King Arthur in Wales (sculptor’s name not provided by the original poster)
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MY MOTHER ASKS ME NOT TO WRITE ABOUT WWII
“Why write about this old stuff?”
Not for this she gave me life.
Not for this she sent me
to the country of the future.
“Hitler is dead,” she says.
She remembers that night —
The chill, uncertain May
has just begun. She’s not in
ruined Warsaw, but in her leafy
home town, sleeping,
when church bells wake her up,
ringing loud and wild.
Lights go on in the windows,
people rush into streets,
women in coats over nightgowns
moon-shadowed, glancing,
whispering. Someone shouts:
“Hey, these are wedding bells!”
A few men run back in
to listen to the radio —
the Red Army entered
Hitler’s bunker, found
two bodies partly burned:
Hitler and Eva Braun.
The bells sway the stunned air.
Neighbors and strangers
embrace, kiss on both cheeks,
laugh and weep. Hitler is
dead, is dead, is dead,
the bells cry all over town,
and the difficult future begins —
wedding bells in the dark.
~ Oriana
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ALOIS HITLER, FATHER OF ADOLF
For 126 years, 31 letters lay hidden in an Austrian attic. They reveal an eerie truth: Adolf Hitler’s extreme arrogance and sharp handwriting perfectly mirrored the man who wrote them.
Penned in 1895 by his father, Alois Hitler, the correspondence was discovered in 2021 by a descendant of master roadbuilder Josef Radlegger.
The letters immediately shatter one of the longest-standing myths about the Hitler family: the role of Adolf's mother, Klara. In Mein Kampf, Adolf painted his mother as a quiet, submissive housewife who lived in terror of her husband. Alois’s letters to Radlegger describe Klara as a capable co-manager who handled the finances and possessed a "necessary zeal and understanding for economy."
She actively managed their newly purchased farm in Hafeld while Alois maintained his civil service job.
While Klara's role is revised, the letters confirm and deepen the picture of Alois as an arrogant, hyper-controlling patriarch. Completely self-taught, he was obsessed with status and constantly flaunted his rank as an imperial customs official. He viewed himself as intellectually superior to academics and the establishment, harboring a deep contempt for authority—an irony, given his micromanagement of his own family.
Historian Roman Sandgruber, who analyzed the letters, noted that the identical angular script suggests a deep, perhaps subconscious emulation by the younger Hitler. The letters also reveal that the family moved 18 times, a constant uprooting that contributed to a chaotic and disjointed upbringing.
The correspondence proves that Adolf did not invent his extreme anti-establishment worldview in a vacuum. Long before the son harnessed his arrogance and disdain for institutions into a global catastrophe, he absorbed those exact traits from a pompous bureaucrat in Upper Austria.%20wears%20his%20uniform%20as%20an%20Austrian%20customs%20official..jpg)
Alois Hitler (1837–1903) wears his uniform as an Austrian customs official.
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ROMANIAN KEPT SOME LATIN FEATURES LOST BY OTHER ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Romanian presents a fascinating linguistic paradox: it is geographically the most isolated from the original heartland of the Roman Empire, yet it preserved several ancient Latin features that were completely wiped out in French, Spanish, and Italian. The key to this preservation lies precisely in that isolation.
When the Roman Empire withdrew its administration and military from the province of Dacia (roughly modern-day Romania) around 271 AD, the Latin speakers left behind were cut off from the rest of the Romance-speaking world. Over the centuries, migratory groups—including Slavs, Magyars, and Turkic peoples—settled in the intervening territories. This created a geographic wedge that severed the linguistic continuum between the ancestors of Romanian and the Western Romance languages.
In historical linguistics, there is a principle known as the "periphery effect," which explains that linguistic innovations tend to originate in the center of a geographic area and radiate outward. Languages at the extreme edges often retain older, archaic forms because the newer changes never reach them. Because Romanian was sitting at the extreme eastern periphery of the Romance language family, separated by hundreds of miles of non-Romance speakers, it missed the waves of linguistic simplification sweeping through Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
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JEWS AND ARABS: HOW CLOSE ARE THEY GENETICALLY?
Despite millennia of diverging histories, the DNA of modern Jews and Arabs reveals a striking truth: both groups descend directly from the exact same Bronze Age Canaanites.
When geneticists examine the Y-chromosome, which is passed down from father to son, they find a deep overlap between Middle Eastern Arab populations (like Palestinians, Syrians, and Bedouins) and Jewish populations (including Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jews). Both groups carry high frequencies of haplogroups J1 and J2. These specific genetic markers indicate a shared paternal lineage originating in the Levant thousands of years ago.
Sequencing of ancient remains has further confirmed this deep indigenous connection. The populations that inhabited the Levant roughly 3,000 to 4,000 years ago are the primary ancestors of both modern Jews and Arabic-speaking Levantine populations. Both groups cluster closely together on genetic maps, demonstrating that they branched off from the same ancestral tree.
While their roots are identical, millennia of geographic separation and different historical trajectories created genetic divergence. Following historical exiles, Jewish populations dispersed across the globe. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, experienced a significant population bottleneck and mixed with Southern European populations (particularly Italian) during the Roman Empire, before settling in Eastern Europe. Despite this European admixture, their Middle Eastern genetic signature remains strong and identifiable.
Similarly, Arab populations exhibit variations depending on their geography. While Levantine Arabs show deep continuity with ancient Canaanites, other Arab groups have varying degrees of admixture from North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or Sub-Saharan Africa, depending on historical trade and migration routes.
Ultimately, the genetic data cuts through historical and political complexities. Beneath thousands of years of separate cultural evolution, the DNA of both groups points back to the exact same narrow strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean. ~ NovaPrism, Quora
Indian Banyan:
The most annoying sibling rivalry on the face of the earth. And the passion it raises among people far from the place or the concerned people is also astonishingly stupid.
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WHAT HAPPENED TO EUROPE’S HUNTERS AND GATHERERS?
When advanced farmers invaded Europe, they drove the continent's first inhabitants into dense forests and harsh coastlines. But ancient DNA reveals a 2,000-year genetic standoff.
The original hunter-gatherers of Europe arrived more than 40,000 years ago and survived the Last Glacial Maximum. By around 10,000 BC, they had differentiated into distinct populations like the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHG). Modern genetic sequencing has revealed that the WHG—who roamed from Spain to Scandinavia—typically possessed an unexpected physical appearance by modern standards: dark skin combined with blue eyes.
The first major disruption to their way of life arrived around 6500 BC, when Early European Farmers migrated into Europe from Anatolia. These farmers brought agriculture, domesticated animals, and a rapidly expanding population. Initially, the farmers and hunter-gatherers did not mix. The agriculturalists claimed the most fertile valleys and rapidly displaced the original inhabitants. Early farmer DNA from this period shows almost zero hunter-gatherer admixture.
The hunter-gatherers did not disappear. They coexisted alongside the agriculturalists for thousands of years, sometimes trading and sometimes skirmishing. By the Middle Neolithic period, roughly 2,000 years after the farmers first arrived, ancient DNA reveals a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry. The descendants of the original hunter-gatherers had begun to integrate into the farming communities, leading to an increase in WHG genetic markers within European farmer populations.
The final demographic upheaval occurred around 3000 BC with the arrival of the Yamnaya, nomadic pastoralists who swept out of the Eurasian Steppe. The Yamnaya themselves carried high levels of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. They intermixed heavily with the local populations, laying down the genetic foundation for modern Europeans.
Today, almost all people of European descent are a tripartite blend of these three ancient groups: Anatolian farmers, Steppe pastoralists, and the original hunter-gatherers. While the hunter-gatherer way of life vanished, their genetic legacy endures, peaking in the Baltic region where up to 30% of modern DNA traces directly back to the very first Europeans.
A reconstruction of Cheddar Man, a 10,000-year-old Western Hunter-Gatherer discovered in England, whose genome sequencing revealed the characteristic dark skin and blue eyes typical of Europe's post-glacial population.
~ SepiaGlyph, Quora
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WHY THE VIRGIN QUEEN NEVER MARRIED
Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, is the only English queen never to have married. The iconic Tudor monarch's last visit to Kenilworth 450 years ago may hold some clues to her solo reign – as revealed in a new art installation at the castle, depicting betrayal, beheadings and an elaborate declaration of love.
On a July evening in 1575, 41-year-old Queen Elizabeth I arrived at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, UK, for what would be her longest and last visit. She had given the castle to Robert Dudley in 1563 and granted him the title of Earl of Leicester the following year. Dudley was a great favorite of the Queen and is thought to have been her childhood friend. The precise nature of their close relationship was the subject of much gossip.
Prior to the unmarried Queen's arrival, Dudley had given the magnificent castle a major refurb. New buildings had gone up, a new garden had been created and the estate had been landscaped. And the earl pulled out all the stops to lay on extraordinary entertainment in the form of music, dancing, acrobatics, spectacular fireworks and dramatic interludes performed by costumed actors. On the huge mere surrounding the castle, there was a moving island inhabited by the "Lady of the Lake". There was a 24ft (7.3m) dolphin that concealed musicians, and an 18ft-(5.5m) long swimming mermaid.
No expense was spared. It cost Dudley £1,000 ($1,400) a day – millions in today's money, and the whole extravaganza has been interpreted as an elaborate and expensive courtship display; the 16th-Century ruling class's equivalent of hiring a plane to fly a "Marry Me" banner. "The 1575 festivities were an attempt to woo Elizabeth – marriage is a theme in some of the events," Jeremy Ashbee, head curator of properties at English Heritage, tells the BBC. "Dr Elizabeth Goldring, who has made a detailed study of Lord Leicester, has called it 'his last throw of the dice'."
Dudley's gamble seemed to be going swimmingly, but then everything changed. The highlight of the stay was to have been a masque – or performance – on Wednesday 20 July. It never took place. Was it simply a case of bad weather preventing the event, as the official version had it? Or had the monarch got wind of the subject matter and been angered? The masque featured Diana, goddess of chastity, searching for one of her chaste nymphs, pointedly called Zabetta – a version of the name Elizabeth.
It concluded with a messenger of Juno, goddess of marriage, directly addressing Elizabeth, and imploring her not to follow the path of Diana but to marry instead.
Dudley had a certain amount of leeway with the Queen, but this perhaps was going too far. Whatever the reason, the masque never took place, and the revelries were over. The Queen remained in her quarters for a few more days before leaving on 27 July.
'Proud and fiery'
Now, the artist Lindsey Mendick has marked the 450th anniversary of the visit by creating Wicked Game, a large sculptural installation at the castle. Wicked Game takes inspiration from ancient mythology as well as from the events of Elizabeth's visit, and the way in which she used her unwed state in her shrewd political maneuvers throughout her 45-year reign. There are 13 different tableaux. Some are sinister, others are suffused with dark humor. The fragmented ceramic sculptures strikingly depict the Queen and those around her as animals. In the central piece, Elizabeth is a lion and Dudley is a bear. The tableaux are positioned on pieces of an exploded giant chessboard.
"Playing chess is the perfect analogy for what Elizabeth had to do to survive," Mendick tells the BBC. "I think she is incredibly interesting and that she's a great way of looking at how we treat women today. This event [that Dudley planned] at Kenilworth was meant to be this massive celebration for Elizabeth; it was meant to be decadent and enjoyable. But then also at the same time it was so loaded with something else. For powerful women like Elizabeth, refusing to marry or have children was a radical act of self-preservation and autonomy.”
Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, is the only English queen never to have married. She came to power in 1558 at the age of 25, inheriting religious, political and financial problems from her two predecessors, her half-brother, Edward VI (1537-1553), and her half-sister, Mary I (1516-1558).
Advisers and members of Parliament repeatedly urged her to marry to protect England's security. A woman ruling alone? Inconceivable. A queen needed to marry, it was believed, not just to produce a male heir in order to avoid succession disputes but also so that a man could take charge of political and military matters. The entreaties to marry were ceaseless, and numerous matrimonial candidates were suggested or suggested themselves. Elizabeth repeatedly parried, deflected and refused. Why?
'No master'
It's entirely possible that she simply found the idea of having to obey or defer to a husband – any husband – intolerable. After all, she was very well educated (she learned five languages – French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Flemish – and had studied history and rhetoric), highly intelligent, proud and fiery. She is said to have declared: "I will have but one mistress here and no master."
Also, Elizabeth knew that a woman could govern perfectly well without a man looking over her shoulder. In the summer of 1544, at Hampton Court, she witnessed the scholarly Katherine Parr, Henry's sixth wife, ruling with full authority while the king was on campaign in France. Katherine was a more than capable regent, and Elizabeth seems to have been profoundly influenced by seeing her stepmother exercising power, and accepting as her due the humble deference of powerful male ministers and courtiers.
Besides, her own immediate family had hardly furnished her with an image of the joys of marriage. Her father had her mother, Anne Boleyn, arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery and conspiracy, and then, shockingly, had her beheaded when Elizabeth was just three years old. One of Mendick's sculptures is an interpretation of this execution, showing Anne as a fox kneeling in prayer, before the executioner, who takes the form of a vicious dog.
Some commentators have suggested that Elizabeth might have been afraid of sex. Alison Weir, for example, in her book, Elizabeth, the Queen, wonders if the monarch "may have made the equation that sexual involvement was inextricably linked with death". The BBC's 2005 series The Virgin Queen portrayed "a monarch terrified of sex", according to the Telegraph. Paula Milne, who wrote the screenplay, told them at the time: "If I was asked to write a piece about a contemporary woman whose mother had been killed by her father, I would be expected to examine the psychological impact."
In fact, Elizabeth enjoyed the company of handsome men, and could be flirtatious with them. However, she had plenty of reasons to fear pregnancy and childbirth. Childbirth was a very high-risk enterprise in the Tudor era. Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife, died in childbirth, and Katherine Parr died of an illness shortly after giving birth, as had Elizabeth's grandmother, Elizabeth of York.
How Elizabeth has been portrayed
But there were political reasons, as well as personal, for not marrying. Keeping the country free from the influence of foreign powers may have been a consideration. Also, the prospect of Elizabeth's hand in marriage might have strengthened her negotiating position in her dealings with France, Spain and other nations. Meanwhile, if she'd married an English nobleman (and Dudley might have been a possibility had not his wife, Amy Robsart, died in somewhat suspicious circumstances in 1560), she would have automatically put another English nobleman's nose out-of-joint.
So she kept everyone waiting and wondering. She seems to have had an instinctive grasp of what we now call PR, and liked to present herself as wholly devoted to her realm. From early in her reign she cultivated the image of the Virgin Queen. In 1559 she declared, in response to MPs asking her to marry, that eventually "a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin". At the end of Shekhar Kapur's much-loved 1998 film, Elizabeth, the young monarch is played by Cate Blanchett, who then played her again in the 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. In Elizabeth, she purposefully transforms herself into the Virgin Queen and, all in white, presents herself to her astonished court, announcing "I am married… to England”.
Kapur's film plays fast and loose with the historical facts, but this dialogue echoes the Queen's actual assertion, made in 1559, that she would not marry because she was "already bound unto a husband which is the Kingdom of England". Her sister Mary I – also known as Bloody Mary – had claimed something similar but had then gone off and married Philip II of Spain.
Elizabeth's decision not to marry has been a key element of depictions of her in popular culture. The connection between sex and death was made in the BBC's multiple-Emmy-winning 1971 series Elizabeth R. Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth says, in the very first episode: "I have trusted no man since the day when I was eight, and Queen Catherine Howard [Henry's fifth wife – beheaded] ran screaming along the galleries of the palace to plead with the great Henry… On every hand, men had betrayed her… First there is trust, then passion, then death."
Miranda Richardson's caricatured Elizabeth, who appears in the second season of the celebrated sitcom Blackadder, remarks in the first episode, "Everybody seems to get married except me." But in the series she uses the promise of marriage to manipulate Blackadder, and others, into doing what she wants.
Had the real Elizabeth allowed Dudley to think he might be in with a chance? And what did the Kenilworth visit mean for their relationship? "I don't believe that he felt humiliated by her rejection of his proposal," says Ashbee. "He was happy for an official account of the festivities to be published soon afterwards, and in his will, he stipulated that the castle was to be left exactly as it had been. I rather get the feeling that he saw 1575 as his 'finest hour'. He certainly didn't retire quietly into private life after 1575."
Elizabeth was furious with Dudley for a while when he married Lettice Knollys in 1578 – but she forgave him. When he died, in 1588, she locked herself in her room for so long that her chief adviser ordered that the doors be forced open. And when Elizabeth died in 1603, a note Dudley had sent her shortly before his death was found in a casket she kept by the side of her bed. She had written on it "his last letter".
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250714-why-the-virgin-queen-never-married
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“SCRATCH A RUSSIAN, FIND A TATAR”
After 250 years of Golden Horde rule, that old proverb feels like a biological certainty—until you look at the DNA.
Large-scale DNA studies consistently show that ethnic Russians are overwhelmingly Slavic and Finno-Ugric. East Eurasian and Central Asian admixture—the genetic signature expected from heavy intermingling with the Turkic and Mongolic peoples of the Golden Horde—makes up only 1 to 2 percent of the average ethnic Russian's genome. Populations in central and northern Russia cluster tightly with other Eastern European groups, such as Poles, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.
This lack of mixing stems from the mechanics of the "Tatar Yoke." The Golden Horde utilized a system of indirect rule. The khans established their capital, Sarai, on the lower Volga River, hundreds of miles from the Slavic population centers. They demanded heavy tribute and occasional military levies from Russian princes, but they did not settle in Russian villages or force assimilation. Geographic distance and strict religious differences between Orthodox Christianity and Islam kept the general populations separated.
The notable exception was the Russian nobility. For diplomatic and political advantage, aristocratic families frequently intermarried with Tatar elites. The khans granted lands and titles to their allies, and over the centuries, many prominent Russian noble houses—including the Godunovs, Yusupovs, and Turgenevs—traced their lineage back to the Golden Horde. This cultural influence introduced hundreds of Turkic loanwords into the Russian language involving trade, administration, and warfare.
It is also important to distinguish between ethnic Russians (Russkiye) and Russian citizens (Rossiyane). The modern Russian Federation is a multi-ethnic state that includes republics like Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Millions of Russian citizens are entirely of Turkic descent, maintaining their own cultural and genetic heritage, but they remain distinct from the country's ethnic Slavic core.
The Golden Horde and surrounding realms in 1300. The khans ruled the Russian principalities indirectly, demanding tribute rather than settling in Slavic population centers.
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WHY SMALL ISOLATED PLACES FAIL
A satellite view of Tristan da Cunha, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Real-world isolated communities highlight why small numbers fail over time. The South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha was settled by just 15 people in the 1800s. Today, its population of around 250 suffers from the "founder effect"—a loss of genetic variation that amplifies recessive traits. Due to the limited DNA of the original settlers, a significant portion of the island's residents experience asthma and unusually high rates of glaucoma.
Crucially, places like Tristan da Cunha are not perfectly isolated; they occasionally receive new genetic material from outsiders. If a similarly small population were sealed in a bunker or a spacecraft for 1,000 years with zero outside contact, the accumulation of recessive genetic disorders would likely lead to demographic collapse long before the millennium was over.
~ NovaPrism, Quora
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DID THE DARK AGES REALLY HAPPEN?
Europe didn't spend centuries recovering from the fall of Ancient Rome. For the average peasant, the empire's collapse wasn't a tragedy—it was a massive tax break.
The period often called the "Dark Ages" was not a long pause in human progress, but a drastic economic and political restructuring that laid the agricultural and technological foundation of modern Europe.
Rome did not suddenly vanish in 476 AD. The Eastern half of the empire survived for another thousand years as the Byzantine Empire, while in the West, incoming Germanic kings actively preserved Roman administration. They employed Roman bureaucrats, minted Roman-style coins, and ruled under Roman law.
What appears in the archaeological record as a sudden decline was largely a shift away from a highly centralized, tax-heavy state. Monumental stone architecture and long-distance luxury trade across the Mediterranean diminished, but rural life continued unabated without the burden of supplying a massive standing army.
As society localized, agricultural technology surged. During this period, Northern Europe adopted the heavy moldboard plow, which allowed farmers to cut deep into the dense, clay-rich soils of the continent that Roman scratch plows could not penetrate. Alongside the widespread adoption of the horse collar, watermills, and the three-field crop rotation system, this agricultural revolution eventually triggered a massive population boom.
By the late eighth century, this new agrarian wealth fueled a cultural revival under Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire. Monasteries systematically preserved classical texts, inventing a new, highly legible script—Carolingian minuscule—which later formed the basis of modern lowercase letters. European rulers began building in stone on a monumental scale once again, merging Roman architectural heritage with new styles rather than recovering from a dark age that never truly existed. ~ SepiaGlyphs, Quora
The Palatine Chapel in Aachen, Germany, was completed in 805 AD. Charlemagne's architects modeled the dome on Byzantine and Roman structures, signaling a revival of monumental stone architecture in Western Europe.
Giovanni B:
The war in the West promoted by him led to the devastation of the Italian peninsula and to the military and economic weakening of the ERE, which opened the door to the later Muslims’ conquests.
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DID MEDIEVAL PEASANTS HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT?
In a good year, medieval peasants ate a highly nutritious diet that modern doctors would envy.
But they lived just one bad rainstorm away from eating tree bark to survive.
The foundation of this daily diet was grain. Most calories came from a thick stew called pottage, made from boiled oats, barley, or rye, bulked out with peas, beans, cabbage, and onions. Alongside pottage, they ate dense, dark bread and drank weak ale, as water was often unsafe. Meat was a rare luxury. A peasant might eat a small amount of preserved pork or bacon, but cattle and sheep were too valuable for their milk, cheese, and wool to be slaughtered for everyday meals.
This diet was high in fiber, complex carbohydrates, and vegetables, meaning peasants rarely suffered from the heart disease or diabetes that plague modern populations. However, it was monotonous and lacked certain nutrients, particularly vitamin C during the winter months, leaving them vulnerable to scurvy.
The real danger was not the daily menu, but the razor-thin margin for error. A single bad harvest caused by heavy rains or drought meant going hungry. Consecutive bad harvests meant starvation. During the Great Famine of 1315–1317, unceasing rains ruined crops across Northern Europe, leading to the deaths of an estimated 10 to 25 percent of the population. In these desperate times, peasants resorted to eating seed grain, wild forage, and domestic animals.
The standard of living shifted dramatically in the mid-14th century. After the Black Death killed roughly a third of Europe’s population, the sudden shortage of labor gave the surviving peasants unprecedented bargaining power. Wages rose, and rents fell. In this post-plague economy, peasants began eating better than ever before, swapping dark barley bread for finer wheat loaves and incorporating significantly more meat, dairy, and fish into their daily meals.
A 15th-century illumination from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry depicting peasants harvesting grapes in September.
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THE MYTH OF A PEACEFUL PREHISTORIC UTOPIA
The myth of a peaceful prehistoric utopia collapses under the weight of blunt force trauma. Up to 15% of early humans died violently—a rate eclipsing both World Wars combined.
This romantic belief largely stems from the 18th-century Enlightenment. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau popularized the concept of the "noble savage," arguing that early humans were uncorrupted by the greed, property disputes, and strict hierarchies of modern civilization. Because prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in small, scattered bands across a vast, sparsely populated planet, modern culture often assumes they had plenty of space and no reason to fight over resources.
When mid-20th-century anthropologists began studying surviving isolated hunter-gatherer groups, early reports seemed to confirm this idyllic view. However, long-term statistical tracking revealed a different reality. Among groups once heralded as the "harmless people," homicide rates frequently exceeded those of major modern cities.
The archaeological record shows this violence is ancient. As researchers analyzed early human remains, the evidence became irrefutable. In Kenya, at a 10,000-year-old site called Nataruk, archaeologists unearthed the remains of 27 individuals who were never buried. Their bones showed shattered knees, crushed skulls, and obsidian blade lesions, providing clear evidence of an organized massacre between hunter-gatherer bands.
In Germany, the Talheim Death Pit contains the remains of 34 men, women, and children from around 5100 BC who were struck down from behind with stone axes and dumped into a mass grave.
A skull belonging to a man killed in the Talheim massacre around 5100 BC. The large fracture on the left side of the face was caused by a fatal blow from a stone adze.
Even isolated travelers faced extreme danger. Ötzi the Iceman, the famous naturally preserved mummy found in the Alps dating to 3300 BC, did not freeze to death peacefully. He bled to death from a flint arrowhead lodged deep in his shoulder blade, and carried deep cuts on his hands from close-quarters combat days prior.
According to data compiled by anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, warfare and murder were routine features of early human life. Civilization did not introduce humans to organized violence; it introduced the legal frameworks, trade agreements, and peace treaties required to stop it. ~ PowderArchive, Quora
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WHY HUMANS ARE COMPARED TO CHIMPANZEES RATHER THAN BONOBOS
Actually, humans share 98.7% of their DNA with both chimpanzees and bonobos. For decades, scientists ignored bonobos because their peaceful societies ruined macho theories of human evolution.
The evolutionary lineage that led to modern humans split from the common ancestor of both Pan species about 6 to 8 million years ago, while chimpanzees and bonobos diverged from each other around 1.5 to 2 million years ago. Despite this equal genetic footing, chimpanzees have historically dominated comparisons in popular culture. The reasons for this imbalance come down to geography, timing, and confirmation bias.
Chimpanzees had a massive historical head start in Western science. They inhabit a broad swath of equatorial Africa, making them relatively accessible to early European explorers and researchers. By the time bonobos were officially recognized as a distinct species in 1929—originally dubbed "pygmy chimpanzees"—chimpanzees were already entrenched in scientific literature, zoos, and popular culture. Bonobos, by contrast, are found only in a remote, heavily forested region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cut off by the vast Congo River. This geographic isolation made them difficult to study in the wild until the late 20th century.
When mid-century anthropologists were searching for living models of early human evolution, they brought their own cultural biases to the table. The prevailing theory of the era was "Man the Hunter," which hypothesized that human intelligence and social structures evolved through male dominance, tool use for hunting, and violent competition. Chimpanzee societies—which are patriarchal, fiercely territorial, and prone to lethal intergroup warfare—perfectly mirrored this narrative.
Bonobos offered a different reflection. Their societies are matriarchal, egalitarian, and famously use sexual contact rather than violence to resolve conflicts and ease social tension. Because this peaceful, female-dominated structure directly contradicted the entrenched patriarchal theories of human evolution, early researchers often marginalized bonobos as an evolutionary anomaly rather than a valid model for human ancestry.
Today, evolutionary biologists recognize that neither species is a perfect mirror for early hominins. Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees or bonobos, but rather share a complex, extinct common ancestor with both. Studying the aggressive politics of the chimpanzee and the peaceful cooperation of the bonobo provides a more complete picture of the behavioral flexibility that defines the human lineage.
A bonobo at the Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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AMERICANS ARE ABANDONING THEIR WEEKLY HABIT
New Gallup data reveals a dramatic shift in how Americans spend their time and money, with potentially serious consequences for an entire industry.
The number of Americans dining out just hit a new low.
In the early days of the pandemic, restaurants went into survival mode to stay afloat. It may be safe to grab a bite to eat out of the house these days, but with fewer Americans able to afford the luxury of eating out, business is drying up again.
The percentage of Americans who say they dine out at least once a week slid almost 10% between 2022 and 2026, according to a new Gallup poll. In 2019, just prior to the pandemic, more than half of people surveyed reported eating out at a restaurant at least one time per week. By 2021, that percentage dipped 10%, to 43%, before perking up to 47% in 2022. In the 2026 version of the same poll, Gallup found that only 39% of people dine out weekly—fewer than in the first year following the COVID outbreak.
“Weekly dining out fell during the pandemic, partly recovered by 2022, and has since dropped to a new low, with the latest decline concentrated among middle- and upper-income Americans,” Gallup wrote in its new report. The analytics company cited the “cumulative effect of price increases over the past four years” as the main driver that’s keeping people at home.
They aren’t just staying in and ordering takeout, either. The number of Americans who say they get takeout weekly slipped to 31% in 2026, down from 39% in 2021—a strong sign that the affordability crisis is behind the shifting trends. That percentage of Americans ordering takeout in 2026 is now even with what it was pre-pandemic in 2018.
Dining out across income levels
Unsurprisingly, people in different income brackets have different habits when it comes to eating out. Americans in upper-income households dine out much more often than those making less money, an intuitive finding given that higher costs don’t sting nearly as much when you’ve got more financial padding.
Just prior to the pandemic, Gallup found that 40% of people in a lower-income group dined out on a weekly basis, compared with 54% in a middle-income group and 65% in an upper-income group. By 2021, weekly dining rates had dropped across the board, but they began to rise again in 2022—but only for higher-income Americans. Now, weekly dining is sliding again, this time falling for middle- and upper-income adults, with 38% and 48% of people in those categories eating out at least once a week, respectively.
For lower-income Americans, the percentage stayed stable at 32%.
“For restaurants, the challenge is less that Americans have stopped eating out than that they are doing so less often,” Gallup wrote in the report. “And with restaurant takeout falling from its pandemic-era high, weekly takeout or delivery does not appear to be making up the difference.”
Food safety worries
The current Gallup survey was conducted in July of this year, drawing on data from a random sample of 1,200 adults across all 50 states. The company does note that its polling coincided with the cyclosporiasis outbreak that had Americans skittish about lettuce this summer, as the food safety scare may have impacted eating habits, too.
The outbreak—traced to iceberg lettuce recalled by food supplier Taylor Farms—officially ended in September, but not before it sickened almost 13,000 people and sent 579 to the hospital. In a separate survey, Gallup found that Americans distrust the federal government on food more than ever, with only 47% feeling confident about food safety protocols.
With more people holed up at home with their groceries, restaurants have been forced to improvise. Some, like fast-casual pillars Noodles & Company and Chipotle, are getting creative with innovative menu items to bring diners back into the fold. Others, like McDonald’s, opted to make fast food feel cheap again with a $5 meal deal.
But local restaurants and fine dining options don’t have as much breathing room as their corporate peers, with many folding to a lethal combination of higher ingredient prices and shrinking customer budgets—and little relief in sight.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91628244/americans-are-abandoning-a-weekly-habit-thats-been-part-of-everyday-life-for-decades?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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THE PARADOX OF SEX IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Sex may appear superficial, yet sexual infidelity is often experienced as love's deepest violation.
Change tends to fuel sexual desire, while familiarity often strengthens romantic attachment.
Sexual afterglow may contribute more to lasting relationship satisfaction than orgasm alone.
Love and sex exist on an intimacy continuum rather than as simple opposites.
Sex is often treated as one of the least profound aspects of enduring romantic love, yet sexual infidelity is experienced as one of love's deepest violations. How can we explain this paradox?
The Paradox of Sex
The paradox of sex in romantic relationships is that its positive contribution to a flourishing, enduring relationship may sometimes seem limited, providing largely momentary physical pleasure. Yet when it violates an exclusive bond, sex can carry enormous destructive power.
Why does something often dismissed as "just sex" become the ultimate romantic betrayal?
Romantic love rests on two major evaluations: (a) a partner's attractiveness and (b) the praiseworthiness of the partner's traits and achievements. The first is typically expressed through sexual desire; the second deepens friendship, caring, and admiration. Although these evaluations are distinct, they often reinforce each other. Attractive partners are frequently perceived as possessing more admirable qualities, while admired partners often become more attractive. This duality reflects the ambiguous nature of sex: It may provide immediate physical pleasure while also strengthening a profound emotional bond.
To understand this paradox, I examine five related issues: the ambiguous nature of sex, the roles of change and familiarity, the distinction between making love and having sex, the intimacy continuum, and sexual afterglow.
The Ambiguous Nature of Sex
Sex can be viewed as serving two primary functions: bodily pleasure and relational connection. From the first perspective, sex need not threaten romantic love. Hence the familiar claim: "I had sex with someone else, but I still love you." Yet sex can also embody intimacy, exclusivity, desire, and belonging.
A sexual interaction may be physically brief yet psychologically significant. A kiss, sexual encounter, or affair may last only minutes or hours, yet its meaning can be enormous because it violates an important relational boundary. Many people regard sexual infidelity as the ultimate betrayal, while others defend it by saying, "It was only sex. It meant nothing." But this defense raises an obvious question: If it meant nothing, why was the relationship worth risking for it?
Change and Familiarity
"The more I see you, the more I want you. Somehow this feeling just grows and grows." ~ Chris Montez
"Weirdly, I want the unpleasant situation between me and my husband to change. But then again, I would not have an excuse for a hot lover. Just being honest." ~ A married woman
Emotions typically arise when we perceive significant changes in our own circumstances or in the lives of those close to us. From an evolutionary perspective, attending to change is adaptive because change may signal opportunity or threat. Once we adapt to a new situation, however, its emotional impact often diminishes (Ben-Ze’ev, 2019).
This tendency may appear to work against enduring romantic love. Yet familiarity has its own emotional value. In long-term relationships characterized by commitment and shared activities, familiarity can deepen intimacy and romantic meaning.
Change tends to ignite sexual desire, whereas familiarity often nurtures romantic attachment.
Making Love and Having Sex
Although making love usually involves sex, not every sexual encounter can be described as making love. Compared to merely having sex, making love is often more patient, emotionally intimate, and relationally significant. A key difference concerns time. Making love reflects what might be called a patient heart, one that values both present enjoyment and future connection. Simply having sex is more likely to emphasize immediate gratification.
Making love also tends to foster greater intimacy. It involves shared attention, responsiveness, and emotional resonance between partners. In such encounters, giving may become as important as receiving, encouraging a more other-centered form of sexual interaction.
The Intimacy Continuum
"Last night I had sex with my husband, but he did not actually touch me. He just penetrated me. I was so sad I could cry." ~ A married woman
"I cannot engage in lip-kissing with men I have sex with unless there is profound intimacy. Kissing other body parts, including sexual organs, feels less intimate." ~ A married woman
The connection between love and sex comes in many forms. Commercial sex illustrates that the two can be separated, while the husband's behavior described above shows that emotional disconnection can occur even within marriage. Love and sex therefore exist on an intimacy continuum rather than as simple opposites.
Elizabeth Bernstein (2007) coined the term bounded authenticity to describe the sale and purchase of authentic emotional and physical connection in certain forms of sex work. This differs from purely impersonal sexual release. Bernstein notes that some sex workers attempt to create genuine feelings of desire, esteem, and emotional connection, giving clients a sense of being valued and wanted. Accordingly, commercial sex need not always involve what people dismiss as "counterfeit intimacy."
Sexual Afterglow
"While having an affair, I was sexually aroused and began noticing other men noticing me. Even my husband seemed more attracted to me. When it rains, it pours." ~ A married woman
"My married lover became emotionally distant the moment he ejaculated. The speed with which he withdrew emotionally and physically was astonishing." ~ A divorcee
Sexual afterglow refers to the positive feelings that linger after a satisfying sexual encounter. Research suggests that these lingering feelings, rather than orgasm alone, play an important role in shaping attitudes toward one's partner. Although less intense than orgasm, afterglow may contribute more to long-term relationship satisfaction. Spouses who experience stronger afterglow report greater marital satisfaction, suggesting that afterglow may help strengthen pair bonds. While orgasm is the clearest expression of sexual intensity, the affectionate interaction that follows sex may do more to deepen a romantic connection. Studies indicate that sexual afterglow lasted at least one day on average and is associated with greater marital satisfaction. The enduring effects of sex, rather than the immediate climax alone, may therefore be especially important for relationship quality and longevity,
Concluding Thoughts
Love and sex are two central forces in romantic life. Their relationship is complex: sometimes they reinforce one another, and sometimes they pull us in different directions. There is no simple formula for balancing them. Yet relationships are most likely to flourish when sex and love complement rather than compete with each other.
The significance of sex depends less on the physical act itself than on the meaning it acquires within a relationship. Sex may be brief, physically, and seemingly superficial, yet at the same time psychologically and romantically profound. This is precisely why, despite being described as "just sex," it can become one of love's deepest expressions—or one of its deepest betrayals.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-name-of-love/202610/the-paradox-of-sex-in-romantic-relationships
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FILICIDE—THE KILLING OF A CHILD BY A PARENT—IS MORE COMMON THAN YOU THINK
Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is not as uncommon a calamity as you may think. A study supported by the National Institutes of Health found that about 15% of homicide arrests over a 32-year period were filicides. A myriad of studies have identified the motivations of adults who murder children. Some children are killed because they are perceived as a hindrance, whereas others are killed by an enraged spouse seeking revenge on a partner.
There is a fatal maltreatment group, encompassing children who died as an unintended consequence of neglect or abuse. The majority of child victims are killed by parents who are delusional and believe they must kill their child to avoid real or imagined suffering (referred to as altruistic delusions) or from those who were acutely psychotic. Women mostly comprise the altruistic group, whereas men the revenge group.
I have been an expert witness in multiple insanity trials, including those involving mothers who killed their children. Consistent with the forensic psychological literature, I found that in the great majority of cases, mothers who kill their children are psychotic and irrational, and motivated by bizarre or altruistically irrational delusions. Often, the killings are followed by an attempted or completed suicide.
In one poignant case, I evaluated Janice, who was driven by her altruistic delusional beliefs to murder her two children. For months before the killing, she had the irrational conviction that she was dealing with deadly demonic forces that existed in the family household that were affecting her and her children. She told her family physician, who diagnosed her with depression and provided antidepressant medication, which had no impact on her insidious thought disorder. Desperate, she concluded that the only way to save her children and herself was through death. She also tried to kill herself, but survived.
It is difficult for juries to conclude that a mother is not responsible for her children’s death at her own hands. The crime is so heinous on its surface that, regardless of the circumstances, juries frequently nullify the evidence that strongly supports an insanity conclusion.
In order to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, the jury, after listening to all the evidence, including the defense and prosecution experts, must conclude that, as a result of a psychosis, Ms. Clancy did not understand that what she did was morally or legally wrong. In such a mental state, how she tied the ligatures would be viewed as relatively unimportant, as her intentions might be purposeful, but irrationally driven and out of touch with reality and the wrongfulness of her actions. The jurors will be acutely attentive to the testimony of the psychiatric experts who interviewed Ms. Clancy. And so should you. I will follow up with the second blog as the trial unfolds and comes to a conclusion.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/decoding-madness/202607/lindsay-clancys-trial-what-will-sway-the-jurors
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FAKING IT VERSUS REAL PSYCHOSIS
Faking insanity happens. A 2025 analysis of roughly 1,300 people in a forensic psychiatry practice found that about a quarter failed at least three tests designed to catch invented or exaggerated symptoms.
Psychosis Shows Up at 3 a.m.
A validity measure tests whether someone is reporting honestly and putting in real effort. Some flag the person who reports too many dramatic, rare, or impossible mental health symptoms. Others track effort on tasks that look hard but are easy enough that even brain-injured patients pass. A deliberately poor score stands out.
The tests catch a lot. So does the conversation. With someone who is genuinely sick, you don’t just hear about the symptoms; you see them. They stop mid-sentence to listen to a voice no one else can hear. Their fear matches the paranoid delusion. A faker can describe all of that, but can’t produce it.
In nearly 30 years of competency and criminal responsibility evaluations, I’ve found that the genuinely ill rarely perform their illness. They’re too busy living inside it. It’s the performers who hand you the symptoms in the order a movie taught them.
Some defendants will agree to almost any symptom you ask them about. Some don’t even know what a hallucination is, mistaking something ordinary, like talking to themselves, for one. Others overdo it, piling on incompatible symptoms that no real illness produces: the wired, sleepless high of mania running full blast next to the dead weight of deep depression, hour after hour. That isn’t how illness works.
And the interview is only part of it. Listening to jail call recordings can be enlightening; despite clear indications that these calls are recorded, you'd be amazed at what some defendants reveal. Some of the most valuable sources are the officers and nurses who staff the jail, who are around the defendant for hours with no skin in the game. They see the defendant at three in the morning and in the lunch line. A performance is exhausting to sustain around the clock, and it often slips when the audience no longer matters.
When a Hunch Becomes Expert Testimony
The defense has its own legitimate worry. Law professor Deborah Denno recently tracked malingering claims across every American insanity case involving neuroscience evidence over the past 120 years. The accusation grew from a rarity in the early 1900s to more than a fifth of insanity cases by the 2000s. When it was raised, it shaped the outcome in roughly 70 percent of cases.
Yet much of the time it rested on thin support. Often, the finding came down to an examiner’s impression that the defendant seemed manipulative. Not a failed test, not a validity measure, but a feeling about the person across the table, written up in clinical language and carried into a courtroom as expertise.
None of this means faking isn't real. It is, and modern tests can catch it. The trouble is that the courtroom malingering accusation, all too often, doesn't include them. It rests on a clinician's gut read, the same blunt hunch the field ran on a century ago, before those tests existed. The science got sharp. The accusation often didn't. And it can carry a case without anyone running the assessment that might have settled it.
Spotting a Liar Is a Coin Toss
It’s tempting to think you’d know a faker if you saw one. The research says otherwise. Across hundreds of studies and more than 20,000 observers, the average person spots a lie about 54 percent of the time, barely better than a coin toss. We psychologists only do a smidgen better. And here's an interesting fact: How confident you feel about your judgment has almost nothing to do with whether you’re right.
It’s why I don’t lean on my own impression of a defendant, and why I’m wary of any examiner who does. The face across the table is the least reliable instrument in the room.
When that certainty hardens into a courtroom opinion, someone pays. In a New York case, a young woman named Keila Pulinario shot a man she said had raped her and intended to do it again. The state’s psychiatrist called her a faker. At trial, she admitted she had lied to the evaluators about her sexual history, and the judge used those lies to bar her own expert from explaining her trauma to the jury. A federal court reversed, holding that her untruthfulness was a symptom of what she had survived, not a reason to silence her defense. Withholding and shame are not holes in a rape victim’s account. They are part of it.
Two Ways to Be Fooled
Mistaking a sick person for a faker denies them treatment and adds years to a sentence.
Mistaking a faker for a sick person lets a fabrication corrupt the verdict.
Both are real dangers, and both come from the same shortcut: trusting a feeling instead of doing the work, watching how the symptoms show up, running the tests built to catch a fake, and checking the story against the people who see the defendant when no one is performing for a judge. The difference between a genuine breakdown and a good act is there to be found. What hides it is an examiner who has already made up their mind.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-equation/202606/faking-insanity-how-experts-tell-whats-real
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THE CENTENARIAN PARADOX
A healthy lifestyle can reliably get you to 85. But researchers tracking centenarians found a baffling trend: many are overweight, rarely exercise, and even smoked for decades.
Aging researchers broadly divide lifespan into two phases: an initial span where habits dictate longevity, and an extreme phase where genetics take over.
Up to the mid-80s, environment and behavior dictate outcomes. Regular exercise, a nutritious diet, avoiding smoking, and managing stress can maximize a person’s baseline life expectancy. Studies of groups with strict health guidelines, such as Seventh-day Adventists—who largely avoid meat, tobacco, and alcohol—show they live up to a decade longer than the general population. At this stage, only about 20 to 30 percent of lifespan variation is attributed to heritable traits. The rest is dictated by daily habits and socioeconomic factors like access to clean water and medical care.
After age 90, the biological rules change. The New England Centenarian Study, which tracks people over 100, confirmed this. Instead of pristine habits, extreme agers possess protective genetic variants. Their cells have longer telomeres and unique alleles that delay or prevent age-related diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, and cardiovascular disease. Their bodies age at a slower molecular rate, an advantage that no amount of dieting can replicate.
Reaching 100 also requires compounding layers of circumstantial luck. It means avoiding fatal accidents, surviving global conflicts, and dodging lethal childhood infections before the invention of modern antibiotics.
Because extreme longevity is driven by DNA, it strongly clusters within families rather than just healthy neighborhoods. Siblings of centenarians are far more likely to reach 100 themselves than the general public, and the children of centenarians consistently show significantly lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes in their later years. ~ Vital Sign, Quora
Wade Watson:
Genetics plays a big role from the anecdotal evidence that I have seen. My maternal grandfather had 9 siblings. Although none of them drank alcohol, some ate whatever they wanted in whatever quantities they wanted. They certainly didn't have an exercise regimen. My grandfather was the only vegetarian among the 10 children and he lived to be 94. He actually died of an infection contracted at the hospital when he was being treated for walking pneumonia.
However, with the exception of a brother who died in a car accident and a sister who died of breast cancer, they all lived well into their 90s. Two of the sisters lived to be 100 and 103 respectively. They were born at the beginning of the 20th century in rural Florida and didn't receive any medical care while growing up in abject poverty. It's clear to me that their genetics played an outsized role in their long lives. I've noticed this to be true in other families as well.
Andrew Glenn:
My father and his two siblings were 92, 93 and 94. Two of them smoked and drank.
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THE IMMORTAL JELLYFISH
What most of us would recognize as a jellyfish – the otherworldly, gelatinous aquatic animals renowned for their sting-filled tentacles – is actually just the final stage of these animals’ life cycle.
At least, it usually is.
Not all jellyfish play by the same rules. In fact, one species may have discovered the secret to immortality!
The life cycle of most jellyfish species is similar. Our curator Miranda Lowe explains, “They have eggs and sperm and these get released to be fertilized, and then from that you get a free-swimming larval form.”
“The larva will move about in the current until it finds a hard surface to establish itself. It’ll then start to mature and grow. Larvae mature into polyps, which will then bud off and mature into young jellyfish.”
An adult jellyfish is known as a medusa. Jellyfish belong to a group called Cnidaria, which also includes sea anemones and corals. As animals, they’re subject to the cycle of life and death – though one tiny species is known to bend the rules.
The hydrozoan Turritopsis dohrnii, an animal about 4.5 millimetres wide and tall – likely making it smaller than the nail on your little finger – can actually reverse its life cycle. It’s been dubbed the immortal jellyfish.
When the medusa of this species is physically damaged or experiences stresses such as starvation, instead of dying it shrinks in on itself, reabsorbing its tentacles and losing the ability to swim. It then settles on the seafloor as a blob-like cyst.
Over the next 24 to 36 hours, this blob develops into a new polyp – the jellyfish’s previous life stage – and after maturing, medusae bud off. This phenomenon has been likened to which of a butterfly which, instead of dying, would be able to transform back into a caterpillar and then metamorphose into an adult butterfly once again.
The process behind this small jellyfish’s remarkable transformation is called transdifferentiation. It’s extremely rare.
Medusa cells and polyp cells are different – some cells and organs only occur in the polyp, others only in the adult jellyfish. Transdifferentiation reprograms the medusa’s specialized cells to become specialized polyp cells, allowing the jellyfish to regrow themselves in an entirely different body plan than the free-swimming jellyfish they’d recently been. They can then mature again from there as normal, producing new, genetically identical medusae.
This life cycle reversal can be repeated. In perfect conditions, it may be that these jellyfish would never die of old age.
“We might be distracted watching much larger jellyfish, but the tiny things such as this can inform so much of our science about these animals,” says Miranda.
Turritopsis
The species T. dohrnii was first described by scientists in 1883. It was 100 years later, in the 1980s, that their immortality was accidentally discovered.
Students Christian Sommer and Giorgio Bavestrello collected Turritopsis polyps, which they kept and monitored until medusae were released. It was thought that these jellyfish would have to mature before spawning and producing larvae, but when the jar was next checked, they were surprised to find many newly settled polyps.
They continued to observe the jellyfish and found that, when stressed, the medusae would fall to the bottom of the jar and transform into polyps without fertilization or the typical larval stage occurring. The discovery, aided by the spectacular nickname ‘immortal jellyfish’, captured the world’s attention.
T. dohrnii is sensitive, which also makes it difficult to rear in a lab for studies. But despite the challenges, one scientist is known to have had long-term success with captive immortal jellyfish.
Japanese scientist Shin Kubota has kept populations of immortal jellyfish looping through their unusual back and forth life cycle since the 1990s. His work with the species is time-consuming, with Kubota needing to monitor and care for the colonies daily. He even has to slice up their miniature meals of brine shrimp eggs under a microscope so they’re small enough for the tiny jellyfish to eat.
But through his endeavors, Kubota has reported that over a two-year period, captive colonies of the jellyfish naturally rejuvenated themselves to to ten times , sometimes at intervals of just one month.
Immortal jellyfish are thought to have originated in the Mediterranean Sea. However, they’re now found in oceans all around the world. It’s thought this recently noticed invasion may have been predominantly caused by people.
A prevailing theory is that ships are responsible for widely dispersing the creatures through Earth’s oceans. The jellyfish’s immortality makes it an excellent hitchhiker, after all.
The immortal jellyfish is also relatively inconspicuous, which may have contributed to its spread being difficult to spot. It’s tiny and translucent, and can have different features depending on where in the world it’s living. From a study of T. dohrnii around the world, researchers found that immortal jellyfish in tropical regions like Panama had only eight tentacles, whereas those in more temperate waters, such as in the Mediterranean and Japan, can have 24 or more. It’s not clear yet why they differ.
Another reason the immortal jellyfish’s spread around the globe may have gone unnoticed for so long is that they don’t have a perceivable negative impact. Invasive species can be problematic, and some, such as zebra mussels in North America, wreak havoc that costs enormous sums of money to fix. Others, like the hippos introduced about 30 years ago, pose threats to the native wildlife they coexist with.
While there haven’t yet been any major problems identified that are linked to immortal jellyfish, their silent spread at the hand of humans is yet another good reminder of our influence on the natural world, even when we don’t notice the effect we’re having.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/immortal-jellyfish-secret-to-cheating-death.html
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WHY THE PLAGUE STILL EXISTS
A standard course of antibiotics can cure the Black Plague in days. Yet the disease remains practically impossible to eradicate because its true home isn't humans.
While medical science has mastered the cure, eradication remains an entirely different challenge. To eradicate a disease means driving its pathogen into total global extinction. The only human disease ever successfully wiped out is smallpox. Smallpox was uniquely vulnerable because it had no animal reservoir; it could only survive by passing from one human to another. Once a critical mass of the global population was vaccinated, the virus hit a dead end and ceased to exist.
The bacterium that causes the plague, Yersinia pestis, does not rely on humans for survival. Its true home is in wild rodent populations—marmots in Central Asia, prairie dogs in the American West, and rats worldwide. The bacteria circulate continuously among these animals, transmitted by the bites of infected fleas. Because there are billions of wild rodents spread across vast, remote ecosystems, it is physically impossible to vaccinate them or monitor every outbreak in a burrow.
Humans only catch the plague accidentally. A person usually becomes infected by wandering into an area where a local rodent population is experiencing a die-off from the bacteria. When the natural hosts die, hungry, infected fleas leap to the nearest warm-blooded alternative, which occasionally happens to be a hiker or camper.
As long as wild rodents and fleas exist, the plague will continue to circulate in the natural environment. It remains an active, permanent part of the global ecosystem, held in check for humans only by modern sanitation and antibiotics.
Vermin Shield Boca Raton:
The plague is treatable, but not realistically eradicable. Antibiotics can cure infected humans; they can’t eliminate Yersinia pestis from wild rodent populations and their fleas. You can treat the disease, but you can’t cure the ecosystem.
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WHY SMALLER INDIVIDUALS OF THE SAME SPECIES TEND TO LIVE LONGER
A first-of-its-kind genetic analysis of dog breeds presents the clearest insights into why larger dogs rarely outlive their smaller relatives. According to a team of biologists writing in the journal Science, the longstanding size–age correlation is likely due to “jumping genes” that inevitably begin sowing chaos inside canine DNA as dogs get older.
Most dog owners are aware of an unfortunate rule of thumb—the bigger the pooch, the shorter the lifespan. While this trend isn’t always the case, breeds like the Great Dane generally don’t stick around as long as smaller relatives like golden retrievers or even pugs. Larger dogs are also much more prone to age-related health issues and diseases. These canine traits starkly contrast with what biologists often see in other mammals, where larger species like whales frequently live much longer than tiny animals such as rodents. But these mysteries make your favorite furry friend’s genetics incredibly intriguing to researchers.
“Dogs provide an extraordinary model for understanding aging because they show dramatic variation in lifespan within a single species,” explained study co-author and Arizona State University (ASU) evolutionary biologist Noah Snyder-Mackler.
Dogs’ longstanding 30,000 plus years of companionship with humans also poses a unique opportunity for scientists. Pets and their owners share many of the same day-to-day experiences, environments, and physical habits, so it stands to reason that a better understanding of canine genes could guide future studies of human biology.
Knowing this, Snyder-Mackler and his colleagues recently examined genetic data from 864 dogs stored in the Dog Aging Project. They specifically focused on mapping genome-wide DNA methylation, which allows genes to express themselves without altering their DNA sequence. DNA methylation is part of the larger epigenome influenced by external factors like stress and diet, and it’s also a widely known indicator of aging and DNA regulation.
Snyder-Mackler’s team discovered a dog breed’s aging is specifically tied to losing regulation in a class of transposable elements, or “jumping genes,” called LINE1s. These genes copy and intersperse throughout the genome by leaping between chromosomes, which damages DNA. This initially isn’t too problematic thanks to the regulation from DNA methylation, but that ability decreases with age. Less regulation means more damage in the form of genetic instability, diseases, and cancer.
“What we found is that the epigenetic regulation of transposable elements—especially LINE1s—appears to be a major factor shaping how quickly different dogs age,” Snyder-Mackler said.
Over 40 percent of LINE1-related portions of the genome lose DNA methylation as a dog ages, but the speed of decline is much faster in bigger breeds. The team’s findings showed larger dogs lost an average of 35 percent more LINE1 methylation than smaller canines.
“It suggests that faster aging in larger dogs may be driven, at least in part, by reduced control over these ‘jumping genes,’” concluded ASU genomicist and study co-author Blaise Mariner.
It’s still unclear if LINE1 behavior causes species to age, but the recent work emphasizes these genetic areas are focal points in biological aging. Beyond understanding aging differences among dog breeds, the discoveries may guide research into similar genetic changes in humans.
“If that’s the case, targeting these elements or the mechanisms that regulate them could be a promising avenue for future therapies to extend the health span in humans,” said Snyder-Mackler.
https://www.popsci.com/science/why-large-dogs-die-younger/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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CAN CANCERS BE INFECTIOUS?
Researchers once doubted whether transmissible cancers could even exist. Now they are starting to uncover how such entities survive and evolve. And as examples accumulate, many researchers are wondering how rare they really are.
“The discoveries in the bivalves and in the catfish have shown us that it can be kind of right in front of us, and just not recognized,” says geneticist Elizabeth Murchison, who leads the Transmissible Cancer Group at the University of Cambridge in England.
Cancers develop when a cell that is part of a larger creature abandons its cooperative role and starts behaving as “a new little single-cell beastie,” says Brown. It proliferates and evolves, treating the body’s tissues as habitats. The immune system fights back, but it is at a disadvantage because the cancer still resembles the well-behaved cells it descended from.
But things should be different if a cancer cell ends up in a different individual: It should be recognized as foreign and destroyed. Immune systems are good at recognizing foreign cells; that’s why people have to take immune-suppressing drugs to receive organ transplants.
Researchers are learning that transmissible cancers have a plethora of strategies, only partly understood, to foil their hosts’ defenses. For example, a type of clam cancer throttles the activity of many genes involved in immune signaling, hinting at how it evades the host’s immune system, according to research published in 2025. And cancers that infect dogs and Tasmanian devils can suppress their own molecular ID badges, the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-1) proteins, that help vertebrates distinguish their own cells from invaders.
The first transmissible cancer ever discovered was that of the dog. It is known as canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT), and it grows as cauliflower-like tumors on dog genitals. Researchers realized in the 19th century that it spreads as a sexually transmitted infection.
But many doubted that the cells themselves moved from dog to dog. Skepticism persisted even after scientists found that all the CTVT tumors shared similar abnormal chromosome structures, no matter what dog they were from. Some skeptics suggested that a virus caused the host dog’s cells to become cancerous, the same way human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer in humans.
Finally, in 2006, researchers sequenced key sites in CTVT genomes. In a normal cancer, this would have revealed warped and mutated versions of each host animal’s own DNA. Instead, the sequences looked like they belonged to someone else. Later research identified that “someone else” as a husky-like canine that lived some 4,000 to 8,500 years ago. In a sense, that ancient dog is still alive, grafted to the nether regions of dogs across six continents.
At the same time that DNA evidence was completing the dog cancer puzzle, scientists realized there was another transmissible cancer, this one affecting raccoon-sized carnivorous marsupials known as Tasmanian devils. It was first documented in 1996, when a photographer captured images of devils with grisly tumors on their faces. By 2006, the disease had spread across much of Tasmania, ravaging devil populations and inspiring heroic efforts to save the species.
The facial tumors could all be traced to a female devil that lived sometime in the 1980s. But then, in the 2010s, a completely new version appeared, this one originating in a male devil. Scientists were flabbergasted.
“We thought that the devils were just really, really unlucky to get this type of disease, and it was completely a fluke thing,” says Murchison. The appearance of yet another transmissible cancer seemed to rule that out. “Now,” she says, “we know that there are certain ecological niches which support these transmissible cancers.”
In the case of the devils, one vulnerability is their social system, which seems to require biting rivals and lovers in the face. Tumor cells can pass through the bites.
To get ahead in Tasmanian devil society, individuals have to be willing to bite, research suggests. The face-biting behavior gives infectious tumors a way to spread.
Another weak point for the devils is their low genetic diversity, particularly in their MHC-1 genes, those molecular ID badges that transmissible cancers of Tasmanian devils and dogs have evolved to suppress, says Carolyn Hogg, a conservation biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia (Hogg coauthored an article about Tasmanian devil conservation in the 2026 Annual Review of Animal Biosciences).
Devils, like humans, have three classical MHC-1 genes. But we have thousands of variants for each gene, meaning individuals hardly ever have similar sets. Devils, however, have only about 60 known variants across all three genes combined. That makes it much more likely that a foreign cancer could match the host well enough to hide from it.
In new research that is still being peer-reviewed, Hogg and her colleagues have found that the devils are losing one of those three MHC genes, and that’s potentially good news for the animals, for the short term, at least. A broken variant of the gene Saha-UA is spreading through infected devil populations. The broken Saha-UA variant doesn’t match the functional version in the cancer, so it helps devils to recognize and reject tumor cells.
But while this may rescue devils from their current plague, Hogg warns that it could lay them open to future diseases, since it further reduces the genetic diversity that their immune systems rely on.
Is it in the water?
In 2015, biologist Michael Metzger and colleagues discovered a third category of transmissible cancer later dubbed bivalve transmissible neoplasia (BTN). BTN affects shelled mollusks such as clams and mussels, and it is similar to leukemia, derived from cells in the animals’ bloodlike circulatory fluid. Cancers of this type have arisen on at least 10 separate occasions.
Why so many infectious clam cancers? One reason may be that bivalves don’t have MHC-1 genes or other paraphernalia that vertebrates use to recognize and reject foreign cells. Another may be the saltwater environment, which is not so different from clam blood, says Metzger, who is now at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle. The cancer cells are thought to float from clam to clam.
A few types of BTN have even floated into new species. One arose in pullet shell clams (Venerupis corrugata) but it has only ever been found in golden carpet shell clams (Polititapes aureus). The original hosts are apparently resistant to the disease they spawned.
In 2025, Metzger’s team reported evidence that softshell clams on the East Coast of North America have evolved their own, still mysterious, defenses against BTN. And in a paper published in June, the team revealed that the same cancer lineage that infected these East Coast clams recently jumped to the West Coast, sparking a new outbreak among soft shell clams in Puget Sound.
The Puget Sound outbreak could be a golden opportunity to identify new cancer-fighting mechanisms, says Metzger. By comparing the same population of clams before and after their leukemia epidemic, Metzger hopes to pinpoint gene variants that distinguish survivors from those that perished. “Eighty percent of the animals are being killed by this right now,” he says. “We’ll be able to see … the evolution of resistance.”
Melanoma spreads in catfish
The only other animals known to get transmissible cancer in natural settings are brown bullhead catfish. In 2012, anglers began reporting strange black growths on catfish they caught in Lake Memphremagog, which spans the border between Vermont and Quebec.
Researchers from state wildlife agencies identified the growths as melanoma and sought help from data scientist Julie A. Dragon at the University of Vermont to sequence and analyze the tumor genomes. Dragon and her colleagues found, to their surprise, that the tumor genomes all looked like one another, the hallmark of a transmissible cancer, the team reported in Nature in July.
It’s not yet clear how the melanoma spreads. Catfish don’t seem to catch it until they reach breeding age, so one possibility is that they are rubbing cancer cells on each other when they spawn. “They get into these big aggregate clusters and sort of fall all over each other,” says Dragon. “We think possibly they’re scratching each other.”
The infectious melanoma is newly discovered, but it may not be truly new. It is genetically more similar to catfish from New Hampshire and Maine than to fish from the lake where it was found. That suggests it arose in a different population and was later transported to Lake Memphremagog, triggering a new outbreak, says Dragon. In fact, Henry David Thoreau described similar “velvet-black” lesions on catfish in the Concord River in Massachusetts in the 1850s.
With four examples of transmissible cancers now known, some researchers are rethinking their assumptions about how anomalous these oddities truly are.
“There are probably still some more out there that we don’t realize are transmissible cancers,” says bioinformatician Dylan Gallinson, a PhD candidate studying Tasmanian devil cancer at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “They might be hiding in plain sight.”
And they are provoking some existential questions. After genetic evidence demonstrated the one-dog origin of the canine genital tumors, developmental biologist Uri Frank of the University of Galway in Ireland proposed that the cancer itself should be viewed as a new species of parasitic dog. Many researchers now talk about the emergence of transmissible cancers as speciation events, although they don’t always agree on terminology.
“These transmissible cancers show us the imperfections in our models of the world in which things are cleanly separated into species and non-species, or even individuals and not-individuals,” says Metzger. “Transmissible cancers blur a lot of the lines, blur a lot of definitions, and make us realize that more things can happen than we think can happen.”
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2026/science-of-transmissible-cancers?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TIS_101926&utm_term=Knowable%20Magazine&_kx=uLj0LAh7JMk2QIrY85uXzPBCBFnJ2kdOA-qbX8ew4Cw.WEer5A
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A NEW LIGHT-AND-SOUND THERAPY AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S
A new therapy uses only light and sound flashing at 40 hertz — and it prompts the brain to clear Alzheimer's plaques.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have uncovered a promising non-invasive approach to treating Alzheimer's disease by using visual and auditory stimulation tuned to 40 hertz.
By exposing patients to lights flickering and sounds clicking exactly 40 times per second—a frequency corresponding to naturally occurring gamma brainwaves—the treatment stimulates crucial neural networks.
Initial clinical trials reveal that this rhythmic sensory stimulation encourages the brain's innate immune cells, known as microglia, into an active state, prompting them to clear harmful amyloid-beta plaques and tau tangles that accumulate in neurodegenerative conditions.
Beyond removing toxic protein build-ups, the therapy has been shown to reduce brain atrophy, preserve synaptic connections, and slow the rate of cognitive decline in patients with mild Alzheimer’s.
Because the method relies entirely on non-invasive sound and light devices rather than complex pharmaceutical interventions, patients can safely receive treatment at home with virtually no side effects.
As expanded clinical trials progress, this simple yet novel technique could revolutionize neurodegenerative care by providing an accessible, low-risk therapeutic option for millions of families. ~ Facebook
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AN AI TOOL CAN PREDICT A CANCER PATIENT’S CHANCES OF SURVIVAL ON THE BASIS OF A PHOTOGRAPH
Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.
The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.
It is one of the most comprehensive demonstrations to date of how AI analysis of a selfie could help assess a patient’s health and potentially guide their medical care, and was trained on data from more than 40 million facial photographs across a range of ethnicities and ages.
Details of the breakthrough were published in the Lancet Digital Health journal.
The system can estimate a person’s biological age – the age a person looks, rather than their actual, chronological age – and predict the chances of survival for cancer patients from an ordinary photograph of their face, according to the results of a study that examined the model.
Doctors used the technology to develop two complementary tools. FAHR-FaceAge estimates a patient’s biological age, and predicts cancer survival. FAHR-FaceSurvival predicts survival from a facial photograph directly, rather than inferring survival through biological age.
Although FAHR-FaceAge and FAHR-FaceSurvival were derived from the same model, they captured different and complementary information about a patient’s health.
Each algorithm also relied on distinct parts of the face to make respective predictions of age and mortality risk. FAHR-FaceAge focuses on the creases that run from the sides of the nose down to the corners of the mouth, the forehead area just above the eye sockets, and the temples. FAHR-FaceSurvival, meanwhile, evaluates the region below the eyes and around the nasal bridge.
“FAHR-FaceSurvival advances the field of facial health recognition AI a step further by learning survival risk directly from facial photographs of patients with cancer,” said Hugo Aerts, a co-senior author of the study. “To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that an AI model can directly predict cancer survival from a simple photograph.”
Among cancer patients treated with radiotherapy in the US, the people who, according to FAHR-FaceAge, looked five or more years older than their actual age had a 21% higher risk of dying during the average four-year follow-up than the rest of the group. The patients who looked five or more years younger had a 17% lower risk.
“The key technical advance is that FAHR-Face learns a general representation of the face from more than 40 million images, which can then be adapted to distinct health outcomes such as biological age and survival,” said Aerts. “This foundation-model approach gives us a scalable way to develop multiple facial health biomarkers rather than training each model from scratch.”
The results of the study suggest people’s biological age estimates are closely linked to their physical health, which could reflect their ability to survive certain treatments.
The breakthrough could pave the way for AI facial analysis to assist doctors in making difficult decisions about the best way forward in terms of treatment for their patients.
The tool could help better predict the risk of death or complications after major surgery or other treatments for cancer.
Dr Raymond Mak, a radiation oncologist at Mass General Brigham, said: “As the population ages, physicians need better ways to estimate physical reserve and frailty before recommending intensive treatments such as radiation, surgery or systemic therapy.
“Our goal is to make face photograph-based health assessment more quantitative, consistent and scalable so it can support personalized treatment decisions rather than replace physician judgment.”
Researchers found lifestyle factors were associated with facial aging. For example, heavy alcohol use, drug use and smoking were linked to looking biologically older in AI analysis of facial photographs.
“Another surprising finding was how consistent FAHR-FaceAge was across common real-world photo variations, including pose, lighting, facial expression and makeup,” said Mak. “It was also stable across most tested plastic surgery procedures, with only a small shift observed after rhinoplasty.”
Doctors cautioned that while single facial photographs could offer an easy, low-cost way to support personalized treatment decisions, more research was needed before the tool could be widely used.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/19/ai-tool-predict-cancer-survival-patient-selfie
Oriana:
In terms of overall life expectancy, looking younger than your chronological age — as well as feeling younger — means living longer.
A well-known study of fraternal twins showed that the younger-looking twin tended to live longer. Thus, it’s not surprising that younger-looking individuals are likely to be biologically younger and thus better able to fight off disease.
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BENEFITS OF MACADAMIA NUTS
Macadamia nuts may not be everyday pantry staples like some other nuts, but their creamy, mild flavor offers a welcome change from the usual selection. Macadamia nuts originated in Australia, but they’re a popular crop in Hawaii and other areas worldwide.
“These tree nuts are known for their silky texture and high fat content,” says registered dietitian Julia Zumpano, RD, LD. “They’re full of healthy fats, fiber and other beneficial nutrients.”
“A single food can’t prevent or cure a disease, but macadamia nuts have nutrients that are great for your bones, heart and metabolic health,” says Zumpano. “They’re full of healthy fats and antioxidants.”
Zumpano shares five top macadamia nut benefits.
HEART HEALTH
“Macadamia nuts are an excellent addition to a heart-healthy diet,” says Zumpano. “They contain polyphenols and monounsaturated fats — healthy fats that may reduce the risk of developing coronary artery disease (CAD) in people living with high cholesterol.”
High cholesterol is one of the primary risk factors for peripheral artery disease (PAD), stroke and other cardiovascular conditions. Studies show that macadamia nuts can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease and help lower total cholesterol and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.
ANTIOXIDANT BENEFITS
Antioxidants neutralize damage caused by too many free radicals in your body. It’s healthy to have some free radicals, but if levels go unchecked, they can wreak health havoc. They cause oxidative stress throughout your body that may lead to damaging inflammation.
Your body makes some antioxidants, but you get most of what you need from food. Macadamia nuts supply several potent antioxidants, like:
copper
flavonoids
manganese
selenium
Vitamin E
Antioxidants are anti-inflammatory, and the flavonoids in macadamia nuts have powerful inflammation-lowering properties. Antioxidants can also help reduce your risk of heart disease and other conditions, including:
Accelerated aging
Alzheimer’s disease
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MACADAMIA NUTS HELP PREVENT AND MANAGE TYPE 2 DIABETES
Elevated blood sugar or Type 2 diabetes harms organs, nerves and other areas of your body.
“Diabetes raises your risk of heart disease and may lead to serious complications like blindness and kidney failure,” shares Zumpano. “It’s also associated with a higher risk of dementia, heart attack and stroke.”
Preventing high blood sugar (or managing blood sugar well if you have diabetes) is one of the best things you can do for your health. Research shows that eating plenty of monounsaturated fats — found in macadamia nuts — reduces the risk of complications from Type 2 diabetes.
BONE HEALTH
“When we think of bone health, we usually think of calcium,” notes Zumpano. “However, calcium is just one of the nutrients your body needs to build and maintain strong bones.”
Bone health nutrients in macadamia nuts include:
Magnesium: Helps many bone-building enzymes function properly
Manganese: Necessary for enzymes that activate bone growth and repair
Phosphorus: Combines with calcium to build strong bones and prevent osteoporosis
HELPS PREVENT WEIGHT GAIN WHEN EATEN IN MODERATION
“Macadamia nuts provide protein, fiber and healthy fats, all of which help you stay full and can prevent overeating,” says Zumpano. “These nutrients move more slowly through your digestive system than sugars and carbs. They keep your blood sugar from spiking, which also helps you feel full.”
Macadamia nuts are packed with healthy fats, but this makes them calorie-dense. Just a dozen nuts contain around 200 calories — so watch your portion size.
Healthline provides a great SUMMARY:
Macadamia nuts are high in monounsaturated fats, fiber, and antioxidants like flavonoids and vitamin E, which may help lower cholesterol and reduce inflammation.
Eating macadamia nuts may support heart health, improve gut bacteria, and lower your risk of metabolic syndrome.
Despite being calorie-dense, macadamia nuts can fit into a weight management plan because their fiber content may help promote feelings of fullness.
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Ending on wisdom:
What good are all the objects in the universe, if there is no subject? It isn’t that mankind is all that important. I don’t think that Man is the measure of all things, or even of very many things. I don’t think Man is the end or culmination of anything, and certainly not the center of anything. What we are, who we are, and where we are going, I do not know, nor do I believe anybody who says he knows, except, possibly, Beethoven, in the last movement of the last symphony. ~ Ursula Le Guin
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