“Normal people are repulsed by Trump”: Independent voters recoil after Trump is hit with indictment

A growing number of voters who previously supported former President Donald Trump are looking at other options after his indictment last week.

Randy Marquardt, the chairman of Wisconsin’s Washington County, where Trump garnered his largest 2020 vote, told The Wall Street Journal that a fierce debate broke out at a recent get-together between two members of the local GOP.

“It got ugly and people eventually went their separate ways to head home,” he told the outlet. “The other guy argued that Trump came with too much baggage. But there are still quite a few people who are all in with Trump.”

Marquardt, who voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections, said he thinks it is time for the party to move on.

“I appreciate what he did and was pleasantly surprised by how conservative he was and how he kept his promises,” Marquardt said. “But there is just something about him that ignites the other side. It can’t be overcome.”

“This is the worst I’ve seen”: TV networks bail on Trump’s “tired” and “recycled” post-arrest speech

Despite Trump’s belief that his indictment may have stoked a fire of support for his most fervent allies, a CNN poll released last week showed that 62% of independent voters approved of the indictment.

The WSJ’s John McCormick interviewed numerous voters and found opinions sharply divided ahead of the 2024 Republican primary.

“The party should avoid Trump and find a younger and fresher candidate,” 73-year-old Dallas lawyer David Sherwood, who voted for Trump two elections in a row, told the outlet. “I don’t think Trump can win because he has too much baggage. He has good policies, but an abrasive personality.”

Sherwood feels Trump’s felony charges have shifted his opinions “a little bit” because he considers it to be a distraction to the former president’s campaign.

Cyndi Tendick, a 30-year-old self-described moderate Republican from Phoenix, Arizona, said she is “looking for someone who can come in and work the middle.” She feels Trump is “more drama than necessary, and he would not be able to get anything done.”

However, Tendick also thinks the indictment is “a bunch of B.S.” and feels Manhattan prosecutors should look to more relevant and serious crimes. “There is so much other stuff going on, way worse than he did,” she said.

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Cassi Carey, 59, said she wants “someone I can actually vote for, rather than vote against.” Carey, who lives in suburban Milwaukee, is enthralled by the prospect of a second presidential election between Joe Biden and Trump, believing the former to be too old and the latter to be too polarizing.

Josh Olson, who did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, said he doesn’t plan to give his vote to the now-indicted Trump in 2024 — unless Democrats nominate a candidate more liberal than Biden. The 34-year-old Huntersville, North Carolina resident said that Trump’s indictment didn’t make much of a difference in his distaste for the ex-president. “A lot of us normal people are repulsed by Trump already, whether he was indicted or not,” said Olson.

“He’s just too caustic,” said Kevin Welch, 59, of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, though he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I liked some of the things he did for this country, but the division that he causes, because of the words he sues, creates a lot of tension.” Welch said he would vote for Trump again in 2024, however, because he dislikes Biden even more.

“How many other human beings get charged for paying off a mistress?” Welch said of the indictment, which he feels is a “ridiculous waste of time and government resources.”

about Trump’s indictment

“Oh, please”: Critics scoff at Clarence Thomas’ defense of secret billionaire-funded luxury trips

Under fire after reporting offered a detailed look at his decades of billionaire-funded luxury vacations, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas claimed Friday that he was “advised” by colleagues not to report personal hospitality gifts from friends, a story that drew immediate derision from lawmakers and legal analysts.

In a statement responding to ProPublica‘s reporting, which shined additional light on trips bankrolled by billionaire real estate mogul Harlan Crow, Thomas acknowledged joining the GOP megadonor and his wife on “a number of” family trips over the past two decades but insisted that he was told such hospitality “from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable.”

“I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines,” said Thomas, who in 2011 amended 20 years of financial disclosure forms after failing to disclose income that his wife, Ginni Thomas, received from the right-wing Heritage Foundation and other organizations.

Thomas claimed at the time that he had a “misunderstanding of the filing instructions,” an excuse that watchdogs found highly implausible.

On Friday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., scoffed at Thomas’ explanation for declining to disclose his many luxury vacations, specifically criticizing the justice’s assertion that those involved with the trips had no business before the court.

ProPublica reported that Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who has helped drag the U.S. judicial system to the right, was among the guests of one Crow-funded trip that Thomas attended.

“Oh, please,” Whitehouse tweeted in response to Thomas’ statement. “If you’re smoking cigars with Leonard Leo and other right-wing fixers, you should know they don’t just have business before the court—their business IS the court.”

Mark Joseph Stern, a legal writer for Slate, added that the justice’s statement “fails to account for Thomas’ alleged use of Crow’s private jet for his own personal travel, presumably because it cannot possibly be squared with the disclosure guidelines in effect at the time.”

ProPublica reported that Thomas’ trips included multiple flights on Crows’ private jet and rides on his superyacht—none of which the justice disclosed. The investigative outlet noted that “Thomas has even used the plane for a three-hour trip.”

“On Feb. 11, 2016, the plane flew from Dallas to Dulles to New Haven, Connecticut, before flying back later that afternoon,” ProPublica revealed. “There are no reports of Thomas making a public appearance that day, and the purpose of the trip remains unclear.”

The 80 or so trips to hunting resorts taken by Scalia set the stage for the Thomas billionaire extravaganza.

The path to secrecy was illogical claims of “personal hospitality,” a trick the federal judges of the Judicial Conference just shut down.https://t.co/RJPEFuy2r3

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) April 7, 2023

According to The Washington Post, Thomas “has reported receiving only two gifts since 2004″—a bronze bust of Frederick Douglass, which came from Crow, and an award from Yale Law School.

After the Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that Thomas “had accepted expensive gifts and private plane trips paid for by Harlan Crow,” the justice “appears to have continued accepting free trips from his wealthy friend,” the newspaper reported Thursday.

“But he stopped disclosing them,” the Times added.

On Thursday, Stern and fellow Slate court writer Dahlia Lithwick argued that by failing to report gifts from Crow, Thomas “broke the law, and it isn’t particularly close.”

“The best argument in his defense is that the old definition of ‘personal hospitality’ did not require him to disclose transportation, including private flights,” the pair wrote. “This reading works only by torturing the English language beyond all recognition. The old rule, like the statute it derives from, defined the term as hospitality that is ‘extended’ either ‘at’ a personal residence or ‘on’ their ‘property or facilities.’

“A person dead-set on defending Thomas might be able to squeeze these yacht trips into this definition, arguing that, by hosting Thomas on his boat for food, drink, and sightseeing, Crow ‘extended’ hospitality ‘on’ his own property. But lending out the private jet for Thomas’ personal use? Come on. There’s no plausible way to shoehorn these trips into the old rule—which quotes the statute verbatim—even under the most expansive interpretation imaginable.”

Following pressure from Whitehouse and other lawmakers, the Judicial Conference of the United States—the policymaking body for federal courts—clarified its disclosure requirements surrounding “personal hospitality.”

The updated regulations state that disclosure exemptions do not include “gifts other than food, lodging or entertainment, such as transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation”—like a private jet.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in an interview with The Lever on Thursday that articles of impeachment against Thomas “need to be introduced” in response to ProPublica‘s revelations.

“If no one’s going to introduce it, I would certainly be open to doing so and drafting them myself,” said the New York Democrat. “I think this has gone far, far beyond any sort of acceptable standard in any democracy, let alone American democracy.”

The man who saw Trump coming: Wayne Barrett warned us decades ago

As the first former U.S. president in history has now been arrested (on, oh, 34 felony charges of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to hide damaging information from voters before the 2016 election), it’s the perfect time to remember Wayne Barrett, the investigative journalist whose keen eye on public corruption naturally led him to scrutinize Donald Trump.

For all he did to expose corruption, largely in the pages of the Village Voice, Barrett deserves much more recognition in New York than he has gotten. Over some 40 years, he energetically and meticulously covered misdoings by politicians and public figures, so a nod to his work could go nearly anywhere. For his early warnings to the public about a certain young, brash real estate player, it would be especially fitting to see it on Fifth Avenue, perhaps on the west side of the street, directly across from the architectural monstrosity of Trump Tower.

One can learn much about political dealmaking in New York in the late 20th century in “Without Compromise: The Brave Journalism That First Exposed Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the American Epidemic of Corruption,” a collection of Barrett’s investigative article published after his death in 2017, prefaced with essays by people who knew and worked with him.

Now that the twice-impeached, disgraced former president has been indicted (or “INDICATED,” as he proclaimed on Truth Social), we are reading again about Trump’s history of terrible behavior, from his merely boorish and gauche default mode to the pathetically self-serving (using a fake voice to try to get press coverage); to the relentlessly racist (being sued for racial discrimination, “birtherism,” “very fine people”) to the misogynistic (“face of a dog,” “horse face,” and many other sexist insults) to his pathological inability to tell the truth (30,000-plus lies as president) to the flat-out criminal (falsifying business records, conspiring to overturn election results and dozens of specific claims of sexual assault or harassment).

Trump will be hit with more indictments “in pretty rapid succession”: MSNBC’s Glenn Kirschner

With an unhinged person like Trump, it’s good to get such a recap because it is all truly difficult to keep up with, which we now understand to be the point. But more stories that describe Trump’s historical assault on our aesthetic sensibilities, our civic life and our democracy should at least offer a hat-tip to Barrett’s early warnings about the future sociopath in chief.

A must-read in the collection is Barrett’s “Like Father, Like Son: Anatomy of a Young Power Broker,” the first of a two-part series published by the Voice in January 1979, which takes a close look at Trump’s political dealings in securing a West Side site for a new convention center and in replacing the old Commodore Hotel at Grand Central Station.

Somehow, Trump hears that Barrett is researching him and calls him to let him know that he knows. He then agrees to interviews, during which he alternately tries to seduce the journalist with offers of a nicer place to live and threatens him with a lawsuit. Barrett notes that, for Trump, “every relationship is a transaction.”

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It’s also in that article that Barrett describes how Trump inherited his father’s political connections (Fred was tight with Mayor Abe Beame’s political machine) and used public money to make a fortune without putting up a dollar of his own: “Like his father,” Barrett writes, “Donald Trump has pushed each deal to the limit, taking from it whatever he can get, turning political connections into private profits at public expense.”

Describing Trump’s willingness to say, at any given moment, whatever suits him best, Barrett writes:

In his interviews with me, Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that the firm was an awesome force in the industry. He also claimed that his convention center and hotel would be the largest in the country. They will not be. Real estate entrepreneurs do their own advertising, and Trump has a way of doubling or shaving every number when it suits him.

From wildly misstating the size of the crowd at his inauguration to the 17 charges of tax fraud charges on which two Trump companies were recently convicted, we all now know more than we want to about Trump’s reflexive pattern of avoiding the truth whenever that strikes him as beneficial.

“Real estate entrepreneurs do their own advertising, and Trump has a way of doubling or shaving every number when it suits him.”

Barrett didn’t limit himself to the go-go Trump of the 1980s and beyond (he published an unauthorized biography, “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth,” in 1991). He also cast his observant eye on the doings of one Rudy Giuliani, a longtime adversary, friend and ultimately groveling servant of Trump’s

Everyone who, for whatever reason, still feels some admiration “America’s Mayor” should read “The Yankees Cleanup Man,” Barrett’s 2007 look at how Giuliani, then a leading candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, had a longtime hands-out relationship with the New York Yankees. As noted in the book when reminded more than a decade later of this article documenting how he had helped himself to Yankee freebies and memorabilia, including World Series rings, Giuliani reportedly grew irate all over again about “fucking Wayne Barrett.” (That quote came in handy as a blurb for “Without Compromise.”)

Barrett would no doubt have been gratified to see the indictment of Trump for falsifying business records, with more charges almost certain to follow. But it’s not as if the courts and juries have not already found a number of Trump’s organizations and associates guilty of a veritable slew of misdeeds: from his fined and dissolved charity to his bogus university, his fraud-happy real estate organization and the various convictions of a number of his enablers and hatchet men.

Were he still with us, Barrett would well recognize the man who ran a “Lock Her Up” campaign and micromanaged the Department of Justice while in office, and who now whines about justice being “weaponized.” He would also recognize the man who attempted on multiple fronts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and now complains of “Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

Barrett would no doubt be especially gratified that Trump is first facing the music in New York, the city they shared. (Another New York case, a civil suit against Trump on the battery and defamation charges brought by E. Jean Carroll, is likely to go to trial soon.)

“Without Compromise,” stands as a fitting tribute to the work Barrett did to inform the public in the city he loved. To be fair to his work the monument could perhaps be placed outside City Hall, since Barrett exposed corruption on both sides of the political spectrum, which in the New York of the ’70s and ’80s was dominated by Democrats. (Including Donald J. Trump, at that time.)

But if anyone wishes to honor Wayne Barrett while sticking it to the guy who has spent his life enriching himself at the public’s expense while calling the free press “the enemy of the people,” that spot on Fifth Avenue would be perfect.

After all, Trump once suggested to Barrett that he could get him a place there. Maybe that day has come.

from Salon on Trump’s indictment

Expelled Tennessee Democrat: GOP threatening to cut off local funds if I am reinstated

One of the Tennessee Democrats who was removed last week by the Republican-dominated state House said Sunday that GOP lawmakers have threatened county officials with funding cuts in an effort to deter them from voting to reinstate the expelled representative.

“I would be honored to accept the appointment of the Shelby County Commission,” former state Rep. Justin Pearson said of the local body that is set to meet on Wednesday to decide who will fill the empty seat until a special election is held. Pearson told NBC News on Sunday that he intends to run in the special election triggered by his widely condemned expulsion, which stemmed from his participation in a gun control protest on the state House floor following a school shooting in Nashville.

The Memphis Democrat said he has “heard that people in the state legislature and in Nashville are actually threatening our Shelby County commissioners to not reappoint me, or they’re going to take away funding that’s in the government’s budget for projects that the mayor and others have asked for.”

“This is what folks really have to realize,” said Pearson. “The power structure in the state of Tennessee is always wielding against the minority party and people.”

Late last week, Shelby County Commissioner Erika Sugarmon told local reporters that members of the body are “being threatened by the state to take away funding, needed funding to run our schools, to run our municipalities.”

“This is about bullying people into submission. And enough is enough,” said Sugarmon. “We’ve got to stand for something or fall for everything. And we’ve been bullied by the state for too long now.”

It’s unclear whether Pearson has enough support among the 13 Shelby County commissioners to win reinstatement ahead of the coming special election.

Mickell Lowery, the chair of the commission, said in a statement Sunday that “the protests at the state Capitol by citizens recently impacted by the senseless deaths of three nine-year-old children and three adults entrusted with their care at their school was understandable given the fact that the gun laws in the state of Tennessee are becoming nearly nonexistent.”

“It is equally understandable that the leadership of the state House of Representatives felt a strong message had to be sent to those who transgressed the rules,” said Lowery. “However, I believe the expulsion of State Representative Justin Pearson was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods. I also believe that the ramifications for our great state are still yet to be seen.”

“Coincidentally, this has directly affected me as I too reside in State House District 86,” he continued. “I am amongst the over 68,000 citizens who were stripped of having a representative at the state due to the unfortunate outcome of the State Assembly’s vote. Therefore, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners will consider the action to reappoint Mr. Justin Pearson to his duly elected position to represent the citizens in District 86 for the State of Tennessee House of Representatives in a special called meeting on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 1:30 PM.”

Rep. Justin Jones, a Nashville Democrat who was expelled along with Pearson for showing solidarity with demonstrators on the state House floor, reportedly has the support of a majority of the Nashville Metropolitan Council members expected to convene Monday to vote on the removed lawmaker’s reinstatement.

Jones warned last week that Tennessee House Republicans could refuse to seat him and Pearson if they are reappointed or if they win a special election.

In his NBC appearance on Sunday, Jones said the resounding national response to his and Pearson’s expulsion makes clear that the Tennessee GOP’s “attack on democracy will not go on unchallenged.”

“The Tennessee House Republicans’ attempt to crucify democracy has instead resurrected a movement led by young people to restore our democracy, to build a multiracial coalition,” Jones said. “We will continue to fight for our constituents.”

“Absolutely insane”: Greg Abbott vows to pardon sergeant convicted of killing BLM protester

Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed to facilitate the pardon of Daniel Perry, an army sergeant convicted of fatally gunning down a racial justice protester at a 2020 Black Lives Matter rally in Austin.

Perry, 35, who is white, was convicted Friday by a Travis County jury in the murder of Garrett Foster, who was also white.

Perry was indicted in 2021 and was also charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and deadly conduct, per CNN.

Perry, who was also working as an Uber driver in 2020, tweeted that he “might have to kill a few people” on his way to work, subsequently revving his car into a crowd of protestors.

Foster, who was pushing his fiancée’s wheelchair, approached Perry’s car while legally holding an AK-47 rifle. Perry proceeded to shoot Foster four times with his .357 Magnum pistol, later admitting to police that Foster had not pointed his weapon at him.

“I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me,” Perry said.

Foster was protesting the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Abbott appoints cop indicted for misconduct during George Floyd protests to police regulatory agency

Following the conviction, Abbott wrote in a Saturday tweet that he was “working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.”

“I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review,” Abbott’s statement said. “I look forward to approving the Board’s pardon as soon as it hits my desk.”

I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry. pic.twitter.com/HydwdzneMU

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 8, 2023

Travis County District Attorney José Garza called the governor’s comments “deeply troubling.”

“Make no mistake, without intervention from the Governor, the defendant’s conviction would be reviewed by both state and federal courts who will examine the record to ensure that no legal errors were made at this level and that the evidence supported the conviction,” Garza said in a statement.

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“Absolutely insane,” tweeted Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. “Less than 24 hours ago Daniel Perry was convicted by a jury of murder—after he shot a protestor point-blank during a BLM rally blocks away from the state Capitol. Greg Abbott says he is working to pardon Perry one day later.”

Keith Boykin, political commentator and former White House aide to Bill Clinton, called Abbott’s staunch support of Perry evidence that “‘Law and order’ is a lie. It’s open season for racism in America.”

Daniel Perry murdered 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster. A jury convicted him on Friday. But Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott plans to pardon him because he killed a Black Lives Matter protester.

“Law and order” is a lie. It’s open season for racism in America. https://t.co/QIvOyufx2n

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) April 9, 2023

Former Travis County criminal court judge David Wahlberg called Abbott’s seeking of a pardon “outrageously presumptuous.”

“I think it’s outrageously presumptuous for someone to make a judgment about the verdict of 12 unanimous jurors without actually hearing the evidence in person,” he told the Austin American-Statesman.

Wendy Davis, an attorney and former Texas Senate representative, called Abbott’s decision “nothing more than a craven political maneuver.”

“Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another,” she tweeted on Saturday. “And it’s happening all over this country on a regular basis.”

This is nothing more than a craven political maneuver. Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another. And it’s happening all over this country on a regular basis. https://t.co/RqroNhbz0E via @statesman

— Wendy Davis (@wendydavis) April 8, 2023

about Greg Abbott

“Very strong evidence”: Bill Barr says Trump should be “most concerned” about documents case

Former Attorney General Bill Barr criticized the indictment of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan but predicted that there is a “good chance” that his former boss will be indicted for refusing to turn over classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Barr in an interview with ABC News’ Jon Karl on Sunday argued that Trump’s indictment on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in New York is “an unjust case” and an “abuse of prosecutorial power.” But, he added, “that’s not to say every legal challenge that the president faces is unjustified.”

“I’d be most concerned about the document case in Mar-a-Lago,” he said.

“He had no claim to those documents, especially the classified documents. They belonged to the government. And so, I think he was jerking the government around. And they subpoenaed it. And they tried to jawbone him into delivering documents,” Barr explained. “But the government is investigating the extent to which games were played and there was obstruction in keeping documents from them. And I think that’s a serious potential case. I think they probably have some very good evidence there.”

“Feels obstruction-y”: Experts say it may be “game over” after Trump aide gives DOJ key evidence

Smith’s team has collected evidence including emails and texts turned over by former Trump aide Molly Michael suggesting potential obstruction by Trump in the Mar-a-Lago investigation, The Washington Post reported last week. Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, who drafted a statement claiming that all sensitive documents were returned before the FBI discovered 100 more top-secret documents during the August search of Mar-a-Lago, was ordered to testify before a grand jury after prosecutors successfully pushed to pierce attorney-client privilege, citing evidence that Trump may have used Corcoran’s services to violate the law.

Barr predicted that there is a “very good chance” that special counsel Jack Smith will indict Trump in the case.

“It depends on how sensitive the documents were, but also what evidence they have of obstruction and games-playing by the president and whether he directed people to lie or gave them information that was deceitful to pass onto the government,” he said.

“The president, unfortunately, has a penchant for engaging in reckless and self-destructive behavior that brings these kinds of things on him,” he added. “In many respects, he is his own worst enemy. I don’t think that’s the case with Bragg’s case. But certainly he has dug himself a hole on the documents. And also on the January 6th stuff. That was reckless behavior that was destined to end up being investigated. So it doesn’t surprise me that he has all of these legal problems. He was warned about this before he left office.”

Despite criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Barr acknowledged that Trump’s personal attacks on the prosecutor are neither “appropriate or wise.”

Trump notoriously “lacks self-control and he frequently gets himself into trouble with these midnight tweets and other things,” he said. “The thing with the baseball bat, for example, was very imprudent of him to do in the middle of the night, and, you know, these are gratuitous comments and aren’t particularly helpful.”

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Barr predicted that Trump’s legal woes could stretch through the 2024 Republican primaries, which will boost Trump among the GOP in the process.

“I also think though, as far as the general election is concerned, it will gravely weaken Trump,” he added. “He is already, I think, a weak candidate that would lose. But I think this sort of assures it.”

Trump also faces a potential indictment in Georgia’s Fulton County over his efforts to overturn the election in the state.

“Georgia has bothered Trump personally for a while, possibly because there are tapes of him telling officials to find votes,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN last week. “Some of his aides are very worried about the documents investigation that the Justice Department has. It’s a clearer-cut issue, and a federal judge overseeing grand jury matters showed in a recent ruling that she’s taking the government’s claims seriously.”

about the Mar-a-Lago probe

“Evidence of prejudice”: Experts break down the case against Donald Trump

On Tuesday and in the days since, the American news media responded to the spectacle of Donald Trump’s indictment and arraignment with a maelstrom, a breathless narrative that kept repeating how this was “history is in the making” and these are “uncharted waters.”

However, part of this narrative was also that somehow Trump’s arrest and arraignment still did not live up to box office expectations for the symbiote that is the Donald Trump mainstream news media “if it bleeds it leads” entertainment machine. On his Apple TV+ show, comedian Jon Stewart described this perfectly as an “epic f**king media fail” where, “Only our media, those cloistered, short attention span, own-ass-spelunking defenders of democracy, find a president paying hush money to a Playboy model and an adult film star, and then cooking the books to help himself win an election, underwhelming and boring.”

What America desperately needs now is to gain some much needed critical perspective by taking a deep collective breath and then locating these last few tumultuous weeks in a much larger context. In an effort to better understand this unsettled time with Trump’s first arrest and arraignment, questions of “justice”, what this all means for democracy, and how the likelihood that he will still be the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, I asked a range of experts for their insights and interventions.

“He is visualizing burning things and blowing them up”: How Trump may be coping with being caught

These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.

Steven Beschloss is a journalist and author of several books, including “The Gunman and His Mother.”

Some pundits insist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s 34 felony charges are “flimsy,” which makes little sense to me given that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has successfully prosecuted other white-collar cases like this involving fraudulent business records intended to cover up underlying crimes. But I also think this misses the deeper point—that if you believe the law should apply equally no matter how much money or power the defendant has, then the case must be brought. Personally, I care less whether this indictment leads to conviction than the fact that Donald Trump is finally being held to account.

“Only by finally holding Trump accountable for his criminality will we ever be able to reassert the rule of law.”

I am also hopeful that Bragg’s indictment will cause other prosecutors to find their courage in the other pending cases. Only by finally holding Trump accountable for his criminality will we ever be able to reassert the rule of law, discourage anti-democratic authoritarians bent on grabbing power by any means, and repair our democracy.

As encouraged as I am that the slow-grinding wheels of justice are finally in motion, it remains a painful fact that tens of millions of Americans were—and apparently still are—willing to ignore his criminality and let him gain control of the levers of power. We need to better understand and fix this continuing danger to the body politic.

Cheri Jacobus is a former media spokesperson at the Republican National Committee and founder and president of the political consulting and PR firm Capitol Strategies PR.

Trump’s somber and even slightly fearful demeanor as he was arrested, fingerprinted and arraigned, belies the bluster and bravado to which we are accustomed and on which a ratings-greedy media have become, sadly, dependent. He thought he’d escaped justice once again, as evidenced by his Truth Social post just days earlier, where he praised the grand jury. Trump’s ashen, drawn face at arraignment told the story.

The Manhattan DA’s grand jury indictment of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts is erroneously viewed as the first domino on what many hope is a slew of indictments in Fulton County, Georgia by Fani Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Department of Justice for the January 6 insurrection and the stolen classified documents case. Hopium is addictive, and I share that hope. However, there is no basis to assume the Manhattan DA’s indictment of Trump has any impact whatsoever on what AG Merrick Garland may or may not eventually do, or what happens in Georgia.

Garland appears to act only when forced, such as when the January 6 Committee findings (which he should have had on his own) light a fire under him or other law enforcement pushed him to sign off on an FBI “raid” of Mar-a-lago to retrieve stolen top secret and classified documents from Donald Trump.

Trump supporters also need to be reminded that neither Democrats nor the media indicted Trump. Nor did a judge. Trump was indicted by a grand jury of his peers.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University, co-founder and North American editor of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime, and author of “Criminology on Trump.”

I was pleased to see Trump criminally indicted for “anything” for the first time especially since he has been a habitual offender for 50 years violating all types of business, consumer, and tax-related laws not to mention his organizational and intergenerational rackets established by his father Fred Sr. and enjoyed disproportionately by Donald and his siblings to lesser degrees. In turn, like his dad before him, “Teflon Don” reproduced these business scams or rackets and expanded them. Presently, the illicit proceeds from the Trump criminal enterprise are enjoyed mostly by Boss Trump and his adult children Don Jr, Eric, and Ivanka. Call these garden varieties, or bread and butter, white collar crimes as Alvin Bragg referred to them. Whatever you call them, the indictments brought by the People of New York against Donald Trump were quite appropriate regardless of whatever weaknesses may lie in successfully navigating a prosecution between the jurisdictional fields of federal and state laws.

That stated, I am much more interested in the forthcoming criminal indictments from Fulton County and from the DOJ as the prosecutions of these political crimes by the former president and his cronies against the citizens of the U.S. are integral to the very survival of U.S. democracy as we have known it — for better and worse — since post-Reconstruction.

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There is a slew of misreads or errors that concern me by the public, news media, and others.

In socially-mediated and post-truth America where the lines between fiction and reality have been blurred on television, in American politics, and in our everyday lives, what probably concerns me most is the magnification of all of this by the mass media’s captivity to its own centrist ideology of journalistic balance and neutrality that plays into and reproduces the political status quo, contributing further to the many problems of representative democracy, public policy, and the rule of law. As I elaborate on in my book, “Criminalizing a Former President: The Case of Donald Trump and the Missing Struggle for a New Democracy,” people are either struggling to obliterate (on the “right”) or to save (on the “left”) our old form of democracy. In comparison, not enough people are pursuing to change or transform our representative-democratic system of minority rule into a new representative-democratic system of majority rule. This entails both an extensive discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of our present constitutional arrangements, and then, an amending and reconstituting of the U.S. Constitution grounded in a new and expanded Bill of Rights dependent first and foremost upon the guarantee of economic rights for all Americans.

Lawrence Rosenthal is Chair and Lead Researcher of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, which he founded in 2009. He is the author of “Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism.”

It became a cliché during the 2016 presidential campaign that media coverage of Donald Trump—inspired by his utter disregard for the conventions and norms of electoral politics — was worth about 2 billion dollars, if he, like other candidates, were obliged to purchase TV advertising to the same end.

Here we go again.

Complete with the relentless analogy to TV’s OJ/Bronco addiction—hours of roadway and jabber with an ounce of action—Tuesday’s coverage of Donald Trump’s arraignment was a media hog’s dream.

From the start, there has been a widespread misunderstanding of Trump and his transgressions. The ready-to-hand, and mistaken, analogy was to Ronald Reagan: Trump was already “Teflon Don” by the summer of 2015. But in reality, outrage to liberal America did not slide off Trump. Rather, they clung to him and —incomprehensibly to Blue America — made him stronger.

Does this change now that Trump’s transgressions have become matters of criminal prosecution? So far, the odds don’t look good. The Republican Party shows no signs of pushback to Trump’s “it’s just political persecution” mantra—nor to any of his attacks on the officers of the court involved (and their families!), nor to his January 6-like encouragement of his base to militant action. Beyond the MAGA true believers in Congress and state legislatures, the reason for the party’s silence is simple, if profoundly cynical: No one wants to be the next Liz Cheney.

At the level of the Republican base, passions and rhetoric are, as ever, escalating, though the resolve to action may be tempered. Trump’s political calculations are all about defending his MAGA 30% of the party as the cornerstone of a strategy to win the party’s presidential nomination. Unlike his rival Ron DeSantis, who talks about nothing but his “woke” fixations, Trump’s campaign, even before his indictment, has been all about his legal “persecution” and defense of the January 6 rioters. Nothing stood out as remarkably during January 6 at the Capitol as much as the rioters’ extraordinary, posing-for-the-camera, sense of impunity. That’s gone. The likelihood of a coordinated action at that level is slim. Lone-wolf events, however, are another matter.

Shan Wu is a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to Attorney General Reno. Shan is a frequent contributor the Daily Beast and appears regularly as a legal analyst in the media.

It was more profound than I expected to see him in a criminal courtroom as a defendant. It was like a reality check as to how disrupted our previous norms have become. The years of frustrated efforts to seek accountability for Trump, his allies, and the Republican Party’s growing extremism created a universe in which accountability only existed as something permanently just out of reach. While being charged in a criminal case is not the same as being convicted it is unquestionably a real step in being held accountable and one that felt far more consequential to me as a former prosecutor than the two impeachments.

But even that reaction on my part shows how the universe of what we expect has changed – impeachment even during the Clinton presidency still loomed as a nuclear type of option one whose deterrent power was so great that even as tenacious a politician as Richard Nixon resigned rather than face it. But no longer. Impeachment now just feels like one more partisan fight. Maybe that’s all it ever was and all it ever should have been thought about as.

There is an unconscious baked-in favoritism given to the rich and powerful – particularly rich and powerful white males – that many in media and even in the public don’t realize impacts them. Weighing the relative importance of the multiple potential criminal cases – Georgia Fulton County, the Mar-a-Lago documents, Jan 6 insurrection, and New York Manhattan hush-money case – reflects this kind of unconscious bias. Sure some of it comes from Republican spin pundits but so much of it comes from media and general public that are not trying to actively spin.

Characterizations of the Manhattan case as an accounting error case or case that is not strong enough to bring against a former President is evidence of prejudice that prosecutors should only bring exceptionally strong cases against exceptionally powerful people. That is wrong, obviously. Cases should be brought based on the evidence in the case, not based on who is the potential defendant. As a former prosecutor, I’ve seen that kind of attitude – which really arises from being afraid to lose a high-profile case or fear of being embarrassed by high-powered well-funded defense counsel – create the dual standard everyone pays lip service to being against but don’t realize when we are perpetuating it ourselves.

There is also a lot of misogyny lurking within the constant reference to salacious details and references to Stormy Daniels as a “porn actress” as though that somehow diminishes the criminality of the case. It doesn’t.

The Manhattan case brought by Bragg is sound. It will certainly be subject to aggressive legal attacks by Trump’s team both pre-trial and during trial, but for Trump’s team once they get to a jury the case will be a hard one to win. It’s factually simple and Trump will make a very unpopular defendant in Manhattan. The constant knee-jerk remarks that the prosecution theory is a “novel” one – most of the people saying that don’t really understand the legal underpinnings of this very common charge in New York state. The assertion that it is “novel” is in many ways a function of how this is all so unprecedented.

about this Trump’s criminality

Anti-trans advocates keep contradicting each other

It should be self-evident from the tone and tenor of the “discourse” (read: hysteria) over trans people right now that what we’re experiencing is a moral panic, in the same vein of the Satanic panic of the 80s. For one thing, the whole shebang is being led by unhinged QAnon-adjacent actors like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and the “Libs of TikTok” lady, people who ignore actual real world sexual abuse in order to indulge in blood libel-style accusations painting LGBTQ people as pedophiles. For another, the supposed “whistleblowers” the right trots out are reminiscent of the sort of shady grifters that always step forward during these moral panics, such as the liars who claimed they used to be Satanists, the “ex-gays” or people who say embryos scream during abortions.

Seriously, Jamie Reed, the lady they’re using to make false accusations at gender-affirmation clinics, is saying kids “identify” as helicopters. One wonders if she’s testing how much nonsense people will swallow because they want their prejudices affirmed so badly. As Irin Carmon of New York magazine recently detailed, anti-trans activists are using “the same playbook” they used to stigmatize abortion by “fomenting moral panic around the most vulnerable and co-opting progressive tropes to help fuel it.”

Sadly, there’s been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are ready to ignore all the red flags. It’s all because they want so badly to write “just asking questions” columns that imply, falsely, that the left is taking this trans acceptance thing “too far.” (Seriously, Carmon’s colleague at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, even went so far as to elevate the “kids are helicopters” lady.) Gosh, they wonder, have people actually considered the downsides of letting trans kids play sports or use bathrooms? Or, in their eagerness to be inclusive, are liberals a little too eager to let kids access gender-affirming care?

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This hand-wringing never slows down, despite repeatedly being debunked by people who actually understand the issue. That alone should be a sign that we’re in midst of a baseless moral panic. But, in case anyone needs more evidence, the recent case out of West Virginia that the Supreme Court (wisely, for once) declined to take up should prove it.

There’s been robust traffic for centrists and concern trolls who are ready to ignore all the red flags. It’s all because they want so badly to write “just asking questions” columns that imply, falsely, that the left is taking this trans acceptance thing “too far.”

Becky Pepper-Jackson v. West Virginia exposes how, in their mindless hysteria, two of the biggest arguments anti-trans people make contradict each other. The case in West Virginia is straightforward: Pepper-Jackson is a 12-year-old transgender girl who sued the state over a law barring her from running track. Laws like this are cropping up across the country, and every time, the people behind them deny that bigotry towards trans kids is the impetus. Instead, they claim to be “concerned” about protecting cis women from having to compete with “biological males,” whose puberty allegedly makes them so big and strong that no one assigned female at birth could ever hope to compare.

MAGA sinks GOP trolling to genocidal lows

This silliness of this argument was laid bare by Pepper-Jackson, who is an enthusiastic runner, but, as the Washington Post delicately put it, “not among the top performers.” As part of her gender-affirming care, after all, Pepper-Jackson is on puberty blockers and estrogen hormone therapy. As her court filing indicated, she “has not experienced and will not experience endogenous puberty.”

If people were objecting to trans girls on sports teams in good faith, they should feel relieved by this outcome. Turns out they had nothing to worry about in the first place! The standard gender-affirming care that trans girls get renders the issue moot by taking puberty out of the equation. If anything, trans girls are at a competitive disadvantage, because they’re competing against girls who do have pubescent growth spurts. But no, the same people who claim to be “worried” about trans girls going through puberty turn right around and “worry” about trans girls not going through puberty. Because they definitely don’t want kids having access to those puberty blockers, either.

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Last week, there was another supposed “whistleblower” elevated in the Free Press, a reactionary outlet masquerading as investigative journalism, run by Bari Weiss. Emily Yoffe reported on a divorced mother, “Caroline,” who alleged that she had been “bullied” into allowing her child to get a puberty blocker, which she then blamed for the child’s poor grades, weight gain, and mental health issues. Even reading the original story, however, it was fairly easy to see that Caroline’s actual grievance with the clinic was not how they rendered care. She was just mad that they accepted her child’s trans identity. Throughout, she speaks as if being trans were merely a phase, grousing that the clinic didn’t eject her child from the consultation so she could make decisions about their body without them present.

This is an important debate between serious people. It’s sadly getting hijacked by unserious people.

Soon, however, a person claiming to be the kid in question (with good corroborating evidence) popped up on Twitter, denying Caroline’s account and the “false perceptions that my mom has about the doctors and clinic.” They attributed their poor grades and mental health troubles to the isolation of the pandemic. Research shows that gender-affirming care improves mental health outcomes, something the scare stories about puberty blockers tend to ignore.

But what is truly telling about all this is how the anti-trans concern trolls flat-out ignore how puberty blockers are also the solution to their other stated concern: Trans girls will have a hormonal advantage over cis girls in sports. Of course, not if they’re on puberty blockers!

MAGA Republicans are obsessed with harassing drag shows — here’s why

On Thursday, President Joe Biden’s administration proposed a rule change to Title IX meant to clarify some of these questions. On one hand, schools would not be allowed to categorically bar trans athletes from competing. On the other hand, the rules would give schools leeway to handle the situation on a case-by-case basis, by assessing the child’s age and medical treatment to determine if they do have an unfair advantage or present a safety risk to other kids.

This rule change was welcomed by some trans advocates and criticized by others. However one feels about the rule, however, reading the actual details suggests this change is less about politics and more a direct response to the rise in localized controversies that ensnare actual children. The Pepper-Jackson case shows that, with proper medical care, a trans kid’s participation in a school sport is unlikely to be a threat to fairness or safety. The Biden directive should be read as legitimizing those kids’ spots on the team. But, as many activists pointed out, bad faith readings by transphobic schools could be given too much wiggle room to deny kids a chance to play, even if the kids are receiving hormones that address any real world questions.

This is an important debate between serious people. It’s sadly getting hijacked by unserious people, such as Substacker Matt Ygelsias, who didn’t seem to read past the headlines and were taking their potshots.

This kind of rhetoric is both deeply silly but also deeply dangerous. As Carmon warned in her New York Magazine piece, centrist pundits who validate anti-trans talking points like this only serve to launder what is, in fact, vicious bigotry against an incredibly vulnerable minority. “Don’t be a mark” for this “coordinated, well-designed plan” run by the religious right to strip people of basic human rights, she pleads. Sadly, there’s too much attention and money to generate by winking at anti-trans bigotry. As long as that’s true, far too many supposed “liberals” are going to ignore this call for basic human decency.

What a precursor to ChatGPT taught us about AI — in 1966

“I’m alive-ish.”

This is what Microsoft’s virtual assistant, Cortana, was programmed to say in 2014 when a user asked if it was alive. Fast-forward to today, as the public is grappling with the social and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence technologies like ChatGPT, which is now integrated into the Bing search engine. While the advanced capabilities of these virtual assistants — particularly their ability not only to mimic but also to contribute — have caused some to worry that humans are turning too much over to machines, history reveals that we aren’t likely to pump the brakes in any significant way. In fact, looking at how people have interacted with robots in the past, we are more likely to welcome, collaborate and even accommodate what James Vlahos refers to as “quasi-beings” going forward. And that could have implications — both good and bad — we can’t yet anticipate.

As Weizenbaum later wrote, “I had not realized … that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”

While it wasn’t until the 2010s that virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa achieved widespread adoption, ChatGPT precursors track all the way back to the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1966 at MIT, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum designed Eliza, a natural language processing program that could convincingly mimic short human conversations. In one famous application, the program could imitate the back and forth of client and therapist. Eliza was a pattern-matcher and ran on scripts, but nonetheless, users swooned. Eliza was available to students and colleagues to try, including Dr. Sherry Turkle, who has since spent her life studying the social effects of machines. Eliza ran on a mere 200 lines of code, but was compelling enough for Weizenbaum’s secretary to ask him to leave the room so she could speak privately with it. Although Weizenbaum himself designed it as a parody of the doctor-patient relationship, users were keen to speak with Eliza, ascribing it with intelligence and compassion, even though its designer made clear that it had no such capacities.

In practice, Eliza was rigid, not intuitive. New interaction patterns had to be programmed into Eliza. The eagerness of users to ascribe life-like capacities to Eliza was an important finding, in direct contrast to what Weizenbaum had hoped to show. As Weizenbaum later wrote, “I had not realized … that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.” In short, users breathed life and personality into a rudimentary chatbot that could not learn or generate. As Dr. Sherry Turkle explains, “We create robots in our own image, we connect with them easily, and then we become vulnerable to the emotional power of that connection.” This tendency of humans to read emotions, intelligence and even consciousness into machines is now called the Eliza effect.

AI chatbots learned to write before they could learn to think

In the intervening decades, many chatterbots (later shortened to chatbot) rolled out, including one named Jabberwacky that was the first to incorporate voice rather than text interaction. Released in 1997, it is still available to try under its new name Cleverbot. In the 20th century, the chatbot Mitsuki has had the most lasting power. Marketed as a virtual friend, Mitsuki was launched in 2005 and has remained accessible ever since. Recently, the bot was renamed Kuki. Millions of users interact with Kuki each month as a form of leisure and company. Some users have been doing so for years. Even though Kuki has improved over time, enhancements to these older technologies were incremental, not evolutionary as the more recent capacities made possible by large language models.

Broader use of virtual assistants/chatbots began in the 2010s, when Siri, Cortana and Alexa arrived. These virtual assistants could replace typed searches for anything from a recipe to a weather forecast. According to the Pew Research Center, by 2017 more than half of all Americans used digital voice assistants, mainly in their phones. Users can now look up from the screen, speak into the air and be “heard.” Voice assistants also condition users to the constant company of a listening device, able to be “woken” at any moment, while smart speakers like Alexa offer up a hub for the smart home, extending constant monitoring to the home as well.

Consumers acclimated to these now-common assistants quickly, making space for them by changing human practices. For example, users of Siri learn how to phrase things in ways that are easier for the AI to “hear” and fulfill. Approximately 40% of Americans use voice assistants, and while overall sales of smart speakers has started to level off, young adults are the most likely to rely on them. Once they become accustomed to voice as interface, users can become more impatient with typing.

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Users also often push the outer limits of the quasi-beings’ designs by seeking interactions the virtual assistants are not explicitly designed for — including declaring their love for the virtual assistants, proposing marriage, or chit-chatting about their days. These human cravings lay the groundwork for relations with chatbots that, due to the advances in machine learning that fuel them, seem more spontaneous, even more “social” than their predecessors.

Released by OpenAI first in 2018, ChatGPT offers an even wider expanse of conversational and interactional capabilities, mainly due to what is possible via generative AI. Generative AI does not wait to be programmed. Instead, it digests the human world using existing text and language, trains on that data, and synthesizes responses in real time, generating novel material.

ChatGPT is a giant leap from earlier text generators. Given its far superior simulation of human thinking, users are understandably fascinated and sometimes a little freaked out by its behavior and implications. In February of 2023, a new version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine was released that was enhanced by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. This new Bing worked like a chatbot, and raised eyebrows when the New York Times’ Matthew Roose got some unsettling results in response to his queries.

Writing about Eliza’s reception, Jake Rossen explains that in the 1960s, “it was a tantalizing flirtation with machine intelligence. But Weizenbaum wasn’t prepared for the consequences.”

Although Bing’s chatbot has now been altered for wider release, the wilder tendencies of its first release have added fuel to the growing attention to ChatGPT and its kin. In response to the quick succession of increasingly able chatbots, organizations and governments are wondering how to differentiate credible information from non-credible, how to entice humans to learn independently without relying on AI shortcuts, and where to draw the line between collaboration and human deskilling.

Situating these new entities in a lineage is especially important now that ChatGPT-4, Google’s Bard, and Baidu’s Wenxin Yiyan (“Ernie Bot”) were all just released. As chatbots arrive so fast that scholars and users alike scramble to make sense of their limits and potential, already, one pattern is clear: the range and sophistication of communication in which ChatGPT and its kin can successfully participate will mean that AI will be more broadly deployed. Rather than H2H (human to human) interactions, users will likely be more adept at H-AI-H (human to artificial intelligence to human) interfaces, in which we first practice or rehearse with them rather than one another. For example, companies like Replika and Anima currently offer romantic chatbots as an alternative (or supplement) to the awkward work of being intimate with other humans. Many human users tout the superiority of H-AI romance to H2H romance, citing the work and inconvenience of a human partner or lover. Given the growing impatience with and disdain for other humans that earlier devices have inspired, ChatGPT and its progeny may once again downgrade how humans value our own thoughts, our own words, and our own ability to be curious and come to conclusions.

Writing about Eliza’s reception, Jake Rossen explains that in the 1960s, “it was a tantalizing flirtation with machine intelligence. But Weizenbaum wasn’t prepared for the consequences.” As we now enter a stage of history in which quasi-beings are much more common and capacious, we remain deeply unprepared for the consequences, not only of their abilities but also our tendency to generously welcome and accommodate them, sometimes to our own detriment.

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“Succession”: Dearly beloved, the Roys cordially invite us to a wedding we won’t soon forget

Believing we’ll go on forever is one of the cruelest tricks humans play on themselves. Such a mindset seduces us into delaying tough choices, putting off the things we meant to do and say until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Deceiving ourselves that way is foolish; using that lie to string along our loved ones is pitiless.

“Succession,” for its part, has been upfront as to where Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was steering his family’s ship from the first season when the 80-year-old Waystar Royco CEO emerges from suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and trumpets his intent to remain on the throne.

Instead of establishing a succession plan, he continued taunting and goading his children into hating each other and despising him. It looked like it would go on that way ad infinitum. But nothing lasts forever.

All great series hit a point that firmly establishes the end has begun. Only “Succession” would be gutsy enough to hide that pernicious alarm in cake and champagne.

A “Succession” primer before its return

Sunday’s episode, “Connor’s Wedding,” doesn’t show any signs of Logan slowing down, including to honor his eldest son’s nuptials. Any day that ends in the letter Y and isn’t focused on Logan is just a day. And the day of his first-born’s wedding, he phones his youngest son Roman (Kieran Culkin) from his airport-bound limo inviting him to go with him Sweden to sweet-talk Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård). Ensuring Waystar’s sale to GoJo is locked down tight is more important than anything.

Roman, to his credit, is firm in his decision to stand with his oldest brother, and asks Logan if he’s going. “Mmm . . . we got him some, uh, Napoleon things?” Logan replies. “Napoleon and Josephine letters,” Kerry (Zoe Winters) clarifies. An exorbitant gift will have to do. Logan directs Roman to tell Connor (Alan Ruck) he’ll call him “when I have a minute.”

Brian Cox and Matthew Macfadyen on “Succession” (HBO)Then Logan directs Roman to fire longtime loyal counsel Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) at the wedding, since she’s going to be there instead of on the plane to Sweden. Logan tells his son to call him when it’s done.

All great series hit a point that firmly establishes the end has begun. Only “Succession” would be gutsy enough to hide that pernicious alarm in cake and champagne.

“I think it would be nicer coming from you. I mean you two, you know, you were close,” Logan says, spreading thick buttercream over the twisted relationship between his most senior female employee and the son who sent her unsolicited dick pics. Then Dad gets sharper. “I mean, you are with me. You aren’t just f**king me around!” Logan growls, adding, “We’ll make it tidy afterward. Just give her the word today.”

Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Karolina (Dagmara Domińczyk) greet Logan as climbs the stairs to his private jet. He lets them know that he’s icing Gerri and, since he’s in a mood, axing Cyd too, instructing Tom to stay on Roman to make sure he doesn’t punk out.

“You push Cyd, Roman knifes Gerri, all in a day’s work!” Tom chirps approvingly.

Business as usual.

But that’s the big joke, isn’t it? Not even giants can know when all mortal business will cease.

Throughout its episode “Succession” hits an array of thematic notes beyond the obvious concerning the Roys’ dysfunction and the callousness of the wealthy. “Connor’s Wedding” evinces this with the final demonstration of Logan’s arrogance. In refusing to indulge all manner of foresight beyond that which concerns profit, and his corporate legacy, he’s left his company imperiled. In messing with their personal lives, he leaves his children adrift.

The stunner, though, is the way Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod, push us into the endless deep right alongside Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman, and, Connor. Unbeknownst to Logan’s children and us, Connor and Willa’s (Justine Lupe) wedding would not be remembered for their exchange of vows. Instead it will be seared in their memories for the grimmest reasons.

First, Roman rolls into the pre-wedding reception ruing the position his father has placed him in. He’s left hating himself when he gives Gerri the dreaded “head’s up” and understandably, she shoots the messenger, rights herself and stalks off. Roman dutifully phones dad to report the murder, but it goes to voicemail.

Then, at long last and at such a late hour, the whelp nuts up. “Are you kind of just being s**tty with me?” Roman rants into a message. “Because your son is getting married and you can’t f**king keep expecting me to bend over you for, like, being c**ty so . . . I’m just asking, so uh, yeah, that’s the question: Are you a c**t? Gimme a buzz!”

Connor, in the meantime, is suddenly out of sorts about the wedding cake, referring to it as a “loony cake.” When Willa asks, Kendall explains that when Logan committed Connor’s mother to an institution, he fed his son Victoria sponge cake for a week to smooth things over.

Otherwise brothers and sister good-naturedly trade insults when Shiv’s phone buzzes – it’s Tom. She sends him to voicemail. Tom rings again, and she ignores him again. Then Connor comes in and happily reveals that Kerry told him Logan planned to drop by to wish him well, which is a lie. After he walks away, the boys send Shiv after their older brother to break the depressing truth.

Shiv departs, and Roman’s phone rings, and again, it’s Tom. “Hello, f**ky-sucky brigade, how can I help you?” Roman deadpans.

This is where the fun slams to a halt as death does what it does best, blindsiding us at the height of our revelry.

For a sense of how little of “Connor’s Wedding” is about Connor or the wedding, the call comes around 14 minutes and 30 seconds into an hour-long episode.

Alan Ruck and Justine Lupe on “Succession” (HBO)Armstrong constructs that scene and all that follow to take everyone by surprise and ensure maximum wreckage. Logan is hale and full of bluster in his limo on the way to his flight, giving no hint as to what’s coming. First Tom tells Roman Logan isn’t doing well, then says he’s non-responsive, then informs him they’re doing chest compressions. Tom advises them to get Shiv, then tell the boys he’s holding the phone up to Logan’s ear so they can say whatever final words they desire.

Culkin’s and Strong’s agonized panic is remarkable in the way it marries with the direction and dialogue. Armstrong’s script precisely captures the cyclone of terror, sorrow and fear that spins the brain when a person knows this is the last time they’ll speak to a loved one. If you’ve ever been in their situation, you know there is never another time when you’ll speak with more savage honesty or lie with so much love in your heart. You will demand the impossible and you will screw reason.

The children of this media god are small humans after all.

First Roman talks. “Hey, dad . . . I uh, I hope you’re OK? You’re OK. You’re going to be OK because you’re a monster. And you’re gonna win. Because you just, you just win and, uh, and you’re a good, you’re a good man, you’re a good dad. You’re a very good dad, uh, you did a good job . . . no, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”

Then he hands the phone to Kendall: “Hang in there, yeah? Um, it’ll be OK. We love you, dad, OK? We love you. I love you, dad. I do. I love you, OK? And, it’s OK. Uh, even though you f**kin’ I dunno, I can’t forgive you. But uh, yeah, I uh, it’s OK. And, and, and, and . . . I love you, uh. . .”

Then they remember Shiv, poor Shiv has no idea. The camera jogs along with Ken as he holds back snot and tears, doing his best not to alarm the carousing guests. He finds Shiv in the crowd, interrupting her bright socializing. A long shot tracks them as Kendall quietly ushers Shiv back to the room, capturing each second of her face falling as the force of the instant hits her. At first, she thinks the bad news is about her mom; later she admits that she wishes it were.

When Roman blurts out that Logan’s gone, handing Shiv the phone, her tearful squawk is heartrending. “No. I can’t have that?”

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The terrible splendor of all this is the means by which Armstrong uses Logan’s death to explode the landmines Logan set in his children’s paths in all the episodes, hours, and minutes leading to this, not caring that they would run over them. Counting on that, perhaps.

Whatever you’d call Roman’s imbalanced relationship with Gerri she took his side in past difficult passages. Not now. In a brief beat when they’re alone, he voices his sadness. “I’m a f**king mess,” he pleads, and all she can quietly offer as she walks out on him is, “Yeah. Room’s all yours.”

Shiv, too, is abandoned, with Tom at her father’s side instead of holding her hand. “Tom, is he even alive?” Shiv says when her estranged husband offers to hold the phone up to Logan’s ear, before uttering some of the saddest words she’s ever said: “Are you just being nice to me?” (Tom, for his part, knows he’s probably done for, and so is Greg.)

Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook on “Succession” (HBO)All that Shiv has in this moment of sorrow are a pair of brothers who would rip her to shreds on any other day. Connor doesn’t even have that and never did. “Oh, man. He never even liked me,” the dry-eyed failson says upon hearing the news. “Sorry. You know what? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I mean. I never got the chance to make him proud of me.”

Also, if Victoria sponge wasn’t ruined for all time before for Connor, it is now. Nevertheless, after talking it over with Willa, the two tie the knot anyway, allocating the appropriate level of importance to his absentee father’s demise.

Whatever mixture of adulation and loathing we hold for these people, Armstrong uses these details and notes to remind us of their raw vulnerability. Life lays them out the same as it does all of us, whether it happens by their father’s hand or the blow comes from an adversary they have no hope of defeating. The children of this media god are small humans after all.

In that way, the first shockwave brings Shiv, Kendall and Roman down to our size. The second rechecks our reality against theirs; one of the horrors of fresh grief is the way life goes on and how obscene that feels. As Shiv and Ken sit in a daze and Roman refuses to believe Logan is dead, the party boat pulls out of the harbor and Logan’s team calls them from a plane, letting them know they’re going to draft a statement.

Quickly the three decide to get out ahead of the leadership’s maneuvers and, with the help of Gerri and Hugo (Fisher Stevens), take a boat to shore, and pull together a statement they give to the press at the airfield where Logan’s plane lands. Shiv, for a beat or two, sinks into Tom’s arms and accepts his embrace before gently pushing him away.

“Are we going to be OK?” Roman asks Kendall. “Yeah. Yeah,” Ken replies warmly, “We’ll be OK,” as he rubs his baby brother’s back.

Then Roman, with all the love in his heart, puckishly spits, “You’re not going to be OK,” which Kendall lobs back at him, adding, “You’re f**ked.” “You’re totally f**ked,” says Roman, continuing the reassuring call and response of business as usual with the Roy clan.

New episodes of “Succession” premiere at 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO.

about “Succession”

Is a post-car future actually possible? Experts say yes — here’s how we could get there

If you live in the United States and commute to your job, there is a 91% chance that you do so via a personal vehicle — meaning, a car. While that is certainly an extreme level of car dependency, Americans are hardly alone in their affliction. In Cyprus, 85% are dependent on cars as their main transport mode, although the European Union as a whole has an average of 47%.

Reasons for high car dependency range from poor infrastructure planning to policies that deliberately favor roads. Yet the United States is particularly notorious for its over-reliance on cars, a trend that can be traced back to America’s central role in introducing those machines to the world and its own government’s pro-car policies — particularly, creating the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.

There is a price for all of this car usage, of course. For one thing, roughly 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from automobiles alone. And building road infrastructure means felling trees and destroying wild areas. Asphalt, with which most roads are paved, generates its own organic aerosol pollution, according to a Harvard study; the same asphalt then keeps cities hot at night in the summer, raising air conditioning costs in places like Phoenix. Worse, some American cities’ land use consists of as much as 14% asphalt, thanks to poor planning and low density.

If we want to live on a habitable planet in a hundred years, humanity cannot keep building cars and roads at the same pace that we have been. Environmentalists have been advocating for a shift to public transit and walking- or bicycle-oriented city planning for decades; and yet, in the United States, the necessary social and infrastructural paradigm shift clearly isn’t happening, as evidenced by how car-dependent we remain. Is a post-car future actually realistic, or a mere pipe dream?

Surprisingly, experts with whom Salon spoke say that it isn’t a utopian fantasy. There are clear ways we could transition humanity to a car-free — or at least, car-lite — existence without compromising on other quality-of-life facets.

While Americans overwhelmingly rely on cars to get around, Europeans have an infrastructure that mixes cars more robustly with alternatives like buses, trains, bicycling and even walking.

The most obvious path to a post-car future is investing in energy-efficient mass transit. Of course, that has already happened in cities like New York, where a minority of residents drive cars to work. Public transit requires “much less energy than driving around in our cars, but still requires substantial energy,” Dr. Kenneth Gillingham, a professor of economics at the Yale University School of the Environment, told Salon.

The trick to lowering carbon emissions, of course, is making sure that most of the energy used to power transit comes from green energy. While most energy generation in the United States comes from fossil fuels, that is slowly changing.

Should the energy for public transit “come from fossil fuels, which at least some of it would, then there would be some increases in emissions that would offset the emission reductions,” Gillingham added as a caveat.

Yet experts say it would not be impossible to create energy efficient mass transit system that — by not significantly adding to greenhouse gas emissions on their own — would reduce climate change as it replaces widespread automobile use. Dr. Lewis Fulton, Director of the Energy Futures program at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis, pointed to Europe as an example of how this might work — with qualifications.

“If there was efficient mass transit so that everyone can sort of theoretically get around, I would say [that] is pretty close to what is in place in Europe,” Fulton told Salon, where Europeans have managed to maintain a functioning society despite using cars far less often than Americans.

Yet Europe is still an imperfect example because even there, automobiles are so ubiquitous that they still consume a large chunk of transportation time. The key difference is that while Americans overwhelmingly rely on cars to get around, Europeans have an infrastructure that mixes cars more robustly with alternatives like buses, trains, bicycling and even walking. As such Fulton noted that the environmental situation in Europe is better than that in America because Europeans rely less on cars, which suggests that there are lessons from their experience.

“As long as we clean up our power grids, which is critical for everything we’re thinking of doing anyway to deal with climate change, transit will take a big bite” out of the problem, Fulton told Salon.

While ameliorating climate change is a big advantage of getting rid of cars, it is hardly the only reason to do so. Dr. John Renne, a professor of urban and regional planning at Florida Atlantic University, told Salon that his own research has found that car ownership creates a number of class and even racial barriers to social mobility. Indeed, Renne’s study, which was published last month in the journal Transportation Research Part D, found that “the poorest are cut off from job opportunities, schools, and other services especially in places where transit service quality is poor and walking and bicycling are unsafe,” Renne explained.

While it is impossible to know for sure whether class issues would be more or less severe in a hypothetical world without cars, “mobility that allows all classes to access jobs and services should create more economic opportunities for those with the least amount of money.” Renne said that a robust transit system dominated by “non-automobile” modes “should have benefits across the board to minority groups who may be currently excluded to accessing jobs and services due to a lack of access to a car.”

Beyond the class issues surrounding car-centric transit, building cities around cars cuts off access to many of those who are disabled. Indeed, cars are often onerous for disabled people; for instance, I cannot drive a car.

As wealth inequality spirals out of control, many Americans can no longer afford to drive

There is also a racial component to our dependence on cars.

“The status quo of a free urban highway system subsidizes people with means, allowing households with enough money to own and maintain a vehicle to use valuable urban land for free — expelling harmful externalities to nearby neighborhoods,” Dr. William H. Dietz of George Washington University’s School of Public Health told Salon by email, citing a recent paper. “Historical race-based practices and policies, including zoning, redlining, and siting, have placed lower income, marginalized, and minoritized communities in closer proximity to roadways and their many harms,” he added. “Poor people and people of color in these areas pay the hidden price for others’ road use in the form of traffic injuries, pollution-driven chronic illness and death.” Indeed, many studies attest to this.

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The implication of this is that people with less money will always be at a massive transportation disadvantage in societies that rely on automotive mobility. At the same time, any mass transit system created as a substitute for car reliance would have to account for other groups of poor people to make sure burdens aren’t unfairly shifted.

“Mobility that allows all classes to access jobs and services should create more economic opportunities for those with the least amount of money.”

“If everyone switched from driving to efficient public transit, this would mostly have rural/urban effects,” Gillingham told Salon. “Cars are tougher to replace in rural areas, so rural areas would be affected more (even if the public transit is efficient… you would still have to wait some amount of time for buses or trains).”

Facts like these underscore how the existing American transportation system is “inherently inequitable,” as Dietz put it.

“Economic mobility, opportunities for social and economic success, and health itself can be dependent on transportation access,” Dietz noted. Indeed, a 2015 Harvard study found that access to opportunities, measured as commuting time, was the strongest factor in determining whether someone can escape poverty.

“Poor access to public transportation is linked to decreased income and higher unemployment.”

Even if we can never entirely get rid of automotive vehicles, analyzing our species’ growing reliance on them illustrates some of the fundamental problems with how society is conducting itself.

“We need to constantly think about and question how we can do better for people and for the environment which supports life,” Renne told Salon.

about cars and culture

Does adding a wine cork to bolognese actually make it more tender? We investigate

Brooklyn Beckham, the nepo baby of former soccer star David Beckham and ex-Spice Girls Victoria Beckham, has officially abandoned his profession as a photographer to focus on being a young chef. He’s really leaning into his newfound career aspiration, and standing by one unconventional, albeit strange, cooking technique.

On Wednesday, Beckham took to Instagram to share photos of himself preparing a pot of what appeared to be bolognese sauce with a wine cork floating at the top. “Daddy day care,” Brooklyn captioned the photos, which were posted to show off his puppy in a crossbody sling.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqY3DQIJGhj/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=7caf9fb1-8fb5-4557-bc10-e8ad6260db84

Many keen observers (including us at Salon Food), however, were fixated on the loose wine cork. “Is the cork added flavour?” asked one curious follower. Similarly, another follower wrote, “Only here for the comments pointing out the cork.”

How long does that open bottle of wine last, really?

Beckham later defended his hack on his story, posting a screenshot of a Feb. 2016 article titled “Let’s Talk Food: Wine corks ensure more tender octopus” from Naples Daily News. Specifically, he cropped and highlighted the text that read, “The addition of wine corks added to the cooking liquid ensured a more tender dish.”

The full article, written by Doris Reynolds, focused on the preparation of octopus around the Mediterranean. In particular, Reynolds wrote that she has “found several recipes for octopus and was amazed that most of them included wine corks in the instructions.” There’s, of course, no mention of beef, veal or pork — the main meats in bolognese sauce.

Beckham’s hack certainly piqued our interest at Salon Food, which is why we did some extra digging to figure out whether it’s valid or just a bunch of baloney. To help us in our investigative pursuits is Celine Beitchman, Director of Nutrition at Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, who delved into the hack and shared some tips on how to safely incorporate it into your cooking.

“Most of the corks that are used in winemaking are produced in Portugal. And wine corks are naturally occurring substances. They’re wood and they come from a very special tree,” Beitchman said. “And I think, just historically, Portugal was one of the main sources to have it and it was a big part of their industry.”

That’s why so many old-school chefs in both Portugal and southern Italy add wine corks to their octopus because the natural enzymes in the cork draw out moisture from the mollusc’s tendons and help tenderize its meat. As explained by Pike Place Market’s Fresh Blog, an octopus must first be thoroughly washed and dried before it’s braised in a stockpot for 30-60 minutes, depending on its size. The braising process involves the octopus simmering in water, a cup of white wine, a pinch of salt, pepper, herbs and spices and your handy cork.

Despite the hack, the blog noted, “While proponents of the cork method believe adding a cork to the pot is key to tenderization, your safest [bet] is to frequently test the Octopus meat. Use a knife to pierce a tentacle every 15 minutes or so. You’ll know the octopus is tender when the knife easily goes in.”

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There are no recipes for using a wine cork to cook and tenderize meat, but Beitchman speculated that the hack “might have some mild effect if the meat is ground down really fine.”

“It’s all going to depend on how long the cork is soaking and how much liquid is there to allow the cork to infuse,” she added. “Because, if you look at the picture of Beckham’s Instagram shot, it’s like the cork is sort of floating on the surface. And when I look at that, as a chef, I’m not quite sure how that’s really infusing fully into the mixture.”

Beitchman also said that corks that are high in tannins — which form the basis of structure in red wines and add its bitterness, astringency and complexity — can possibly soften some of the muscle fibers in beef and pork. That’s why wines with high levels of tannins are commonly enjoyed with thick cuts of steak to help balance the fattiness of the meat and enhance its flavor.

So, does cooking your bolognese sauce with a wine cork really result in “a more tender dish”? There’s no clear-cut answer, but it doesn’t hurt to experiment and channel your inner chef in the kitchen. If you do decide to add a cork to your bolognese, Beitchman recommended using a cork that’s hygienic, sterilized and food safe. Avoid using synthetic corks or plastic corks.

about cooking hacks:

How to deal with chronically stubborn people

The United States has reached unprecedented levels of political polarization, and the trend seems to only be getting worse. Whatever bipartisan comity existed in the twentieth century seems to have largely evaporated; indeed, polling shows that Americans are even moving away from places where they feel their political views aren’t welcomed.

While the issue of polarization is certainly a social problem, on an individual level it may also reflect a phenomenon of American stubbornness. Individuality is as American as apple pie, and stubbornness may be an attempt to preserve one’s sense of individuality. Certainly few people like to admit to defeat or to being wrong — but some will go to the most extreme lengths imaginable in order to save their pride. Take, for instance, Donald Trump — who is currently in legal peril because his perennial stance that he only loses if the winning side cheats culminated in him attempting a coup after being defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Though Trump is one of the most conspicuous examples of stubbornness, he is far from alone. If you are reading this article, chances are that you have encountered at least one infuriatingly stubborn person in your workplace, home or friend circle — or perhaps you fear you yourself are the stubborn one.

Those struggling with stubborn people in their life may be apt to wonder what is happening psychologically that makes some people act as if admitting they are wrong is the equivalent of psychic death.

While most people have some degree of pride, and therefore will at least initially resist acknowledging error, usually those same people also have the capacity to be reasonable and humble out of logic, self-interest or both. Yet a substantial minority lacks even these rudimentary instincts. What ticks in the brains of the “never wrong” crowd?

What happens when a narcissist loses? Expect “rage” and “terror,” psychologists warn

Salon spoke with psychologists and psychiatrists about what is going on in the heads of the chronically stubborn. Notably, experts differentiate between the situationally stubborn and the pathologically stubborn — meaning people who maintain their position to prove that they are “stronger” than their opponents. The nature of this behavior is proof that something unhealthy is going on.

“You make the correct distinction between ‘normal human stubbornness’ and recalcitrance to an ‘excessive degree’ — or at least what psychiatrists such as myself concern themselves with, since distinguishing between health and disease is important,” explained psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee in an email interview with Salon. “This is because healthy personality features will be life-affirming, no matter their direction in the marvelous tapestry of human diversity and resilience.”

People who refuse to admit when they are wrong past the point of reason, by contrast, engage in maladaptive behavior that harms themselves and others. At that point, Lee notes, “it can be defined as pathology.”

Dr. Jessica January Behr, a licensed psychologist who practices in New York City, further unpacked the various diagnoses that can explain that kind of pathological behavior — in particular, personality disorders tend to be linked with stubbornness.

“When it becomes an immutable trait, this may fall under a diagnosable category,” Behr wrote to Salon. “People who meet criteria for Cluster B personality disorders such as NPD, Histrionic PD, or Antisocial PD may be more likely to display characteristic stubbornness, denial of fault/responsibility, and manipulation of facts to support a fixed belief.”

Of course, people who are not certified as mental health practitioners cannot diagnose a “never wrong” on their own, and it is often difficult to convince a stubborn person to sit down in a psychiatrist’s or therapist’s chair for an official diagnosis. This does not mean, though, that ordinary people can’t use effective techniques to figure out if someone else is being stubborn to a pathological degree.

“A healthy person has the mental stability and foundation to be able to admit it when one is wrong, and the importance of learning and responding to the truth will generally override any primitive drive to be ‘right’ all the time,” Lee explained. “This allows one to become resilient, resourceful, and responsive to the needs of the situation.” Those who disregard contrary evidence and cling to their professed beliefs for emotional reasons will display this through unstable behavior, including reacting with hostility to any outside information that challenges them. They will ultimately respond with “stubborn insistence, with doubling down, and in extreme cases — as one’s belief is increasingly threatened — with violence.”

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“Being aware of your perceived shortcomings and developing awareness around their origins can help protect against using anti-social behaviors.”

From a neurochemical perspective, “the psychological mechanisms behind ‘never wrongs’ include a complex web of defensive processes, most commonly the over-use of primary, or lower-order, defense mechanisms,” Behr added. “Primary defense mechanisms are developed in earlier periods of life and tend to involve the denial of reality. The most likely mechanisms at play in those who struggle to admit fault are denial, omnipotent control, idealization and devaluation, splitting and introjection.”

If all of this science jargon is intimidating, there is a simple way to break down its implications.

“The reality of an event or circumstance is so dangerous for the person’s psychic experience that it must be defended against to protect the integrity of the individual’s perception of reality,” Behr explained. “Therefore, pre-logical convictions are held, such as ‘If I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t real (denial)’ or ‘I can make anything happen by believing it (Omnipotent control)’ or ‘This object (person/idea) that I value could not possibly be fallible’ (idealization or a misinterpretation due to overidentification out of a desire for safety and security with negative aspects of another —introjection).”

Psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula added that “impulsivity may also play a role, which relates to executive functioning and an incapacity to stop the stubborn stuckness.”

Durvasula added that “stubbornness could be viewed as a form of perseveration, again, an executive function in the brain.”

If you know for a fact that you are interacting with an irrationally stubborn person, your situation is not hopeless. According to Dr. David M. Reiss, a psychiatrist and expert on mental fitness evaluations, the key first step is to manage your expectations — namely, accept that you are not going to convince this person to change their mind. If doing so was possible, it would have happened already. Instead you need to first anticipate how they will likely respond to your inconvenient truths, and then prepare yourself accordingly.

“Expect the person to be increasingly angry, punitive, hostile when confronted, especially if confronted with objective evidence that they cannot logically deny, but still must be denied on an emotional level,” Reiss told Salon. At that point, “protect yourself. When possible, disengage and exit the relationship. When disengagement is not possible, set limits and boundaries to whatever extent possible to avoid interactions with the person; and if interaction is not avoidable, while it may be extremely difficult, avoid emotional engagement as totally as possible.”

“Protect yourself. When possible, disengage and exit the relationship. When disengagement is not possible, set limits and boundaries to whatever extent possible to avoid interactions with the person.”

It is not your responsibility to be, as Durvasula put it, “an opinion missionary.” Instead, to quote Reiss, your priority is to “take stock of, check yourself, and check with those you trust, to see if you are overtly or covertly maintaining false hope that there will be some logical or some ‘magical’ positive solution to the situation. It is almost always unlikely, and very often impossible. The best to hope for is damage control.”

Finally, if you want to rise above the “never wrong” people in your life, the best way to do so is practice humility in your affairs. After all, since no person wants to be wrong, every human has the ability to act like a “never wrong.”

“This is where mental hygiene is important,” Lee wrote, referring to tips from her 2020 book “Profile of a Nation.” “The advice I regularly give to medical or law students as they go into ‘battle’ with disease or in defense of their clients is: ‘In an emergency, first check your own pulse.’ It follows the dicta: ‘Physician, heal thyself’ and ‘Know thyself.'”

Behr also said that old-fashioned self-awareness and humility have a useful place in keeping us from joining the “never wrong” crowd.

“What can help to protect against this is the awareness of our limitations, our vulnerability and sensitivities,” Behr wrote to Salon. “For instance, if we feel ashamed about our competence in a particular area, that may be a place where we risk being overly-defensive. Being aware of your perceived shortcomings and developing awareness around their origins can help protect against using anti-social behaviors.”

Finally, as Durvasula added, we can strive to create a society which recognizes the pathologies behind “never wrong” behavior — and strenuously works to not reward them.

“I think it would be great if decision-makers understood personality styles like narcissism a little better,” Durvasula wrote to Salon. “The problem with these styles is that their shapeshifting, lack of empathy and arrogance can result in short-term success, but in the long-term people like this will sink a company, country, organization. Simply knowing that — what it is, and to stop rewarding folks like this — is a start.”

Yet there is an ugly catch, namely, that the stubborn seem to get ahead in life too often.

“The problem is that folks like this run the world, so I don’t think they will line up to deny power to them because it means their heads may roll too,” Durvasula adds.

The answer may lie in education and teaching critical thinking, as Durvasula noted.

“At this point, the way the world is changing, timetables seem outmoded,” she said. “We need to teach children to think critically about media, leadership, anything but the more we use rote and repetition and standardized tests as an assessment. We are creating a group of people who can’t understand multiple positions and build mental flexibility.”

about narcissism

Jason Isbell’s “Running with Our Eyes Closed” and a marriage of two artists

“I’ll be your Emmylou and I’ll be your June / if you’ll be my Gram and my Johnny too,” the band First Aid Kit sing in their 2012 song “Emmylou.” The Emmylou of the title is of course Emmylou Harris and the Johnny, the legendary Johnny Cash. The June is June Carter Cash, the singer-songwriter and wife of Johnny for decades. But the Gram of the song is perhaps not so readily apparent; it’s Gram Parsons, who had a musical partnership with Harris, one which never fully developed into a romance, as many artistic pairings do.

“Do writers only like to get with other writers?” a high school poet asked me years ago in a creative writing workshop I was teaching. I must have brought in work by Sylvia Plath and mentioned her marriage to Ted Hughes. Or taught Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Shelley. Or Sandra Doller and Ben Doller, contemporary poets and partners who changed and combined their former last names (Miller and Doyle). Or any number of writers who did, in fact, get with other writers.

The impact of telling a story out of chronological order is that the past doesn’t stay buried, like trauma.

There’s the convenience factor. If you’re performing music, giving readings or mounting art shows, you’re going to be surrounded by other people doing and interested in the same. But there’s also the creative drive, which not everyone understands. “Running with Our Eyes Closed” the new Sam Jones-directed documentary now streaming on HBO, purports to be about musician Jason Isbell, who has eight studio albums with his band the 400 Unit — and it is: about his difficult Alabama childhood, “Almost Famous”-style big break, sobriety and the making of his 2020 album “Reunions.”

But the documentary is also overwhelmingly about marriage, Isbell’s long marriage with musician and band member Amanda Shires, exploring how the union has been fire-tested by addiction, the pandemic and the past. It does not delve into perhaps the darkest aspect of such an artistic union: how it might be tested by fame.

“Daisy Jones & The Six” and the appeal of the band that breaks their own hearts

“Running with Our Eyes Closed” begins at home, the Nashville home that Isbell and Shires share with their young daughter — and a whole lot of chickens, birds, the occasional skunk. Right away we know this isn’t a typical music documentary of beer-soaked bars and adrenaline-fueled late nights, although there’s plenty of that. There are also plenty of home videos: the musicians struggling to record themselves, to practice and write, to grow vegetables, to read their daughter to sleep.

Maybe for an artistic partnership to work it needs the domestic too, the ordinary moments without the heightened drama of performance, of persona, of fame.

Told in a non-linear style, we first see the couple happy, then we see them struggling. “F**king unbelievable,” producer Dave Cobb says after Isbell plays a new song for the band while Shires sits listening. She has notes on the lyrics. She starts her interview to the camera wearing large, dark sunglasses inside, as she does multiple times throughout the film (I think of Tori Amos, hiding behind long hair onstage; Kirstin Hersh taking her contact lenses out to perform — ways, perhaps, for a more introverted or private person to open up).

The impact of telling a story out of chronological order is that the past doesn’t stay buried, like trauma in general. And Isbell’s past is difficult: early addiction enabled by joining the Drive-By Truckers on tour when he was just 22. The band later fired him, as Isbell puts it in the documentary, for out-of-control behavior when he was drinking.

Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell in “Running With Our Eyes Closed” (HBO)That behavior also tests the couple’s marriage — Shires says she trusts him but not the addiction — as does “the way he gets” when making an album. That way appears to be tunnel-visioned, not seeing Shires, her contribution, or always considering the feelings of someone not simply a band member but a wife. At one point, the couple have a tense moment about her playing the fiddle too loudly. “I still don’t really think of it as she’s in the band. I need her to do different things and I think she needs to have a different role,” Isbell says. What does Shires think?

Can an artistic couple control which one of them makes it first or biggest or at all?

It’s a difficult balance, to work with someone all day, especially on an intense, personal creative project, and then come home to them too. But while the documentary starts with Isbell alluding to sleeping in a hotel and the couple not speaking (all the while recording an album), the pandemic has brought them closer together. Spending time together without the pressure of performing, just being a family in quarantine through the long months of the first part of COVID, was a boon to their marriage. Maybe for an artistic partnership to work it needs the domestic too, the ordinary moments without the heightened drama of performance, of persona, of fame.

We don’t see much of Shires’ past, not without Isbell; we don’t see much of Shires at all. She “has her own career,” one of the grandparents says but the film provides no details. Granted, this is a documentary about Isbell. His name is on the title — and, like the fictional Daisy Jones & The Six, on the band — and director Jones’ oeuvre has been centered on men, from documentaries about Tony Hawk and Wilco to music videos for Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons.

But to create a full portrait of a marriage, you need to have both people. And when one of those people is a star in her own right, it would be nice to hear her.

Shires started playing the fiddle as a child, joining the Texas Playboys when she was 15. As a solo artist, she has seven studio albums. The most recent, 2022’s “Take it Like a Man” was created after Shires had said she was giving up music, frustrated by the industry, including its double standards. Some of the songs on “Take it Like a Man” also dwell deeply in issues and anxiety about her very public marriage with Isbell, as does Isbell’s album “Reunions,” the one recorded in the documentary. As NPR writes, “This willingness to be real and forthright is a quality that attracts listeners to both Shires and Isbell, though it’s not without its complications . . . Shires knows that being a woman means that the bulk of any public criticism of her marriage could and likely would land squarely on her shoulders, deserved or not.”

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In many ways, Isbell and Shires have had parallel career trajectories. But the world doesn’t view the contributions of men and women the same. I’ve been to multiple shows of both Isbell and Shires performing solo (and will attend again, when both tour with the 400 Unit this summer, in support of Isbell’s upcoming album “Weathervanes“). But the only time I cried was when Shires sang “Highwomen” from her country music supergroup of the same name: “I was gifted as a girl . . . I heard ‘witchcraft’ in the whispers and I knew my time had come.”

Can an artistic couple control which one of them makes it first or biggest or at all? No. Can they control what is written, reviewed, made into documentaries about their work and lives and what is not? No. All they can do is keep creating while hopefully making space for each other, bringing the other along, perhaps, while also backing away when it’s time for the other to shine and recognizing that the world may be treating them differently. “I’m not asking much of you,” the First Aid Kit song goes. “Just sing, little darling. Sing with me.”

“Running with Our Eyes Closed” is now streaming on HBO. Watch a trailer via YouTube below:

about music

Body dysmorphic disorder is now more common than eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia

While eating disorders have been widely publicized for decades, far less attention has been given to a related condition called body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD.

Body dysmorphic disorder is often hidden from public view due to the shame people feel about one or more parts of their body, yet it is a devastating, debilitating psychological condition. People with the disorder suffer from obsessive thoughts and repetitive behaviors related to their appearance.

Whereas people with eating disorders might view their underweight body as too fat, those with body dysmorphic disorder see themselves as ugly or disfigured even though they appear normal or attractive to others.

Body dysmorphic disorder is more common in both men and women than bulimia or anorexia. About 2.5% of women and 2.2% of men in the U.S. meet the criteria for body dysmorphic disorder – that’s higher than the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in the general population.

For comparison, at any point in time, bulimia is seen in roughly 1.5% of women and 0.5% of men in the U.S., and anorexia in 0.35% of women and 0.1% of men.

We are a team of communication and mental health researchers and clinicians from Colorado State University Global, Hofstra Medical School and the University of Toronto. One of us, Eva Fisher, lived with the disorder for almost 15 years before getting help and recovering. My book, titled “The BDD Family,” provides insights into my daily struggles with body dysmorphic disorder along with information about diagnosis and treatment.

In our view, body dysmorphic disorder needs to be better understood and publicized so that more people suffering from the condition can be properly diagnosed and treated.

Body dysmorphic disorder often involves a fixation on a single feature, like the shape or size of one’s nose, a mole or the shape or curvature of a certain part of the body.

Comparison between BDD and eating disorders

People with body dysmorphic disorder and those with eating disorders share similar negative emotions such as shame, disgust and anger about their appearance. They also engage in some similar behaviors, such as mirror checking, taking photos to check themselves, seeking reassurance from others about their appearance, and using clothing to camouflage or conceal perceived defects.

People who suffer from these disorders commonly avoid places and activities due to self-consciousness about their appearance. In addition, those with eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder may lack the knowledge that their body image beliefs are distorted.

Depression is common in people with body dysmorphic disorder, and they have a higher rate of suicidality than those with eating disorders, including thoughts about committing suicide and suicide attempts. Although both eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder can be severe and life-threatening, people with body dysmorphic disorder on average experience more impairment in daily functioning than those with eating disorders.

A personal view

My (Eva’s) body dysmorphic disorder symptoms started at age 16. Some causes could have been childhood bullying and perfectionism about my appearance. I would obsess about the shape and size of my nose for more than eight hours a day and constantly compare my appearance to models in fashion magazines.

I was convinced that others were judging me negatively because of my nose, which I perceived to be fat and ugly. I hated my nose so much that I didn’t want to get married or have children because I feared they would inherit it.

Even after getting plastic surgery at age 18 to make my nose thinner, I still hated it. This is a very common outcome for people with the disorder who undergo cosmetic surgery procedures.

Research indicates that 66% of people with body dysmorphic disorder have received cosmetic or dermatological treatment. However, even when people feel better about one part of their body after surgery, the image obsession often moves to one or more other body parts.

Some patients will have multiple procedures on the same body part. Other people are so disappointed by the results of their surgery that they want to commit suicide.

Tragically, many people with body dysmorphic disorder think about killing themselves, and others attempt to take their own lives. Approximately 80% of people with body dysmorphic disorder experience lifetime suicidal ideation, and 24% to 28% have attempted suicide. Often, they are young men and women who feel so hopeless about their perceived appearance defects that suicide seems like the only way to end their suffering.

Body dysmorphic disorder carries a high risk of suicide, and sometimes pursuing dermatological solutions can make the issues worse if the person isn’t satisfied with them.

When appearance concerns become problematic

So how is body dysmorphic disorder different from normal appearance concerns? Researchers have found evidence that while appearance dissatisfaction can range in severity, there is a distinct group of people with much higher appearance concerns, many of whom likely have the disorder. They feel much worse about their appearance than those with normal appearance concerns and experience greater anxiety, depression, shame and self-disgust about some aspects of their appearance.

About one-third of people with the disorder obsess about their perceived flaws for one to three hours a day, nearly 40% for three to eight hours a day and about a quarter for more than eight hours a day. Most people with body dysmorphic disorder know they spend too much time thinking about their appearance, but others with the condition mistakenly believe that it’s entirely normal to worry about their appearance for hours every day.

Common body dysmorphic disorder behaviors include, from most to least common:

camouflaging the perceived defects with clothing and makeup
comparing one’s appearance to others
checking one’s appearance in mirrors and other reflective surfaces
seeking cosmetic treatments such as surgery and dermatology
repeatedly taking photos to check one’s appearance
seeking reassurance from others about the perceived flaw or convincing others that it is unattractive
touching the perceived flaw
excessively changing clothes
dieting and skin picking to improve appearance
engaging in excessive exercise, including excessive weightlifting

Discovering the causes of body dysmorphic disorder

The exact causes of body dysmorphic disorder are unknown. Possible developmental causes include genetic factors, childhood bullying and childhood teasing about appearance and competency, as well as childhood maltreatment and trauma. Other factors that could play a role include growing up in a family with an emphasis on appearance, perfectionist standards concerning appearance and exposure to high ideals of attractiveness and beauty in the mass media.

Common personality traits among people with body dysmorphic disorder include perfectionism along with shyness, social anxiety, low self-esteem and sensitivity to rejection and criticism.

Researchers have found that people with the disorder may have abnormalities in brain functioning. For instance, one study found that people with body dysmorphic disorder, as well as those with anorexia, have an information processing bias toward more detailed visual information rather than viewing images globally – in other words, seeing the trees rather than the forest. This suggests that abnormalities in the brain’s visual system could contribute to the distortions that those with body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia experience.

Effective treatments

Fortunately, there are effective treatments for people with body dysmorphic disorder. Cognitive behavioral therapy and medication are both used to treat the disorder.

During cognitive behavioral therapy, therapists work with patients to help them modify intrusive thoughts and beliefs about physical appearance and to eliminate problematic behaviors associated with body image, such as mirror checking and reassurance seeking.

Medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, such as Prozac and Zoloft can reduce or eliminate cognitive distortions, depression, anxiety, negative beliefs and compulsive behaviors. They can also increase levels of insight and improve daily functioning.

I (Eva) worked with a psychologist and psychiatrist to combat the depression and anxiety caused by my appearance concerns. Fortunately, both the medication and therapy were effective in reducing my negative feelings and compulsive behaviors.

Two years after I started treatment, my symptoms lessened and became manageable. Today I facilitate two online support groups and encourage people to learn more about the disorder. Group members provide support and comfort to others who understand their daily struggles. They also share advice about getting help for this common but little known body image disorder.

More information about diagnosis and treatment for body dysmorphic disorder is available on the International OCD Foundation BDD site.

Eva Fisher, Communication Faculty Member, Colorado State University Global; Fugen Neziroglu, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Hofstra University, and Jamie Feusner, Professor of Psychiatry and Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto

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

“The gay shall stay”: “SNL” mocks Ron DeSantis’ failed attempt to take Disney’s Florida kingdom

Don't mess with the Mouse; you'll get the, uh, incisors.

Ron DeSantis had tried to be the new sheriff in the Magic Kingdom, but was thwarted by Disney, which still controls the land around its Orlando-area theme parks. Naturally, "Saturday Night Live" could not allow this to slide without comment, or at least Bowen Yang couldn't.

The comedian has become a hilarious and refreshingly theatrical presence whenever he deigns to visit the "Weekend Update" desk, and when he breaks out the costumes, you know it's going to be good. (Never forget his Titanic iceberg headgear).

With Bowen Yang, "Saturday Night Live" has finally hired its first cast member of Asian descent

On Saturday's episode, Yang takes it upon himself to speak for Disney through one of its villains. Dressed as the Royal Vizier version of Jafar from "Aladdin," Yang – draped in black and robes with a giant headdress and snake-headed scepter – chomps the scenery with relish, rolling his R's and practically singing with diabolical laughter.

The fashionable Jafar isn't terribly impressed with DeSantis' attire, noting, "As villains go, the boy's an amateur. He has no riz, no spark . . . no drip. The look is giving Baby Mayor."

However, Jafar acknowledges that DeSantis' actions count as villainous. "The boy is plenty evil," he says. "I mean, banning Rosa Parks in schools? I'm a dark sorcerer and even I was like, Jesus dude, it's Rosa Parks!"

He also mocks DeSantis' "Don't Say Gay" bill, pointing out that Disney is all about queerness, from the middle-aged men who visit the theme park to various other Disney villains, including Jafar himself.

"Did my John Waters 'stache not tip you off?" he challenges "Weekend Update" anchor Michael Che. "Of course I'm gay, you petulant fool! My waist is snatched, my eyeliner on point, my final form is a yoked genie with gorgeous nails and a high micro-pony."

The defiance is palpable as Jafar concludes, "So, I'm sorry Mr. DeSantay. The gay shall stay, and you sashay away."

Check out the full bit below:

about "Saturday Night Live"

We’re misunderstanding how child abuse happens — and that has deadly consequences for kids

Roughly 100,000 children suffer physical abuse in the United States each year. Too often, the public, media, and even authorities dismiss this abuse as unavoidable.

Even when physical child abuse is reported, outdated policies often keep child welfare authorities from intervening in time to save kids’ lives.

This sense of hopelessness is rooted in the notion that child abuse is a one-off, uncharacteristic loss of control — the result of an otherwise upstanding guardian inevitably “snapping,” perhaps after a stressful work day or family situation.

But the data suggests that parents abruptly snapping is largely a myth. Often, physical child abuse isn’t a one-time mistake; it’s an escalating pattern of violence.

It’s time for us to acknowledge this reality — and for authorities to change their policies accordingly.

How unsecured guns are killing children

We already recognize that other types of abuse escalate over time. Consider intimate partner violence. The abuse often entails disparaging comments, physical threats, and physical outbursts — like breaking objects or punching walls — before it culminates in physical abuse.

Physical child abuse follows a similar pattern. Yet the “snapping” myth persists, making it less likely that anyone will report the abuse or intervene. For every instance of child abuse that’s reported, roughly two go unreported.

Even when physical child abuse is reported, outdated policies often keep child welfare authorities from intervening in time to save kids’ lives.

Child welfare authorities nationwide receive nearly 4.5 million reports of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as neglect, each year. More than 40% of children who are the subjects of an initial report from child welfare authorities will experience at least one additional report.

Yet there’s no federal policy requiring state and county child welfare authorities to take the number of past reports into account when deciding to escalate an intervention. At best, this leaves kids with a patchwork of protection from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, each with different standards and thresholds officials abide by when deciding to intervene.

At worst, this oversight — and our ignorance of the pernicious pattern of abuse — has deadly consequences.

The very existence of multiple reports is a red flag. And when children die from physical abuse, it’s often after multiple reports to child welfare authorities.

An estimated 1,820 children died of abuse or neglect in the United States in 2021. That’s roughly 130 more than just five years ago.

Consider data from Texas. Roughly half of the 380 children who died of abuse in the state between 2010 and 2014 had previously been involved with Child Protective Services. More than 140 of them were referred to authorities more than three times. In one case, the child had contact with CPS more than 20 times.

In Wisconsin, more than half of the 27 children who died of abuse in 2020 had at least one prior contact with CPS. Many of them were the subjects of repeated prior calls and reports, and some even experienced previous visits or interventions from child welfare authorities.

All told, an estimated 1,820 children died of abuse or neglect in the United States in 2021. That’s roughly 130 more than just five years ago.

We have the knowledge to prevent those deaths. That begins with implementing policies that recognize the pattern of child abuse and the danger it poses to children. Child welfare authorities should be required to use the number of previous reports a child receives as a critical factor in the decision to escalate an intervention. And any intervention should reflect the seriousness of the pattern of abuse.

Interventions grounded in evidence-based therapy and social support can interrupt this cycle of abuse, which often starts in childhood. A review of nearly 100 studies published in Clinical Psychology Review found that parents who experienced or witnessed physical abuse or violence during their own childhoods are at a higher risk of perpetrating abuse or neglect with their kids.

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One evidence-based approach is alternatives for families: a cognitive-behavioral therapy, or AF-CBT. The model can help parents and guardians improve self-control, respond to challenges more effectively, learn better family communication strategies, and cope with trauma. Some Children’s Advocacy Centers provide this sort of therapy to families free of cost.

Policymakers should aim to make these supports more widely available to struggling parents and guardians — both before violence ever escalates and after child abuse has already occurred.

A few states have also implemented programs to help families who are affected by abuse. Washington’s “Parents for Parents” program, for example, connects families who are newly involved in the child welfare system with parent mentors who provide support and guidance.

Such interventions recognize that child abuse isn’t a matter of “snapping.” Rather, they aim to break a pattern of abuse and save children’s lives. It’s time our policies — and society at large — did the same.

on children and society

What popular culture like “Will Trent” gets wrong about dyslexia, and why it matters

This past weekend, I sat down with a glass of wine to watch “Will Trent,” the ABC series about a detective (Ramón Rodríguez) who sees things others don’t. Will Trent’s secret weapon in crime fighting is his dyslexia. I wanted to watch because, as a dyslexic myself, I was curious about the show’s portrayal of the learning difference. Was it just another shtick, or an authentic effort to bring nonlinear thinkers into the fold of popular culture?

Dyslexia is not illiteracy. Dyslexics can read, it’s just that their brains don’t do so linearly.

Imperfect main characters using their differences as crutches are hardly a new trope. Monk, the uncannily perceptive detective with OCD, did it moons back. “The Good Doctor” tried autism on for size. While seeing dyslexia featured in popular culture is a step in the right direction, we should be mindful of how the dyslexic experience is portrayed. Creative liberties taken at the expense of the truth can be dangerous. They shroud the learning difference, already misunderstood by many, in mystique and misinformation.

In “Will Trent,” the pendulum mostly swings to the extremes: either dyslexia is portrayed as a disability or it’s a gift. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Dyslexia isn’t a gift. Nothing is, if you don’t have the tools to harness it and use it to your advantage. It’s hard to believe that Will Trent, an accomplished detective, doesn’t yet have his workarounds. For example, he’s totally stymied by the task of reading a name on a flier, and can’t tell the difference between “Push” and “Pull” on a door.

But dyslexia is not illiteracy. Dyslexics can read, it’s just that their brains don’t do so linearly, like a non-dyslexic’s might. Dyslexia is also not writing your E’s and K’s backwards – that’s dysgraphia – and there’s actually no evidence that dyslexics flip or reverse letters. Young children might write their letters flipped, but most adult dyslexics wouldn’t still be struggling with that particular task. Finally, Will Trent owns an ancient flip phone, presumably to avoid the complexity of the modern iPhone – really? I assure you, dyslexics are just as beholden to, and capable of navigating, modern technology as the next person.

You don’t have to read the whole article: “Reader’s Block” author says stop shaming over reading

But “Will Trent” does get some important things right. Will seems ashamed of his diagnosis, doing his best to hide it from his partner and coworkers. “I forgot I’m an idiot and it takes an hour to read a damn sentence,” he says to Angie (Erika Christensen), his on-again, off-again love interest. I’d bet most dyslexics have felt that way. I certainly did. Because of the words that we sometimes use to talk about dyslexia — disability, disorder, diagnosis — it’s easy for most to see it as a drawback and associate it with lower intelligence. In fact, some of the greatest thinkers of our time are dyslexics who have found a way to work around their language processing problems by highly developing other skills, such as memory, visualization, imagination or observation.

Some dyslexics excel in arts, design, and music … they strengthen their ability to speak in a whole different language.

Many dyslexics end up “compensating” for their trouble with language processing by doing other things really well – things that don’t come naturally to the linear mind. California Governor Gavin Newsom, a fellow dyslexic, said that he struggled with reading so much that he trained his brain to remember. He credits dyslexia for his photographic memory. And that’s exactly what Trent has done: he seems to have a knack for visualization – Ramón Rodriguez, the actor who plays Trent, describes him as a puzzle master, reconstructing crime scenes in his mind’s eye.

Some dyslexics excel in arts, design, and music because, instead of written language, their brains think visually or audibly; they strengthen their ability to speak in a whole different language. My experience with dyslexia has been a process of accepting that, while I’ll never be great at reading and writing, my ability to visualize like Will — to think outside the box, to negotiate things that others take for granted, to challenge the status quo — has been the driving force behind my creative career. If I hadn’t had opportunities to explore this part of my brain as a young child, I might have dropped out of school, like so many dyslexic children who confront an inflexible learning environment that teaches down to them.

Ramón Rodríguez in “Will Trent” (ABC)We see this story told, time and again, by countless artists, doctors, musicians, engineers, designers, lawyers and CEOs – that their success came in spite of an education system that labels them as slow, lazy, unenthusiastic or deficient, and failed to encourage their incredible strengths: innovation, imagination, visualization — things that are hard to teach. Trent acknowledges this himself: “Before I had dyslexia, you know what I had? Stupid. Lazy. Useless. . . I had to . . . learn how to navigate the world without words. Every step of the way, there was someone there to tell me that I was broken, worthless. I decided long ago that I’m not letting anyone look at me that way ever again.”

It’s heartening that at the same time the narrative around dyslexia is changing, the words we use to describe it are, too. People are encouraged to say “learning difference” instead of “disability” — a good first step. But I want to take it further. When I talk about dyslexia, I call it a hyper-ability. That’s my lived experience, and the experience of many dyslexics who have been lucky enough to learn how to wield their dyslexia as a tool. Even though Will Trent fully uses his dyslexia as his on-the-job secret weapon, it’s disheartening that his language doesn’t yet reflect that: he refers to himself as an idiot, or says things like, “My stupid detective brain doesn’t have an off switch.” He doesn’t want others to see him as broken and he’s decided the best way to do that is to hide a language-processing issue, something that – in the grand scale of things – is probably a small fraction of his job.

I’d like to imagine a near future in which dyslexia is not heralded as a gift outright, dismissed as a disability, or hidden altogether, but rather recognized, with nuance. That’s why the way we talk about dyslexia in popular culture matters — why a show like “Will Trent” matters so much to dyslexics like myself. In Season 2, the showrunners must do a more realistic and complex job of capturing the dyslexic experience. For example, I’d imagine that Will feels flustered by the dysfunction of the police system he has to operate within. As a dyslexic whose brain makes seamless connections, sees the bigger picture, and is masterful at problem solving, there must be a massive amount of overwhelm that he deals with, every day, for example, at not being able to fix systemic issues. Connecting dyslexia to these deeper issues will give it context and depth – beyond just jumbled letters and flip phones – to a deeper acknowledgement that the dyslexic brain works differently.

Ramón Rodríguez and Iantha Richardson in “Will Trent” (ABC)Myths and misunderstandings about dyslexia persist, causing many children and adults to struggle without a diagnosis and treatment. Seeing ourselves in popular culture, in positions of power and success, in characters such as Will Trent, is important. It lets dyslexics know that we’re ready, as a community, to understand the nuances around dyslexia. We need “Will Trent” to acknowledge that part of Trent’s arc – from ashamed of his dyslexia to motivated and energized by it – in the following seasons the way that many dyslexics do, in real life.

Finally, we need to be careful that, in our representation, we’re not turning dyslexia into a plot device without much basis in reality, a schtick that buries the learning difference in misinformation. We can use shows like “Will Trent” as an excellent launching pad for deeper discussions around learning differences — and how to create an environment in which they are celebrated, and dyslexics can thrive.

“Will Trent” airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC and streams on Hulu.

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Raccoons, rabbits and Sean Spicer: The camp and contradictions of the White House Easter Egg Roll

I attended the White House Egg Roll in 1988. I have vague memories of standing in a long line of children and grownups waiting to get onto the packed White House grounds. After a brief encounter with a fuzzy Easter bunny, I made a frantic timed jaunt through a stack of hay bales to find my souvenir Easter Egg, signed by George B. Was it the current vice president George Bush senior, my mom eagerly asked the attendant, who squinted at it. No, I think it’s George Burns, they replied. My mother recently sent me that George B— signed egg, wooden and painted turquoise, with the event’s details on it — while I was in the final throes of editing my new book, “Egg.“

Nothing could be more American than the White House Egg Roll. And yet, like the egg itself — simultaneously alive and not-alive — it offers a slate of contradictions. The United States is supposed to preserve the distinction between church and state, yet we have an Easter Egg Roll on government property. Dig below the event’s thin veneer of Christianity and you’ll find a pagan springtime ritual. We value equality, and yet Black children could not attend the event until the 1950s.

From chicken to chocolate: the fascinating history of the Easter egg

But let’s go back a bit and tackle the egg-roll’s complexity, starting with its deep historical origins.

As an event, egg rolls are ancient. To roll an egg, that is, to use a long-handled spoon to propel an egg down a slope or along a field in a race, one first needs an egg. And for most of human history this meant springtime, since the reproductive cycle of chickens is sensitive to light, and their laying rate picks up in the spring. Hard boiling eggs and coating them in wax to preserve them just makes sense. Scraping designs into the wax was among the first egg decoration. There are numerous playful egg traditions, including egg tosses, egg hunts, egg dancing, egg jousting or jarping (tap two together and see who wins), dressing as witches and trick or treating for eggs, performing folk plays in exchange for eggs, and of course, decorating eggs. As with egg rolls, these began as pagan practices celebrating the arrival of spring and the growing season. In “An Egg at Easter” (1971), Venetia Newall speculates that egg rolls likely began as a charm to fertilize the earth, ensuring a good harvest, and a way to enhance human fertility.

Eventually, Christianity came along, and appropriated the tradition into its own symbolism. In the case of the egg roll—great fun, especially in a world before rubber balls–the egg rolling down the field came to represent the stone rolled away from Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. The activity, widespread across Europe and Russia, often took place on a town-appointed hill. It tended to take place the Monday after Easter, though in some locations it occurred on Fat Tuesday, just before the beginning of Lent. And according to British tradition, witches could use the empty shells as boats, so kids enjoyed smashing them to smithereens. As the mother of a five-year-old, I can only wonder, did they really need a reason?

Settlers brought their egg-rolling traditions with them to the United States, including to Washington DC. It’s hard to say who, exactly, held the first egg roll. Some historians note that Dolly Madison suggested the idea of a public egg roll in the early 1800s, and the first family hosted informal egg rolls dating back to the time of Abraham Lincoln. However, the first official egg roll required an act of congress. The area’s children used to roll eggs on a gentle slope on the West Lawn of the Capitol each year. Their foot traffic, and the many broken eggshells and hard-boiled eggs (not to mention, I suspect, the rank odor), damaged the landscape. With a tight landscape budget, Congress took particular notice after the 1876 egg roll, and passed a law banning its grounds from being used as a playground for children. In typical Washington fashion, what had been Congress’s problem soon became the president’s.

In 1878, either a gang of mad children rushed down the road to the White House, or President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the gates and invited the children onto the South Lawn to roll eggs. Almost every spring since, barring war or pandemic, hijinks have ensued.

The first year after the cancellation, it rained and no one felt up to rolling eggs. But in 1878, either a gang of mad children rushed down the road to the White House, or President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the gates and invited the children onto the South Lawn to roll eggs. Almost every spring since, barring war or pandemic, hijinks have ensued.

In 1885, the kids lobbied for an audience with Grover Cleveland, who received them in the East Room. He was reportedly charmed, although they promptly trashed the carpet with their hard-boiled eggs. Whether indoors or outdoors, the hard-boiled eggs presented an issue. As eggs are cooked, and especially, over cooked, the yolk releases iron which joins up with hydrogen and sulfur from the white to produce the notoriously pungent chemical hydrogen sulfide. If you’ve over-boiled your eggs, this reaction forms a green ring around the yolk; it smells distinctly “eggy,” or as my kiddo informs me, “farty.” According to one account, the sulfurous stank emanating from the White House lawn polluted the air for about three-square miles.

First Lady Lou Hoover tried to solve the problem in 1929 by focusing the event on folk dancing, including maypole, Swedish, English, and Native American dances, all performed by Girl Scouts. She included the latter, perhaps, in homage to Charles Curtis, Hoover’s vice president and the first person of Native American heritage to reach this high echelon of executive office. Even though the dancing left less room for eggs, the increasing crowds on the South Lawn—about 47,000 people at Hoover’s event—took their toll. Officials limited attendance with the restriction that grown people were only permitted “when accompanied by a child.” Naturally, some enterprising little rascals began charging unrelated randos a fee to accompany them to the event. Ah, Washington, a town where even the children sell access to the White House! The Secret Service was eventually called in to break up the racket by the late 1930s.

Although several photographs from the 1890s show Black and white children at the egg roll together, segregation remained the general rule. Black families weren’t invited, and gathered instead at the National Zoo’s Easter event on Lion-Tiger hill instead, which is still a popular outing. In 1953, the White House event returned after a 12-year hiatus taken due to World War II, post-war food restrictions, and South Lawn construction. At that egg roll, Mamie Eisenhower noticed Black children gathering at the gates to the event and gazing longingly at the fun. She officially desegregated the event the following year. Now, tickets are assigned by lottery.

Over the years, different presidents and first ladies have put their own spin on the event. Benjamin Harrison added some peppy music with Sousa conducting the band known as the “President’s Own.” In 1926, someone sent a live racoon to the White House, with the idea that the first family could have it for dinner. Instead, Grace Coolidge named it Rebecca, and kept it as a pet. She met kiddos at the 1927 Egg Roll. Much later, the Carters set up a petting zoo, including a 1,200-pound steer.

It was Pat Nixon who gave the egg roll two of its most vital attributes. She learned the hard way why egg hunts involving real eggs were a bad idea—an egg undiscovered is fragrant indeed. Plastic eggs have become the norm since.

But it was Pat Nixon who gave the egg roll two of its most vital attributes. She learned the hard way why egg hunts involving real eggs were a bad idea—an egg undiscovered is fragrant indeed. Plastic eggs have become the norm since. Nixon also introduced the custom of Easter drag—a White House staffer in a bunny suit. According to the White House Archives of George W. Bush, “Strict guidelines prohibit the bunny from being seen without his costume head, but the identity of the staffer inside is revealed every once in a while.”

Apparently, Ursula Meese, wife of President Reagan’s attorney general Edwin, enjoyed playing the part and did so for six egg rolls, earning the nickname “The Meester Bunny.” During Bush Jr.’s administration, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer played the part, and told The Wrap, “It gets very hot.” A high-level official, dressed up like a furry, anonymized, interacting with children. What could be campier than that?

Nancy Reagan also introduced the wooden eggs signed by celebrities, and soon after a small future writer on eggs attended the White House Easter Egg roll with her mother. She said “hi” to a tall furry bunny and was funneled through a bunch of hay bales to find the wooden egg she’d take home with her.

My souvenir wooden Easter egg has many meanings written atop it — paganism, Christianity, and most of all, contradiction. In a secular democracy, it’s strange that, to paraphrase Orwell, some religions are more equal than others. In this time, when Republicans are banning drag shows (whatever happened to the inalienable right to pursue happiness?), can the White House Easter bunny remain? With abortion no longer legal federally, will the egg roll become a chick roll?

Still, most of all, The White House Easter Egg Roll is the essence of the United States. If we the people want to march into the White House and grind stinky eggs into the carpet, we have that right, because the president’s house is the people’s house, and as voters we are supposed to make—so far—him dance to our tunes. We demand, if not bread and circuses, then true American camp—a racoon-and-toy-pony show, a hunt for treasure, and White House officials dragged up to entertain our children.

In this tumultuous time, perhaps we need the egg roll more than ever, not for its Christian symbolism, but for its pagan origins. At this point in history, we really need to ritually fertilize our fields with a little hope.

If you liked this essay, consider picking up Lizzie Stark’s book, “Egg: A Dozen Ovatures.”

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Positive urine test? Maybe you ate poppy seeds

The U.S. Defense Department issued a memo on Feb. 17, 2023, warning service members to avoid eating poppy seeds because doing so may result in a positive urine test for the opiate codeine. Addiction and pain medicine specialist Gary Reisfield explains what affects the opiate content of poppy seeds and how they could influence drug tests.

What are poppy seeds?

Poppy seeds come from a species of poppy plant called Papaver somniferum. “Somniferum” is Latin for “sleep-bringing,” which hints that it might contain opiates – powerful compounds that depress the central nervous system and can induce drowsiness and sleep.

There are two main uses for the opium poppy. It is a source of the opiates used in painkillers, the most biologically active of which are morphine and codeine. Its seeds are also used for cooking and baking.

Poppy seeds themselves don’t contain opiates. But during harvesting, the seeds can become contaminated with opiates contained in the milky latex of the seed pod covering them.

(Getty/borchee)

What affects opiate content in poppy seeds?

Many factors determine the opiate concentrations and ratios of poppies. As with wine grapes, the opiate profile of the poppy plant – and thus its seeds – is affected by its terroir: climate, soil, amount of sunshine, topography and time of harvest.

Another factor is the variety or cultivar of the plant. For example, there are genetically engineered opium poppies that produce no morphine or codeine and others that produce no opium latex at all.

Can you get high from eating poppy seeds?

Practically speaking, you cannot eat enough poppy seeds to get you high. Furthermore, processing dramatically decreases opiate content – for example, by washing or cooking or baking the seeds.

Do poppy seeds affect drug tests?

Poppy seeds don’t have nearly enough opiates to intoxicate you. But because drug tests are exquisitely sensitive, consuming certain poppy seed food products can lead to positive urine drug test results for opiates – specifically for morphine, codeine or both.

Under most circumstances, opiate concentrations in the urine are too low to produce a positive test result. But certain food products – and it’s generally impossible to know which ones, because opiate content does not appear on food labels – contain enough opiates to produce positive test results. Moreover, because of overlap in opiate concentrations and morphine-to-codeine ratios, it can sometimes be challenging to distinguish test results that are due to the consumption of poppy seeds from those that are due to the use of opiate drugs.

This is not a problem with most workplace drug testing. Test results are reviewed by a specially trained physician called a medical review officer. Unless the physician finds evidence of unauthorized opiate use, such as needle marks or signs of opiate intoxication or withdrawal, even relatively high concentrations of opiates in the urine that produce positive test results are generally ruled to be negative.

It turns out, though, that drug testing in the military is different, and poppy seeds pose potential problems. One such problem, as highlighted in recent news reports, concerns service members who test positive for codeine and assert a “poppy seed defense.” They are still regarded as having taken codeine, sometimes with serious consequences, such as a disciplinary action or discharge from the service.

Gary Reisfield, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida

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

“Succession”: Nothing says I’m a billionaire like refusing to buy fresh pizza

We just passed an election, which means some people you know, especially journalists, were working overtime, staying up into the early hours to wait for and report results from the polls. People working late, working long past dinner, working away from their homes and families, need to eat. What’s the best way to feed hungry journalists? Pizza.

Logan didn’t get to be a billionaire buying new pizza when yesterday’s pie is right there.

ATN knows. The fictional broadcast news network, spearheaded by Logan Roy (Brian Cox) of “Succession,” opened its break room to viewers this season, in the episode titled “Rehearsal.” Queasy-lit by fluorescent overhead lights, the cramped little office kitchen contains sad muffins, stale breakfast bars and bruised apples. And multiple stacks of pizza boxes, their cooling, congealing slices triggering Logan into one of the mini-tirades his character is famous for.

From the beginning of the HBO show, he’s been rolling in funds like a media Scrooge McDuck. We don’t see exactly how he made his billions. But one way he’s keeping them? He’s cheap, just like a billionaire. He’s also, despite his company, not a huge fan of working writers.

In “Succession,” Kerry reveals weakness by having a dream

Logan has gone to the office and is sulking around, standing over employees’ shoulders as they sweat at their cubicles. They’re not writing their emails fast enough for him. His criticism continues into the ATN kitchen where he interrupts Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg (Nicholas Braun) in one of their frantic huddles. Logan’s default state is annoyed. And the first thing that falls upon his affronted glance is pizza. Too much pizza.

“It’s killing me,” Logan says about viewing so much of it. Really, it looks like maybe six boxes, tops. Logan says the pizza-purchasing is “out of control,” that the older pizzas “are perfectly good. All you have to do is put them in the f**king microwave.” Logan! Not even an oven? How will the crust stay crispy? (This will be important later.)

Brian Cox in “Succession” (Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO)Billionaires are famously cheap, part of their eccentricities and the lore of how they made their money (the reality is, most billionaire money is made through investments). J. Paul Getty refused to pay the ransom when his son was kidnapped (eventually, the billionaire paid out $2.2 million; it was tax deductible). Mark Zuckerberg often drives a Honda Fit. Warren Buffet eats at McDonald’s every morning.

Just this week, a photo of Bill Gates (worth over 110 billion) went viral on Twitter, both for his position contentedly waiting in line in the parking lot at Seattle’s Dick Burgers, as well as for his casual outfit. “The goal is to be rich, not to look rich,” one Twitter user wrote.

So, Logan didn’t get to be a billionaire buying new pizza when yesterday’s pie is right there. Greg, ever the anxious over-explainer, tries to point out “the sog factor” of old pizza (which doesn’t appear to have been refrigerated, so maybe there’s a food safety factor too). But there’s also a kindness factor. It’s thoughtful to buy your employees fresh hot dinner when they’re working late for you. It’s more humane than expecting them to make do with old, cold soggy stuff. But Logan also didn’t get to be a billionaire by being kind, even or maybe especially to journalists.

Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck, Sarah Snook and Jeremy Strong in “Succession” (Macall B. Polay/HBO)The sins of the father will be (re)visited upon the children. The Roy kids? They don’t share their patriarch’s stinginess. Roman (Kieran Culkin) especially is weirdly kind-hearted, always thinking and worrying about other people’s feelings. He would spring for more pizza. Connor (Alan Ruck) would spend everything he had on Justine Lupe’s Willa (granted, it’s his dad’s money, not his).

They act like they need inoculations to enter an innocuous dive bar.

But a large chunk of “Rehearsal” shows the adult kids turning up their noses at an ordinary bar and grill, a place morose Connor wants to go to, which probably would serve pizza along with the advertised wings, which cause Roman to ponder, “I wonder from which particular creature they snip these wings.”

They act like they need inoculations to enter an innocuous dive bar. The kids are food snobs. Logan, for all his many, many problems, may not be. But he’s also not generous.

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Like much of “Succession,” the thing we’re talking about isn’t actually what we’re talking about. It’s deeper and darker. “It’s not the pizza,” Logan admits to Tom, bringing up that he’s really worried about girlfriend/assistant Kerry and her rocky broadcast news anchor audition, which reflects poorly upon him. Sometimes a pizza is not simply a reflection of your values, but a symbol for deeper woes, a conduit, a greasy gateway.

Later on in the episode, Logan tries to actually talk about feelings with his children, even apologizing. Sort of. Is the pizza the first sign of self-knowledge? Like soy cheese, Logan may just be faking it.

about food and wealth

The “Tennessee Three” were right: Screw decorum, it’s time to rush the well

Two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee, both of them Black men, were expelled from the legislature on Thursday for breaking the chamber’s supposed rules of decorum. A third representative, a white woman, was not expelled, although all three of them had done exactly the same thing: After another school shooting led to hours of go-nowhere gun-reform debate, they had brought floor action to a halt with protest chants and walked up to the speaker’s well at the front of the chamber.

Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville was expelled on a 72-25 vote and Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis, was expelled 69-26. The vote to expel Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville failed at 65-30, one vote short of the necessary two-thirds.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, led the charge for their expulsion. He said the three had “rushed the well.”

Well, good on them. It’s about damn time someone rushed the well. Every ragtag band of Democratic lawmakers who are effectively powerless in Republican-dominated trifecta states — that is, states where the GOP controls both houses of the legislature and the governorship — should strongly consider rushing the well too.

When the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling unleashes a tidal wave of political dark money so massive that in less than 12 months it causes at least 20 statehouse chambers across 16 states — and at least 680 seats across the country — to turn from blue to red, rigging the field for the long term in favor of the wealthiest candidates, it’s time to rush the well.

When the red wave brings the GOP an ironclad supermajority trifecta in the Tennessee Capitol, which then gerrymanders the state so deeply that the number of Democrats is halved in the state House and slashed from 13 to 6 in the senate, and then punishes protesters by stripping their right to vote, it is time to rush the well.

After Nashville, Democrats want to force a floor vote on assault weapons ban. They probably can’t

When a political duopoly sidelines national and state-level reform candidates out of elections and forces progressives in conservative states to beg national Democratic leadership not to keep abandoning them, and when so many state Democratic lawmakers who are vastly outnumbered in their chamber choose to sit on their hands and collect checks rather than raise their voices and fight, it is time to rush the well.

When a shooter opens fire in a Nashville school and kills six people, including three children under the age of 10, and students across Nashville march on the Tennessee Capitol building calling for a literal ceasefire, only to be dismissed by the only lawmakers who could end this shootings given the deadlocked in Congress, it is most definitely time to rush the well.

“Enough is enough,” the children chanted in Nashville. Enough is enough, their lawmakers agreed.

Yes, the kids have had enough. At least, the ones that are still alive. Those are the ones who avoided being locked in cages at the border, survived the fastest-rising child mortality rate in 50 years, an unprecedented spike in child suicides and a homicide rate that recently became the leading cause of death among American kids.

All over the U.S., they’re dodging literal bullets, armed with nothing more than bullhorns and backpacks. They’re being shoved back into the closet in conservative states where LGBTQ-targeted book-banning bills are being passed faster than the food-assistance programs they rely on. And they’re watching the clock tick on climate change as state and federal lawmakers argue about banning TikTok.

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It’s hard to tally the exact number of school walkouts but reports have exploded across news outlets and social media platforms since with the resurgence of student activism that followed the 2018 tmass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers. In 2019, thousands of students walked out of U.S. schools to protest anti-LGBTQ legislation, and millions of students worldwide participated in climate marches that September.

Since then, the kids haven’t stopped. And they won’t.

Not in Tennessee. And not in Nebraska.

“About 40-60 students at Lincoln Southeast are currently staging a walkout outside the school’s football stadium in support of trans rights,” reported the Lincoln Journal-Star’s Zach Hammack. “LPS closed the campus, so I’m only able to watch from afar. Students are waving LGBTQ flags and giving speeches with a megaphone.”

Not in Texas.

“Uvalde Flores Elementary … girls protesting against school violence. They began walkout during lunch. It’s been three hours. It’s hot and they haven’t eaten, reported Nancy Johnson of the Express News. “‘Enough is enough! Stop school shootings!,’ they chant. One said she wants [Gov.] Greg Abbott to see this.”

Not in Illinois.

“Students at Little Village High School held a walkout today before spring break. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of LVHS, the school was built after a 19-day hunger strike by community members demanding a school. [Mayoral candidate Paul] Vallas was CEO of (Chicago Public Schools) at the time of the strike in 2001,” notes Lynda Lopez.

Not in Louisiana.

“Big crowd of students at a walkout at Ben Franklin High School in New Orleans, where students are protesting anti-LGBTQ bills in the legislature,” wrote the Illuminator’s Piper Hutchinson.

And not in Virginia where, even in towns as small as Falls Church and in schools as small as Meridian High, students have to ask themselves what other tools they possess to make anything change at all.

In supermajority red states like Tennessee, no amount of these kids’ thoughts, prayers, speeches, voting, petitions, lobbying, fundraising, organizing, volunteering, letter-writing, phone-banking or begging for their lives has worked. Nor will it. Because in a GOP trifecta grip, their dwindling number of Democratic lawmakers have been largely written off by national party leadership, and rendered almost entirely powerless.

In supermajority red states like Tennessee, no amount of thoughts, prayers, speeches, voting, petitions, lobbying, fundraising, organizing, volunteering, letter-writing, phone-banking or begging for their lives is going to work.

These Democrats’ unheard floor speeches, voted-down bills, overridden objections, blocked parliamentary maneuvers and kneecapped committee placements didn’t stop any kids from getting shot to death and won’t stop it from happening again. Nothing these marginalized legislators have done commands respect or serves to galvanize their base — at least, not until now.

Those beaten-down normie Democrats weren’t the reason that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris woke up Friday to a world where suddenly their party’s top priority was to get out a statement and schedule a trip to Tennessee. That happened because three individual lawmakers who understood they had no real ability to protect kids from getting murdered had the courage of their convictions, stopped being civil and playing by the rules and freaking rushed the well.

These kids are backed into a corner and fighting for their lives. At least these three lawmakers are fighting too. You don’t always win the good fight; indeed, by its nature, you very often lose, which doesn’t make the fight less good. We live in a time when good fights are the only ones left to fight, and there’s nowhere for Democratic lawmakers in red trifecta states to hide. They will no longer look savvy to their own party’s leaders, or be forgiven over and over again by their constituents, if they shirk the duties of conscience and quail in face of political defeat, censure or expulsion.

If you want national funding and press attention; if you want Kamala on the plane; if you want every Democratic voter in your state out in the streets with you, marching and knocking doors and showing up at the polls next time around; if you want the entire world to see how single-party control has shattered America’s state governments; and if you want to force both the GOP and Democrats to reckon with the fallout of allowing plutocratic authoritarianism to dominate these statehouses — well, it turns out there’s a way to do that.

Raise some hell. Rush the well.

from Rae Hodge on tech and politics

Research shows health risks of using marijuana in pregnancy

Cannabis is a widely used psychoactive drug worldwide, and its popularity is growing: The U.S. market for recreational cannabis sales could surpass US$72 billion by 2023.

As of early 2023, 21 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use for people age 21 and up, while 39 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized it for medical use.

The growing wave of legalization and the dramatic increase in cannabis potency over the past two decades have raised concerns among scientists and public health experts about the potential health effects of cannabis use during pregnancy and other vulnerable periods of development, such as the teen years.

I am a developmental neuroscientist specializing in studying what’s known as the endocannabinoid system. This is an evolutionarily ancient system found in humans and other vertebrates that produces natural cannabinoids such as THC and CBD.

Cannabis and its constituents interact with the body’s endocannabinoid system to product their effects. THC and CBD are the most commonly known cannabis extracts and can be synthesized in a lab. My lab also studies the risks versus potential therapeutic value of cannabis and cannabinoids.

People often assume there’s no risk when using cannabis or cannabinoids during vulnerable periods of life, but they’re basing that on little to no data. Our research and that of others suggests that cannabis use during pregnancy and adolescence can present myriad health risks the public should be aware of.

Data shows that many people who use cannabis continue to do so during pregnancy. But there are health risks.

Cannabis use during pregnancy

More and more pregnant people are using cannabis today compared with a decade ago, with some studies showing that nearly 1 in 4 pregnant adolescents report that they use cannabis.

Many cannabis-using people may have not known they were pregnant and stopped using when they found out. Others report using cannabis for its touted ability to ease pregnancy-related symptoms, like nausea and anxiety. However, studies do not yet confirm those health claims. What’s more, the potential harms are often downplayed by pro-cannabis marketing and messaging by dispensaries, advocacy groups and even midwives or doulas.

In addition, physicians and other health care providers often are not knowledgeable enough or don’t feel well equipped to discuss the potential risks and benefits of cannabis with their patients, including during pregnancy.

While research shows that most people who are pregnant perceive little to no risk in using cannabis during pregnancy, the data show there is clear cause for concern. Indeed, a growing number of studies link prenatal cannabis exposure to greater risk of preterm birth, lower birth weight and psychiatric and behavioral problems in children. These include, for example, difficulties with attention, thought, social problems, anxiety and depression.

Cannabis and the developing brain

When cannabis is inhaled, consumed orally or taken in through other routes, it can easily cross through the placenta and deposit in the fetal brain, disrupting brain development.

A recent study from my lab, led by medical student Mohammed Faraj, found that cannabis use during pregnancy can shape the developing brain in ways that are detectable even a decade later.

We used data from the National Institutes of Health Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which is the largest long-term study of brain development and child and adolescent health in the U.S. It has followed more than 10,000 children and their families from age 9-10 over a 10-year period.

Through that analysis, we linked prenatal cannabis exposure to alterations in functional brain networks in 9- and 10-year-old children. In particular, prenatal cannabis exposure appeared to disrupt the communication between brain networks involved in attentional control, which may explain why children who were exposed to cannabis in utero may develop difficulties with attention or other behavioral issues or mental disorders as they develop.

While alcohol abuse has steadily declined among adolescents since 2000 in the U.S., cannabis use shows the opposite pattern: It increased by 245% during that same period.

Data reported in 2022 from the Monitoring the Future survey of over 50,000 students in the U.S. found that nearly one-third of 12th grade students reported using cannabis in the past year, including cannabis vaping. Yet only about 1 in 4 12th grade students perceive great harm in using cannabis regularly. This suggests that many teens use cannabis, but very few consider it to have potential negative effects.

High-potency, concentrated forms of cannabis extracts have far higher levels of THC than the pot of earlier decades.

Cannabis use during adolescence

Research shows that the adolescent brain is primed to engage in high-risk behaviors such as experimenting with cannabis and other substances. Unfortunately, owing to ongoing brain development, the adolescent brain is also particularly susceptible to the effects of cannabis and other substances. Indeed, many neuroscientists now agree that the brain continues to develop well into the second and even third decade of life.

In line with this vulnerability, research shows that, relative to those who did not use cannabis during adolescence, those who started using it during adolescence are at increased risk of developing depression, suicidal ideation, psychosis and reductions in IQ during adolescence and adulthood. Neuroimaging studies also show residual effects of adolescent cannabis use on brain functioning, even later during adulthood.

Reading beyond the label

Despite common misconceptions that cannabis is “all natural” and safe to use during pregnancy or adolescence, the data suggests there are real risks. In fact, in 2019, the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory against the use of cannabis during pregnancy and adolescence, stating that “no amount … is known to be safe.”

Cannabis may be harmful to the developing brain because it disrupts the developing endocannabinoid system, which plays a critical role in shaping brain development from conception and into adulthood. This includes neural circuits involved in learning, memory, decision-making and emotion regulation.

While much of this research has focused on cannabis use, there is also other research that comes to similar conclusions for THC and CBD in other forms. In fact, although CBD is widely available as an unregulated supplement, we researchers know almost nothing about its effects on the developing brain. Of note, these harms apply not only to smoking, but also to ingesting, vaping or other ways of consuming cannabis or its extracts.

In my view, it’s important that consumers know these risks and recognize that not everything claimed in a label is backed by science. So before you pick up that edible or vape pen for stress, anxiety, or sleep or pain control, it’s important to talk to a health care provider about potential risks – especially if you are or could be pregnant or are a teen or young adult.

Hilary A. Marusak, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University

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

Kenny Loggins on creating legendary soundtrack anthems for “Top Gun,” “Caddyshack” and “Footloose”

Award-winning singer, songwriter and guitarist Kenny Loggins joined host Kenneth Womack to discuss the magic of the Beatles and making movie music on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Loggins, one half of the 1970s duo Loggins and Messina before going solo and becoming known as the “soundtrack king” and the “messiah” of the Yacht Rock genre, first learned about popular music as a child from his older brother, who had a large record collection. But it was his mother who tipped him off that a new group called the Beatles were going to be on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February of 1964. Newly 16 at the time, Loggins had been casually taking guitar lessons to learn to play folk-style tunes, and then “everything changed.”

Pattie Boyd on the Beatles’ legacy, working on “A Hard Day’s Night” and falling for George Harrison

As he tells Womack, seeing the Beatles made him realize, “Oh, this is what I want to do…Some kind of strange magic was happening. You could feel the electricity, and yet you could also picture yourself playing in a band like that. It seemed do-able.” He was soon stealing the guitar from his brother’s wall, playing until his fingers bled (“the definition of passion”), singing from a Beatles songbook, and starting to write music of his own.

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION:

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That music would later include the megahits “Footloose,” “Danger Zone,” and “I’m Alright” — which Womack confesses to having thought was a new Paul McCartney single upon first hearing the song in 1980. “Flattered,” Loggins says he has definitely been influenced by the Lennon-McCartney catalog when it comes to chord changes and lyrical turns of phrase. He’s also collaborated with many prolific artists including Barbra Streisand, Michael McDonald and Stevie Nicks, and likens writing songs for soundtracks to collaborations: “In a perfect world, the song should enhance the scene. But the power of the movie enhances the power of the song, and vice versa. That’s storytelling at its finest.”

Now 75, Loggins has published a memoir (“Still Alright,” 2022), is a generous charity donor and is heading out on his final tour (which he’s titled “This Is It,” appropriately enough). He says that as an artist, it’s important not to think of yourself as having “made it” or “arrived.” Describing himself as “determined,” he says that – not unlike McCartney – he still constantly strives to collaborate, improve and learn. “It’s all part of the journey.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Kenny Loggins on “Everything Fab Four,” including the true story behind his bestselling children’s album “Return to Pooh Corner,” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you’re listening.

“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest project is the authorized biography and archives of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, due out in November 2023.

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to more Everything Fab Four