Shrinking planet Mercury is still getting smaller, new research finds

Planetary scientists have long known that Mercury has been shrinking for billions of years. Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, its interior has been cooling down as internal heat leaks away. This means that the rock (and, within that, the metal) of which it is composed must have contracted slightly in volume.

It is unknown, however, to what extent the planet is still shrinking today – and, if so, for how long that is likely to continue. Now our new paper, published in Nature Geoscience, offers fresh insight.

Because Mercury’s interior is shrinking, its surface (crust) has progressively less area to cover. It responds to this by developing “thrust faults” – where one tract of terrain gets pushed over the adjacent terrain (see image below). This is like the wrinkles that form on an apple as it ages, except that an apple shrinks because it is drying out whereas Mercury shrinks because of thermal contraction of its interior.

A simple algorithm could reveal the ghosts of alien life in Mars dirt, study finds

The first evidence of Mercury’s shrinkage came in 1974 when the Mariner 10 mission transmitted pictures of kilometres-high scarps (ramp-like slopes) snaking their way for hundreds of kilometres across the terrain. Messenger, which orbited Mercury 2011-2015, showed many more “lobate scarps” (as they had become known) in all parts of the globe.

From such observations, it was possible to deduce that gently dipping geological faults, known as thrusts, approach the surface below each scarp and are a response to Mercury having shrunk in radius by a total of about 7km.

A cross-section though Mercury’s crust. D A Rothery, CC BY

But when did this happen? The accepted way to work out the age of Mercury’s surface is to count the density of impact craters. The older the surface, the more craters. But this method is tricky, because the rate of impacts that produce craters was much greater in the deep past.

However, it was always clear that Mercury’s scarps must be fairly ancient, because although they cut through some older craters, quite a few younger craters are superimposed upon the scarps and so the scarps must be older than those.

When did that scarp last move?

The consensus view is that Mercury’s scarps are mostly about 3 billion years old. But are all of them that old? And did the older ones cease moving long ago or are they still active today?

We should not expect that the thrust fault below each scarp has moved only once. The biggest earthquake on Earth in recent years, the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake offshore of Japan in 2011 which caused the Fukushima disaster, was the result of a sudden jump by 20 metres along a 100km length of the responsible thrust fault.

Mercury’s biggest “earthquakes” are probably smaller. To accumulate the 2-3km of total shortening that can be measured across a typical scarp on Mercury would take hundreds of magnitude 9 “earthquakes”, or more likely millions of smaller events, which could have been spread out over billions of years.

Getting a handle on the scale and duration of fault movements on Mercury is important, because we would not expect Mercury’s thermal contraction to have entirely finished, even though this should be slowing down.

Cracking up

Until now, evidence has been sparse. But our team found unambiguous signs that many scarps have continued to move in geologically recent times, even if they were initiated billions of years ago.

This work was triggered when a PhD student at Open University in the UK, Ben Man, noticed that some scarps have small fractures piggy-backing on their stretched upper surfaces. He interpreted these as “grabens”, the geological word to describe a strip of ground dropped down between two parallel faults.

This typically happens when the crust is stretched. Stretching may seem surprising on Mercury, where overall the crust is being compressed, but Man realised that these grabens would occur if a thrust slice of crust has been bent as it is pushed over the adjacent terrain. If you try to bend a piece of toast, it may crack in a similar way.

The grabens are less than 1km wide and less than about 100 meters deep. Such comparatively small features must be much younger than the ancient structure on which they sit, otherwise they would have already been erased from view by impacts tossing material across the surface in a process aptly named “impact gardening“.

Based on the rate of blurring resulting from impact gardening, we calculated that the majority of grabens are less than about 300 million years old. This suggests that the latest movement must have happened equally “recently”.

Lobate scarp, with visible grabens on its crest. NASA

Working with the most detailed images provided by MESSENGER, Man found 48 large lobate scarps that definitely have small grabens. A further 244 were topped by “probable” grabens – which aren’t seen quite clearly enough on the best MESSENGER images.

Global map of shortening structures atop lobate scarps. Triangles = definite. Circles = probable. D A Rothery, CC BY

These are now prime targets for confirmation by the imaging system of the joint European/Japanese BepiColombo mission, which should start operating in orbit around Mercury early in 2026.

Lessons from the Moon

The Moon has also cooled and contracted. Its lobate scarps are considerably smaller and less spectacular than those on Mercury, but on the Moon we know for sure that as well as being geologically recent, some are active today.

This is because recent reanalysis of the locations of moonquakes recorded by seismometers (vibration detectors) left on the Moon’s surface by several Apollo missions shows that moonquakes are clustered close to lobate scarps.

Also, the most detailed images of the Moon’s surface from orbit reveal the tracks made by boulders bouncing down scarp faces, presumably after being dislodged by moonquakes. Much smaller in scale than Mercury’s grabens, similar logic applies to these boulder tracks: they would become erased from visibility after only a few million years, so they must be young.

BepiColombo won’t be landing and so we have no prospect of collecting any seismic data on Mercury. However, as well as showing small grabens more clearly, its most detailed images might reveal boulder tracks that could be additional evidence of recent quakes. I am looking forward to finding out.

about space

The study of smell loss still struggles for support

Growing up, Julian Meeks knew what a life without a sense of smell could look like. He’d watched this grandfather navigate the condition, known as anosmia, observing that he didn’t perceive flavor and only enjoyed eating very salty or meaty foods.

The experience influenced him, in part, to study chemosensation, which involves both smell and taste. Meeks, now a professor of neuroscience at the University of Rochester, told Undark that neither gets much attention compared to other senses: “Often, they’re thought of as second or third in order of importance.”

Post-COVID, many patients try smell therapy. But does it work?

The pandemic changed that, at least somewhat, after it left millions of people without a sense of smell, albeit some temporarily. In particular, more researchers started looking at a specific type of condition called acquired anosmia. Common causes include traumatic brain injury, or TBI, neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, or following a viral infection like Covid-19. Due to the pandemic, “many people found it scientifically interesting to focus their research on smell,” said Valentina Parma, the assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia. By one account, NIH funding of anosmia research nearly doubled between 2019 and 2021.

But many of the research findings do not apply to those who have lacked the ability to smell since birth: congenital anosmics. And, despite the increased attention to smell loss more broadly, some researchers still face challenges in funding studies. In March 2023, for instance, Meeks received a peer review for a small grant, of less than $275,000, from the National Institutes of Health, with which he had planned to look into anosmia in the context of TBI.

Many of the research findings do not apply to those who have lacked the ability to smell since birth: congenital anosmics.

For Meeks, the response was frustrating. One expert reviewer in particular “didn’t really understand why there would be any need to establish a preclinical model of anosmia with TBI,” he said, noting that the reviewer also wrote that because anosmia is not a major health problem, the value of the research was low. The comment, Meeks added, was “quite discouraging.”

In response to a request for comment on that decision, Shirley Simson, a spokesperson for NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, or NIDCD, which funds smell and taste research, replied that “NIH does not discuss the peer review process for individual grant applications.” She noted in a separate email that “all NIH grant applications, including those submitted by investigators to NIDCD, undergo the same review process.”

The sense of smell is complicated, and not fully understood. Jay Piccirillo, an otolaryngologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, likens its complexity, with its many neuronal connections, to Times Square. Compared to the nose, the eye looks relatively simple, he told Undark.

“We can smell and discriminate tens of thousands or maybe billions or trillions of smells.”

There are a few basic steps, however, on which researchers do agree. Humans smell by detecting molecules, or odorants, in the environment around them. These odorants latch on to one of 400 receptors in the nose, called olfactory receptor neurons, which then send a signal the brain. The result: a dizzying array of odors.

“We can smell and discriminate tens of thousands or maybe billions or trillions of smells,” said Hiroaki Matsunami, an olfaction researcher at Duke University who, along with colleagues, recently published a study on how one of these receptors works.

Both congenital and acquired smell loss can either entail complete loss (anosmia) or minimal loss (hyposmia). Some people also have a distorted sense of smell, a condition known as parosmia, or perceive odors that aren’t there, known as phantosmia. And because of the connection between smell and taste, sometimes smell loss is accompanied by the inability to taste, or ageusia, as it did for many Covid patients.

People missing the scent region of their brain can still smell

Any form of anosmia can have a broad effect on daily function. For one, it can be a safety hazard, since affected people may not be able to detect a fire, gas leak, or spoiled food. Smell loss is also associated with depression, and because of the close link between smell and taste, the condition can affect appetite and, by extension, nutritional health.

The cause of anosmia isn’t entirely known. For congenital anosmia, researchers suspect a genetic link or developmental abnormalities. As for acquired anosmia, an injury or illness appears to disrupt the transmission of an odorant to the brain, but the exact spot of that break isn’t clear — and it may vary, depending on the cause. When it comes to Covid, for instance, some researchers initially suspected that the virus was killing the cells that transmit the odorant signal to the brain. More recent research suggests that, instead, it could be because of inflammation or damaged supporting cells.

Experts say there are fewer resources or people involved in smell research.

It’s also not entirely clear how many people have anosmia. In 2012, research analyzing the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimated that 23 percent of Americans over the age of 40 report some alteration to their sense of smell. A 2016 paper that examined results from a later version of same survey estimated that more than 12 percent of American adults had some sort of olfactory dysfunction. And Fifth Sense, a charity for smell and taste disorders, estimates that 1 in 10,000 people have congenital anosmia.

The numbers are uncertain in part because, compared to other sensory dysfunctions like vision or hearing loss, experts say there are fewer resources or people involved in smell research. And prior to the pandemic, anosmia research was typically relegated to smell and taste research centers or otolaryngologists (also known as ear, nose, and throat doctors). “It was like a niche,” said Thomas Hummel, a smell and taste disorder researcher at the University of Dresden in Germany. Studying smell loss, he added, wasn’t “in the foreground of research.”

When anosmia was reported as a symptom of Covid-19, there was a switch. Smell and taste researchers were suddenly inundated with requests. For Hummel, who works in a clinic, the phone didn’t stop ringing from patients. Others were similarly in demand. “We were flooded with emails, with calls by patients and reporters,” said Parma. “It was the time I gave the most interviews in my entire career.”

While NIH did not provide Undark with statistics detailing exactly how much the field of smell loss research grew, a search for the word “anosmia” on their online database turned up 35 distinct projects, totaling more than $14.6 million in funding for the 2019 fiscal year. In the 2021 fiscal year, that number grew to $28.5 million in funding for 63 projects.

As a result, experts say, the anosmia research community began collaborating more, wanting to use their knowledge and skills to help in whatever way they could. Many researchers, including Parma, developed smell tests that could gauge a user’s sense of smell and, by extension, to see whether they had a Covid-19 infection at a time when PCR and antigen tests were limited. Some conducted longitudinal surveys where they could track reported progression of smell loss and quality of life among Covid-19 patients. Others started exploring potential treatments of Covid-19-linked anosmia, such as olfactory training and topical steroids.

“We were flooded with emails, with calls by patients and reporters. It was the time I gave the most interviews in my entire career.”

While the effectiveness of such treatments is still unclear, more than three years later, interest in such scientific collaborations is still going strong. “Even if that’s not your primary area of research, many people are at least considering the question or reaching out to other investigators that are experts on taste and smell disorders to ask ‘What is a question I can add in my research?’ or ‘Can we collaborate?” said Paule Joseph, a researcher at NIH’s Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research within the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Despite the interest, some scientists, like Meeks, are still running into the same problems they had before the pandemic: It’s difficult to capture funding and attention related to smell and smell loss. When Meeks took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to lament the discouraging peer feedback on his grant proposal for traumatic brain injury and anosmia, he said, the responses were telling.

It’s difficult to capture funding and attention related to smell and smell loss.

“There were several people who responded that they had received similar critiques on their own research grants or their scientific research by whoever was evaluating the research or the grant proposal,” he told Undark. “Although it was nice to know we weren’t singled out, it was a moment where I became a little bit more conscious of the need for greater communication with the broader public and with other scientists.”

Parma thinks some may be dubious to invest in research given the lack of sufficient treatments. “The biggest counterargument is: We don’t know how to treat this, so therefore it’s okay for us not to care about it,” she said. And when there are successes in the field, it’s difficult to implement them on a larger scale. Although Parma’s group has received NIH funding for their smell test, for instance, smell tests are often not covered by insurance.

But research, many scientists in the field say, is not just about developing tests or finding a cure. It’s also about informing and understanding the anosmia experience. This is especially important because not all anosmia affects the olfactory system in the same way — and it is not always treatable. A recent survey found that within a sample of nearly 30,000 Americans who were infected with Covid-19, for instance, 60 percent lost some sense of smell and taste. Among those, a quarter didn’t fully recover.

In one longitudinal survey to assess people who contracted the virus and lost their sense of smell, researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University found that among 267 people, more than half reported partial recovery and 7.5 percent reported none over a two-year period. And out of 946 people who had lost their sense of smell for at least three months, more than half reported partial recovery, and more than 10 percent reported no improvement at all.

“It depends on how severe the damage is,” said Richard Costanzo, director of research at the Smell and Taste Disorders Center at VCU and an author of the study, noting that if there is damage in certain regenerative cells in the nose, there is a lower likelihood of recovery.

While recent studies that focus on Covid-19 anosmia can be applied to other forms of acquired smell loss, one group has largely been left out of research: congenital anosmia. The condition is a different, and understudied, form of anosmia.

“It’s like the community of woodworking but the whole world only knows about wooden bowls,” said Sam Lenarczak, a Seattle-based 23-year-old with the condition. And congenital anosmics, like Lenarczak, want to be understood.

“Every time I look to see if I can get involved in research, they’re recruiting very specific people,” said Charlotte Atkins, who also has congenital anosmia and lives in the U.K. Those studies, she added, are nearly always about acquired smell loss, so she’s unable to participate.

Atkins acknowledges that acquired anosmia can be treated. The culprit, especially in the case of Covid-19, can be known. But she is concerned about what treatment for those conditions could mean for congenital anosmics like her — or really anyone who hasn’t had a successful recovery. “I worry that with a cure comes no more help with living,” she said, “which is what a lot more people need.”

Some smell loss scientists are still running into the same problems they had before the pandemic: It’s difficult to capture funding and attention.

Joseph, the NIH researcher, agreed that much of anosmia research focuses on smell loss — and she sees qualitative studies of other anosmics as a next step. By understanding the lived experience, she said, researchers can develop interventions that could help people with smell loss navigate day-today life: “We need evidence to be able to develop policies, to develop guidelines, to just have a way to inform patients of what is the latest thing that could be helpful to them. We need the science.”

Still, there are some Covid-era innovations that may be repurposed. Parma is among a group of researchers pushing to implement testing more universally so that the inability to smell can be gauged earlier on, as many congenital anosmics don’t realize their condition until they start school — or even much later. In Europe, Hummel has received funding for research in olfactory dysfunction more generally, not just reserved to Covid-19 patients.

Meeks is also looking to the future, and determined to push back against the idea that smell is just a luxury and its loss pales in comparison to the loss of any other sense or bodily function. To him, it’s a “dated and narrow-minded view” that needs to be broken if the field wants to keep making progress. And despite the initial pushback from the grant reviewers, Meeks is determined to continue his research. In July, he submitted a new grant application on the topic.

“We’re not going to stop,” he said. “We’re going to keep going as long as we can.”

Hannah Docter-Loeb is a freelance writer based in Washington D.C. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, National Geographic, Scientific American, and more.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

about COVID

Kevin McCarthy’s embarrassing lesson: MAGA torches everything it touches — and will destroy itself

In the wake of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., moving to vacate Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from the Speaker of the House seat, the punditry was awash in advice for Democrats: Don’t help McCarthy! Or do help him, but only for concessions! Half-help him by voting “present” instead of in support! Save him without concessions, because heaven only knows how much worse the next guy will be!

The good news is, but for the “help him, no conditions” suggestion, Democrats were awash in excellent options. Most of the choices available served the main Democratic goal in all this: weakening Republicans by stoking the infighting. Congressional Democrats are blessed these days in their opponents, a cantankerous bunch of back-stabbers. Republicans have become too obsessed with hurting each other to remember to be trouble for the Democrats.

In the end, Democrats went with the most satisfying option and refused to help McCarthy. Between a united Democratic front and the handful of Republicans who opposed him, McCarthy didn’t have enough votes to keep his position. His speakership is deader than Donald and Melania’s marital relations.

“This is what MAGA has done,” former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia told MSNBC as the vote was happening. “Matt Gaetz and his merry band of misfits,” Comstock said, are “a destructive force” with no plan for what happens after this.

She then warned that, even if Gaetz is crowing about his victory, this would be “the demise of MAGA.”

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Comstock might be wrong about most things, but in this, she’s right: The MAGA movement is simply unsustainable. It cannot help but destroy everything it touches. Right now, it’s the GOP they’re ripping apart. But eventually, this urge to ruin everything will take out their own movement. (Hopefully sooner rather than later!) Taking out McCarthy, even though he’s been an ass-kissing MAGA loyalist, illustrates this reality.

There are many flavors of fascism, and MAGA is an especially nihilistic one. The right-wing media ecosystem rewards trolling above all else — especially over intra-party unity. In a competition for attention, adoration, and donations from the MAGA base, the quickest and surest route is to become a Joker-like chaos agent. MAGA loves a bad guy because it lets them pretend they’re “rebels” who are “taking on the system.” In reality, they are locusts swarming a field until nothing is left.

Republicans have become too obsessed with hurting each other to remember to be trouble for the Democrats.

The trolling-based economy on the right also incentivizes a politics of far-right purity. Republicans squabble over who can be the biggest MAGA of them all — with everyone else being deemed a “RINO.” When McCarthy passed a budget bill, however short-term, it created just the pretext Gaetz and his fellow travelers needed to continue their contest of MAGA one-upmanship.

That is why the MAGA movement is so prone to self-destruction. They’re all competing with each other in an endless purity contest to win the Most MAGA prize. That may be good for individual brands of politicians like Gaetz, but, as was seen this week, it seriously damages the party’s ability to stick together.

“We’re not saving Kevin”: House Democrats refuse to rescue McCarthy’s speakership

The press kept trying to frame the GOP infighting this past month as somehow substantive, like a disagreement over spending levels. But for Gaetz and his cronies, it was always an empty power grab, undertaken for the most fascistic of reasons: To show they can do it. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., explained on “Pod Save America” Tuesday, McCarthy spent weeks trying to placate members of his own party, offering deep spending cuts that are politically unpopular. Nothing worked — because the budget negotiations were never about the budget. It was always just about humiliating McCarthy for the sake of it. Once McCarthy realized they were going to move to vacate his seat, “one way or another,” Jayapal argued, that’s when he sucked it up and passed the budget with Democratic votes.

It was always just about humiliating McCarthy for the sake of it.

Not that anyone should feel sorry for McCarthy. He’s a major part of the reason that the modern GOP values bullying and showboating antics above everything else. At every turn, McCarthy has propped up and promoted Donald Trump in his role as de facto Republican leader. In doing so, McCarthy sent a signal that this is what the Republican Party is now: A bunch of jackasses who don’t care about policy, about governance, or about anything but burnishing their own brand and giving people swirlies. That his head would be the one shoved in the toilet eventually was inevitable.

Jayapal also revealed a great irony in how the MAGA movement’s race to the bottom works: Gaetz, in order to make some “point” about the evils of working with Democrats, reached out to Democrats, hoping he could get their support in his efforts to oust McCarthy. Gaetz, who claims he opposes making concessions to Democrats in order to get things done, made a number of concessions to Democrats as he wooed them, including waiting until the continuing resolution to fund the government was passed before bringing the motion to vacate McCarthy’s seat.

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Gaetz, in all his mighty opposition to Democrats, also ended up making a speech destined to run in President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign ads.

Matt Gaetz on the House floor: "It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy's lunch money in every negotiation." pic.twitter.com/LXNxi9YMs4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2023

Gaetz hates Democrats, unless he can use them to stick it to McCarthy, at which point he comes begging with his hat out. Gaetz hates Democrats, but he’s doing everything he can to get them elected. That’s what MAGA has done to the GOP. Republicans have become so focused on fighting each other that they are practically inviting Democrats to come help them rip the GOP apart.

The good news is Democrats certainly seem to have learned the lesson not to interfere when your opponents are self-destructing. Granted, they were in a real win-win situation. Fishing McCarthy out of the pool of MAGA hate he’s drowning in would have been a perfectly fine option. They could have extracted concessions, and in the process, dialed up the amount of vitriol Republicans are flinging at each other. But the option they went with, to push McCarthy’s head underwater, was perhaps an even stronger choice. The House Minority Leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., repeatedly emphasized that it’s not on Democrats to save Republicans from themselves.

My statement on the chaos, dysfunction and extremism of the House Republican Conference. pic.twitter.com/1AAeBiFtPH

— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) October 3, 2023

Smart messaging that conveys that the GOP is being crippled by its devotion to MAGA extremism, while also reminding people that it’s Democrats who are calm, competent adults. Plus, even if McCarthy had survived this particular motion to vacate, nothing has changed. Gaetz and other GOP trolls still believe their funding and fame depends on portraying themselves as stalwart MAGA soldiers, in contrast to the supposed quislings who run the party. If Democrats had stepped in to save McCarthy this time, they would find themselves in the same situation again, in very short order.

The trolling and competitive redhat theatrics are the most immediate reason that the current iteration of the GOP is destroying itself. But there’s a bigger issue at stake, which is that the MAGA movement is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. It’s a fascist movement that backs a leader, Donald Trump, who attempted to overthrow a presidential election. Of course they can’t function within a system they want to tear down. That’s what happens when you put a bunch of arsonists in power: They will eventually set everything on fire.

about Kevin McCarthy’s troubles with MAGA

Monk parakeets have “voiceprints” that identify themselves in groups just like humans, study finds

Parrots consistently top the charts of the world’s smartest animals. Certain species can outperform 5-year-olds on cognitive tasks, others have the ability to learn more than 500 words, and some of the smartest trade “currency,” like fancy pieces of metal, for food. Some of these birds can even choreograph their own dance numbers.

A new study published yesterday helps us better understand how these intelligent creatures communicate. Writing in the Royal Society Open Science, researchers studied thousands of monk parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus) vocalizations from hundreds of birds in Barcelona across two years and ran these recordings through a machine learning program that identifies small differentiations in their calls to see what sets individuals apart in a group.

What an orphan owl taught an ecologist about bird intelligence

“The voiceprint is this underlying kind of timbre of a voice that you can recognize in humans, and this is the first time that has been shown in another vocal learner.”

Previously, it was thought that these birds introduced themselves to other monk parakeets with a sort of “catchphrase” that distinguished their identity. However, after running the vocalizations collected in this study through the program, a team led by Simeon Smeele, a doctoral student at Aarhus University in Denmark, found that the birds actually had “voiceprints” like humans that identify themselves in the group.

“The voiceprint is this underlying kind of timbre of a voice that you can recognize in humans, and this is the first time that has been shown in another vocal learner,” Smeele told Salon in a video call. For example, the voiceprint of Robin Williams is how you know it’s his voice, even if there isn’t video present. “This is what I think could explain how they recognize each other, because it can be stable over very long periods of time.”

Artificial intelligence is currently being used to understand how many species, including sperm whales, zebra finches and even our own pet dogs communicate. Just as Roger Payne used recordings of whale songs in the 1960s to mobilize conservation efforts and save these sea giants from extinction, research into animal communication has the potential to spur the public into action to combat climate change.

“Understanding who each other is and how we interact with one another is an important part of human life,” said Emily DuVal, Ph.D., a behavioral ecologist at Florida State University, who wasn’t involved in the study. “This shows that these birds also have that sort of information that they might be using in their complicated social interactions,” she said.

How is technology expanding what we know about animals?

“This is probably a common phenomenon across animals that use vocalizations and live in communities.”

Monk parakeets live in complex social groups like humans do, said Erica L. Westerman, Ph.D., an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Arkansas, who also wasn’t involved in the study. Keeping track of which individuals in these groups share the most food, find the best places to nest or are the best at detecting predators can be evolutionary advantageous for these birds to stay alive, she explained.

“It increases the likelihood that you will make it to have offspring and that your offspring will make it to the next generation,” Westerman told Salon in a phone interview.

In the study, researchers tested five different types of vocal calls: the contact call, the alarm call, the tonal upsweep (like “trruup”), the growl and the quick quip (like “tja”). Interestingly, the machine learning program only distinguished voiceprints in the former three types of calls.

“I think the reason we didn’t find it in the other two is either that they’re too short or not tonal enough,” Smeele said. “Or because they are used in really close interactions or in sequences, where it’s not super important to encode who you are.”

Experts say you should talk to your dog like a baby. A surprising new study reveals the canine brain

This model can potentially be applied to other animals with vocal recognition like bottlenose dolphins, bats and elephants. Future research can also look into how monk parakeets use this information when socializing and whether these voiceprints are recognized by all parakeets in the community or only a circle of close relatives, DuVal said.

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Pet owners who have watched their dogs or cats respond to other pets in the home may not be surprised that animals would have voiceprints. It would have been interesting to test whether these voiceprints were also found in monk parakeets’ native habitats in South America, as this species is invasive in Spain, Westerman said. At the same time, there is probably less of a disconnect between domesticated and wild animal communication than might be commonly thought, she added.

“This is probably a common phenomenon across animals that use vocalizations and live in communities,” Westerman said. “Because the advantage of being able to identify an individual is huge.”

about animal behavior

“A clarion call to arms”: Experts on why MAGA remains impervious to anti-Trump Republicans’ message

Trumpism is a public health crisis.

In his role as cult leader, Donald Trump’s direct threats and incitements of violence, terrorism, and mayhem – which include killing people – have encouraged the MAGA people and other members of the white right to engage in the same behavior. In the most recent high-profile example of right-wing violence and terrorism, last Thursday a Trump MAGA cultist went to a protest in a suburb of Albuquerque against the decision by the local government to reinstall a statue “honoring” a Spanish conquistador, Juan de Oñate. While there, the MAGA cultist attempted to provoke a fight and then pulled out his pistol and shot one of the protesters, who is an environmentalist and member of the Hopi tribe. The MAGA hat-wearing Trumpist reportedly laughed and smirked during his police interview.

On Monday, Trump threatened and raged at the judge presiding over his civil trial in New York for fraud and other financial crimes. Trump also verbally attacked and threatened New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling her a “racist” and “a horror show.” James is a Black woman. While in court, Trump scowled like an adult toddler and looked like he was having murderous thoughts of revenge and suffering. Trump’s performance was generally pompous and detached from reality, as the ex-president lied and claimed that he was being “persecuted” and is a type of victim-martyr for the MAGA cause. On Tuesday, the judge barred him from making personal attacks on court staff after the former president disparaged a law clerk. In all, Trump’s behavior was that of a cult leader and demagogue who is finally facing some type of serious accountability for his criminal behavior.

None of this really matters to Trump’s MAGA cultists and other followers. Trump’s hold over them remains very strong and appears to be largely immune to any outside intervention. Moreover, Trump’s power and control over the MAGA cult endures – despite and even more likely because of his criminal trials and escalating violence and other destructive and dangerous behavior.

Judge brutally debunks Trump’s claim that he threw out most of the NY fraud case against him

To that point, last week New York Times political reporter Jonathan Swan highlighted an attempt by a group of anti-Trump conservatives to stop the ex-president by weakening his support among the MAGA cultists.Their efforts failed; Trump’s dark charism and cult-leader power is that great.

A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.

The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.

But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”

The memo will provide little reassurance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals that there is any elusive message out there that can work to deflate his support.

“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.

The article continues:

For the polling underpinning its analysis, Win It Back used WPA Intelligence — a firm that also works for the super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s chief rival in the race for the presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

Examples of “failed” ads cited in the memo included attacks on Mr. Trump’s “handling of the pandemic, promotion of vaccines, praise of Dr. Fauci, insane government spending, failure to build the wall, recent attacks on pro-life legislation, refusal to fight woke issues, openness to gun control, and many others.” (Dr. Anthony S. Fauci led the national response to the Covid pandemic.)

The list of failed attacks is notable because it includes many of the arguments that Mr. DeSantis has tried against Mr. Trump. The former president leads Mr. DeSantis by more than 40 points in national polls and by around 30 points in Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis’s team believes he has the best shot of defeating Mr. Trump.

Mr. McIntosh, a former Indiana congressman who co-founded the Club for Growth and the Federalist Society, makes it clear in the memo that any anti-Trump messages need to be delivered with kid gloves. That might explain why Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, has treated Mr. Trump gingerly, even in ads meant to contrast his character and his record unfavorably against Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments.

Swan’s reporting reinforces how Trumpism and American neofascism constitute a political, cultural, and moral crisis for the country and world. It is true that tens of millions of Americans correctly view Trump with contempt and understand that is an extreme threat to the country’s democracy and society. Unfortunately, tens of millions of other Americans view that same foul and evil behavior by Donald Trump as something admirable, evidence that he is “strong” and a “fighter” who is willing to break the law and undermine democracy to get things done for people like them. And perhaps even more troubling for what it reveals about the health of American society, there are tens of millions of other Americans who are indifferent to Trump’s evil and wrongdoing and the existential danger that he and the Republican fascists and MAGA movement represent to the country.

“Outside of Trump’s influence, the same people can be compassionate, empathic, generous, but in their Trump-aligned echo chamber they become antisocial toward outsiders.”

In an attempt to make better sense of the enduring power of the Trump MAGA cult, I asked a range of experts for their insights and reactions to this important new reporting by the New York Times.

Dr. Lance Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

The recent finding that Trump supporters will rationalize and ignore even sophisticated ads produced by Republicans against Trump — ads showing him saying things that are opposed to the very values of the Republican audience — is strong evidence of the cult-like nature of at least the most committed of his followers. Cults have exactly this characteristic: unquestioning worship of a charismatic leader and inability to hear or consider opposing or even differing views, especially about the leader who must remain godlike. Trump’s personal primitive psychology, in which he believes himself to be godlike and has contempt for others as valuable human beings, makes him a perfect candidate to surround himself with a cult. In turn, members vulnerable to joining the cult seek just such a godlike figure in a regressive wish to be protected, cared for, and told how to think. The irony of course is that the leader, Trump in this case, cares only about his grandiosity and nothing at all about them or their welfare.

It’s been impossible to draw these regressed followers away from the cult not only because of their wishful belief in their charismatic god, but also because leaving the cult would mean the loss of support and identity from the other cult members who, like Trump himself, would condemn them as evil.

To enable cult members to leave they would have to have a significantly large enough number of others to create a new inclusive, protective group to which they could attach themselves. That might happen if a new charismatic leader arose to lead them away in large enough numbers to feel safe rebelling from the old leader. It would help for there to be a major event that a new leader within or outside the group could seize upon to redirect the members, like the honest child in the fable who finally spoke up to say the emperor had no clothes. There probably are figures within the Republican Party who could serve in that role, but it would require more moral and political courage than we have seen so far.

Jen Senko is the director of the documentary “The Brainwashing of My Dad.”

Yes, Trump COULD stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and they would still be devoted. Dare I say he could even claim he’s a woke lib and his followers wouldn’t even hear it. It no longer matters what he says.

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We all know by now; this is classic cult behavior. It’s all about the leader, not the ideology or what the person they follow represents—they might represent nothing. Cult followers abdicate their reasoning, and their own ideas of what is good or bad to a leader. Giving themselves over to a leader absolves them of any guilt or responsibility. If confused by all the stuff flooding the zone and the contradictions in the news, it’s almost a relief to just hand it over to a leader who says He Knows.

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of linguistic anthropology and semiotics at the University of Toronto. His new book is Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective.

Oppositional messaging in the case of a “culture war leader” will never work, because it is seen as the words of enemies against Trump and his followers. Trump’s lies are thus not interpreted as destructive words but as part of a clarion call to arms to overturn the deep state that must be defeated to restore America to its purported roots, which, incidentally, Trump has never specified what he means by them, in true Orwellian fashion. Any message against him is thus filtered out as an attack from opposing warring armies in the ongoing cultural war, and thus discarded as tactics. Trump’s lies are perceived to be verbal weapons in that war. There is nothing Trump could say or do that would erode support from his followers, because he is seen as the leader of the greater cause of taking down the enemies that he and his blind followers see as the source of America’s and their own troubles, and as eroding the fabric of American society. Outside of Trump’s influence, the same people can be compassionate, empathic, generous, but in their Trump-aligned echo chamber they become antisocial toward outsiders. It is somewhat ironic to observe that Trump and his followers portray their battle as a counterculture one, as did the hippies in the 1960s and 1970s, portraying the government as the “establishment” and the liberal democratic state—again quite ironically—as the enemy of freedom and true American values.

Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and the author of “Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.”

I have always believed that an important part of psychic development is the ability to face, feel, and think about loss. Trump never had that capacity, nor was allowed to have it, growing up. He immediately transformed loss into blaming others, into triumphant denial (refusing to accept that he lost), or into acts of revenge. All three characteristics dominated the January 6 insurrection.

What I learned in my psychiatric residency – as well as in my own life – is that sorrow is the vitamin of growth. Does that make denial the vitamin of autocracy? During the 2016 election Trump said that if he lost, the entire campaign would have been a waste of time and energy. Denying and dismissing loss led us to January 6. Just remember Abe Lincoln’s statement after he lost an election: “I feel like a 16-year-old who stubbed his toe: I’m too old to cry but it hurts too much to laugh” Facing the painful process of renunciation leads also to emotional growth and maturity. So, how does the GOP win back MAGA followers? It seems impossible, even if Trump goes to prison and is completely discredited.

To me, the operative word is not “win,” but wean. Trump supporters are attached to him at the mouth, at the lips, at the heart and soul. He is their divine leader, much the way an evangelical preacher becomes more important to his congregation – as the personification of God’s power – than the scriptures they recite. Trump has a similar deep effect on his flock. The only way they could be brought back to the GOP hymnal is to gently, persistently, non-judgmentally help them discover for themselves Trump’s genuine contempt for them, our country and its health and wellbeing.

Rich Logis is a former right-wing pundit and high-ranking Trump supporter. He describes himself as “a remorseful ex-Trump, DeSantis and GOP voter”. Logis is the founder of Perfect Our Union, an organization that is dedicated to healing political traumatization; building diverse, pro-democracy alliances; and perfecting our Union.

I understand the fatigue from coverage of Trump; constant MAGA/Trump trauma is exhausting and soul-draining. But it remains necessary, because our nation must be continually reminded that there is nothing Trump could do, or say, to lose the support of most voters who identify as MAGA or Ultra-MAGA. And, as a one-time, zealously devout MAGA voter, I mean “nothing” literally, not figuratively. The country club conservatives, über-wealthy GOP donors and Ronald Reagan mythologizers haven’t accepted that they no longer run the party, as evidenced by myriad Republican focus groups — whose attendees affirm their commitment to voting Trump—and the millions spent in ads intended to weaken Trump — but have the opposite intended effect.

“It’s been impossible to draw these regressed followers away from the cult not only because of their wishful belief in their charismatic god, but also because leaving the cult would mean the loss of support and identity from the other cult members.”

$1 trillion in anti-Trump would help—not hurt—Trump. Electorally defeating MAGA is non-negotiable; our democratic republic, almost certainly, would not survive a second Trump presidency (which I also fear could be a permanent presidency). It’s important to be candid with the American people: electorally winning, however, is the start—not the finish—of de-traumatizing our nation from MAGA.

Joe Walsh was a Republican congressman and a leading Tea Party conservative. He is now a prominent conservative voice against Donald Trump and the host of the podcast “White Flag with Joe Walsh.”

It is a cult. How many times must that be said. One of America’s two major political parties has become completely radicalized and has given up on democracy. Trump is their cult leader. Each and every evidence of his corruption and criminality only strengthens his support within his cult. Our only job now is to defeat them.

about the threat of Trumpism

Hey, progressives: Don’t follow RFK Jr. down the rabbit hole — he’s just not that into you

If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. follows through on his apparent plans to run for president in the fall 2024 general election, that will make it all the more important for progressives to have a clear understanding of who Kennedy is and what he really stands for.

In advance of announcing that he’ll run as an independent, according to Mediaite, the Kennedy campaign will deploy “attack ads” against the Democratic National Committee for preventing an open primary process. The DNC’s shenanigans deserve to be condemned, and we have repeatedly done so, including here, here and here.

Kennedy can be forceful in denouncing aspects of U.S. militarism, and at times makes valid points about hawkish foreign policies that shun diplomacy while enriching military contractors. But a closer look at his overall views is needed, lest progressives follow Kennedy into his often inaccurate — and sometimes demagogic — rabbit hole.

Leftists, save yourselves! It’s a bad moment for nihilistic self-indulgence

Any serious progressive critique of U.S. foreign policy must include a challenge to our country’s one-sided position on Israel/Palestine — which leads to other dangerous policies, such as supporting the Saudi dictatorship (and its horrific war in Yemen), while unnecessarily exacerbating tensions with Iran.

Kennedy seems to believe that Washington has not been one-sided enough in support of Israel. He pledged in a mid-July interview: “There’s nobody who’s running for president right now in either party who will be a better friend to Israel than me as president.” Kennedy followed up by saying: “Progressive Democrats have become outspoken opponents of Israel. That’s the worst outcome of woke culture.”

And he added: “The criticism of Israel is a false narrative. Israel is a shining star on human rights in the Middle East.”

If you are a progressive who is leaning toward RFK Jr. but cares about Palestinian rights and Middle East peace, you should watch the recent interview with him conducted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a staunch supporter of the Israeli government. Kennedy questions the “narrative” that Palestinians are an “oppressed” people, applauds the Israeli military for consistently “avoiding civilian casualties,” says he doesn’t want the Biden administration to make a nuclear agreement with Iran, and agrees with Boteach’s characterization of Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as “anti-Semitic.”

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In that July 16 interview, RFK Jr. was evidently trying to do damage control after the discovery of a video from this summer in which he made bizarre comments suggesting that COVID-19 was an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon and that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people possessed greater immunity to the virus. But Kennedy’s extreme support of Israel and his closeness with Boteach predate those comments. In June, he waved Israeli flags side-by-side with Boteach in Manhattan’s “Celebrate Israel 75th” parade and declared in a column for Jewish Journal: “I support Israel because I share Israel’s values.”

Kennedy’s positions on domestic policies — from the climate crisis to economics to his extreme anti-vaccination views — are often at odds with progressive values and positions. In a thorough critique for the Guardian, Naomi Klein exposes Kennedy’s faux populism and support from high-tech billionaires. Along with debunking many of Kennedy’s claims about vaccines, Klein points out that he has asserted the climate crisis is being overhyped by “totalitarian elements in our society” and says he would leave energy policy to market forces.

Klein also makes clear that RFK Jr. is no economic populist: “On Fox, he would not even come out in favor of a wealth tax; he has brushed off universal public health care as not ‘politically realistic’; and I have heard nothing about raising the minimum wage.”

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Kennedy offers no systemic, class-based analysis of what’s wrong in U.S. society. Instead, he takes a consistently conspiratorial view. Through his use of social media and other outreach, he’s attracted considerable support from the conspiracy-minded right wing. In April, Steve Bannon – the far-right influencer who shaped Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign — said that “Bobby Kennedy would be an excellent choice for Trump to consider” as a running mate in 2024. Both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone said in late July that Kennedy would be a good choice for the next Republican cabinet.

While running for president as a Democrat, RFK Jr. gave friendly interviews to corporate libertarian outlets. That coziness, along with his recent consultation with the chair of the Libertarian Party, has led to speculation that he’ll end up as the candidate of the Libertarians, who were on the ballot in almost every state in 2020. (Going it alone without an established third party, Kennedy would be unlikely to qualify for many state ballots, given the undemocratic hurdles.)

It’s unclear what RFK Jr.’s strategy is. What is clear is that his campaign could end up helping the neofascist Republicans win in November 2024. Back in 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton after both major parties nominated unpopular candidates. Eight percent of younger voters — a demographic that leans heavily Democratic in general — voted for either the Libertarian or Green parties, a percentage that was much higher in some swing states.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offers progressives a mishmash of appealing statements, “free market” corporatism and assorted political toxins. It’s not a good deal.

about the RFK Jr. crusade

Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO accused of exploiting young men for sex. Here’s what we know

Mike Jeffries, the former head of clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch, has been accused of exploiting young men for sex at events he and his partner, Matthew Smith, hosted in the U.S. and around the world, according to a BBC investigation. The events were reportedly hosted in Jeffries’ New York residences and luxurious international hotels, including in London, Venice and Marrakesh.

As part of a two-year investigation, the BBC spoke to 12 men who described attending or organizing events between 2009 and 2015 that involved sex acts for both Jeffries and Smith. The men said they were recruited by a middleman/casting agent, who denied any wrongdoing and claimed the men attended these events “with their eyes wide open.”

The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch

The BBC obtained several documents — including emails, flight tickets and detailed travel itineraries — that reinforced the men’s allegations. Additionally, the outlet interviewed dozens of other sources, including Jeffries’ former household staff. Two ex-U.S. prosecutors, who independently reviewed documents and testimony uncovered by the BBC, have also called for an investigation to determine whether charges for sex trafficking could be brought forward.

In light of the bombshell allegations, Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), which has said it considers Jeffries its modern-day founder, told the BBC that it was “appalled and disgusted” by Jeffries’ behavior.

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Here’s a rundown of the allegations made against Jeffries, his middleman and Smith:

Jeffries’ middleman “sexually auditioned” men before they were introduced to Jeffries and Smith

Eight men who attended the events said they were recruited by a middleman, who was described as having a missing nose covered with a snakeskin patch. The BBC has identified him as 70-year-old James (Jim) Jacobson.

The men alleged that Jacobson, who was hired by Jeffries, sexually “auditioned” them by requesting or offering to perform oral sex on them, before the men were introduced to Jeffries and Smith. Half of the men said they had been initially misled about the recruitment process or told sex wasn’t involved. The other half said they knew that sex would be involved, but were unsure what was actually expected of them. All the men involved were paid, the BBC specified.

Several of the men added that Jacobson or other recruiters lured them by offering possible modeling opportunities with A&F. All, except one individual, said they felt harmed by the experience.

Jacobson said in a statement through his lawyer that he took offense at the allegations of “any coercive, deceptive or forceful behavior on my part” and had “no knowledge of any such conduct by others.” He continued, saying he did not recall promising any modeling gigs to the men.

“Any encounter I had was fully consensual, not coercive,” Jacobson said. “Everyone I came into contact with who attended these events went in with their eyes wide open.”

The “well-oiled machine” organizing sex events for Jeffries

According to the report, the recruitment process began with so-called “recruiters,” who would find men to attend Jeffries’ elaborate events and received between $500 and $1,000 from Jacobson for every referral. Jacobson also recruited men for the sex events and forwarded photos of them to both Jeffries and Smith.

Most of the men said Jacobson sexually “auditioned” them by requesting or offering to perform oral sex on them, before they met Jeffries and Smith. A personal “groomer” was also hired to intimately shave body hair from some of the men attending events, which some men said was a “dehumanizing” experience. The men added that they were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. And although they had little time to read the agreements and were not allowed to keep copies, the men said they understood they’d be sued if they spoke out.

A small group of Jeffries’ personal staff, who donned A&F uniforms, supervised the men — even during the sex acts — and gave them money directly. Jeffries allegedly funded the entire operation, including the money for referral fees, while Smith organized cash payments, the BBC reported.

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Jeffries allegedly referred to the sex events as “playtime”

Staff members who worked in Jeffries’ former Hamptons residence told the BBC that events were held there regularly over the weekend. A few staffers said they were instructed to leave the residence every Saturday afternoon for several years, which made them grow suspicious of Jeffries and Smith’s antics. One former staffer said he understood it was because Jeffries was having “playtime.”

Several men who attended the events said Jeffries and Smith would engage in sexual activity with about four men or “direct” them to have sex with each other.

David Bradberry, who was 23 at the time, said he accepted an invitation to a daytime event at Jeffries’ Hamptons residence, where he spoke with Jeffries and Smith about his aspirations to be an A&F model. Bradberry told BBC that Jeffries later held “poppers” (an inhalant used to get high or make sex more comfortable) under his nose and had sex with him.

Bradberry continued, saying the “secluded” location and presence of Jeffries’ personal staff, dressed in A&F uniforms, meant he “didn’t feel safe to say ‘no’ or ‘I don’t feel comfortable with this.'”

A former model said he felt pressured into attending one of Jeffries’ events in the Hamptons

Barrett Pall said in 2011, he was recruited by an older model who received a referral fee to be his “replacement” for “some sort of sexual experience” with Jeffries and Smith. Pall, who was just 22 years of age at the time, said he felt pressured into complying because the older model had been supporting him financially and he felt indebted. The model also told Pall, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do” but suggested, “the further you go, the better” due to more career opportunities.

At the event, Pall recalled feeling under pressure to “perform.” Another man who was recruited for the event performed oral sex on Pall while Jeffries and Smith watched. Pall said Jeffries and Smith then encouraged him to come over to the bed and kiss Jeffries. Afterwards, two other recruits had sex with Jeffries and Smith. At one point, Pall said Jeffries was behind him, groping him.

Another model said there’s a “very good possibility” he had been drugged and raped by Jeffries

Jeffries’ largest event was held in a private villa at a five-star hotel in Marrakesh. Dozens of men had been flown into the city, including Alex, a struggling model at the time who was recruited as a dancer for the event. Alex said he first auditioned for Jacobson, who praised his dancing but forced him to “finish the job” by performing oral sex on him.

“I had debt, I wanted to support my family,” Alex said. “I performed the job and I was, like, disgusted.”

While dancing at the event, Alex said Jeffries tried to kiss him. He went to go hide in a back room where he eventually fell asleep. Alex said he woke up with a condom inside him and feared that the champagne he had drank earlier had been spiked.

“When I put things together, I believe there is a very good possibility I was drugged and raped,” Alex said. “I’ll probably never, never know for sure the answer of what happened.”

Jeffries was a controversial figure prior to the bombshell allegations

The fashion mogul previously faced allegations of discrimination against staff and enacting body-shaming policies. In Benoit Denizet-Lewis’s 2006 story for Salon, he revealed that Jeffries proudly boasted that A&F is “exclusionary,” frequently reiterating that the brand’s clothes are not size-inclusive. Jeffries frequently obsessed over how jeans would look on the mannequins kept in the company’s headquarters, once saying, “We need to make this dude look more like a dude,” while analyzing a male mannequin.

Jeffries stepped down from his role in 2014 amid mass criticism of the company’s low performance and tanking sales.

Abercrombie & Fitch also had a tarnished past, with allegations made against the clothing company that includes discrimination and sexual assault by the brand’s chief photographer.

about controversial, powerful figures:

Kevin McCarthy ousted as House speaker — Far-right coup leads to Capitol chaos

Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California has been removed as speaker of the House of Representatives after his colleagues voted 216-210 in favor of a motion to vacate the speakership. That motion was proposed Monday by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a longtime Republican opponent of McCarthy’s. Eight members of the Republican majority voted with all 208 Democrats present in supporting the motion. In the history of the U.S. Congress, this marks the first time a speaker has been removed in this fashion.

At this moment, the House has no speaker and cannot advance legislation. Although Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., will serve as temporary speaker, normal legislative business will cease until a new speaker is elected. There is no clear indication of who that might be, although Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, is a likely leading contender. Reports on Tuesday night suggested that McCarthy has told Republican colleagues he will not seek the office again.

The Republican members who voted to oust McCarthy, along with Gaetz, were Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

“No one can stand him at this point”: House GOP plots to expel Matt Gaetz amid McCarthy catfight

McCarthy’s downfall came more rapidly than many observers expected after Gaetz made good on his oft-repeated threat to file a motion to vacate on Monday night. The speaker’s downfall follows months worth of tensions between a handful of members on the far-right flank of the House Republican caucus and more moderate members, who overwhelmingly backed McCarthy.

McCarthy’s predicament stemmed from two interlocking factors. The first was that among his numerous concessions to hard-right GOP members during the speakership battle last January was a rule change that allowed a single member to introduce a motion to vacate, as Gaetz did this week.

Secondly, the Republicans’ razor-thin House majority meant that even a handful of defectors would be enough to doom McCarthy, unless he could persuade enough Democrats to support him to make up the difference. Despite a handful of rumors regarding possible backroom deals, no Democratic members voted against the motion to vacate on Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier on Tuesday, prior to the vote on a “motion to table” that would have shut down Gaetz’s intra-party coup, Democrats indicated that no deal had been made, and they would vote unanimously to oust the speaker. “We’re not saving Kevin McCarthy,” Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told The Messenger. “There’ll be a motion to table. A vote that was either present or yes would be saving Kevin McCarthy.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., expressed similar sentiments during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend, nothing that McCarthy never had her vote to begin with. When asked if she would support the motion to vacate, she responded “Absolutely,” adding that she believed McCarthy was a “very weak speaker” who “clearly has lost control of his caucus.”

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Tuesday’s earlier motion to table failed, with 11 Republicans voting against it, allowing the later vote on the motion to vacate to continue. Three of those Republican members apparently changed course and voted to support McCarthy on the final vote, but that wasn’t enough to rescue him.

Gaetz, who has long been one of McCarthy’s most vocal opponents among Republican hardliners — and who never voted to support him in January — announced his plans to oust McCarthy on Sunday after the speaker’s compromise deal with Democrats on a stopgap spending bill that avoided a government shutdown.

Gaetz joined with a number of far-right colleagues in voting down a number of measures McCarthy had proposed in the days leading up to the shutdown deadline. He and 20 other Republican members even joined with Democrats in killing a last-ditch, GOP-crafted bill last Friday.

Those failed attempts to unify the Republican conference on government funding legislation marked significant and embarrassing defeats for McCarthy, paving the way for the startling humiliation of Tuesday’s vote to end his speakership.

After McCarthy announced the launch of an impeachment inquiry against President Biden last month, Gaetz vowed to repeatedly file motions to vacate the speakership, claiming that McCarthy had reneged on his promises to hardline Republicans.

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“I rise today to serve notice: Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role,” Gaetz said during a speech on the House floor following the impeachment inquiry’s announcement. “The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate, total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair,”

In an appearance with CNN’s Abby Phillip later that day, Gaetz expressed regret that he was not able to block the debt limit deal that McCarthy had reached with Biden earlier this year that prevented the U.S. from defaulting on its debt. He urged McCarthy to adopt a tougher approach to a range of issues in order to avoid the barrage of motions.

“I’m going to do it over and over again until it works, and today we saw a baby step towards that with more robust efforts towards impeachment, but I’m going to keep doing it. … The American people want term limits, they want balanced budgets, they don’t want to see government funding wrapped up in just one up-or-down vote,” Gaetz told Phillip.

Gaetz’s intra-party coup marks the culmination — but perhaps not the end — of months-long tensions between McCarthy and the right-wing members of his conference, who forced him to undergo 15 rounds of votes in January to win the speakership. In his ultimate deal to secure the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy agreed to allow a single member to advance a motion to vacate, a decision he may now regret.

When the threats to oust him from the role rolled in last month, McCarthy issued a profane challenge to those Republican lawmakers, sources told Politico.

“Go ahead. I’m not f—king scared of it. Any new speaker will do what I’m doing,” one legislator said they recalled the speaker saying. “If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the f—ing motion,” McCarthy said, according to two other anonymous Republican lawmakers interviewed by the outlet.

on Kevin McCarthy’s decline and fall

Ketone drinks: Do they really improve sports performance?

The stories of Asterix and his friend Obelix introduced us to a magic potion that comes in a small bottle and doesn’t taste good, but dramatically increases strength and fitness. Sports nutrition scientists have been trying to find or develop a compound with such characteristics for a long while.

Many supplements have been proposed, but few actually work.

The latest supplement receiving lots of attention is ketones. They come in small bottles and their taste is – to put it bluntly – horrible. Because of their high price and claimed improvement gains, many called for their ban. But do they really improve performance?

First, let’s look at what ketones are.

During exercise and also at rest, we get the required energy from breaking down carbohydrates and fats. While most tissues can use fats, the brain relies on glucose (a form of carbohydrate). Once carbohydrate stores in the body are exhausted, glucose starts being produced in limited amounts from other sources, including protein from skeletal muscle and byproducts of fat breakdown. This, however, provides less than what the brain needs, which is more than 100 grams of glucose daily.

When carbohydrate availability gets low, the liver starts converting fat into ketone bodies – as ketones are properly called – which provide an alternate source of fuel for the brain. Ketone bodies can also be used in other tissues, such as muscle and could eventually be used as fuel during exercise.

One of the popular diets these days is the so-called keto diet. The idea behind it is that if carbohydrate intake is reduced to less than 50 grams a day, the body produces ketone bodies for brain fuel while making other tissues rely on fat as a fuel.

While this diet may work for weight loss, many studies have shown that sports performance is impaired. This is not surprising as carbohydrates are essential for sustaining high-intensity exercise.

Ketone supplements — the best of both worlds?

As ketone bodies can be a source of energy, just like carbohydrates and fats, scientists became interested in supplements that would increase ketone body concentrations in the blood without reducing carbohydrate availability. This way, at least in theory, sports people could benefit from using not only carbohydrates and fats but also ketone bodies – the use of which could spare precious carbohydrates that are stored in very limited quantities.

Many attempts have been made to develop a ketone supplement. Initially, most ketone supplements caused gastrointestinal issues and did not sufficiently increase ketone body availability.

For instance, an Australian study published in 2017 undertaken in professional cyclists used a ketone diester (a ketone body bound to a compound called diester) supplement and reported impaired time-trial performance, accompanied by significant gut discomfort and a limited increase in ketone body availability.

A newer ketone monoester (ketone body bound to a compound called monoester) drink was shown not to cause gastrointestinal discomfort and to sufficiently increase ketone body concentrations in the blood. However, this still didn’t result in improved performance, as a new study by researchers at McMaster University in Canada showed. They found the ketone supplement impaired a 20-minute time-trial performance by 2.4% compared with a placebo.

The underlying mechanisms for these findings are not yet clear. The most likely explanation is that this reduction in exercise performance occurs because ketone supplements make the blood more acidic, something that has long been known to impair performance.

There is some limited evidence that combining ketones and sodium bicarbonate supplements could counteract this. However, the jury is still out as not all the studies show this.

Ketones in recovery

It appears that consuming ketones before or during exercise does not provide any benefits to exercise performance. Indeed, it can impair it. However, there is some evidence from KU Leuven, a research university in Belgium, that taking ketone supplements when recovering from endurance exercise can help reduce the symptoms (called “overreaching”) associated with overtraining. But there is no evidence suggesting that ketone supplementation would provide benefits to athletes during normal training.

It seems ketones are nowhere near as efficient as the magic potion that Asterix used and we will continue to be searching for the lost recipe of the series’ village druid Getafix.

Tim Podlogar, Research Fellow, School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How can I lower my cholesterol? Do supplements work? How about psyllium or probiotics?

Your GP says you have high cholesterol. You’ve six months to work on your diet to see if that’ll bring down your levels, then you’ll review your options.

Could taking supplements over this time help?

You can’t rely on supplements alone to control your cholesterol. But there’s some good evidence that taking particular supplements, while also eating a healthy diet, can make a difference.

Why are we so worried about cholesterol?

There are two main types of cholesterol, both affecting your risk of heart disease and stroke. Both types are carried in the bloodstream inside molecules called lipoproteins.

Low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol

This is often called “bad” cholesterol. This lipoprotein carries cholesterol from the liver to cells throughout the body. High levels of LDL cholesterol in the blood can lead to the build-up of plaque in arteries, which leads to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

High-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol

This is often called “good” cholesterol. This lipoprotein helps remove excess cholesterol from the bloodstream and transports it back to the liver for processing and excretion. Higher levels of HDL cholesterol are linked to a reduced risk of heart disease and stroke.

Diet can play a key role in reducing blood cholesterol levels, especially LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. Healthy dietary choices are well recognized. These include a focus on eating more unsaturated (“healthy”) fat (such as from olive oil or avocado) and eating less saturated (“unhealthy”) fat (such as animal fats) and trans fats (found in some shop-bought biscuits, pies and pizza bases).

Fiber is your friend

An additional way to significantly reduce your total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels through diet is by eating more soluble fiber.

This is a type of fiber that dissolves in water to form a gel-like substance in your gut. The gel can bind to cholesterol molecules preventing them from being absorbed into the bloodstream and allows them to be eliminated from the body through your feces.

You can find soluble fiber in whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, oats, barley, beans and lentils.

Fiber supplements, such as psyllium

There are also many fiber supplements and food-based products on the market that may help lower cholesterol. These include:

natural soluble fibers, such as inulin (for example, Benefiber) or psyllium (for example, Metamucil) or beta-glucan (for example, in ground oats)
synthetic soluble fibers, such as polydextrose (for example, STA-LITE), wheat dextrin (also found in Benefiber) or methylcellulose (such as Citrucel)
natural insoluble fibers, which bulk out your feces, such as flax seeds.

Most of these supplements come as fibers you add to food or dissolve in water or drinks.

Psyllium is the fiber supplement with the strongest evidence to support its use in improving cholesterol levels. It’s been studied in at least 24 high-quality randomized controlled trials.

These trials show consuming about 10g of psyllium a day (1 tablespoon), as part of a healthy diet, can significantly lower total cholesterol levels by 4% and LDL cholesterol levels by 7%.

Probiotics

Other cholesterol-lowering supplements, such as probiotics, are not based on fiber. Probiotics are thought to help lower cholesterol levels via a number of mechanisms. These include helping to incorporate cholesterol into cells and adjusting the microbiome of the gut to favor elimination of cholesterol via the feces.

Using probiotics to reduce cholesterol is an upcoming area of interest and the research is promising.

In a 2018 study, researchers pooled results from 32 studies and analyzed them altogether in a type of study known as a meta-analysis. The people who took probiotics reduced their total cholesterol level by 13%.

Other systematic reviews support these findings.

Most of these studies use probiotics containing Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis, which come in capsules or powders and are consumed daily.

Ultimately, probiotics could be worth a try. However, the effects will likely vary according to the probiotic strains used, whether you take the probiotic each day as indicated, as well as your health status and your diet.

Red yeast rice

Red yeast rice is another non-fiber supplement that has gained attention for lowering cholesterol. It is often used in Asia and some European countries as a complementary therapy. It comes in capsule form and is thought to mimic the role of the cholesterol-lowering medications known as statins.

A 2022 systematic review analyzed data from 15 randomized controlled trials. It found taking red yeast rice supplements (200-4,800mg a day) was more effective for lowering blood fats known as triglycerides but less effective at lowering total cholesterol compared with statins.

However, these trials don’t tell us if red yeast rice works and is safe in the long term. The authors also said only one study in the review was registered in a major database of clinical trials. So we don’t know if the evidence base was complete or biased to only publish studies with positive results.

Diet and supplements may not be enough

Always speak to your GP and dietitian about your plan to take supplements to lower your cholesterol.

But remember, dietary changes alone — with or without supplements — might not be enough to lower your cholesterol levels sufficiently. You still need to quit smoking, reduce stress, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. Genetics can also play a role.

Even then, depending on your cholesterol levels and other risk factors, you may still be recommended cholesterol-lowering medications, such as statins. Your GP will discuss your options at your six-month review.

Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland and Emily Burch, Dietitian, Researcher & Lecturer, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fast-food drive-thru lanes are speeding up due to fewer drivers waiting in line, new study finds

Fast-food drive-thru lanes are getting even faster as fewer customers choose to sit in their car and wait in line to order their go-to meals, according to an annual study by Intouch Insight released Monday. The findings were based on visits to nearly 1,500 locations of Arby’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’, Hardee’s, KFC, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Wendy’s. Mystery shoppers ordered from several drive-thru lanes during various times between the months of June and July.

The average total time spent in a drive-thru lane was five minutes and 43 seconds, which is 29 seconds less than last year’s average time, the study found. The average number of cars in line fell from 2.76 to 1.27, thus decreasing wait times by 25 seconds.

Taco Bell, KFC and Carl’s Jr. had the fastest overall total times for their drive-thru lanes, mainly because they aren’t as popular as other major fast-food chains (which had more cars waiting in line). Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s and Wendy’s ultimately secured the fastest times when their average total times were divided by the number of cars in line.

As more and more customers continued to order from their cars once fast-food restaurants reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants employees faced immense pressure to put together orders quickly, efficiently and correctly. As shown by the nearly thirty second decrease in average drive-thru time, though, it’s clear that these fast-food restaurants are meeting the demand head-on.

Over 100 dolphins cooked in the Amazon river as climate change heats water to Jacuzzi temperatures

Jacuzzi-level temperatures of the Amazon River have killed more than 100 pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) in Brazil over the past week after more than 120 carcasses were seen floating in Lake Tefé, which is connected to the Amazon River.

According to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science, the dolphins’ deaths can likely be attributed to a historic drought and record-high water temperatures, which in some places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit — the same heat of a typical Jacuzzi. Not only is this intolerably warm for the river dolphins, but it also reduces the oxygen levels in the water, which render the area even more unliveable.

“It’s still early to determine the cause of this extreme event but according to our experts, it is certainly connected to the drought period and high temperatures in Lake Tefé,” explained the Mamirauá Institute in comments carried by CNN affiliate CNN Brasil. Amazon river dolphins are among the handful of surviving freshwater dolphin species. They are found only in South America’s rivers and experts believe this particular group may have already lost 10 percent of their population in Lake Tefé, which Mamirauá researcher Miriam Marmontel told Reuters “could threaten the survival of the species in Lake Tefé.”

Summer 2023 contained the hottest three months recorded in human history, a development that has led to extreme weather events from worldwide wildfires and intensified tropical storms to flooding from New York City to Libya. While humans have naturally focused on how these developments have impacted our own species, they are far from alone in their suffering among intelligent mammals.

“Unacceptable”: Judge slaps Trump with gag order after he targeted law clerk

The New York judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud case issued a limited gag order against the former president Tuesday after he attacked the judge’s clerk on social media while in court, according to The Messenger.

“Personal attacks on members on my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I won’t tolerate it [in my courtroom],” New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said in court, according to the report. “Consider this a gag order for all parties from posting about any members of my staff,” he added.

In a since-deleted post to Truth Social, Trump falsely called Engoron’s principal law clerk Senate Majority Leader Chuck “Schumer’s girlfriend” and linked to her Instagram account.

“Schumer’s girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me,” Trump wrote in the post. “How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!”

While in court, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social attacking Judge Engoron’s clerk, calling her “Shumer’s girlfriend” and linking to her Instagram account.

Still no gag order. pic.twitter.com/xIHDmEdtrw

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) October 3, 2023

Judge brutally debunks Trump’s claim that he threw out most of the NY fraud case against him

“I have since ordered the post deleted,” Engoron reportedly said.

The former president had doubled down on the claim to press outside the courtroom during a break in the trial, also adding a jab at New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit against him. Engoron last week found Trump liable of defrauding banks and insurers in his statements of financial condition and began the trial Monday to consider the six remaining matters in the lawsuit.

“This trial is a rigged trial. It’s a fraudulent trial. The attorney general is a fraud, and we have to expose her as that,” he told reporters. “You see what’s going on — it’s a rigged deal. And frankly, you saw what was just put out about Schumer and the principal clerk — that is disgraceful.”

“This trial is a rigged trial … You saw what was just put out about [Chuck] Schumer and the principal clerk — that is disgraceful.”

— Donald Trump, seemingly referencing his TruthSocial post calling the judge’s “clerk” in his civil fraud trial “Schumer's girlfriend” pic.twitter.com/ZrBiEln1T8

— The Recount (@therecount) October 3, 2023

Judge told lawyers to “keep the volume down” after Alina Habba “practically yelled” at him: reporter

As Politico reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan pointed out, however, the allegation Trump’s attempting to push is connected to a long-running rumor about Schumer, D-N.Y., that the Associated Press reported began on a now-defunct satire website.

In 2017 the satire site America’s Last Line of Defense created the story that Schumer had an “affair” in 1977 with his daughter’s best friend from high school when the girl was 16, adding that Schumer’s daughter “Lisa” had disclosed the scandal. But Schumer does not have a daughter named Lisa, neither of his two daughters had been born by 1977 and the details of the story are untrue.

An internet archive shows in 2018 the “about” section of the site read, “America’s Last Line of Defense is a whimsical playland of conservative satire” and “Everything on this website is fiction.”

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At the time the satire piece ran, Alabama voters were set to vote in a special Senate election just days later, and Republican candidate Roy Moore had come under fire after allegations of him engaging in sexual misconduct with underage girls in the later 1970s rose to the fore.

Since then, several versions of the false story about Schumer have made the rounds on social media and right-wing websites as if it were true, AP reported.

While pushing the claims against Greenfield to reporters outside the courtroom Monday afternoon, Trump also lambasted the judge and his recent decision, calling Engoron a “disgrace” to other judges.

“He ruled that we lost part of the case because he’s a Democrat club politician. He’s a Democrat operative, and he’s a disgrace to people that call themselves judges. And I hope my lawyers go in and I hope they fight him very hard because this guy’s getting away with murder,” Trump said of the judge.

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“Trump savaging the judge and judge’s clerk in the courthouse?!?” MSNBC commentator Tristan Snell, a former prosecutor at the New York Attorney General’s office, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Literally ANY other party doing this would be slapped with contempt of court and be either paying a fine or being placed under arrest.”

Trump savaging the judge and judge’s clerk in the courthouse?!?

Literally ANY other party doing this would be slapped with contempt of court and be either paying a fine or being placed under arrest.

pic.twitter.com/tCmvUun9W7

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) October 3, 2023

“Mark my words: this is the first of many gag orders against Trump that will be issued by Justice Engoron in this case,” predicted MSNBC legal analyst Katie Phang. “Also: the fact that Trump took the time to post this attack on his failing social media platform DURING the trial (the trial was on a brief recess) just goes to show how little respect he has for the judicial process.”

Also: the fact that Trump took the time to post this attack on his failing social media platform DURING the trial (the trial was on a brief recess) just goes to show how little respect he has for the judicial process.

— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) October 3, 2023

about Trump’s trial

“When stupidity is elevated”: “Airplane!” filmmakers reveal the secrets to their deadpan success

“Airplane!” has been hailed as one of the funniest movies ever made —usually by anyone who has seen it. Forty-three years after its premiere, it still has audiences rolling with laughter. The brainchild of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (collectively known as ZAZ), the film is a parody of the B-movie “Zero Hour!” where a character really does say, “The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.”

“We told the actors, ‘Play it straight.'”

Such is the absurdity of the ZAZ world, which plays its comedy with deadpan seriousness, and why “Airplane!” is so uproarious. The filmmakers (making their debut as directors) cast serious actors — Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen — in prominent roles, and made them say outrageous things, such as “I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue,” as if they were in a drama. The film is inspired because the actors are not winking at the audience. Even cameos by everyone from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Barbara Billingsley are hilarious because they are done with a straight face. ZAZ prided their humor on getting audiences to appreciate the deadpan tone. This may be why the film is so quotable, but there are sight gags, and jokes in the background that require repeat viewings to catch.

The unexpected genius of Leslie Nielsen

The new book, “Surely You Can’t Be Serious,” cowritten by the filmmakers, recounts how “Airplane!” got off the ground. The trio built their comedy starting with theatrical skits, and a feature, “Kentucky Fried Movie,” before writing “Airplane!” and navigating Hollywood hoping to get it made. Even when they finally got approval, they wanted to direct and collaborate on casting and editing. The filmmakers recount their struggles and successes in the book, name-dropping Jonas Salk, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and others, as they mined comic gold and made one of the most profitable and influential comedies ever. As someone in the book notes, there is life before “Airplane!” and life after “Airplane!”

The filmmakers/authors spoke with Salon about their comedy classic.

Everyone has an airplane story. What is your wackiest, strangest, or more exciting airplane trip?

Jerry Zucker: I guess the one where I crashed in the Andes and had to live off the land and the animals for about three weeks.

Jim Abrahams: And you ate a few of the other passengers.

David Zucker: He doesn’t talk about that!

Jerry Zucker: Just one or two, and they were practically dead.

David Zucker: But tasty, I hear.

Abrahams: I don’t know if I actually had anything exciting or memorable happen on an airplane.

David Zucker: Memorable — there was that time when we flew to London to do press and Jerry forgot his passport, but the actual flight was uneventful.

A page from the “Airplane!” script (Courtesy of the authors)You “seized a moment” and followed your dream to write a comedy with no connections, no experience, and not really with an idea. What observations do you have about making “Airplane!”?

Jerry Zucker: We take the reader through everything that led up to “Airplane!” The experience we had was doing comedy. Being pranksters and goof-offs. We started Kentucky Fried Theater and did “Kentucky Fried Movie.” In that sense, we didn’t have any film experience, but we felt we knew how to make people laugh.

Jim Abrahams: We got our start filming stuff on our own and making spoofs of commercials. Back then, no one had cell phones, so we were unique — we had a video machine. We could film and edit and show it to other people and get their reactions. That was the school we went to.

David Zucker: We learned a lot about directing from “Kentucky Fried Movie,” being on the set as writers watching John Landis direct. We just learned along the way.

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Yes, but you ended up having control over directing and casting that first time filmmakers almost never got.

Jerry Zucker: Here’s the secret: We were too naïve to know we couldn’t get any of that stuff. So, we pushed and ended up getting most of what we needed. There was naivete involved, but if we had really known how the movie business works and paid attention to the odds, it may have been more daunting. We were three people with one singular vision of a certain kind of movie and style of humor we wanted to make and didn’t pay attention to anything else. We just kept pressing through.

David Zucker: We saw what was out there at the time, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, and they were great, and we thought we could do that and be as funny.

Abrahams: Maybe we should have called the book “Ignorance is Bliss.”

David Zucker: You are quoted as saying that “ignorance is bliss.”

Abrahams: Really?

At the Bruin premiere of “Airplane!” (Courtesy of the authors)The humor in the film works because you raise stupidity to an art form. There are sight gags, reference to other films, wordplay, and fart jokes, absurdism and more. You write that jokes have to be plot points and plot points have to be jokes. You poke fun at genres. Can you discuss why all these different elements work in this one film, and why it is so beloved?

David Zucker: We connected to a lot of 11-year-olds on that level.

Jerry Zucker: We watched a lot of serious, hard-hitting movies and it’s a style of acting that is still around. It was really big in the 1950s, and maybe it was coming from Milwaukee. We didn’t take those shows seriously and laughed at how silly it was that they were taking themselves that seriously. So, it became about duplicating the whole style, the look, the acting and costumes and putting our jokes in. We never wanted it to be funny. We told the actors, “Play it straight. Pretend that you don’t know that you are in a comedy. Be naïve of the fact that people may be laughing at this. Everyone has to do this as if it was a real B-movie.”

David Zucker: For a lot of the actors, it was a big step and a risk. They had to have trust in us that it was going to be funny.

Abrahams: As Jerry alluded to, we learned the details as we went along, but from the time we were kids, it was an instinct in us to do this kind of comedy. We saw how many things were taken seriously, especially in the media and TV and movies. Our instincts told us we don’t have to take that seriously.

David Zucker: Not only that, we had some outside influences, like “MAD Magazine,” that was a textbook for us. Back in Milwaukee at age 10, we saw a feature in “MAD Magazine” called “Scenes We’d Like to See.” They’d set up a serious scene from a movie and do the scene they thought it should be, and it was very much like “Airplane!”

Abrahams: It was to elevate that beyond media to everyday, and you reference that in your question about how stupid our jokes are. When stupidity is elevated — and there is lots of stupidity in society — it needs to be acknowledged in parlance and verbiage, and everyone will say, “Surely you can’t be serious?” is a serious line. But if we acknowledge that, we all can celebrate it.

David Zucker: And it made all the difference to have that be in the context of a serious melodrama, and have the lines delivered by serious actors, like Stack, Bridges, Nielsen and Graves.

What about scenes that might be seen as pushing the envelope now? The jive talk, the pedophilia jokes, the breasts, the abortion joke and more. The film treads the line of tastelessness, but it never oversteps. Julie Hagerty blowing up Otto is pure naughtiness only if you see a sex joke there. You went from the very R-rated “Kentucky Fried Movie” to the PG “Airplane!” Can you discuss?

Jerry Zucker: Our theory was to let the audience find things. Not every joke, but if there’s something in the background that is funny, we don’t point to it. We love the fact that if you see it, you feel you are discovering it. That works in a lot of ways when people are being that serious, but they are saying something silly.

Abrahams: It’s very subjective stuff. We’ve been working with the publishing company on how they will advertise the book. And one suggestion was showing “Nun’s Life” magazine, but instead of the nun on a surfboard, like in the movie, instead, the nun is smoking a cigar and getting drunk. We objected to that because there is a fine line. It’s subjective, because there is something genuinely offensive about a nun smoking a cigar and getting drunk opposed to a nun surfing.

David Zucker: One of the ad guys at the publishing company said, “I’m Catholic, and I agree with you.” But there is that fine line.

Rossie Harris as Joey Hammond and Peter Graves as Captain Over in “Airplane!” (Paramount Pictures)That’s why I love your film — you go right up to the line and don’t cross it.

Jerry Zucker: I don’t think there is anything tasteless in the movie. People might find it tasteless. And if we were to do it now, they wouldn’t want us to do the pedophile joke — but it doesn’t do any harm. Taste is as Jim said, subjective, but I always default to, “Are we doing any harm?” If we are doing a joke that is mean-spirited or racist or whatever, then we shouldn’t do it. But the stuff that is borderline — people say you couldn’t do the jive talk today — but every Black person we ever met said they love the joke. It is people being overly sensitive on behalf of people they think should be sensitive.

David Zucker: The question we ask is does it make a satirical point? There was a lot of raunchy stuff in “Kentucky Fried Movie,” but it made a point. The Peter Graves and little boy scene was making fun of the straitlaced image of pilots in a lot of movies.

“Barbara Billingsley, she’s the perfect white lady you would never think of in a million years could translate jive.”

Abrahams: We did it 40 years ago but today, there are these YouTube channels where people watch “Airplane!” for the first time. They weren’t alive when “Airplane!” was made, and it all holds up. No one ever says, “Oh gosh, that doesn’t work today.” It may be that you won’t find an executive today who would greenlight that movie, but nonetheless, the movie itself holds up.

The casting in the film is exceptional and you talk about lobbying for actors who don’t get the humor, auditioning folks like David Letterman, who was grateful he didn’t get the part, to landing Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, as well as getting a cameo from Ethel Merman and the joy of Kareem and Barbara. What convinced you that the casting would work?

David Zucker: With the casting of Stack, Nielsen, Graves and Bridges, the really straight guys, we were into dubbing our own voices on old movies. That was fun, and that’s how we thought of doing “Airplane.” Why not actually cast those guys? We had experience getting laughs making fun of that acting style. We had confidence that style would work.

Jerry Zucker: In terms of Ethel Merman and Barbara Billingsley, we thought of a joke: “What if someone said he thinks he’s Ethel Merman, and it was her?” It wasn’t that we thought, “Would she work in this?” We just thought that’s hysterical. At the time, her fame was widespread.

Same with Barbara Billingsley, she’s the perfect white lady you would never think of in a million years could translate jive. We never thought about if it would work. We just came upon a name and thought she would be great.

Barbara Billingsley as jive translator in “Airplane!” (Paramount Pictures)David Zucker: We can’t remember who came up with “How about Ethel Merman and it is really Ethel Merman?” and the other two cracked up. We trusted our reactions to a joke. Someone suggested, “Surely you can’t be serious? . . . “And don’t call me Shirley,” and someone cracked up. All these things were first laughed at in the writing room.

Abrahams: There was nothing more fun when “Airplane!” came out and because no one knew us, we could go to the movie and sit with a full house and bathe ourselves in that laughter.

Jerry Zucker: Which is what I hate about streaming now. You sit with three people or by yourself, you just don’t get that communal experience, which is terrible.

Abrahams: I hate to see the end of theaters and theatrical experience with hundreds of people, and you hear other laughs. It’s the best way to watch comedies.

What observations do you have on why you work so well together with each other and everyone else? The book doesn’t feature much dirt.

Jerry Zucker: We decided not to talk about Jim and David’s drug problems . . .

Abrahams: We did have rules about collaborating. You can argue a joke on its merits from now until the cows come home, but you can’t get personal. You can’t say, “That’s not funny, you a**hole!”

But you just did!

Jerry Zucker: We’ve known each other since we were kids, and we’ve been doing comedy for a long, long time. We never got into the Hollywood scene very much. We didn’t have many famous friends or were hanging with other actors and directors. We met John Landis. We were a very tight group. It was like “The Godfather” — you don’t go against the family. And also, it helped having just the three of us. It was a quick decision; you vote.

David Zucker: Our lives were centered around Pico Boulevard where our theater was. We were in LA, but it was enough distance from Hollywood. There was another crowd at the Comedy Store. A strain of humor developed there, and that was different, too. You would see Letterman, and Leno and Robin Williams.

Jerry Zucker: We never tried to do anything individually without the others. We didn’t audition for an acting job or a writing job. We were a team.

Abrahams: One of the cool things about writing books was we got to collaborate again, and it’s been fun going back and seeing how the same chemistry is still there and it still works. The other day we were doing an audio ad, and we came up with, “Every page has pictures, and every page has words, and every page has its own page number.”

Your dedication is the best dedication I’ve seen in a book, and I work in publishing. What is your favorite line, joke or sight gag? What were you surprised you got away with?

David Zucker: My favorite has always been when the stewardess says, “I’ve never been so scared, and besides, I am 26 and I’m not married.” And the other lady comes in and says, “I’ve never been so scared, but at least I’ve got a husband!” It was a gag written very collaboratively. We each added to it. It was written, “I’m 26 and I’m not married.” It’s a gag that plays in one shot, and it always worked. It worked 43 years ago, it works today, and it will work 43 years from now.

Jerry Zucker: It’s hard to pick a favorite line. There are so many jokes that I would consider favorites. I will say, when the movie was out, we would periodically stop by at a theatre and time it so we could see, “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” Because the reaction to that was like a roar because it was just so outrageous and so unexpected to see Peter Graves saying that and that other one.

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Do you like gladiator movies?

Jerry Zucker: We just kept going. I just love hearing the audience react to that. Have you ever been in a Turkish prison . . . ?

David Zucker: Matt Stone says in the book, he was 11, and he knew it was funny, but he didn’t know why.

I had the exact same reaction! The first line clued me, and it was weird and uncomfortable, but at 11, I didn’t get the subtext.

Jerry Zucker: The funniest thing, which is in the book, is Rossie Harris, who played Joey, didn’t know what it was all about, and he talks about finally figuring it out!

Abrahams: I think among my favorites which vary from week to week, but consistently and among the most dangerous, was subtitling the Black guys. We came across the idea in 1975 when we saw “Shaft.” We enjoyed it, but we weren’t sure what the Black guys in the movie were saying. We thought: Wouldn’t it be fun to subtitle them with stupid white guy interpretations of what they were saying? In the film I was hopeful that we did it with that intention coming across. When the movie first opened, we went to see it with an entirely Black audience, and I remember holding my breath as that first scene came up and they laughed at least as hard, maybe even harder, than white audiences did.

Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs as jive dudes in “Airplane!” (Paramount Pictures)

“Surely You Can’t Be Serious” is available Oct. 3.

about ’80s comedies

Girl Scout Cookies are getting more expensive this season, thanks to inflation

Inflation has officially hit Girl Scout Cookie prices, which are on the rise in anticipation of this year’s cookie season.

On Sept. 28, CNN reported that the Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, a New York State chapter, informed parents and other members of the community in an email that all cookies will be sold for $6 per box, instead of the $5 price tag seen last year. “In order to combat rising production and material costs, GSHH will be increasing the price of all cookie packages to $6.00,” the chapter’s interim CEO wrote, adding “we expect our neighboring councils to announce similar increases in the coming weeks and months.”

Other chapters in New York, Louisiana and North Carolina all announced similar price hikes last year due to budget concerns, per The Takeout. “The decision to raise the price of Girl Scout cookies is based on the costs associated with food production, labor, and transportation,” spokeswoman Stacy Wilbur said in a statement. A few cookie varieties, like S’mores and Toffee-Tastic, were already priced at $6. But now the higher price will apply to additional cookies sold by the troops, including more classic staples.

“Each of our 111 Girl Scout councils sets local Girl Scout Cookie prices based on several factors,” a spokesperson for Girl Scouts of the USA told CNN. “In some instances, councils are faced with the tough decision to raise the prices, though prices have remained steady in many areas for a number of years.”

The prices were last raised in 2015.

John Kelly slammed for revealing “horrifying” Trump statements “three years too late”

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed a series of unsavory anecdotes about his former boss in a new bombshell statement to CNN — but faced widespread criticism for waiting years to go public.

The details of Kelly’s statement include alleged remarks Donald Trump made while president, and specifically underscore the insensitive nature of those made about U.S. service members and veterans. On the heels of the release of “Enough,” the memoir written by former Trump aide turned whistleblower, Cassidy Hutchinson, Kelly was asked if he wanted to provide commentary about Trump’s antics. “What can I say that has not already been said?” Kelly asked in response.

“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'” Kelly continued. “A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

US general says Trump was angered by invite to wounded soldier: “Nobody wants to see that”

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” he added. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly closed. “God help us.”

As CNN notes, Kelly’s statement corroborates information contained within a 2020 article from The Atlantic that alleged the ex-president, while standing with Kelly in the section of Arlington National Cemetery dedicated to those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq on Memorial Day in 2017, said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

“Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat,” CNN observed, also noting how Trump during his campaign in 2015 claimed in front of a crowd in that former Vietnam prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, was “not a war hero.”

“He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump added. “I like people who weren’t captured.” CNN also reported that it was this very confusion that led Trump to refer to McCain as a “loser,” a word he would use in 2018 during a trip to France for the centennial anniversary of the cessation of World War I, as observed in the Atlantic’s piece. Trump reportedly stated he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, saying, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”

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Kelly’s statement also gives credence to previous reports of Trump speaking poorly of wounded veterans on numerous occasions. Per CNN, the former chief of staff’s comments provide context for an except from “‘The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,’ by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor.”

“Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” the ex-president allegedly said.

“Those are the heroes,” Kelly retorted. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are — and they are buried over in Arlington.”

“I don’t want them,” Trump insisted. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

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A recent profile done by The Atlantic of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley references a similar incident in which Trump expressed dismay at wounded Berger Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for Milley. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded,” the former president reportedly said.

But many critics argued that Kelly’s statement was too little, too late and condemned him for false and seemingly racially imbued statements made about Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., in 2017. Kelly incorrectly stated that Wilson thwarted the dedication of an FBI building by saying she “called up President [Barack] Obama for the funding,” describing her as part of a “long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise.” Kelly’s comments aligned with a tweet composed by Trump calling Wilson “wacky,” emphasizing other instances of hypocrisy.

“About three years too late, General,” tweeted attorney Bradley P. Moss.

About three years late, General https://t.co/XFtbbDb0IW

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) October 2, 2023

“Empty barrel”: The real meaning of John Kelly’s slurs against Frederica Wilson

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan observed how, though Kelly’s statement about Trump was undoubtedly “excoriating,” he “happily went to work for Trump after 2016, first at DHS and then at the White House, as chief of staff.” In a separate tweet, Hasan wrote, “By the way, has Gen. Kelly apologized yet to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson for lying about her?”

Interestingly, in this statement from Gen. Kelly excoriating Trump, he mentions awful things Trump did during the 2016 election and yet… Kelly happily went to work for Trump after 2016, first at DHS and then at the White House, as chief of staff. 🤷🏽‍♂️ https://t.co/WIpacKUnw0

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 2, 2023

Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, called the revelations contained in the statement “horrifying.”

“Horrifying. Just horrifying,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “In its substance, but also in the decision of Gen. Kelly — having this damning estimation of Trump — to choose to serve as Trump’s Homeland Security & then Chief of Staff, and to not have publicly offered this comprehensive assessment before now.”

“Can you imagine knowing this abt Trump but giving Rep. Frederica Wilson the ‘Ruby Freeman treatment’ for daring to call out Trump’s awful treatment of the pregnant wife of a soldier slain in Niger?” Ifill continued. “I will not clap for those who participated& knew better.”

“I covered a disturbing John Kelly story in 2017 when Kelly attacked Rep. Frederica Wilson,” tweeted journalist Victoria Brownworth, “after she helped the widow of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson, a green beret murdered in Niger. Kelly lied about Wilson to support Trump’s lie about the widow and refused to apologize.”

Well, I covered a disturbing John Kelly story in 2017 when Kelly attacked Rep. Frederica Wilson after she helped the widow of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson, a green beret murdered in Niger. Kelly lied about Wilson to support Trump's lie about the widow and refused to apologize. https://t.co/4n4O9reCgy

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) October 3, 2023

“Now that Kelly is coming forward to bash Trump over his views of vets, remember when he attacked Rep Frederica Wilson for criticizing Trump’s handling of a dead soldier’s widow? Kelly called her ‘all hat & no cattle,’ & misrepresented comments she made. What changed?” questioned The Messenger’s Marc Caputo.

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Judge brutally debunks Trump’s claim that he threw out most of the NY fraud case against him

The judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial shut down Trump’s assertion to reporters at the end of the trial’s opening day Monday that he had suddenly reversed himself on the statute of limitations. To start Tuesday’s proceedings, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron clarified that Trump’s comments were not true, according to The Messenger, explaining that his ruling last week ordering the dissolution of several of Trump’s businesses found the former president had committed fraud every time he submitted a false statement of financial condition (SFC) to insurers and banks.

Though Trump’s defense argued that the relevant conduct is when the loan “closed,” Engoron rejected that theory, reiterating his reasoning again in court. “Every use of a [false] statement of financial condition in business starts the statute of limitations running again,” Engoron said Tuesday morning, noting that he understands that Trump’s attorneys “strongly” disagree with his argument and will likely appeal the ruling.

Trump’s Monday remarks stemmed from the judge’s exchange with his attorneys following hours of testimony from Donald Bender, a former accountant Trump’s businesses had used whose examination largely hinged on documents from 2011 while an appellate court warned that only events from three years later fall within the applicable state of limitations. Later that day, Engoron declared that Bender’s testimony must connect to events on or after 2014 in order to be relevant, which prompted the former president’s remarks. But Engoron’s recent decision finding Trump liable for fraud cited actions after 2014 and found that the relevant issue is when they were “completed,” which includes the moments when Trump “still obligated to, and did, annually submit current SFCs to comply with the terms of the loan agreements.”

Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” trailer depicts the toxic love story between Elvis and Priscilla

Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” paints a different picture of the supposed fairy tale of the sometimes volatile relationship between the late Elvis Presley and his then-wife Priscilla Presley. The infamous couple’s romanticized love story is seen through a new lens in the film’s trailer released on Tuesday.

The movie is based on Priscilla’s 1986 memoir “Elvis and Me” which detailed the accounts of their turbulent relationship mostly due to Elvis’s frequent infidelities and affairs with other women and his battle with addiction. In Coppola’s filmmaker lens, she hits on the same instabilities in their relationship.

The A24-produced film highlights Priscilla’s origin story, played by Cailee Spaeny, as the daughter of an Air Force captain who is swept away by the rock star Elvis (Jacob Elordi), whose music career has halted because he has been drafted into the military. Glimpses of the trailer focus on the blossoming young love contrasted with the real-life levels of trauma, stress and dysfunction that plagued the couple’s relationship.

In a scene in the trailer Elvis directs Priscilla to wear “dark hair and more eye makeup,” depicting the influence and control he had over her now iconic ’60s aesthetic. Later on in the trailer, a shakey Priscilla asks Elvis: “Is there something you’re hiding?” He yells back, “I don’t have a godd**n thing to hide.” He also angrily throws a chair above Priscilla’s head in one of the multiple shots of the film in the trailer.

Take a look:

“Priscilla” opens nationwide on Friday, Nov. 3.

“We’re not saving Kevin”: House Democrats refuse to rescue McCarthy’s speakership

House Democrats left their Tuesday morning closed-door meeting resolved to vote against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., after Republican hardliner and vocal McCarthy foe Rep. Matt Gaetz, Fla., filed a motion to vacate against the speaker Monday night, The Messenger reports. “We’re not saving Kevin McCarthy,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told the outlet. “There’ll be a motion to table. A vote that was either present or yes would be saving Kevin McCarthy.”

The caucus held an extended meeting just hours before the House is expected to vote on a motion to table Gaetz’s motion, which he filed in hopes of ousting McCarthy from leadership this week over alleged broken promises. During the session, Democrats expressed their desire to present a unified front on the floor and their distrust of the California Republican. No members spoke in favor of coming to McCarthy’s aid, according to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and some even played videos of the speaker lying at press conferences or on TV while a few mentioned that past contentious Republican speakers like Paul Ryan resigned instead of forcing the chamber to endure more chaos.

Noting that the requirements to pursue a motion to boot the speaker had fallen from 50 to 25 to five to one, Rep. Richie Neal, D-Mass., said that McCarthy brought the rampant GOP discord and Gaetz’s vow to oust him on himself by empowering the far-right flank of his conference in order to secure the speakership in January. “Once you seal the deal, you have to take the consequences,” he told reporters, adding, “For him then to retreat and take the threshold of the motion to vacate the chair down to one person, that conceivably puts one person in control of 434.” Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., told The Messenger after the meeting that “it’s their problem,” adding, “They have a civil war within their caucus and we’re not here to solve that. We’re here to govern.”

Celebrate fall with Anthony Bourdain’s 5 most comforting recipes

Cherished and celebrated for his trademark acerbic wit, advocation for the working class and marginalized communities, and his sharp, incisive commentary on all things food, Anthony Bourdain remains a stalwart influence on the food industry at large.

Why there’s no better comfort food than bread and butter

Bourdain, of course, meant (and means) so many different things to so many different people. As “Roadrunner” director Morgan Neville told Salon’s Alli Joseph, “I think with Tony, I mean, he was so complicated, but one of the things I came to realize was in many ways, his flaws were also his superpowers.”

So, for those looking to lean into the dawn of fall and start building a repertoire of top-tier comfort foods, here a rundown of some of Bourdain’s most comforting dishes to enjoy on a cozy night in. From his many books and cookbooks to his numerous cooking show appearances and his travel shows like “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain has a deep bench of recipes to his name.

Take your pick of these and be certain that your recipe will turn out perfectly.

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Mushroom soup

This dish is a true exercise in simplicity. With only 6 ingredients (plus salt and pepper), the soup is so much more than the sum of its parts. Now, if you’re not a mushroom fan, maybe steer clear of this — just because the flavor is deeply, distinctly mushroom-y. There’s nothing superfluous here, either, so the flavor comes through so cleanly. Swap in vegetable stock instead of chicken if you’re aiming to keep it vegetarian, use oil instead of butter to make it vegan, or omit the sherry if you’re not looking to use alcohol in your cooking.

No matter which pivots or customizations you make, this soup is a real winner.

Turkey matzo ball soup

Swapping the traditional chicken for turkey is a welcome change that helps to slightly elevate this incredibly classic dish. Don’t skimp on the fresh herbs; they add a real brightness and freshness to the soup. Bourdain uses chicken fat here, but you can totally swap in oil or butter if you don’t want to use (or don’t want to go out and buy) chicken fat.

You might raise an eyebrow at the seltzer, but don’t! It helps add such heft and buoyancy to the matzo balls.

Meatloaf with mushroom gravy

Meatloaf, the quintessential mid-century offering, gets a slightly update with this immensely tender, super-flavorful version with the creamiest mushroom gravy you’ve ever had. The meatloaf has all the usual subjects, while the gravy packs shallots, tons of mushrooms, veal stock and heavy cream into a velvety, rich gravy.

As Bourdain himself puts it, “My mom’s meat loaf is inarguably better than yours, but this is not my mom’s meat loaf recipe. This one is an amalgam, intended to evoke all the important meat loaves in my life—and there have been many.” Add this one to your lineup and anyone at your table is sure to be pleased.

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Roasted chicken

As many have said, the true measure of a cook is how he or she makes a roasted chicken (or an omelette). As Bourdain puts it, “everybody should know how to roast a chicken.”

This is a traditional recipe that harnesses the power of fresh herbs, lemon and butter, as well as some wine, stock and parsley for extra moistness, color and flavor. Pair this with some roasted vegetables, a starch (maybe a scalloped potato?) and a simple pan sauce for a truly special meal.

Braised veal shanks (osso bucco)

While sourcing veal shanks might be bit tougher than finding some produce or more readily available proteins, you will thank yourself once you make this dish. Immensely, fall-apart tender with stunning flavor and texture, this is the kind of braised dish you would sink into at a restaurant; making this at home allows you to quite literally sink into your couch as you enjoy a bowl, diving into the flavor and the richness of the dish. This is a beautiful dish no matter what you pair it with, but if you do opt for a risotto and gremolata, you’ll really be doing yourself a favor by making a genuinely top-tier restaurant-worthy dish at home.

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Rage against machine learning: Lessons from the Luddites in an era of exploitative technology

The dictionary definition of “Luddite” broadly refers to “one who is opposed to especially technological change.” Although the dictionary also mentions that Luddites were a real 19th Century movement, this is not the main way in which people use the term. If a person is a Luddite in the modern age, that supposedly means they are a hard-headed reactionary irrationally frightened by technology. While the rest of the world enjoys computers, smart phones, televisions and the other benefits of technological progress, the Luddite is stereotyped as a grouchy stick in the mud, equivalent to someone’s grandpa complaining about TikTok and kids these days.

“Yes, I am a Luddite. I am a proud Luddite.”

Yet who were those real-life 19th Century Luddites? It turns out, they weren’t fatuous technophobes, as the pejorative insult “Luddite” would lead us to believe, but keen observers of the labor trends of their time, which has interesting implications for our current moment of ChatGPT bots that can write complex prose with the push of a button and artificial intelligence (AI) being injected into everything possible, often with mixed results.

Sit-down strikes revolutionized the labor movement — could it happen again?

The history of the Luddites and its relevancy to the present is expounded in “Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech,” a new book by Los Angeles Times tech columnist Brian Merchant. He proudly refers to himself as a Luddite because, as “Blood in the Machine” makes clear, the actual Luddites were intelligent activists seeking a better life for the working class against the greed of the super-rich.

Luddites objected to technology that, as they saw it, stole from the poor and cheated consumers, while enriching the wealthy.

Named after the legendary weaver Ned Ludd, who was said to have destroyed two stocking machines in 1779 in a fit of rage, the Luddites were English textile workers in Nottingham, North West and Yorkshire between 1811 and 1816. Observing that industrialists were replacing workers with automated machines, they rejected the arguments that this constituted “progress.” After all, machines usually produced inferior products and threw thousands of men out of work; they harmed consumers and workers alike. The only beneficiaries of automation were the handful of businessmen at the very top of the socioeconomic pyramid.

Luddites had no problem with technology for its own sake. They objected to technology that, as they saw it, stole from the poor and cheated consumers, while enriching the wealthy. Sound familiar?

Their solution goes a long way to explaining why the term “Luddite” is now an insult: They rode around England destroying machines that industrialists were using to throw working class people out of their jobs. In the process, they incurred the wrath of the most powerful men in England’s business and political classes, all of whom were determined to make an example out of the Luddites so that others in the working class wouldn’t emulate their example.

They rode around England destroying machines that industrialists were using to throw working class people out of their jobs.

It was not enough to merely arrest the Luddites. After four of them – led by a man named George Mellor — ambushed and assassinated mill owner William Horsfall, the hammer came down hard. Luddites were rounded up, shipped off to penal colonies and, in many cases, executed. All of this was done publicly. Before long, members of the public got the message: The Luddite movement was dead, resistance to automation was taboo (at least for now) and the name of the Luddites was forever dragged through the mud.

As AI threatens to put millions out of work and automation continues to take away jobs, the Luddites’ ideas are more relevant than ever. Perhaps just as importantly, the original Luddites are more deserving than ever of historical rehabilitation. In a sense, Merchant’s book is therefore a three-pronged endeavor: It is primarily a fascinating step into England as it existed two centuries ago, one that is immense fun for fans of history; afterward it is a cry of protest of contemporary conditions, echoing the themes of the Luddites themselves; and finally it is an attempt to do justice to the destroyed reputations of impoverished, decent people who were not backward technophobes. The actual Luddites were, if anything, ahead of their time.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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“Their plight is our plight to some extent.”

Would you self-describe as a Luddite?

Yes, I am a Luddite. I am a proud Luddite. I do not see any tension between calling myself a Luddite and being a tech columnist by trade, for example. I think that if we understood what a Luddite was truly about, then a great many of us would be Luddites, in fact.

I agree. You profile many individual stories in this book. Did you feel a sense of obligation to the original and now deceased Luddites, to rehabilitate their image after they’ve been effectively defamed for the last two centuries?

Absolutely. In fact, the road to this book was through a piece I wrote for Vice in 2014 called “You’ve Got Luddites All Wrong.” When I first started digging into the story, what really struck me was just how we have completely mischaracterized their struggle. Their identities and what they were fighting for had been all condensed into this derogatory epithet that just lingers on as kind of a bad word in modern times.

“Their identities and what they were fighting for had been all condensed into this derogatory epithet.”

So I would say yes, one of my animating goals was to really offer a window into the travails, insecurities, anxieties and economic plight that these cloth workers, these proud, skilled workers were facing. I did that by going up close and personal with them as much as I could, trying to relay their very resonant anxieties about the future, when someone like George Mellor — who we follow as kind of the lead Luddite throughout the book — hearing him talk about his concerns about the way technology is being used against him, about the way that the future is being shaped by interests that do not have him in mind, by seeing the rise of inequality and enclosure of common lands, all of these things just have such direct resonance today.

So I really, really put front and center this aim to rehabilitate the Luddites. Not only that, but also to remind everybody that their plight is our plight to some extent.

In many ways, Mellor seemed like a prophet. What are your thoughts on the relevance of his observations on contemporary conditions? There is one quote that stands out: “Unless the toilers of England rise and strike for their rights, there’ll soon be neither rights nor toilers. I’ve looked into this thing further nor you, an’ I can see the signs o’ the times. The tendency’s all one way.”

Yes, Especially that last part. It is something that is constantly echoing in my own skull. The tendency is all one way, and what he means by that is he has seen exactly the manner to which automated machinery is being put to use, who it’s being used by. And that is by factory owners who are using automated machinery to chiefly maximize profits for their own gain at the expense of others. One of the important things to know about about the time that this was taking place, and one of the reasons that it works so well as a means of understanding the way a lot of these different forces of technological development and capitalism and social struggle all intersect, is that in the Luddites’ time, it was a lot clearer.

“Luddites may have been the last group to see technology in the present tense.”

They had not been taught for decades and decades that technology equals progress, that innovation is inherently good, or any of these things. David Noble, the historian of automation, says that the Luddites may have been the last group to see technology in the present tense. What they saw was a small elite group of people using the capital that they had access to, the power that they had access to through connections from building factories, and organizing labor in a way that seemed grim, to say the least. They were basically organizing the first factories and using those machines to push down wages, to generate profits that would be only enjoyed by that relatively few group of people, and ruin the reputation of their trade by churning out shoddier and cheaper goods.

And it was something that was happening on a local scale that was very obvious, right? If you had a smallish town that the main industry is cloth production, and you’ve done your job just like your father’s done it, and your grandfather’s done it, and your grandfather’s father always — you get the point — and all of a sudden somebody says, “Well, you know what? I can use this machine to stack six stories, one to top another, fill it with these machines, and if I maximize this production using these machines, then no one else is going to be able to compete. They’re going to have to offer lower and lower wages.”

And that’s exactly what happens. And to the Luddites, they were looking at the moral dimension of this as well, saying, “What is happening? They’re stealing our bread.” And it wasn’t for the greater benefit of the community. It was so one person could enjoy more profits, and they saw that as a moral violation.

It wasn’t like, “Oh, look at that innovator down the road.” It was like, “That person took my work. That person that I can point to is using these machines and child labor and unskilled labor to run them.” And the machines still need people, but they don’t need a skilled operator, perhaps.

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So what George is talking about when he says “the tendency is all one way,” he’s identifying the victors of that equation if there’s no contestation, if there’s no protest to it, so those factory owners, are they going to be the ones who profit mightily at the expense of everybody else? It’s going to create a gulf of inequality. People are going to be made to suffer. There’s going to be a lot less of a premium on community life, on having taken pride in work, in craftsmanship, and all of these things, and basically one class is going to get crushed by another.

And since then, if you’re talking about automating machinery, the tendency has absolutely all been one way. And we’ve seen this from the Industrial Revolution on through Taylorism at Ford, when they found new ways to increase the production at the expense of workers, on through today, where our tech titans today are some of the richest people that have ever lived. So yes, George Mellor was right. The tendency was all one way.

I would like to segue to artificial intelligence and what that means for workers. I’m thinking about the writers strikes in Hollywood, which recently protested in part to limit the use of AI in Hollywood. (Disclosure: Salon’s unionized employees are represented by the WGA East.) Is there a message there from the Luddites? And what about other unions, like the ones you described that are concerned not just about automation, but for instance, with COVID-19 at Amazon Warehouses?

Yes, the Luddites provide a tactic and they provide a way of rethinking the moral dimensions to technological development. The writers’ strike is really interesting. This is, honestly, this is such a great week for the book to come out, because a lot of the book is about a lot of the misery caused by the early automation and the factory bosses who wielded it against workers and the people who kind of got ground up in the gears.

The Luddites’ battle, while powerful and popular and illuminating, was ultimately unsuccessful. So to have the book come out on a week when the Writer’s Guild has emerged victorious in many ways with their new contract that has strong protections against AI, it’s really great to see this positive note and this positive demonstration of what is essentially modern-day Luddism.

“That refusal, that sort of aggressive denunciation of this particular use of AI, was basically Luddism.”

I’ll explain why I think that’s the case. When the writers sat down at the bargaining table, many months ago at this point, it was a sort of a tossed off demand that they thought the studios were going to accept immediately that they don’t use AI to create original scripts. When the studios balked at that and said, “No, no, no, how about we just meet every once in a while to discuss technology, we’re not going to commit to this,” they realized that that’s what the studios at least wanted, to be able to have hold the threat of doing this. They wanted not necessarily to replace scriptwriters with generative AI, but they wanted the option to do so. They wanted the leverage. They wanted maybe to generate scripts and then pay writers a lesser fee to sort of cut costs or to break down the writer’s power.

The Hollywood studios are always looking for ways to do that, and often technological disruption is used as an excuse to lessen wages, to break down power. So when the writers said, “No,” they drew a red line, and they said, “No, you the studio, we will not accept the studios using AI to create scripts on their own terms,” that refusal, that sort of aggressive denunciation of this particular use of AI, was basically Luddism.

And then we saw how popular and inspiring that tactic proved. It rallied not only SAG-AFTRA – who was also worried about AI being used to create replicas of the actors to be used in perpetuity and things like that — but I think everyone around the country who’s feeling this anxiety, that AI’s going to creep up on them, and managers are going to introduce it into their workplaces, whether to replace them or to sort of diminish their jobs or degrade their conditions, there is this real anxiety, and then you see these, the polling around the writers’ strike, and it’s like 72% supported the writers over the studios, according to Gallup. I think that that’s a big reason why they were so successful. It is because they were fighting a proxy battle, basically. Luddites on one end and sort of the modern day factory bosses who wanted to use automating technology against them [on the other].

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And by doing Luddism, they not only won important protections, but they illuminated this struggle in a way. They painted a way forward, a way they made it okay to protest technology, in a way that’s not always the case especially in this country where we do value innovation so much. I think they made it clear that technology is something we can navigate the use of in our workplace. We can be democratic about it. We can refuse exploitative uses while embracing others.

Because that’s the other part, the contract they won, they said, if anyone’s going to use the AI, then it’s the writers themselves. They get to decide on what terms and how they use it. That keeps the studios from being able to use it as an exploitative tool, and it puts it in their hands and makes it one that is potentially good and useful and creative. Just like the Luddites, the writers did not hate the technology. They were familiar with the technology. They knew how it would be used, and now they’ve won the right to use it in a way that benefits them.

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Katy Perry’s housing battle sparks bills to protect elderly homeowner rights

Katy Perry‘s housing battles with California homeowners have inspired change but not in the way you might think. The pop star’s legal contention with an elderly homeowner has made way to a national legislative push to slow down the sales of homes owned by elderly homeowners.

Alongside Perry’s partner and “Peppa Pig” co-star/voice actor, Orlando Bloom, the couple purchased a $15 million eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom Santa Barbara mansion from Carl Westcott, the 84-year-old founder of 1-800-Flowers and husband of Kameron Wescott of “The Real Housewives of Dallas” fame. Westcott is contesting the sale of his home to Bloom and Perry because he alleged that he could not consent to the sale. He said that he was suffering from mental decline and had just had major surgery and was under the use of opiates when he told the home to Perry, Semafor reported.

Following the sale and the legal dispute, Westcott’s family has proposed the Protecting Elder Realty for Retirement Years Act, or for short, the Katy PERRY Act. On a website for the bill, it states that it would address the “risks of elder financial abuse, especially as it relates to property and real estate sales and transfers.” It stipulates that after the sale of a personal residence, there is a “72-hour cool-down period” that allows the person over 75 to “rescind the agreement without penalty.”

The bill apparently has supporters from both sides of the political aisle and local and state legislatures across the country who are said to be introducing versions of the bill soon.

Judge told lawyers to “keep the volume down” after Alina Habba “practically yelled” at him: reporter

Judge Arthur Engoron, the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York, had to instruct attorneys to lower their voices after an outburst from Alina Habba, an attorney for the former president.

Habba became incensed about a number of perceived issues with the judge, including the fact that he is holding a bench trial rather than a jury trial. Engoron explained that he was holding a bench trial because “nobody asked for” a jury trial on Trump’s legal team.

Habba also accused the judge of improperly valuing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort at $18 million, even though Engoron in a summary judgement finding that Trump and his companies had persistently committed fraud cited a Palm Beach County official’s assessment that the property was worth between $18 million and $27 million between 2011 and 2021.

Engoron rejected Habba’s characterization.

“Mind-blowing”: Legal experts warn that lawyer’s incredible “screw-up” is “very ominous” for Trump

“He said, ‘hang on. I never said that.’ And he didn’t say it. His ruling that came down last week said that there have been valuations for property appraisal that put it at that” price, New York Times reporter Suzanne Craig, who was in the courtroom, recounted on MSNBC. “It doesn’t mean it’s worth that. And I just found that that really struck me because that’s what Donald Trump and some of his lieutenants do. They say a lie and they repeat it over and over and over. And Eric Trump, the other night, was out tweeting about that valuation saying the same thing. And so the judge — there was a very heated back and forth and vocal back and forth between the two of them at the end of her remarks. And her audience was an audience of one. It was Donald Trump.”

Engoron, who reportedly waited until Habba had concluded her rant to speak, then requested that the attorneys lower the volume.

“She gets up and was very animated, was practically yelling to the point where, after she was done, the judge said to the next lawyer that came up to keep the volume down because it was so loud,” Craig continued.

Experts mock Trump whining it’s “unfair” he doesn’t get jury after lawyer “messed up the paperwork”

“And she was saying that Letitia James, she had run simply ‘to get Trump’ and this was just all about this vendetta that Letitia James has,” she added. “And then she started in on repeating some of the claims that they’ve already gotten into trouble for.”

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Catherine Christian, a former assistant Manhattan district attorney, told MSNBC that the Habba’s performance in the courtroom amounted to a “press statement” rather than a legal defense and warned that there could be consequences for repeating false claims in court.

“In court, there is a professional responsibility, [you can’t] make arguments that you knowingly know are not based in law and facts,” she explained. “You just can’t make that. You can make arguments, you know, all of us who have tried cases could step on that line. But if you know for a fact that it’s not based on law and facts, you’re not supposed to make that. So, she might be dealing with issues after this trial. So, hopefully, she is getting paid well.”

about the Trump trial

Experts mock Trump whining it’s “unfair” he doesn’t get jury after lawyer “messed up the paperwork”

Former President Donald Trump on Monday complained that it was “unfair” that he is facing a bench trial after his lawyers failed to request a jury trial.

Trump sat through the first day of his Manhattan trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit on Monday and repeatedly lashed out at James and Judge Arthur Engoron to reporters at the courthouse during breaks.

“We are not entitled to a jury, which is pretty unusual in the United States of America. I think it’s very unfair that I don’t have a jury,” Trump told reporters after Monday’s session ended.

“Mind-blowing”: Legal experts warn that lawyer’s incredible “screw-up” is “very ominous” for Trump

But Engoron told Trump and his legal team in court on Monday that the reason he is holding a bench trial is that “nobody asked for” a jury trial on the former president’s legal team.

Legal experts called out Trump’s complaint.

“Will someone – anyone – please inform him it’s because his lawyer messed up the paperwork?” tweeted attorney Bradley Moss.

“Let’s be clear: Trump can only blame his own lawyers for this bench trial versus having a jury trial. He can’t blame the judge or even the NYAG. This is all on his defense team,” argued MSNBC legal analyst Katie Phang.

Legal experts: Trump’s unhinged attack on judge in court shows he “realizes he’s going to lose”

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal questioned whether it was a “competence issue” by Trump’s legal team.

“I have no idea whether this was an intentional, purposeful decision by Trump’s legal team to waive his right to a jury trial or not, because with Trump and his team, it’s hard to know where incompetence ends and where actual strategy begins,” he told MSNBC.

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Even on Fox News, host Jessica Tarlov pointed out that “it also seems that [Trump] doesn’t—and this has happened to him before—have a top-notch legal team with him.”

“He has the one lawyer who he had to pay in advance because he stiffs everybody,” she said on Monday’s edition of “The Five,” referring to Trump’s $3 million payment to defense attorney Chris Kise. “Then he has Alina Habba, who gives a great cable news hit but it seemed that she forgot—or just, I don’t know what happened—to check the box saying that they wanted a jury trial and then Donald Trump is complaining to the cameras and on Truth Social that it is un-American to have a trial without a jury when his own crackpot team asks for that.”

Trump lawyer Alina Habba in an interview with Newsmax rejected the criticism from legal analysts, arguing that it would not have been as simple as checking a box.

“I have to address this one common misconception in the press, and unfortunately it just keeps getting repeated, which is that we had this great option to have a box checked for a jury. No, we didn’t have that. That’s not how this works. They brought it under Section 63(12), which is a very narrow, not appropriately used section of the law, which is for consumer protection,” Habba argued.

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It’s unclear whether a jury trial would have been available under New York Executive Law 63(12), the statute under which the case was brought and some legal experts believe it would not have been, The Messenger reported.

But New York attorney Andrew Laufer, who has represented former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, argued that it was a “big mistake” by Trump’s legal team not to seek a jury trial.

“This was a huge error on the part of the defense team by failing to request a jury,” he wrote. “It virtually negates any hope of a defense verdict. The only realistic shot the defense has is if the plaintiff fails to meet their burden under the law – prima facie case. That’s not going to happen. Trump will lose and lose big. This isn’t an appeallable issue since Trump was afforded a reasonable opportunity to request a jury trial. Again, this isn’t a criminal case. Trump’s remedy would be to sue his counsel for legal malpractice if the verdict goes [against] him.”

about the Trump trial