take them at their word. Assuming 60,000 people have been killed, that’s about 3 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population. The Nazis killed over 60 percent of European Jews. The Ottoman Empire killed over 50 percent of the Armenians in its territory. Hutu extremists may have killed close to 80 percent of the Tutsis in Rwanda over 100 days in 1994. Those were genocides.
In legitimately identified cases of genocide in which a smaller percentage of people were killed, it was because the perpetrator didn’t have the power to kill more. That’s not the case with Israel. If the IDF wanted, it could kill almost everyone in Gaza in a matter of weeks. Why hasn’t it?
Some people cite international pressure, arguing that Israel would like to commit a genocide but doesn’t want to become a pariah state. Leaving aside the fact that Israel is already a pariah state in many circles, that argument concedes that what Israel is doing isn’t genocide.
Yes, some far-right Israeli politicians have pledged to destroy Gaza. But they no more represent the will of most Israelis than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Marjorie Taylor Greene represent the most Americans. The reason that spectators focus on politicians’ words is to divine their intentions from unclear information. We want to understand what they would do if they had the power to do it. That calculus doesn’t apply to Israel, which is powerful enough to do anything it pleases.
The best indication of what Israeli decision-makers are trying to do in Gaza is what they’re actually doing. And what they’re actually doing is trying to destroy Hamas, an organization that started a war against them, is fanatically committed to their destruction, and is starving its hostages to death while feeding malicious propaganda to Western media.
There is a moral asymmetry in this war, and it favors Israel. Don’t be misled by information warfare campaigns trying to convince you otherwise.
~ Coleman Hughes, The Free Press, via M. Iossel, Facebook 
*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaoGI-soL1g
*
RUSSIA AS A COLONIAL POWER (Misha Firer)
Bashkirs are forbidden to speak their language in Mother Russia because it’s associated with dissent and independence movement.
Misery, as they say, loves company. And so Russians have been diligently looking out for company to despair, grieve and suffer properly with whoever they could find by peaceful or warlike methods.
There’s a region in the Urals where the ethnic group of Bashkirs have resided long before the Russians showed up with cannons and guns and claimed the land and its people as the prosperity of the tsar. As they say: wherever steps the jackboot of a Russian soldier is Motherland.
Russia’s still very much a colonial power under the guise of “federation”: suppressing national identity and minority languages, denying independence, imposing their administration control, siphoning out natural resources and leaving the indigenous populace impoverished.
Bashkir language and culture have been suppressed. Moscow has been sending its politicians to rule over Bashkirs to facilitate mining of natural resources there in order to build Potemkin City on Moscow River to smite off their feet folks like Carlson Tucker to spread the message far and wide of the great and undefeatable Mother Russia.
The “Asyltash” (“Nugget”) forum was organized by the ethnic authorities of Bashkiria, but quickly deteriorated into a language conflict.
Bashkir officials decided to please Moscow authorities and excluded the Bashkir language from the event. Speeches were only allowed in Russian. The presenters were ordered to speak only in Russian under a threat of expulsion and fines.
The forum website is also available only in Russian. The event takes place within the framework of the “For the Unity of the Country” program.
As a sign of protest, the forum participants deliberately spoke in the Bashkir language and in the evening near the fire they continued to sing in the Bashkir language and read Bashkir poetry.
Resistance won’t go away but the Russians won’t stop loving misery and to make wretched its imperial subjects to keep them company. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Stanko:
It is a land of misery, ruin, booze, and extensive literary works about ruin, misery, and booze. And it brings to the world only the above-mentioned. Without exception.” ~ 1845 - Karel Havlíček Borovský
*
TRUMP'S CONTINUING COGNITIVE DECLINE
‘He has trouble completing a thought’
Joe Biden was hounded for his age-related gaffes, but Trump’s increasingly strange behavior has largely been ignored
Donald Trump’s frequently bizarre public appearances, which this month have seen the president claim, wrongly, that his uncle knew the Unabomber and rant unprompted about windmills on his recent trip to the UK, have once again raised questions about his mental acuity, experts say.
For more than a year Trump, 79, has exhibited odd behavior at campaign events, in interviews, in his spontaneous remarks and at press conferences. The president repeatedly drifts off topic, including during a cabinet meeting this month when he spent 15 minutes talking about decorating, and appears to misremember simple facts about his government and his life.
During his presidency, Joe Biden was subjected to intense speculation over his mental acuity – including from Trump. After Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June 2024, when he repeatedly struggled to maintain his train of thought, scrutiny over Biden’s fitness eventually led to him not running for re-election.
Trump, however, has largely been saved the same examination, despite examples of confusion and unusual behavior that have continued throughout his second term and were on full display on his recent trip to the UK.
Over the weekend Trump, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, abruptly switched from discussing immigration to saying this: “The other thing I say to Europe: we’ve – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery.”
Trump proceeded to speak, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes about windmills, claiming without evidence that they drive whales “loco” and that wind energy “kills the birds” (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the number killed by domestic cats and from flying into power lines).
The abrupt changes in conversation are an example of Trump “digressing without thinking – he’ll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative”, said Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine.
For years, Trump has batted away questions about his mental acuity, describing himself as a “stable genius” and bragging about “acing” exams – later revealed to be very simple tests – which check for early signs of dementia.
But Democrats have begun to more aggressively question the president’s fitness, including Jasmine Crockett, the representative from Texas, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and this week alone offered multiple examples of Trump exhibiting odd conduct.
Asked about the famine in Gaza on Sunday, Trump seemed unable to remember the aid the US has given to Gaza, and forgot that others had also contributed.
Trump claimed the US gave $60m “two weeks ago”. He added: “You really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything.
“Nobody acknowledged it, nobody talks about it and it makes you feel a little bad when you do that and you know you have other countries not giving anything, none of the European countries by the way gave – I mean nobody gave but us.”
Trump seemed to not realize or remember that other countries have given money to Gaza – the UK announced a £60m ($80m) package in July, and the European Union has allocated €170m ($195m) in aid. And the Guardian could not find any record of the US giving $60m to Gaza two weeks ago. In June, the US state department approved a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group backed by Israeli and US interests which has been criticized by Democrats as “connected to deadly violence against starving people seeking food in Gaza.”
The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s claimed $60m donation.
Segal said another characteristic of Trump’s questionable mental acuity is confabulation. “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.”
A high-profile example came in mid-July, when Trump claimed his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at MIT.
Trump recalled: “I said: ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.’ I said: ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said: ‘Seriously, good.’ He said: ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”
The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump’s uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT.
“The story makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s told in a very warm, reflective way, as if he’s remembering it,” Segal said. “This level of thinking really has been deteriorating.”
Aside from the confabulation, there have been times when Trump seems unable to focus. During the 2024 campaign there was the bizarre sight of Trump spending 40 minutes swaying to music onstage after a medical emergency at one of his campaign rallies. Trump’s rambling speeches during his campaign – he would frequently drift between topics in a technique he described as “the weave” – also drew scrutiny.
The White House removed official transcripts of Trump’s remarks from its website in May, claiming it was part of an effort to “maintain consistency.” It is worth reading Trump’s remarks in full, however, to get a sense of how the president speaks on a day-to-day basis.
At the beginning of July, Trump was asked, “What is the next campaign promise that you plan to fulfill to the American people?” He then rambled about meeting foreign leaders and removing regulations, adding:
“I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn’t come out. They have a restrictor. You can’t – in areas where you have so much water they don’t know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn’t uh, the shower doesn’t, you think it’s not working. It is working. The water’s dripping out and that’s no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet. Takes you – you have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a, a thing – and it sounds funny but it’s really not. It’s horrible. And uh, when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You’re washing whole – water barely comes out it’s ridi – this was done by crazy people. And I wor – wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can’t just change it.”
“Any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump’s performance,” Richard A Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote in the Atlantic, after a stumbling performance from Trump in his debate against Kamala Harris last September.
He added: “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”
At a recent cabinet meeting called to discuss the flooding tragedy in Texas, the war in Ukraine and Gaza, the bombing of Iran, and global tariffs, Trump went on a 13-minute monologue about how he had decorated the cabinet meeting room.
After talking about paintings which he said he had personally selected from “the vaults”, Trump said. “Look at those frames, you know, I’m a frame person, sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures,” and added he had overseen the cleaning of some china.
As department heads, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, waited to be dismissed so they could go and do their jobs, Trump continued:
'Here we put out – you know these, these lamps have been very important actually, whether people love them or not but they’re if you see pictures like Pearl Harbor or Tora! Tora! Tora!, you see movies about the White House where wars are being discussed, oftentimes they’ll show those lamps or something like those lamps, something that looks like them. Probably not the reals, because I don’t think they’re allowed to – this is a very important room, this is a sacred room, and I don’t think they made movies from here.
You never know what they do. But they were missing, er, medallions. See the medallions on top? They had a chain going into the ceiling. And I said: ‘You can’t do that. You have to have a medallion.’ They said, ‘What’s a medallion?’ I said: ‘I’ll show you.’ And then we got some beautiful medallions, and you see them, they were put up there, makes the lamps look [inaudible] so we did these changes.
And when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color, beige color, and it’s been really something. The only question is, will I gold-leaf the corners? You could maybe tell me. My cabinet could take a vote. You see the top-line moldings, and the only question is do you go and leaf it? Because you can’t paint it, if you paint it it won’t look good because they’ve never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that in the Oval Office.
Er, they’ve tried for years and years. Somebody could become very wealthy, but they’ve never found a paint that looks like gold. So painting is easy but it won’t look right.”
The White House pushes back aggressively on the issue of Trump’s mental fitness.
“The Guardian is a left-wing mouthpiece that should be embarrassed to pass off deranged resistance leftists as ‘experts’. Anyone pathetic enough to defend Biden’s mental state – while being labeled as unethical by their peers – has zero credibility. President Trump’s mental sharpness is second to none and he is working around the clock to secure amazing deals for the American people,” said a White House spokesperson, Liz Huston.
So do his political allies. “As President Trump’s former personal physician, former physician to the president, and White House physician for 14 years across three administrations, I can tell you unequivocally: President Donald J Trump is the healthiest president this nation has ever seen. I continue to consult with his current physician and medical team at the White House and still spend significant time with the president. He is mentally and physically sharper than ever before,” said the Republican congressman Ronny Jackson.
In April, Trump’s White House physician, Dr Sean Barbabella, wrote that the president “exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander-in-chief and head of state”. He said Trump was assessed for cognitive function, which was normal.
That report hasn’t stopped people from questioning Trump’s mental acuity.
“What we see are the classic signs of dementia, which is gross deterioration from someone’s baseline and function,” John Gartner, a psychologist and author who spent 28 years as an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, said in June.
“If you go back and look at film from the 1980s, [Trump] actually was extremely articulate. He was still a jerk, but he was able to express himself in polished paragraphs, and now he really has trouble completing a thought and that is a huge deterioration.”
Gartner, who during Trump’s first term co-founded Duty to Warn, a group of mental health professionals who believed Trump had the personality disorder malignant narcissism, warned: “I predicted before the election that he would probably fall off the cliff before the end of his term. And at the rate he is deteriorating, you know … we’ll see.
“But the point is that it’s going to get worse. That’s my prediction.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/donald-trump-mental-fitness
Oriana:
I happened to see the videos of Trump in the 1980s -- everyone should see those. The younger Trump really comes across as very articulate. He doesn't say anything memorable or impressive, but he uses complex sentences and appears to have a good vocabulary. He sounds like a smart, educated person -- you'd never guess he'd decline so dramatically. I've met men in their eighties or even nineties who seemed totally sharp and coherent. I've encountered dementia as well -- it's terribly sad.
*
TRUMP’S TRUTH SOCIAL POSTS
No political leader has used social media quite like Donald Trump. But his recent posts on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2021, have become increasingly bizarre: the president using the lack of scrutiny afforded by the platform’s small user base to truly let loose.
In the hundreds of “truths” since he took office, Trump has variously used Truth Social to reimagine himself as a king and to urge Americans to “BE COOL!” as the stock market tanked in the wake of his trade war, the president’s seemingly random use of capital letters, punctuation and inaccurate spelling consistent across the messages.
Trump’s posts broadly fit into three categories: attacking perceived foes, reposting praise and posting no-context images or videos of himself, like an elderly relative in a family group chat.
Judges – or “radical left judges”, as Trump would have them – have come in for particular criticism, the president eschewing normal decorum to lambast those members of the judiciary who won’t let him deport people without due process.
“What is going on with our Courts? They are totally OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote on 18 April, responding to a judge’s ruling that the government cannot deport noncitizens to a country other than their place of origin without due process.
Trump then made the extraordinary, and untrue, claim that Joe Biden had flown more than half a million undocumented immigrants to the US in one 24-hour period, before adding:
“This Radicalized Judge is saying that Sleepy Joe Biden can fly more than half a million Illegals into America, IN ONE DAY, but we have to hold many years of long and tedious trials to fly each and every one of them back home. Where is the JUSTICE here???”
That was one of just several furious complaints about judges not letting Trump do as he pleases, but his focus also went beyond the judiciary to the executive branch.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has been a frequent target in recent weeks. Trump has repeatedly posted stories from right-wing news sites which accuse James of alleged mortgage fraud. James has said the accusations are “baseless” – while also finding herself described by Trump as a “wacky crook”, among other insults.
Yet Trump’s Truth Social account does, sometimes, offer tender moments. No one, for example, treated the death of Pope Francis with more reverence than Donald Trump.
“Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome. We look forward to being there!” Trump posted hours after the death of the pontiff. He followed that up by posting a video of a speech he gave at the White House, during which Trump praised Pope Francis as “a good man” while standing next to the Easter Bunny.
The posts come thick and fast – Trump frequently writes on Truth Social more than a dozen times a day – interrupted only by adverts for “dream singles” and “international singles”. Amid the complaining about the rule of law and personal score-settling, sometimes Trump announces things that would be good for people who are not on Truth Social, which is most people, to know.
“ALERT: All purchases of Iranian Oil, or Petrochemical products, must stop, NOW!” Trump wrote on Thursday afternoon. He warned that countries that purchase oil from Iran would be subject to “secondary sanctions”, before signing off in the manner of a passive-aggressive tenant writing to their landlord:
“Thank you for your attention to this matter, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”
It was an important notice. Unfortunately, only about 5 million people use Truth Social each month, so Trump may have been screaming into the void. The diatribes about judges and tariffs, and the all-caps, slightly hysterical entreaties of “Vladimir, STOP!” after Russia launched its latest attack on Ukraine, account for much of the content.
But they are interrupted by a sprinkling of no-context posts – photos and videos posted to Trump’s account with little explanation: the messaging style of an elderly relative in a group chat.
“Just landed in Italy!” he posted on 25 April, attached with a video of him getting off a plane.
Earlier that month he posted a seven-second video of him swinging at a golf ball. No information was provided, similarly to his actions in March, when Trump posted an image that had been heavily edited, apparently with the intention of giving him a jawline, with the words “Fight Fight Fight”. There was no text accompanying the photo.
Of course, a favorite Trump pastime is reposting praise of himself. Luckily for a man who has managed to turn the Republican party from a sober political institution into what is essentially a cult, there is plenty to go around.
On 18 March, he posted a screengrab of an X post from a user called @Dndbreakfast which said: “A reminder of what a warrior looks like” above a photo of Trump after a bullet grazed his ear in July last year. It was unclear where Trump found @Dndbreakfast’s X post, as he does not follow them on X.
Beyond that, if there is a final common feature among Trump’s uses of Truth Social, it is his freeform, frequently unhinged posts. In early February, Trump banged out a lengthy missive that was ostensibly about the economy and trade but read as if it were being shouted at townsfolk through a bull horn.
“The ‘Tariff Lobby,’ headed by the Globalist, and always wrong, Wall Street Journal, is working hard to justify Countries like Canada, Mexico, China, and too many others to name, continue the decades long RIPOFF OF AMERICA, both with regard to TRADE, CRIME, AND POISONOUS DRUGS that are allowed to so freely flow into AMERICA,” was the first sentence.
Trump rambled a bit more before declaring: “THIS WILL BE THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA! WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID. WE ARE A COUNTRY THAT IS NOW BEING RUN WITH COMMON SENSE – AND THE RESULTS WILL BE SPECTACULAR!!!”
The results of the tariffs are yet to be seen. But Trump’s thoughts and views, disseminated hourly on his little-used social media network, are certainly spectacular.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/03/trump-truth-social-media-posts
*
WHY DID GHISLAINE MAXWELL TRAFFIC IN YOUNG WOMEN?
Days after Ghislaine Maxwell met with the deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend and procurer was moved from a women’s federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a so-called “prison camp” in Texas, a dramatically more comfortable minimum-security environment with dormitory-style housing and fewer guards, sometimes called “Club Fed.”
Maxwell’s new camp primarily houses nonviolent offenders, and the inmates there are reportedly livid, and probably not a little bit frightened, to be imprisoned with one of the world’s most notorious sex traffickers and alleged rapists. Maxwell, too, was not initially eligible for such a transfer, due to her sex offender status; connections at the Department of Justice had to waive a procedural requirement in order for the move to go through.
The transfer appears to be a reward. As Donald Trump struggles to extract himself from the continuing fallout of the Epstein scandal, Maxwell finds herself, now, in the best position that she has been in since her one-time partner Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019. Suddenly, she has something that the president wants: the ability to say, truthfully or no, that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein’s sex trafficking. The president, too, has something that Maxwell wants: the ability to issue a pardon.
Maxwell has always formed the dark center of the Epstein saga, a woman who appears to have been exceptionally dedicated to arranging Epstein’s life, facilitating his travel, luring new victims to his homes, and coordinating his sexual abuse over the course of decades. Alleged victims of Epstein recall being recruited by Maxwell in public places – including at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach – and through friends. They say that she inspected their bodies, brought them to Epstein’s homes, talked incessantly about sex, and instructed them in Epstein’s sexual preferences. They also say that Epstein and Maxwell sometimes made them available for sexual abuse by their friends.
She is widely presumed to know more than she has yet been willing to tell about the extent to which Epstein’s large network of powerful businessmen, politicians, and financiers knew about or participated in his rapes and trafficking of children. What is less clear, at least at first, is what motivated her to facilitate the abuse, and what kept her so loyal to Epstein over so many years.
Maybe this kind of life – one spent attending to men’s lesser desires – was always what Maxwell was destined for. The ninth and youngest child of a British media magnate, Maxwell was doted on by her father, the Czechoslovakia-born Robert Maxwell, and raised in Oxford in a family as obscenely wealthy as it was darkly tragic: one of her older brothers was in a hideous car accident just days after Ghislaine’s birth, and the boy lingered in a coma for years before dying before her 10th birthday.
Her father financed her life as a high-class party girl – first in London, and then in New York – where she spent much of her time accompanying famous and wealthy men to the kind of rich people’s social functions that have a pretext of raising money for charity. She does not seem to have had aims beyond that: despite her ample resources and encouragement, Ghislaine never showed much sign of intellectual ambition, or political interest, or business acumen, or general curiosity. (A short-lived “ocean protection” charity that she founded accomplished little, and shut down after her arrest on sex trafficking charges.) It was not merely that Ghislaine was a product of an elite unburdened by principle, who often reduce their daughters to mere ornaments. It is that an ornament, it seems, is all that Ghislaine Maxwell ever aspired to be.
It was not her charity, or her father’s publishing, that were Maxwell’s great passions. Her great passion appears to have been for the romantic attention of men – and specifically, her life’s greatest animating goal seems to have been to achieve, and keep, the attention of Jeffrey Epstein. From those accounts we have of their relationship – and admittedly, these are not always reliable, given how intense, widespread, and prurient the attention on their activities has been – it appears that Maxwell’s devotion to Epstein was intense. At her trial in 2021, prosecutors entered into evidence a photo of a cleavage-bearing Maxwell with Epstein, massaging his foot. This seems to have been her posture toward Epstein for the entire time she knew him: slavish, nearly worshipful.
The pair met sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Maxwell’s father, Robert, died in an apparent suicide in the ocean off the coast of the Canary Islands – aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine – in late 1991. Soon thereafter, it was discovered that millions of dollars were missing from pension funds that he managed; two of Maxwell’s brothers were charged for their alleged role in the fraud. (They were later acquitted.)
It was during this moment of rupture and imperiled status that Maxwell was romantically involved with Epstein. Her boyfriend would have served as a meal ticket as well as a source of validation: Maxwell is alleged to have received payments from Epstein totaling more than $30m; she told one of her victims that he bought her her New York City townhouse, just a few blocks from his own. By 1994, she was recruiting and grooming teenagers for his sexual abuse.
Maybe Maxwell justified what she did for Epstein as kink – a kind of sexual libertinism that shrugged off the regressive, prurient mores of the lower classes. The 90s were the peak of a kind of reductive heterosexual sex-positivity: lots of women were telling themselves, and being told, that sexual submission was a mark of sophistication – that the more liberated they were, the more of men’s desires they would grant. But this is all speculation: trying to provide a rationalization for Ghislaine Maxwell’s actions evades the true terror of her, which is her seemingly profound and horrifying vacancy. To such a person, obedience does not require a justification.
Unequal desire in love – particularly when the suffering lover is a woman – tends to elicit a kind of pity. Feminists, too, often depict women’s outsized desire for men as a form of gendered victimization. Generally, it is not seen as serious – women’s limerence, romantic obsession, and striving for men’s attention is broadly relegated to the realm of the adolescent and the vulgar, the embarrassing and the silly. But Maxwell’s case suggests such desire can breed not just frustrated vanity but also a kind of monstrousness.
Untempered by principle or self-respect, it can contain in it the seed of the grotesque. In her efforts to please Epstein, and to make herself useful to him, Maxwell became something hideous and unforgivable. In her deficient, warped soul, it seems she lacked something that every woman must have: a morality that she valued more than male approval.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/07/why-did-ghislaine-maxwell-help-epstein
*
BEING BILINGUAL LOWERS THE RISK OF DEMENTIA
You may have heard that learning another language is one method for preventing or at least postponing the onset of dementia. Dementia refers to the loss of cognitive abilities, and one of its most common forms is Alzheimer’s disease. At this time, the causes of the disease are not well understood, and consequently, there are no proven steps that people can take to prevent it. Nonetheless, some researchers have suggested that learning a foreign language might help delay the onset of dementia.
To explore this possibility more deeply, let’s look at some of the common misconceptions about dementia and the aging brain. First of all, dementia is not an inevitable part of the normal aging process. Most older adults do not develop Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. It is also important to remember that dementia is not the same thing as normal forgetfulness. At any age, we might experience difficulty finding the exact word we want or have trouble remembering the name of the person we just met. People with dementia have more serious problems, like feeling confused or getting lost in a familiar place. Think of it this way: If you forget where you parked your car at the mall, that’s normal; if you forget how to drive a car, that may be a signal that something more serious is going on.
The idea that dementia can be prevented is based on the comparison of the brain to a muscle. When people talk about the brain, they sometimes say things like “It is important to exercise your brain” or “To stay mentally fit, you have to give your brain a workout.” Although these are colorful analogies, in reality the brain is not a muscle. Unlike muscles, the brain is always active and works even during periods of rest and sleep. In addition, although some muscle cells have a lifespan of only a few days, brain cells last a lifetime. Not only that, but it has been shown that new brain cells are being created throughout one’s lifespan.
So, if the brain is not a muscle, can it still be exercised? Once again, researchers don’t know for sure. There are now many computer, online, and mobile device applications that claim to be able to “train your brain,” and they typically tap into a variety of cognitive abilities. However, research suggests that although this type of training may improve one’s abilities at the tasks themselves, they don’t seem to improve other abilities. In other words, practicing a letter-detection task will, over time, improve your letter-detection skills, but it will not necessarily enhance your other perceptual abilities. Basically, solving crossword puzzles will make you a better crossword puzzle solver.
The best evidence that foreign language learning confers cognitive benefits comes from research with those who are already bilingual. Bilingualism most commonly occurs when children are exposed to two languages, either in the home (mom speaks Dutch, dad speaks Spanish) or more formally in early schooling. But bilingualism certainly occurs in adulthood as well.
*
Bilingualism and multilingualism are actually more common than you might think. In fact, it has been estimated that there are fewer monolingual speakers in the world than bilinguals and multilinguals. Although in many countries most inhabitants share just one language (for example, Germany and Japan), other countries have several official languages. Switzerland, for example, has about the same population as New York City (about eight million people), and yet it has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Throughout large parts of Africa, Arabic, Swahili, French, and English are often known and used by individuals who speak a different, indigenous language in their home than they do in the marketplace. So bilingualism and multilingualism are pervasive worldwide. And with regard to cognitive abilities, the research on those who possess more than one language paints an encouraging picture.
For one thing, bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tests of selective attention and multitasking. Selective attention can be measured by what is called the “Stroop Test” in which individuals look at a list of color names written in different colors. The task is to name the colors that words are printed in, rather than say the word itself. (If you search for “Stroop Test” or “Stroop Effect” online, you can take this test yourself.) Because we read automatically, it can be difficult to ignore the word “blue,” and report that it is printed in green. Bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, as well as other measures of selective attention.
They also are better at multitasking. One explanation of this superiority is that speakers of two languages are continually inhibiting one of their languages, and this process of inhibition confers general cognitive benefits to other activities. In fact, bilingual individuals outperform their monolingual counterparts on a variety of cognitive measures, such as performing concept-formation tasks, following complex instructions, and switching to new instructions.
For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that the advantages of being bilingual are not universal across all cognitive domains. Bilingual individuals have been shown to have smaller vocabularies and to take longer in retrieving words from memory when compared to monolinguals. In the long run, however, the cognitive and linguistic advantages of being bilingual far outweigh these two issues.
If the benefits of being bilingual spill over to other aspects of cognition, then we would expect to see a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in bilinguals than in monolinguals, or at least a later onset of Alzheimer’s for bilinguals. In fact, there is evidence to support this claim. The psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues obtained the histories of 184 individuals who had made use of a memory clinic in Toronto.
For those who showed signs of dementia, the monolinguals in the sample had an average age at time of onset of 71.4 years. The bilinguals, in contrast, received their diagnosis at 75.5 years, on average. In a study of this sort, a difference of four years is highly significant, and could not be explained by other systematic differences between the two groups. For example, the monolinguals reported, on average, a year and a half more schooling than their bilingual counterparts, so the effect was clearly not due to formal education.
A separate study, conducted in India, found strikingly similar results: bilingual patients developed symptoms of dementia 4.5 years later than monolinguals, even after other potential factors, such as gender and occupation, were controlled for. In addition, researchers have reported other positive effects of bilingualism for cognitive abilities in later life, even when the person acquired the language in adulthood. Crucially, Bialystok suggested that the positive benefits of being bilingual only really accrued to those who used both languages all the time.
But as encouraging as these kinds of studies are, they still have not established exactly how or why differences between bilinguals and monolinguals exist. Because these studies looked back at the histories of people who were already bilingual, the results can only say that a difference between the two groups was found, but not why that difference occurred. Further research is needed to determine what caused the differences in age of onset between the two groups.
Other studies of successful aging suggest that being connected to one’s community and having plenty of social interaction is also important in forestalling the onset of dementia. Once again, however, the results are far less clear than the popular media might lead you to believe. Older individuals who lead active social lives are, almost by definition, healthier than their counterparts who rarely leave their homes or interact with others. So we can’t really say whether being socially active prevents the onset of dementia, or if people who don’t have dementia are more likely to be socially active.
But even if studying a foreign language is not a magical cure-all, there is one thing it will do: It will make you a better speaker of a foreign language. Doing that confers a whole host of advantages we do know about.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/can-learning-a-foreign-language-prevent-dementia?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
*
CHILE’S VERY LOW BIRTHRATE
SANTIAGO, Chile — In a noisy market in a working class neighborhood in Santiago, Marisol Romero was selling bright balloons, little dolls and flowers to passers-by.
She's in her 50s and comes from a big family. Her mother had eight kids, which used to be common across Latin America.
But Romero said her own decisions about parenting were very different from her mother's. "I have only two children," she said.
Asked why she chose to have a smaller family, Romero laughed and said, "Because of the cost of living. I would have had more. My ideal was five. The reality was two."
Romero is part of a global trend toward much smaller families that experts say is reshaping Latin American society, in particular, at an astonishing rate.
As recently as the 1990s, women across South America and the Caribbean had between three and four children on average.
But according to the latest United Nations report, the region's fertility rate had fallen to fewer than two children per woman. That's well below the 2.1 "total fertility rate," a technical term used by researchers, which is widely considered the minimum necessary to maintain a stable population.
In Chile, meanwhile, the number has plunged even lower, barely above one child per woman, and is still falling.
According to Romero, her own family's experience is helping shape her country's transformation.
"I love my children and now my grandchildren very much, but they had only one and one," she said, referring to her children's decision to have a single child apiece.
The U.N. study found more than one in 10 nations around the world now have "very low" fertility, similar to Chile's.
"We now have a total fertility rate that is lower than most European countries, lower than Japan's," said Martina Yopo Diaz, a sociologist at Santiago's Catholic University. "I think this has huge implications, for which we're not prepared as a society.”
Yopo Diaz and other experts think life in these countries will change fast as populations age and eventually begin to shrink.
"Key social systems, from the economy to the labor market to pensions, are based on the principle that there will be new generations to replace the old ones," she said. "But now we see that that principle is no longer something that we can take as given.”
In many ways, Chile's rapid demographic shift mirrors, and possibly foreshadows, population trends and the growing debate over birthrates emerging in the U.S.
In both countries, experts say affordability is one key factor driving starkly different decisions about family size.
In the U.S., as in Chile, individual choices made by women and families are expected to reshape everything from the workforce to elder care as the population of young people shrinks and the number of seniors over age 65 surges.
One unanswered question is whether the U.S. birth rate will continue to decline sharply, as Chile's has done.
A decade ago, Chile had a relatively robust and stable total fertility rate of around 1.6, roughly the current rate in the U.S. Then Chile began plunging again to the current rate of 1.1.
"What we see as a new phenomenon are these very low fertility levels," said the U.N.'s Kantorova. "It's difficult to predict whether some of these very fast declines will be happening all over the world."
Last year, the U.S. fertility rate reached its lowest level ever recorded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's not certain the U.S. will keep dropping, or will drop as rapidly, but Yopo Diaz thinks declines in family size are likely to continue and may accelerate in many parts of the world.
"I think this is definitely the future, a demographic transformation that's here to stay," she said. "Most countries around the world are not going to be able to turn around their fertility decline.”
Researchers say there's another key way Chile and the U.S. are strikingly similar. A fast-growing number of women in both countries are delaying motherhood until much later in life, and in many cases, opting out of parenting altogether.
"It's not something I dream of, seeing myself as a mother; I'm just not interested," said Florencia Contreras, a 23-year-old art student. "I don't want it to sound ugly, but I feel like it's a burden."
Contreras spoke with NPR on the street in Santiago, where she was walking with friends and fellow students, Mariana Sanhueza, 21, and Macarena Lagos, 19, who also voiced deep reservations about the impact motherhood might have on their lives.
"I don't want kids either, not at all," Lagos said. "Even if I were more financially stable. I don't think I'm cut out to be a mother. I also don't feel like the world is a nice place to bring someone else into. I don't like the state of the planet and the world in general."
Sanhueza was the only one of the three to voice some openness to having children, but she too said it would be "a problem" if it happened in a way that disrupted her education or career. "I think it's very much in the future to make that decision," she said.
Along with questions of affordability, many researchers believe growing freedom and autonomy for young people, particularly for young women, lies at the heart of what the U.N. report describes as an "unprecedented" shift in human behavior.
Antonio Orellana, the minister of women and gender equity in Chile's progressive government, said rapid changes playing out in Chilean society are challenging but should be viewed less as a crisis and more as the result of hard-won progress.
"We have to discuss this [demographic shift] as a government who has a commitment with the feminist ideas," Orellana told NPR. "We have now more women studying in higher education, technical [schools] and universities, than ever. And we have almost erased the teen pregnancy within the last 20 years."
These positive trends — the rise of women in education and the workplace and a rapid drop in adolescent pregnancies — also mirror what's happening in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, according to Vladimíra Kantorová, the U.N.'s chief population scientist and co-author of last month's report.
"There has been a very fast decline in adolescent childbearing in Latin America, and Chile is one example of it," Kantorová said. "I would say it's one of the major success stories in population health [worldwide] over the past three decades."
Alarm among conservatives in Chile's populist movement
But as in the U.S., many conservative leaders in Chile view these demographic changes very differently.
Chilean political parties on the right regularly portray the rapid drop in family size and the changing role of women as threats to the nation's culture and identity.
Jose Antonio Kast, a leading populist candidate in this year's presidential race, posted a campaign video celebrating what he describes as women's traditional identity as mothers.
"Mothers are essential. The mother-child bond is tremendous," he said. "A society that wants to develop well needs this emotional bond."
Chile's influential Roman Catholic Church has also taken up the cause of motherhood and population. In an interview with the national TV station TVN, the Archbishop of Santiago Fernando Chomali called the country's population trends an "urgent" problem.
"The birth rate we have today is practically zero," he warned. "That needs to be addressed urgently because Chile is an aging country."
As in the U.S., conservative Chilean politicians hope to implement policies, including economic incentives, that might encourage young couples and women to have more children.
The Trump administration has introduced similar efforts in the U.S., including a savings program for babies called "Trump Accounts."
According to Yopo Diaz, these measures appear far too modest to reverse the downward trend in birthrates worldwide. She believes societies need to adapt to what appears to be a permanent change in the way women view their lives and prioritize motherhood.
"Today being a woman doesn't necessarily mean to be a mother and having a family doesn't necessarily mean to have children," she said.
Many women who spoke to NPR in Chile voiced concern about government policies that might attempt to limit their growing freedom. They also voiced doubt that government efforts to incentivize parenting would change their attitudes.
"No matter what the government does, it's still my decision, my own," said 19-year-old Macarena Lagos. "And no matter what the government does, I don't think my decision would change."
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/03/nx-s1-5476032/chiles-plunging-birth-rate-may-foreshadow-future-in-u-s
*
WHY CASH BONUSES DON’T INCREASE THE BIRTH RATE
As policymakers and pundits clamor to solve the riddle of slowing fertility rates, one idea in particular seems to crop up again and again: What if we hand out “baby bonuses”? In other words, let’s offer lump sum payments – often thousands of dollars – to encourage more women to have more babies.
Baby bonuses aren’t actually a new creation; it’s an approach that’s been tried, tested, and recycled over many years, in countries around the world. That means there is a mountain of evidence as to whether they work. Spoiler alert: They don’t.
For those not swayed by academic studies, young people are delivering the same message.
Young women, it turns out, are telling us exactly what they need to feel secure enough to have children – and it’s not a one-off cash bonus. What they want is paid leave, family-friendly workplaces, affordable housing and childcare, access to quality reproductive healthcare, and the ability to believe that their children will be born into a safe world where they can thrive.
Broadly speaking, baby bonuses offer none of these assurances. Neither do the governments of the countries offering them. The newest report from my organization, the United Nations Population Fund — the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency — shows that lump-sum payments are mostly ineffective.
And why are we surprised? Even thousands of dollars would barely cover the costs of childbirth in some countries. And while some governments claim their cash payments have boosted birth rates, there's no solid proof that is the case: Often they are measuring the number of births taking place in a year, rather than the number of births a woman will have in her lifetime. Deeper analyses of the data show that, when bonuses have an impact, it’s more in convincing people to have a baby earlier to take advantage of a cash benefit, rather than helping them actually have more children. The result is a false impression that a time-limited or one-off policy, like a baby bonus, has worked.
But it’s not just baby bonuses – even longer-term tax breaks or childcare credits or housing benefits, although much more helpful to parents, fall short. Our report surveyed around 14,000 people across 14 countries, which together are home to more than a third of the global population, to ask if people wanted children, how many they would ideally like, how many they realistically thought they would have, and why they might not meet their ideal number.
People overwhelmingly want children – even in the lowest-fertility countries. Most want at least two. In other words, people are not rejecting parenthood; they feel shut out from it. And while money was reported as their biggest worry, there were other common barriers as well, including healthcare concerns, fears about the state of the world, and challenges finding a suitable partner (or any partner at all).
And that’s not all: Gender inequality is a major hurdle – not only for women but for men too. Workplace discrimination and social stigma keep men from carrying their fair share of the domestic burden, even as more say they want to be involved.
The world is getting better at ensuring paid maternity leave (despite some countries notably lagging behind), but too few offer the same for fathers. When they do, it’s usually less than two weeks, and in many cases men are reluctant to use it in fear of suffering the same career fates as women – stalled advancement, discrimination, demotion and more. The gender pay gap also pushes men to keep up the breadwinner role, especially when women are so often obliged to stay home doing unpaid childcare.
Meanwhile, we are no longer making real progress in ending gender inequality. In fact, by many measures we are backsliding. Around the world, we are seeing attacks on reproductive rights and the vilification of feminism. We are seeing the proliferation of online misogyny among men of all ages, but particularly GenZ. Not only is this turning many women off relationships and dating, it’s fueling a loneliness epidemic that actually makes lifelong singleness – and, because cohabitation and marriage are strongly linked to fertility, childlessness – more likely, for both men and women.
Baby bonuses won’t make a dent in any of these issues. In fact, they could make matters worse by reinforcing the trope that women will have babies purely for cash. Language like “incentives for childbearing” and “pronatalist policies” are inherently problematic, prioritizing the childbearing goals of policymakers over those of people. How useful is it to incentivize parenthood when most people already want to become parents but don’t feel able to? Research suggests people are actually less compelled to become parents when they feel their fertility choices are being manipulated.
So what works? Focusing on the actual fertility crisis, which isn’t people having too many babies or too few babies. It’s that people feel unable to make their own free and informed reproductive choices when it comes to having children, how many, when and with whom. Only by seeing the real crisis can we find real solutions – solutions that safeguard people’s health, well-being and futures so they can decide what they want for themselves – and are able to fulfill their dreams.
https://www.context.news/socioeconomic-inclusion/opinion/offering-women-a-cash-bonus-isnt-the-way-to-boost-birth-rates?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
*
ENORMOUS HEAT PUMPS COULD WARM CITIES
From New York City to rural England, communal heat pump networks could be the answer to decarbonizing heat in both city high-rises and other hard-to-heat homes.
It's another cold snap and the fields of Cornwall, in south-west England, are blanketed in snow. But down a windy lane, Ceri Simmons' home is toasty warm. Her living room is a jungle of hanging plants and, through the kitchen, glimpses of a wood-lined studio reveal Simmons' job as an aerial-yoga teacher. "It's not just lovely for me to have a warm house, it's also important for my clients," she says.
The remote village of Stithians, close to the most south-westerly tip of the UK mainland, where the Simmons family live has become an unlikely frontier in the race to decarbonize heating. It is piloting a new approach to low-carbon heating which could be key to the rapid scale-up needed worldwide.
The project zooms out from the obstacles facing individual homeowners and designs a heat pump system that can be delivered at scale across streets, towns and cities. In doing so, it could provide a model for urban spaces across the world pondering how to decarbonise their heat systems quickly and effectively.
In the UK today, 74% of people heat their homes using gas boilers, with mostly electric heaters and oil comprising the rest. This leads the heating sector to account for a third of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions – comparable to the emissions of all its petrol and diesel cars. Similar values are seen in the US, where around half of heating comes from gas.
To limit global warming, this needs to change drastically, and in many places, that means installing many more heat pumps. By 2030, around a quarter of UK buildings should be heated using them, according to the UK government's climate advisory body, rising to 52% by 2050.
Electrifying heating will also be key to decarbonizing buildings in the US, says Melissa Lott, director of research at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. One study in San Francisco referred to heat pumps as the "single most impactful lever" to reducing emissions.
Rather than burning a fuel, heat pumps concentrate heat energy already present in air, ground or water and pump it through a building's pipes and radiators.
They do this with incredible efficiency, converting 1 kilowatt (kW) of electricity into 3-5kW of heat, as opposed to 1kW for a direct electrical heater and 0.9kW for a gas boiler. This means they provide practically "free heat", says Lott. However, as with all heating systems, efficiency depends on how well the building is insulated to minimize heat loss, she notes.
If the source of electricity is renewable, heat pumps themselves emit no carbon. In the UK, almost half of the electricity provided to the national grid comes from renewable sources, compared to 20% in the US. Both countries aim for sharp increases in these percentages.
The Heat the Streets project in Stithians provides a whole new template for how ground source heat pumps can work.
Ground source heat pumps are more efficient than their air source counterparts. This is due to the ground having a consistent temperature. Most ground source heat pumps have a vertical piping which requires drilling of a deep, costly borehole 60-200m (200-650ft) into the ground. Alternatively, they can use a horizontal loop that is far shallower in the ground but requires a large surface area that most people don't have, especially in cities.
What's more, installing heat pumps tends to be the responsibility of individual homeowners. Despite incentives such as the UK's Boiler Upgrade Scheme and US federal tax credits under Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, there remain significant barriers to widespread rollout. There is often a lack of understanding and awareness of the technology, which, combined with large upfront costs and few trained installers, can prevent homeowners from making the change.
Architecture can also be a barrier: houses also simply need enough outdoor space to install the heat pumps, something obviously lacking in flats and dense urban settings.
Rather than each home drilling a single borehole for a single heat pump, however, Heat the Streets uses over 200 boreholes drilled 100m (330ft) beneath the street linked to a huge communal network of horizontal, underground pipes just below street level, known as a heatmain.
Glycerol – an odorless, non-toxic, viscous liquid – is passed vertically through the boreholes to absorb heat and then circulate it in these horizontal pipes, which in turn supply heat pumps in individual properties along the whole street and, eventually, the whole neighborhood.
The heat pumps – no larger than a typical gas boiler – are fitted either inside or outside individual homes, depending on the property's size, suitability and owner preference.
Just a few meters below the surface of Cornwall, the ground has a constant temperature of around 11C (52F) from absorbing sunlight for millennia, says Max Bridger, project operations manager of Heat the Streets, and it's this heat that is harvested by the heatmain.
The heat pumps then perform another series of exchange, compression and evaporation that brings the temperature to around 50C (122F). Finally, this heat is transferred to water, which is pumped through a house's specially upgraded pipes and radiators.
Kensa Utilities, the company in charge of installing the network in Stithians, will remain the owner of the infrastructure. For residents, connecting to the heatmain works like it does with other utilities, such as broadband or water. Residents own their individual heat pumps and pay a connection fee to join whenever they're ready.
"When a [gas] boiler breaks, there'll now be an alternative to simply replacing it. But this system also means people don't have to finance the large upfront infrastructure costs or connect all at once," says Bridger.
The ground source heat pumps provide all the heating and hot water needed by the house, and cut the greenhouse gas emissions released by them by 70%. Residents keep full control of their heating and can switch energy suppliers whenever they want.
Simmons' home was fitted with a heat pump that shares a heatmain with several neighbors. It took around a week to do the interior and exterior work and "really wasn't too disruptive or noisy", she says. The water cylinder, tucked away inside an old linen cupboard, is almost exactly the same size as an average boiler.
She ultimately plans to use her solar panels, currently set up to sell the electricity to the National Grid, to directly power the heat pump – which she says would make her home almost entirely self-sufficient.
This concept of a heatmain buried beneath a communal street is by no means restricted to single-story properties like Simmons'. Another Kensa project in Enfield, London, is installing ground source heat pumps in high-rise flats.
Heatmains have been developed beneath each of eight tower blocks, totaling 400 flats, using their car parks to drill the required boreholes.
A vertical shaft that is used to transport other utilities throughout the building, known as a service riser, allows the technology used in Stithians to work for multi-story buildings, says Bridger. With smaller spaces, retrofitting each flat with a "shoebox" heat pump can supply enough heat while minimizing the space taken up inside, he adds.
The future of heat pumps in high-rise buildings is receiving growing attention across the world. In New York City, it is air-source heat pumps that have become the focus of efforts to decarbonize the city's 6,000 high-rise buildings.
Currently, most of these have a single, large gas boiler that controls the whole building's heating. Each individual flat also uses an air conditioning unit attached to an outdoor window that works separately from the heating system.
In 2021, the New York City Housing Association launched the Clean Heat for All Challenge, a competition to encourage industry innovation in line with an upcoming local law that will limit the greenhouse gas emissions of buildings from 2024. The design that emerged as the winner is an air-source heat pump which hangs "like horse saddlebags" from the base of apartment windows, not blocking any light or taking up space inside apartments, Lott says.
"The beauty of heat pumps is that they can both heat and cool spaces, using the same process in reverse," Lott adds. "It's one modular unit performing two functions."
The design would also give apartments control of their own heating and cooling. "It's more efficient because you have the ability to customize your apartment to your own comfort so there'll be no more windows flung open from overheated apartments in winter," says Lott.
The new heat pumps are being rolled out this year for a trial at Woodside Houses, a complex of 20 brick buildings in Queens where residents went without heating and hot water in winter 2021 following Hurricane Ida.
While it is not expected that the local grid infrastructure will need to be upgraded immediately, an increased electricity demand is an important consideration in the increased use of heat pumps generally.
Jan Rosenow, director of European programs at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), says that the UK could see pressure on the grid double or even triple in the next 20 to 30 years. "There will need to be ways to store electricity other than as large batteries in people's homes," he says. There is a range of promising technologies out there, he adds, such as flow batteries and green hydrogen. (Read more about whether gravity batteries can solve our energy storage problems).
Stockholm's district heating network supplies electricity to 800,000 homes using industrial-scale heat pumps and other sources of heat
In a sense, Heat the Streets taps into another major solution for heating homes in a low-carbon world: district heating.
In essence, district heat networks are "just whacking empty vessels that connect properties together", says David Barns, a heat decarbonization expert at the University of Leeds. "How you get heat energy into that heat network is a related but separate question."
District heating boomed in Nordic countries during the 1970s' oil crisis, but the systems were mostly powered by burning fossil fuels in large combined heat and energy plants. Still, this design of a single centralized system can make it far easier to switch a significant number of homes to low-carbon heating – without thousands of boilers being "ripped out", says Barns.
For example, Stockholm's district heating network has 3,000km (1,860 miles) of pipes and now supplies electricity to 800,000 homes using industrial-scale heat pumps which capture heat from domestic wastewater, data centers and seawater, alongside incinerated non-recyclable waste and forest biofuels.
The Heat the Streets model in Stithians uses "fifth-generation district heating" – a localized network combined with heat pump technology. The advantage of this kind of street-by-street project is being able to focus on whatever energy resources there are nearby to make the best match, says Caroline Haglund Stignor, a researcher in energy technologies at Rise Research Institutes of Sweden. “You start small and then you build on little by little,” she says.
This can allow for more innovative methods of sourcing heat, such as a network in Islington harnessing heat from the hot currents from London Underground tunnels, or flood-water in old mines.
In the UK, however, there is a lack of awareness and regulation around district heating, which is delaying its expansion, says Barns.
The UK government has committed to designating heat network zones no later than 2025 that will situate heat networks in the best places and mandating that people connect to them. This will help to make the business model for building heat networks more financially viable, Barns explains, because private investors will have more certainty that people are going to use them.
This type of large-scale work can be coordinated with other groundworks, such as cables for electric vehicle charging points, to reduce disruption, says Rosenow. But these rollouts at the local level requires "radical change" in planning that is not yet reflected in policies or frameworks, he adds.
Still, district heating is not necessarily the right answer everywhere. It is most suitable for densely populated areas due to the significant heat loss that comes from transporting water at high temperatures over long distances.
District heating already exists in some US cities, such as Milwaukee and Baltimore, but the country doesn't have the same density of population as the UK and most of Western Europe, bar a few exceptions, says Lott. "For most of the US, we're talking about heating individual buildings and so district heat networks don't make sense. [Individual] heat pumps, both air or ground source, are a much better option for us."
The road to decarbonized heating is not simple but heat pumps are one technology more or less ready and waiting, so long as the cost hurdles can be breached. But even as question marks hang over energy security, fuel prices and climate-related weather extremes, the yoga studio in the Simmons' family home feels like an inviting place to weather the uncertainty.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-enormous-heat-pumps-warming-cities?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
*
WHAT HUMANITY OWES TO NICOLA TESLA, PROMETHEUS OF THE MODERN WORLD
They say a journalist once asked Albert Einstein what it felt like to be the smartest man on Earth. Einstein reportedly replied, “I don’t know. You should ask Nikola Tesla.”
On January 7, 1943, in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, one of the world’s greatest minds passed away. Nikola Tesla was 86. He had lived a remarkable life—one devoted entirely to science.
As a child, his future seemed set: he was expected to become a priest.
"That future loomed over me like a black cloud," Tesla later wrote.
But fate intervened. During a near-fatal battle with cholera, Tesla struck a deal with his father: “During one of the attacks, when everyone thought I was dying, my father rushed in and told me, ‘You’ll get better.’ I still remember how pale he looked as he tried to comfort me with words even he didn’t believe.
‘Maybe I will recover,’ I said, ‘if you let me study engineering instead of theology.’
He answered solemnly, ‘You’ll attend the best technical school in Europe.’
Right then, I knew he meant it. It was as if a heavy weight had lifted from my soul.”
Shortly after, Tesla recovered—thanks to an old woman who brewed him a bean-based herbal remedy—and began his path toward scientific greatness. While attending a lecture at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Tesla observed the operation of a Gramme machine and began to question the efficiency of direct current motors. When he shared his idea for using alternating current instead, his professor, Jakob Pöschl, publicly ridiculed the concept as impossible.
History would prove him very wrong.
Though most American textbooks highlight Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison as pioneers of electricity, it was Nikola Tesla who turned electricity into a usable force for humanity. He didn’t just experiment—he delivered systems that worked. Alternating current, induction motors, wireless transmission—all ideas born in Tesla’s mind.
Today, a statue of Tesla stands with his cane atop one of his AC motors, gazing out at Niagara Falls—the site of the first hydroelectric power plant built using his patents. The standard 60 Hz frequency used across the United States to this day? That was Tesla’s doing.
His genius helped bring light to America.
And his story still inspires those who dare to challenge convention.
~ Pinky Media, Quora
Sathya Jith P.S.:
Prometheus of modern world!
*
THE BIBLE’S 72 GODS: EL, ASHERAH AND SEVENTY ELOHIM
According to the bible’s creation account in the book of Genesis, god was talking to someone and he said, “Let us [plural] make mankind in our [plural] image, after our [plural] likeness.”
So who was god speaking to?
Human women were not created in the image of a male god, but in the image of female goddesses. Thus, we hear the narrator observe:
“So the gods created mankind in their own image, in the image of the gods created they them; male and female created they them.”
I believe this was the original text, before the Levite scribes who wrote and rewrote the bible decided to demote all gods other than Yahweh, whom they combined with El into a single entity.
Later, we see El speaking to the Elohim again, about the problem of human beings acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, which would make them like the gods if they remained immortal:
Then the Lord God [El] said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us [plural] in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever… (Genesis 3:22)
The bible began with 72 gods:
El was the supreme god and his name appears in important biblical names like Israel, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the prophets Joel and Ezekiel, place names like Bethel (“the house of god”), etc. El, being the supreme god, was also called El Elyon, meaning “most high god” or “most exalted god.” Asherah was El’s consort, the Queen of Heaven, and the mother of the Elohim.
The Elohim, the 70 sons and daughters of El and Asherah, and thus also gods. Yahweh was one of the Elohim, as were his main rivals and fellow storm gods, Baal and Marduk. Other Elohim mentioned prominently in the bible include Moloch, Chemosh and Milcom. More on these rivals of Yahweh later.
As we will see, the bible admits that the wise King Solomon worshipped Chemosh, and that Chemosh was more powerful than Yahweh!
We can confirm that there were 70 sons and daughters of god, because the bible says the various peoples were all assigned to one of the Elohim, with Yahweh being assigned Jacob/Israel.
When El Elyon [Most High God] gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind [at the Tower of Babel], he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of god [the Elohim].
For Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. (Deuteronomy 32:8-9) Here we see El, who is in charge, dividing the peoples of the earth according to the number of his offspring, which happened to be 70. And we have stunning confirmation of this in the bible, because its Table of Nations in Genesis 10 names exactly 70 such peoples or nations, confirming that there were 70 sons and daughters of god. This fact is further confirmed by extra-biblical sources such as Canaanite texts.
BTW, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that the original version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 had “sons of god” rather than the redacted “sons of Israel” which makes no sense at all and was a clear attempt to convert the bible from polytheism to monotheism.
The bible quite obviously began as a polytheistic book.
The bible refers to assemblies or councils of the sons of god, the Elohim, as I will point out herein. One the most explicit and most stunning verses is one Jesus quoted:
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of [El Elyon] the Most High God. (Psalm 82:6)
Another example:
There is none like you among the gods, Yahweh, nor are there any works like yours. (Psalm 86:8)
One of the more amusing confirmations that the bible started out with polytheistic roots is the fact that the Sumerian goddess Ninti was the original “Lady of the Rib” who was also the “Lady who gives Life.” Those amazing parallels to Eve are way too strong to be mere coincidence.
Furthermore, Ninti lived with other gods and goddesses in a paradisal garden at the headwaters or the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which was also the location of the Garden of Eden according to the bible. Anyone interested in the truth about the bible’s origins should read the very entertaining creation account of Enki and Ninhursag and pay close attention to Ninti’s role.
El was the supreme god at the time the earth’s people were divided into 70 nations, after the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel.
El was the supreme god at the time of the patriarchs, which we can clearly see in the name given to the nation they fathered, Israel.
The Levite scribes who wrote and redacted the bible decided to merge El and Yahweh into one god, but they did so clumsily and left evidence of the bible’s original polytheism. For instance the bible tells us that Yahweh and Asherah were being worshiped in the Jerusalem temple at the time of King Solomon. That fact has been confirmed by archeological discoveries such as artifacts that mention “Yahweh and his Asherah.”
Asherah was the Queen of Heaven, so when Yahweh merged with El, he inherited her wife.Tammuz was mentioned as being worshiped in the Jerusalem temple in Ezekiel 8.14-15, as was the sun (possibly Baal, the god of sun and storms). Thus the famous temple of Solomon was a polytheistic temple.The bible calls Solomon the wisest man who ever lived, or ever will live, but he worshiped Asherah and built temples for other gods:
So Solomon did what the Lord considered evil. He did not wholeheartedly follow the Lord as his father David had done. Then Solomon built an illegal worship site [temple] on the hill east of Jerusalem for Chemosh, the disgusting idol of Moab, and for Molech, the disgusting idol of the Ammonites. (1 Kings 11:6-7)
Undoubtedly, Solomon’s worship of multiple gods was kosher in his day, and the Levite redactors of the bible edited the “word of god” to convert previously popular gods to “disgusting idols.”
Why did Solomon worship Chemosh? Perhaps because Chemosh was more powerful than Yahweh, as the bible admits! I provide the details in the section OTHER GODS. Yahweh was one god among many, but allegedly better, according to the authors of the bible:
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods ?" (Exodus 15:11)
Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods. (Exodus 18:11) Yahweh vowed that he would execute judgments “on all the gods of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12). How does Yahweh do this? By mass-murdering children, infants, babies and animals!
For I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night and strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from man to beast; and I will execute judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)
The author of Numbers claims this is exactly what happened: “Yahweh executed judgments against their gods.” (Numbers 33:4)
In Deuteronomy 4:19 the Israelites were commanded not to worship “the sun, the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven … [which] Yahweh your god has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven.”
The Israelites were not being told these other gods did not exist, but that Yahweh had created other gods to rule other peoples, not Israel, which he would rule himself. In Psalm 82 we see Yahweh judging the other Elohim, who are indeed called the sons of El, the Most High God:
[Yahweh] has taken his place in the divine council, In the midst of the gods he passes judgment. … And all of you, sons of Elyon [God Most High] Instead like Adam you shall die, And like one of the ‘Shining Ones’ you shall fall.” “Arise, O Yahweh; Judge the earth! May you take possession of all the nations!”
In the last line we also see confirmation that the 70 nations had been assigned to the 70 sons of god.
No matter how Christian translators try to spin Psalm 82, we can see that Yahweh is clearly judging gods, not human beings, because they were once immortal, but now they will die, “like Adam.”
We see these other gods who rule other nations in Daniel 10:13 when Daniel is told: “The prince of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.” Paul in the New Testament also mentions such powers and principalities:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places [“heavenly realms” or “heavenly places” in more modern translations]. (Ephesians 6:12 KJV)
We also see the assembly or council of the gods in the ancient book of Job, which probably predates much of the Levite-written bible. Here, amusingly, Satan is not a “fallen angel” who has been banished from heaven, but is one of the Elohim, and thus a brother of Yahweh! They have a friendly chat and Satan dupes Yahweh into murdering Job’s children, his slaves and his livestock! Later in the book Yahweh admits that he was duped, and was therefore far from “wise,” much less “infallible”:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. (Job 1:6)
When Yahweh allegedly gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the first commandment admits the existence of other gods: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exod. 20:3; Deut. 5:7).
Israel is commanded in Exodus 23:32–33 not to worship other gods with no denial that they exist.
Dagon the fish god was associated with agriculture and fertilityOTHER GODS
Gods and goddesses mentioned in the bible include Adrammelech, Anat/Anath, Asherah/Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth, Athirat, Baal, Chemosh, Dagon, El, Marduk, Milcom, Moloch, Nisroch and Yahweh. I will give more information about them after the discussion of Chemosh being more powerful than Yahweh.
Solomon built the first temple to Yahweh but Asherah was also being worshipped there, according to the bible. Why? Because Asherah was the Queen of Heaven, the mother of the gods, the Elohim, and the consort of the supreme god El. This leaves us with a conundrum:
Was El still being worshiped as the supreme god at the time of Solomon, meaning the Levite redactors of the bible went back and replaced El with Yahweh in a massive rewrite? Or was Yahweh committing incest with his mother?
Solomon also built hilltop temples for Moloch and Chemosh according to the bible. The much-revised bible does not deny such things, but frames them in a highly negative way.
Amusingly, the bible admits that Chemosh was no mere idol, but was more powerful than Yahweh!
In 2 Kings 3:1-27 we find the hated Moabites in rebellion against Israel, under the leadership of King Mesha. The famous prophet Elisha delivers the “word of god” and prophecies an easy victory for the Israelites:
This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord; he will also deliver Moab into your hands. (2 Kings 3:18)
The Israelites were winning the war handily until the mighty Chemosh intervened: Then the king of Moab took his oldest son who was to reign in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall.
And great anger came upon Israel, and they departed from him and returned to their own land. (2 Kings 3:27)
Understandably, the bible doesn’t dwell upon this false prophecy and humiliation of its god, so this chapter ends abruptly with the Israelites defeated and slinking off home to lick their wounds. But Mesha, the King of Moab, erected a temple honoring Chemosh, and within the temple he commissioned a great stone, known as the Moabite Stone or Mesha Stele with the full story. The stone reads in the Moabite Stone passage 7:
And Chemosh said to me: "Go, take Nebo from Israel!" And I went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed its whole population, seven thousand male citizens and aliens, female citizens and aliens, and servant girls; for I had put it to the ban of Aštar Chemosh. And from there, I took the vessels of Yahweh, and I hauled them before the face of Chemosh.
Chemosh, the God of Moab, was more powerful than Yahweh, and that is surely why he was worshiped by Solomon, as the bible confesses.
THE ELOHIM
The Elohim, a family of gods, but one with a very messy divorce, included:
El, the creator and supreme god, who evolved into Lah, then Allah.
Athirat was the consort of El, the Queen of Heaven, and the mother of the pantheon. However, according to Biblical Hermeneutics, Asherah was also the consort of El, so the two may have been the same deity, along with Ashtoreth (discussed below). As we will see, this suggests that Yahweh and Baal were fighting over which son of God would “consort” with their mother!
Yahweh aka Jehovah, a tribal thunder god, was married to Ashtoreth/Asherah but had to fight for her affections with a rival storm god, Baal, and eventually divorced her, paving his way to become a lone wolf god with a very bad disposition and a predilection for mass-murdering women, children, infants, babies and unborns in fits of rage.
There is extra-biblical evidence that Yahweh and Asherah were a divine couple at one time. According to Arthur George: “Several inscriptions specifically refer to ‘Yahweh and his Asherah [or asherah].’”
There was an asherah pole in King Solomon’s famous temple, so Yahweh and Asherah were being worshiped together, as befits a divine couple!
There were also women doing ritual weaving for Asherah inside Solomon’s temple. (2 Kings 23:7)
Asherah was so popular in Israel that there was an asherah pole “under every spreading tree”!
“They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree.” (1 Kings 14:23)
Jezebel had 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah eating at her table. (1 Kings 18:19) Yahweh was understandably furious to have his main rival shacking up with his ex-wife and both of them being lavished with such worship!
Raphael Patai was the first historian who observed that the Israelites once worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. His theory has gained prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. Stavrakopoulou says her research led her to conclude that “God had a wife.” The evidence that convinced her includes Canaanite inscriptions that link the couple as a divine pair, including a petition for a blessing from “Yahweh and his Asherah.”
Anat was the sister of Baal.
Anath was the sister of Ashtoreth; the two shared many qualities and may have originally been the same deity.
Ashtoreth was also known as Ashtaroth, Asherah and Astarte, and was possibly the same as, or related to Istar, Ishtar and Aphrodite. Ashtoreth was a Canaanite-Phoenician goddess of fertility, sexual love, and war. She was called the Queen of Heaven and was very highly esteemed. Canaanites burned offerings and poured libations to her. Asherah poles were erected in her honor, assuming Ashtoreth and Asherah were different names for the same goddess.
According to the International Bible Encyclopedia, Asherah was “originally an epithet of Ishtar (Ashtoreth) of Nineveh.”
Also, Ashtoreth and Asherah were both consorts of Baal. For these reasons, I believe Ashtoreth and Asherah were the same deity. Ashtoreth became the consort of Baal, undoubtedly leading to Yahweh’s disgust with her, and their messy divorce. Known by the name Asherah she was the chief female deity worshiped in ancient Canaan, Phoenicia and Syria. The Phoenicians called her Astarte, the Assyrians called her Ishtar, and the Philistines had a temple of Asherah. (1 Samuel 31:10)
Ashtar aka Ashtaroth and Ishtar may have been a male or hermaphrodite precursor to Ashtoreth.
Baal aka Ba’al (the latter meaning "lord" or “master” in Hebrew and related languages) was a Canaanite-Phoenician storm god, making him a direct competitor to Yahweh. That, and stealing his wife! Baal was also known as Ba’al Hadad, meaning Lord Hadad. Baal was widely worshiped. Baal is one of the oldest gods we know by name and his origins can be traced back to the 13th to mid-14th century BC. For instance, Baal is featured doing battle with the sea god Yam and the underworld god Mot in the very ancient Baal Cycle.
Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon, was the Babylonian version of Baal. The status and cults of Baal and Marduk were much the same. As Babylon rose in prominence, so too did its god Marduk. With tiny Israel losing war after war, then being taken into captivity by Babylon, the ancient world would have seen Marduk/Baal as being far more powerful than Yahweh. And then Marduk/Baal stole Yahweh’s wife, heaping shame on shame! No wonder Yahweh was so furious, so often!
Chemosh, the tribal god of the Moabites.
Milcom, the tribal god of the Ammonites.
Moloch aka Molek, another tribal god of the Ammonites.
Mot, the god of the underworld.
Nisroch is mentioned in two bible verses as the god of Sennacherib.
Tammuz aka Dumuzi was killed by his lover, Inanna, the goddess of sexuality, because she felt he didn’t mourn her enough when she was lost in the Underworld. But he was resurrected.
Tammuz was mentioned as being worshiped in the Jerusalem temple in Ezekiel 8.14-15, as was the sun.
Yamm, the sea god.
Surely I struck down Yamm, the Beloved of El,
Surely I finished off River, the Great God,
Surely I bound Tunnanu and destroyed him.
I struck down the Twisty Serpent,
The Powerful One with Seven Heads.
I struck down Desire, Beloved of El,
I destroyed Rebel, Calf of El.
I struck down Fire, Dog of El,
I annihilated Flame, Daughter of El,
That I might fight for silver, inherit gold.
In conclusion, the bible has two supreme gods, with El replaced by Yahweh, the mother goddess Asherah, and the 70 sons and daughters of god, the Elohim.
~ Michael R. Burch, Quora
Don Andrews:
Very interesting. I suppose this explains why God made man and woman in his own image in one part of Genesis and then turns a spare rib into Eve one chapter later? If you think of Genesis as a poorly edited attempt to turn a polytheistic religion into a monotheistic one it all makes more sense.
*
A COMBO OF TWO ANTI-CANCER DRUGS (LETROZOLE AND IRINOTECAN) MAY WORK AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S
Researchers all over the world are actively seeking treatments or a cure for Alzheimer’s disease — a form of dementia currently impacting about 32 million people globally.
The medications used right now for Alzheimer’s disease are designed to only help treat symptoms and slow disease progression.
One avenue scientists are taking in an effort to find treatments for Alzheimer’s disease is by looking at currently-approved medications that are used for other diseases, an approach called drug repurposing.
“The idea of drug repurposing or identifying new uses for existing drugs, can speed up the drug discovery process because the compounds already have been tested for toxicity and adverse events,” Marina Sirota, PhD, professor and interim director of the University of California — San Francisco Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute explained to Medical News Today.
“Alzheimer’s disease is a complex disease, which is very difficult to treat so we need to use all the tools possible to speed up drug discovery and help patients,” said Sirota.
Sirota is the co-senior author of a new study recently published in the journal Cell hat has identified two cancer medications that may help overturn brain changes caused by Alzheimer’s disease, possibly slowing or even reversing the disease’s symptoms.For this study, researchers began by using past studies to assess how Alzheimer’s disease changed gene expression in brain cells, mainly neurons and glia.
“Glia cells are non-neuronal cells that provide support and protection to neurons in the nervous system,” Sirota explained. “By targeting both neuronal cells and non-neuronal cells (glia) we hope to be able to more comprehensively target disease pathophysiology.”
From there, scientists then took the gene expression signatures they found and used a database called the ConnectivityMap, allowing them to examine thousands of drugs to find ones that reversed the Alzheimer’s disease gene expression signature.
“We started with a set of 1,300 drugs and narrowed it down to the combination of letrozole and irinotecan through data driven analysis using both molecular and clinical data,” Sirota said.
“We first identified compounds that reversed the cell type specific disease signatures back to normal based on the gene expression profiles. We then further filtered the list to the candidates that affect several cell types,” she explained.
“Then we wanted to see whether patients who are on those drugs already have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease by querying electronic medical records across the UC system,” she continued. “This has allowed us to narrow our list down to a handful of drugs and focus on this combination.”
The analysis of electronic medical records did indeed show that both drugs were associated with a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, confirming the selection.
Next, researchers decided to test the combination of letrozole — used to treat breast cancer — and irinotecan — used to treat colorectal and lung cancer — in a mouse model of aggressive Alzheimer’s disease.
At the study’s conclusion, Sirota and her team found that the drug combination overturned multiple aspects of Alzheimer’s disease in the mouse model, including undoing the gene expression signature changes in the neurons and glia caused by the disease.
Additionally, researchers found the combination cancer drugs helped reduce the amount of amyloid beta and tau proteins in the brain, which are known hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
“This tells us that multiple levels of evidence — molecular data, clinical information and mouse model experiments are all aligning to tell us that these compounds might be helpful for Alzheimer’s disease patients,” Sirota said.
She further noted that While we don’t know the exact mechanism of how these drugs work to treat Alzheimer’s disease, we know that irinotecan is a chemotherapy drug that works by inhibiting the enzyme DNA topoisomerase 1, specifically. While we don’t know the exact mechanism of how these drugs work to treat Alzheimer’s disease, we know that irinotecan is a chemotherapy drug that works by inhibiting the enzyme aromatase, which is crucial n the biosynthesis of estrogen.”
“However, we don’t know whether it is the main aforementioned mechanisms or off-target effects of these drugs which might help Alzheimer’s disease patients,” Sirota cautioned. “Additional experiments need to be carried out to better understand how these two drugs might work together to combat Alzheimer’s disease in patients.”
Using ‘big data’ and inventive approaches to find potential Alzheimer’s drug targets
MNT had the opportunity to speak with John Dickson, MD, PhD, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, about this research.
“This is an interesting and innovative paper that uses ‘big data’ to aid in identifying potential drug targets to treat Alzheimer’s disease and then tests candidates in a preclinical model of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dickson, who was not involved in this research, said.
“Combining the use of transcriptomic data from brain tissue from Alzheimer’s disease patients, drug perturbation studies in cell lines, and patient data from electronic medical records was an inventive approach to identifying and narrowing down potential drug targets,” he added.
In Dickson’s view, “the decision to use a dual-therapy approach and plan to target multiple cell types with this strategy was also innovative.”
“The combination of drugs showed beneficial effects on the memory testing and neuropathological findings in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to identifying two potential candidate therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, this paper also provides an experimental paradigm for identifying new drugs to treat a variety of conditions,” he continued.
Why look at repurposing existing drugs for Alzheimer’s treatment?
MNT also talked to Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, about this study, who said it is refreshing to see data that supports improving memory loss through a novel mechanism that is not related to current therapies that work on brain acetylcholine, N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), or amyloid.
“This study’s design is smart and the data is captivating,” Segil, who likewise was not involved in the research, added. “Repurposing medications already being used has been extremely rewarding in neurologists and I truly hope something grows out of this research.”
And Peter Gliebus, MD, neurologist and director of cognitive and behavioral neurology at Marcus Neuroscience Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, also not involved in the research, commented to MNT that this was a promising and exciting study, and said that repurposing existing drugs offers several advantages.
“Faster development since these drugs already have established safety profiles, which reduces the time and cost required for clinical trials,” Gliebus noted.
“Cost-effectiveness [is achieved] by avoiding the high expenses associated with developing new drugs from scratch. And [this approach has] a broader impact, as many existing drugs may have unexplored mechanisms that could address complex Alzheimer’s disease pathologies, such as neuroinflammation, synaptic dysfunction, and metabolic deficits.“
“Given the high failure rate of Alzheimer’s drug trials, repurposing provides a practical and efficient pathway to identify effective treatments,” the neurologist concluded.
EATING 1 EGG PER WEEK LINKED TO LOWER ALZHEIMER'S RISK, STUDY FINDS
Eating eggs regularly is linked to less buildup of toxic proteins in brain, according to a study on human brains
A study finds that eating eggs is associated with a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Using brain autopsies, the scientists also showed that those who ate eggs more regularly had less protein buildup in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s.
The researchers conclude that this link may be due to eggs’ choline and omega-3 content.
Eggs have been a dietary staple since before humans evolved to be humans. Although they are packed with nutrients, relatively cost-effective, and easy to source, they have been the subject of much controversy in the health and wellness domain over the years.
A study whose results appear in The Journal of Nutrition, however, may help reestablish their good reputation.
According to the authors, eating one egg per week was associated with a 47% reduction in Alzheimer’s risk compared with eating eggs less than once each month.
They also showed that those eating eggs had a reduced buildup of the toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s.
Before we get into the details, we should mention that some of the authors received funding from the Egg Nutrition Center, “the science and nutrition education division of the American Egg Board.”
Are eggs good for you or bad for you? One hundred years ago, and for thousands of years before that, eggs were considered essential. Nutrient-dense and rich in protein and micronutrients, eggs were a staple throughout the world.
Then, a few decades ago, scientists found that high levels of cholesterol in the blood were a risk factor for heart disease, so high-cholesterol eggs were pushed to the naughty corner.
However, as nutrition science progressed, it became clear that dietary cholesterol did not significantly impact blood levels of cholesterol.
Their saturated fat content, though, is still a concern, so eggs are still partially sidelined. Still, they are likely much healthier than many of the low-fat, highly processed snacks that have replaced eggs in modern kitchens. In fact, eggs contain all essential trace elements.
Some studies suggest that even consuming up to three eggs per day may be safe for some individuals and may even improve cholesterol levels according to a study cited by Verywell Health.
Previous research has shown that choline is important for cognitive function.
Choline has many important functions; for instance, it is a precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, plays a pivotal role in cell membranes, and has neuroprotective powers.
Also, as the authors explain, “choline modulates the expression of key genes related to memory, learning, and cognitive functions via epigenetic mechanisms.”
Although our body can synthesize choline, it cannot synthesize enough to meet all the body’s needs, so some must be taken in with our diet.
Aside from choline, eggs contain essential omega-3 fatty acids, which support brain health as we age. Worryingly, studies show that the majority of adults in the United States do not consume enough of these essential fatty acids.
These facts led the authors of the new study to investigate links between egg consumption and Alzheimer’s risk.
Reduced risk and less protein buildup
The recent study included data from 1,024 older adults with an average age of 81.4. All participants lived in retirement communities and residential facilities in Illinois.
They attended yearly checkups and completed food frequency questionnaires, and the researchers followed them for an average of 6.7 years.
During this time, a little over one-quarter of them developed Alzheimer’s disease.
After analysis, the scientists found that individuals who consumed at least one egg per week had a 47% reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s during follow-up compared with those eating one egg per month or fewer.
In the second part of their study, they looked at the post-mortem brains of 578 participants. They found that those who ate one or more eggs each week were more likely to have less Alzheimer’s-associated protein buildup.
Choline and omega-3 synergy
Overall, the authors suggest that consuming at least one egg per week may help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. They explain that the choline and omega-3s in eggs might have a “synergistic” effect, whereby they join forces to protect brain health during aging.
Medical News Today spoke to Christopher U. Missling, PhD, president and CEO of Anavex Life Sciences, who was not involved in the study. Missling explained that “about 39–40% of the protective effect was explained by higher dietary choline intake. Egg yolks also contain omega-3 fatty acids, which have known neuroprotective properties. The combination of choline and omega-3s may be particularly beneficial for brain health.”
The study authors also point to previous research demonstrating that people with Alzheimer’s are more likely to be deficient in omega-3s and choline.
Overall, the scientists conclude that, “once replicated in other prospective cohorts and confirmed by clinical trials, these findings may have important public health implications for reducing the population’s risk of [Alzheimer’s].”
If the results are replicated, this could be a very useful, low-cost intervention. MNT also spoke with Maddie Gallivan, RD, a registered dietitian who was likewise not involved in the recent study.
“Eggs are often a go-to food for older adults, as they’re soft in texture, which can be helpful for those with dentures, quick to prepare, and packed with key nutrients,” Gallivan explained. “So it’s great to see a study focussing on how they may support cognitive health in later life.”
For now, if you like eggs, enjoy them. They may reduce your dementia risk, and they will certainly provide you with a good dose of protein and a healthy range of micronutrients.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/eating-1-egg-per-week-linked-to-lower-alzheimers-risk-study-finds?utm_source=ReadNext#Limitations-and-future-research
from a different study:
WHAT ABOUT ONE EGG A DAY?
Overall, increasing egg consumption from monthly to weekly to daily was associated with a decreased risk of dementia, and those who ate eggs daily had the lowest odds of dementia. The results suggested that non-consumption or excessive egg consumption [more than 2 a day] did not significantly alter the risk. These results were independent of health conditions, diet, smoking, education, and age.
The underlying mechanism could be that eggs are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, choline, antioxidants, and proteins. However, researchers cautioned that consuming more than two eggs daily might increase cholesterol levels, which could raise the risk of dementia. [Oriana: On the contrary: dig into the research and you'll find that eating two eggs a day does not significantly increase cholesterol levels.]
The study adds to a growing body of evidence regarding links between egg consumption and cognitive function across different populations, though previous research has shown mixed results.
Study limitations include the fact that the exact quantity of eggs consumed was not measured, and participants with dementia were significantly older than those without, which may affect the findings. Further research is needed to strengthen the understanding of this relationship.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20241003/Could-eating-eggs-prevent-dementia.aspx
*
METFORMIN LOWERS THE RISK OF DEMENTIA AND EARLY DEATH
New research in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism reveals that metformin, a medication traditionally prescribed to treat diabetes, is linked to lower risks of dementia and early death.
In the study by investigators at Taipei Medical University that included 452,777 adults with varying degrees of overweight and obesity, 35,784 cases of dementia and 76,048 deaths occurred over 10 years. Metformin users exhibited significantly lower risks of both dementia and all-cause death than nonusers.
The benefits of metformin were seen across all categories of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity, with 8–12% lower risks of dementia and 26–28% lower risks of death.
Oriana:
The life-extending effect of metformin was first shown in lab animals, and in the finding that diabetics who took metformin tended to live longer than average non-diabetic people who did not take metformin.
Fortunately, you don’t have to beg you doctor to prescribe metformin. There is something that provides the same benefits — and more — and it’s sold online and in places like Walmart without a prescription. It’s a supplement called BERBERINE.
Berberine doesn’t just lower your blood sugar. It also lowers LDL cholesterol, raises HDL cholesterol, and improves renal function — among several benefits. Together with CoQ10, it’s the most important anti-aging supplement.
The beautiful thing about berberine (I suggest 1500 mg/day, but 1200 may be enough for smaller individuals) is that it improves overall health and well-being. For that overall improvement, don’t expect to feel it right away. See how you feel after a month or two. Watch your energy levels and quality of your sleep, among other things. Watch your saliva and urine production (I'm hinting at the notorious "dryness" of old age). After you get your first blood test results confirming a range of benefits, it may seem that you have reversed aging. It's probably more accurate to say that in the long run you've only slowed it down -- but isn't that already miraculous enough? Aren't the many benefits of lower blood sugar pretty stunning?
Do I sound too enthusiastic? If anything, I suspect I’m not doing enough to spread the word about the benefits of berberine. The medical establishment and Big Pharma might not want millions of patients, particularly seniors, to know of such an easy and inexpensive way to keep your blood sugar and cholesterol in the healthy range. But do spread the word to your loved ones.
**
BENEFITS OF AVOCADO
Rich in monounsaturated fats, fiber, potassium, and antioxidants, avocado supports heart health by lowering LDL cholesterol, reducing blood pressure, and fighting inflammation.
Avocado's soluble fiber binds to cholesterol in the digestive tract, helping the body remove it naturally and further reducing heart disease risk.
*
Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is one of the best things you can do for your heart. That’s because these foods are high in heart-healthy nutrients, including fiber, minerals, and antioxidants. They’re also naturally low in saturated (“bad”) fats and sodium, which can have negative effects on the heart. However, there’s one vegetable that’s particularly beneficial for cardiac health, and it’s more impressive than you may think. Read on to learn a cardiologist’s pick for the best vegetable for heart health, along with ways to eat it at home.
Best Vegetable (Actually a Fruit) for Heart Health
According to Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, cardiologist and director of Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School at Tufts University, one vegetable wins in the realm of cardiac health: avocado. Though technically a fruit, avocado is commonly eaten and prepared like a vegetable, and it’s highly beneficial for your heart.
This is partly due to its rich content of unsaturated fatty acids, or “good” fats. “Unsaturated fats come in two major classes, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated,” explains Dr. Mozaffarian. Both types can help manage blood cholesterol levels, a key component of healthy heart function. According to Dr. Mozaffarian avocados contain mostly monounsaturated fatty acids, which help decrease LDL (“bad”) cholesterol1. This is a noteworthy effect, as high LDL cholesterol levels can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, per the experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Avocado also provides fiber; just half an avocado satisfies 20 percent of your daily fiber needs. This includes soluble fiber, which binds to cholesterol in the intestine and removes it from the body via stool4. This reduces cholesterol absorption in the body, thereby supporting healthy blood cholesterol levels and lowering the risk of heart disease.
Plus, avocado contains potassium, an essential mineral for heart health. “Potassium lowers blood pressure and helps offset the harms of sodium,” shares Dr. Mozaffarian. (ICYDK, excess sodium can increase blood pressure, or the force of blood flow against your artery walls.) This can help manage or prevent high blood pressure, or hypertension, another risk factor of cardiovascular disease.
To top it off, avocado is teeming with antioxidants. These beneficial compounds fight oxidative stress and inflammation, two factors that also contribute to heart disease. Antioxidants also prevent LDL cholesterol from oxidizing, a process that would otherwise promote plaque buildup in arteries, causing atherosclerosis. If such buildup occurs, it can prevent proper blood flow and lead to heart issues like heart attack and stroke—but antioxidants, like those in avocado, may help reduce the risk.
https://www.realsimple.com/the-one-vegetable-for-better-heart-health-according-to-a-cardiologist-11774184
*
ending on beauty:
WHITNEY PORTAL
What she loved was the view
of the highest peak —
the mountain’s two great wings,
a granite angel. Silent strokes
were eroding the trails
in my mother’s brain. I thought,
if only she could live
in a nursing home near Lone Pine,
looking at Mt. Whitney —
the mountain she loved, had climbed
on her birthday so many times.
But the dying leave
before the last breath.
She would not have seen
the stone angel. Nor did she
need to, my mother, ninety,
in a deepening coma,
with my father, climbing
the steep switchbacks —
Then before all motion
stopped: she lifted
her arm and reached for his
hand, to help her cross
the last stream.
~ Oriana
No comments:
Post a Comment