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<title>11 February, 2024</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>SARS-COV-2 induces blood-brain barrier and choroid plexus barrier impairments and vascular inflammation in mice</strong> -
<div>
The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has led to more than 700 million confirmed cases and near 7 million deaths. Although Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus mainly infects the respiratory system, neurological complications are widely reported in both acute infection and long-COVID cases. Despite the success of vaccines and antiviral treatments, neuroinvasiveness of SARS-CoV-2 remains as an important question, which is also centered on the mystery whether the virus is capable of breaching the barriers into the central nervous system. By studying the K18-hACE2 infection model, we observed clear evidence of microvascular damage and breakdown of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Mechanistically, SARS-CoV-2 infection caused pericyte damage, tight junction loss, endothelial activation and vascular inflammation, which together drive microvascular injury and BBB impairment. In addition, the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier at the choroid plexus was also impaired after infection. Therefore, cerebrovascular and choroid plexus dysfunctions are important aspects of COVID-19 and may contribute to the neurological complications both acutely and in long COVID.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.09.579589v1" target="_blank">SARS-COV-2 induces blood-brain barrier and choroid plexus barrier impairments and vascular inflammation in mice</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Unfolded Von Willebrand Factor Binds Protein S and Reduces Anticoagulant Activity</strong> -
<div>
Protein S (PS), the critical plasma cofactor for the anticoagulants tissue factor (TF) pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and activated protein C (APC), circulates in two functionally distinct pools: free (anticoagulant) or bound to complement component 4b-binding protein (C4BP) (anti-inflammatory). Acquired free PS deficiency is detected in several viral infections, but its cause is unclear. Here, we identified a shear-dependent interaction between PS and von Willebrand Factor (VWF) by mass spectrometry. Consistently, plasma PS and VWF comigrated in both native and agarose gel electrophoresis. The PS/VWF interaction was blocked by TFPI but not APC, suggesting an interaction with the C-terminal sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) region of PS. Microfluidic systems, mimicking arterial laminar flow or disrupted turbulent flow, demonstrated that PS stably binds VWF as VWF unfolds under turbulent flow. PS/VWF complexes also localized to platelet thrombi under laminar arterial flow. In thrombin generation-based assays, shearing plasma decreased PS activity, an effect not seen in the absence of VWF. Finally, free PS deficiency in COVID-19 patients, measured using an antibody that binds near the C4BP binding site in SHBG, correlated with changes in VWF, but not C4BP, and with thrombin generation. Our data suggest that PS binds to a shear-exposed site on VWF, thus sequestering free PS and decreasing its anticoagulant activity, which would account for the increased thrombin generation potential. As many viral infections present with free PS deficiency, elevated circulating VWF, and increased vascular shear, we propose that the PS/VWF interaction reported here is a likely contributor to virus-associated thrombotic risk.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.08.579463v1" target="_blank">Unfolded Von Willebrand Factor Binds Protein S and Reduces Anticoagulant Activity</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Distinct evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB and BA.2.86/JN.1 lineages combining increased fitness and antibody evasion</strong> -
<div>
The unceasing circulation of SARS-CoV-2 leads to the continuous emergence of novel viral sublineages. Here, we isolated and characterized XBB.1, XBB.1.5, XBB.1.9.1, XBB.1.16.1, EG.5.1.1, EG.5.1.3, XBF, BA.2.86.1 and JN.1 variants, representing &gt;80% of circulating variants in January 2024. The XBB subvariants carry few but recurrent mutations in the spike, whereas BA.2.86.1 and JN.1 harbor &gt;30 additional changes. These variants replicated in IGROV-1 but no longer in Vero E6 and were not markedly fusogenic. They potently infected nasal epithelial cells, with EG.5.1.3 exhibiting the highest fitness. Antivirals remained active. Neutralizing antibody (NAb) responses from vaccinees and BA.1/BA.2-infected individuals were markedly lower compared to BA.1, without major differences between variants. An XBB breakthrough infection enhanced NAb responses against both XBB and BA.2.86 variants. JN.1 displayed lower affinity to ACE2 and higher immune evasion properties compared to BA.2.86.1. Thus, while distinct, the evolutionary trajectory of these variants combines increased fitness and antibody evasion.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.20.567873v3" target="_blank">Distinct evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB and BA.2.86/JN.1 lineages combining increased fitness and antibody evasion</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Forecasting dominance of SARS-CoV-2 lineages by anomaly detection using deep AutoEncoders</strong> -
<div>
The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is characterized by sequential emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants and lineages outcompeting previously circulating ones because of, among other factors, increased transmissibility and immune escape. We devised an unsupervised deep learning AutoEncoder for viral genomes anomaly detection to predict future dominant lineages (FDLs), i.e., lineages or sublineages comprising &gt;= 10% of viral sequences added to the GISAID database on a given week. The algorithm was trained and validated by assembling global and country specific data sets from 16,187,950 Spike protein sequences sampled between December 24th, 2019, and November 8th, 2023. The AutoEncoder flags low frequency FDLs (0.01% - 3%), with median lead times of 4-16 weeks. Over time, positive predictive values oscillate, decreasing linearly with the number of unique sequences per data set, showing average performance up to 30 times better than baseline approaches. The B.1.617.2 vaccine reference strain was flagged as FDL when its frequency was only 0.01%, more than one year earlier of being considered for an updated COVID-19 vaccine. Our AutoEncoder, applicable in principle to any pathogen, also pinpoints specific mutations potentially linked to increased fitness, and may provide significant insights for the optimization of public health pre-emptive intervention strategies.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.24.563721v2" target="_blank">Forecasting dominance of SARS-CoV-2 lineages by anomaly detection using deep AutoEncoders</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Importance of Cause-of-Death Certification for the COVID-19 Burden Assessment: the Case of Central Europe</strong> -
<div>
Background: In Central Europe, the increase in mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic exceeded the number of deaths registered due to coronavirus disease. Miscertification of COVID-19 has been suggested as one of the possible explanations. Analysis of all mentions from death certificates allows us to identify cases where COVID-19 was reported as a contributing rather than the underlying cause of death (UCoD). Methods: Analysis of 187,000 death certificates with a COVID-19 mention from Austria, Bavaria, Czechia, Lithuania and Poland, 2020–2021. Cause of Death Association Indicators (CDAIs) and Contributing CDAIs were calculated to identify and measure the strength of associations between COVID-19, reported as UCoD or not, and all other medical mentions. Results: Death certificates reporting COVID-19 included on average more medical information than other death certificates. In 171,600 deaths with COVID-19 as the UCoD, ten groups of comorbidities and ten types of complications revealed significant and strong association with COVID-19. Further 15,700 deaths were certified with COVID-19 only as a contributing condition, of which almost 20% were assigned to typical coronavirus complications, such as cerebral infarction, Acute Myocardial Infarction, renal failure. In Austria, Bavaria, Czechia and Lithuania the reported scale of COVID-19 mortality would have been 18-27% higher had COVID-19 been coded as the UCoD in all the cases. Conclusions: Complete death certificate information allows us to assess the scale of COVID-19 miscertification and the burden of COVID-19. Deaths registered with a coronavirus comorbidity were equivalent to the total estimated excess mortality in Austria and Czech Republic, and a large proportion of in Lithuania and Bavaria.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hy9zn/" target="_blank">The Importance of Cause-of-Death Certification for the COVID-19 Burden Assessment: the Case of Central Europe</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Mosaic sarbecovirus vaccination elicits cross-reactive responses in pre-immunized animals</strong> -
<div>
Immunization with mosaic-8b [60-mer nanoparticles presenting 8 SARS-like betacoronavirus (sarbecovirus) receptor-binding domains (RBDs)] elicits more broadly cross-reactive antibodies than homotypic SARS-CoV-2 RBD-only nanoparticles and protects against sarbecoviruses. To investigate original antigenic sin (OAS) effects on mosaic-8b efficacy, we evaluated effects of prior COVID-19 vaccinations in non-human primates and mice on sarbecovirus response breadths elicited by mosaic-8b, admix-8b (8 homotypics), and homotypic SARS-CoV-2, finding greatest cross-reactivity for mosaic-8b. As demonstrated by molecular fate-mapping in which antibodies derived from specific cohorts of B cells are differentially detected, B cells primed by WA1 spike mRNA-LNP dominated antibody responses after RBD-nanoparticle boosting. While mosaic-8b and homotypic-nanoparticles boosted cross-reactive antibodies, de novo antibodies were predominantly induced with mosaic-8b boosting, and these were specific for variant RBDs with increased identity to RBDs on mosaic-8b. These results inform OAS mechanisms and support using mosaic-8b to protect COVID-19 vaccinated/infected humans against as-yet-unknown SARS-CoV-2 variants and animal sarbecoviruses with human spillover potential.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.08.576722v1" target="_blank">Mosaic sarbecovirus vaccination elicits cross-reactive responses in pre-immunized animals</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Use of substances to cope predicts PTSD symptom persistence: Investigating patterns of interactions between PTSD symptoms and its maintaining mechanisms</strong> -
<div>
Objective. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains a growing public health challenge across the globe and is associated with negative and persistent long-term consequences. The last decades of research identified different mechanisms associated with the development and persistence of PTSD, including maladaptive coping strategies, cognitive and experiential avoidance, positive, and negative metacognitions. Despite these advances, little is known about how these different processes interact with specific PTSD symptoms, and how they influence each other over time at the within-person level. Method. Leveraging a large (N &gt; 1,800) longitudinal dataset representative of the Norwegian population during the COVID-19 pandemic, this pre-registered study investigated these symptom-process interactions over an eight-month period. Results. Our panel graphical vector autoregressive (GVAR) network model revealed the dominating role of substance use to cope in predicting higher levels of PTSD symptoms over time and increases in PTSD symptomatology within more proximal time-windows (i.e., within six weeks). Threat monitoring was associated with increased suicidal ideation, while threat monitoring itself was increasing upon decreased avoidance behavior, greater presence of negative metacognitions, and higher use of substances to cope. Conclusions. Our findings speak to the importance of attending to different coping strategies, particularly the use of substances as a coping behavior in efforts to prevent PTSD chronicity upon symptom onset. We outline future directions for research efforts to better understand the complex interactions and temporal pathways leading up to the development and maintenance of PTSD symptomatology.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/7r9e6/" target="_blank">Use of substances to cope predicts PTSD symptom persistence: Investigating patterns of interactions between PTSD symptoms and its maintaining mechanisms</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Dimensionality reduction distills complex evolutionary relationships in seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Public health researchers and practitioners commonly infer phylogenies from viral genome sequences to understand transmission dynamics and identify clusters of genetically-related samples. However, viruses that reassort or recombine violate phylogenetic assumptions and require more sophisticated methods. Even when phylogenies are appropriate, they can be unnecessary or difficult to interpret without specialty knowledge. For example, pairwise distances between sequences can be enough to identify clusters of related samples or assign new samples to existing phylogenetic clusters. In this work, we tested whether dimensionality reduction methods could capture known genetic groups within two human pathogenic viruses that cause substantial human morbidity and mortality and frequently reassort or recombine, respectively: seasonal influenza A/H3N2 and SARS-CoV-2. We applied principal component analysis (PCA), multidimensional scaling (MDS), t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), and uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) to sequences with well-defined phylogenetic clades and either reassortment (H3N2) or recombination (SARS-CoV-2). For each low-dimensional embedding of sequences, we calculated the correlation between pairwise genetic and Euclidean distances in the embedding and applied a hierarchical clustering method to identify clusters in the embedding. We measured the accuracy of clusters compared to previously defined phylogenetic clades, reassortment clusters, or recombinant lineages. We found that MDS maintained the strongest correlation between pairwise genetic and Euclidean distances between sequences and best captured the intermediate placement of recombinant lineages between parental lineages. Clusters from t-SNE most accurately recapitulated known phylogenetic clades and recombinant lineages. Both MDS and t-SNE accurately identified reassortment groups. We show that simple statistical methods without a biological model can accurately represent known genetic relationships for relevant human pathogenic viruses. Our open source implementation of these methods for analysis of viral genome sequences can be easily applied when phylogenetic methods are either unnecessary or inappropriate.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.07.579374v1" target="_blank">Dimensionality reduction distills complex evolutionary relationships in seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Identification of B cell subsets based on antigen receptor sequences using deep learning</strong> -
<div>
B cell receptors (BCRs) denote antigen specificity, while corresponding cell subsets indicate B cell functionality. Since each B cell uniquely encodes this combination, physical isolation and subsequent processing of individual B cells become indispensable to identify both attributes. However, this approach accompanies high costs and inevitable information loss, hindering high-throughput investigation of B cell populations. Here, we present BCR-SORT, a deep learning model that predicts cell subsets from their corresponding BCR sequences by leveraging B cell activation and maturation signatures encoded within BCR sequences. Subsequently, BCR-SORT is demonstrated to improve reconstruction of BCR phylogenetic trees, and reproduce results consistent with those verified using physical isolation-based methods or prior knowledge. Notably, when applied to BCR sequences from COVID-19 vaccine recipients, it revealed inter-individual heterogeneity of evolutionary trajectories towards Omicron-binding memory B cells. Overall, BCR-SORT offers great potential to improve our understanding of B cell responses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.06.579098v1" target="_blank">Identification of B cell subsets based on antigen receptor sequences using deep learning</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>BootCellNet, a resampling-based procedure, promotes unsupervised identification of cell populations via robust inference of gene regulatory networks.</strong> -
<div>
Recent advances in measurement technologies, particularly single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), have revolutionized our ability to acquire large amounts of omics-level data on cellular states. As measurement techniques evolve, there has been an increasing need for data analysis methodologies, especially those focused on cell-type identification and inference of gene regulatory networks (GRNs). We have developed a new method named BootCellNet, which employs smoothing and resampling to infer GRNs. Using the inferred GRNs, BootCellNet further infers the minimum dominating set (MDS), a set of genes that determines the dynamics of the entire network. We have demonstrated that BootCellNet robustly infers GRNs and their MDSs from scRNA-seq data and facilitates unsupervised cell labeling using scRNA-seq datasets of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and hematopoiesis. It has also identified COVID-19 patient-specific cells and their potential regulatory transcription factors. BootCellNet not only identifies cell types in an unsupervised and explainable way but also provides insights into the characteristics of identified cell types through the inference of GRNs and MDS.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.06.579236v1" target="_blank">BootCellNet, a resampling-based procedure, promotes unsupervised identification of cell populations via robust inference of gene regulatory networks.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Social Sharing of Emotion During the Collective Crisis of COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
We collected data from two sources — social media and online questionnaires — to investigate the emotional consequences of social sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1 tracked and analysed sentiment of tweets posted over the course of a month in the crisis period and found that users who tweeted more frequently about COVID-19 expressed decreasing negative sentiment and increasing positive sentiment over time. Granger-causality tests confirmed that this association was better interpreted in the forward direction (sharing levels predicting sentiment) than in the reverse direction (sentiment predicting sharing levels). Study 2 focused on immediate emotional consequences of sharing COVID-related events and found that participants reported improved overall affect about an event to after sharing it, especially when that event was a personal experience rather than a news story. Reported positive feelings about both kinds of event were also significantly higher after sharing. Taken together, both studies suggested that social sharing is linked with emotional relief and may therefore help people to deal with their negative experiences during a persistent collective crisis.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/9p3wh/" target="_blank">Social Sharing of Emotion During the Collective Crisis of COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Simulation-Driven Design of Stabilized SARS-CoV-2 Spike S2 Immunogens</strong> -
<div>
The full-length prefusion-stabilized SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) is the principal antigen of COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine efficacy has been impacted by emerging variants of concern that accumulate most of the sequence modifications in the immunodominant S1 subunit. S2, in contrast, is the most evolutionarily conserved region of the spike and can elicit broadly neutralizing and protective antibodies. Yet, the usage of S2 as an alternative vaccine strategy is hampered by its general instability. Here, we use a simulation-driven approach to design S2-only immunogens stabilized in a closed prefusion conformation. Molecular simulations provide a mechanistic characterization of S2 trimer opening, informing the design of tryptophan substitutions that impart kinetic and thermodynamic stabilization. Structural characterization via cryo-EM shows the molecular basis of S2 stabilization in the closed prefusion conformation. Moreover, a corroborating set of experiments indicate that the engineered S2 immunogen exhibits increased protein expression, superior thermostability, and preserved immunogenicity against sarbecoviruses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.24.563841v2" target="_blank">Simulation-Driven Design of Stabilized SARS-CoV-2 Spike S2 Immunogens</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Trait Intolerance of Uncertainty Is Associated with Decreased Reappraisal Capacity and Increased Suppression Tendency</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of great uncertainty for the general population and highlights the need to understand how attitudes towards uncertainty may affect well-being. Intolerance of uncertainty is a trait associated with worry, anxiety, and mood disorders. As adaptive emotion regulation supports well-being and mental health, it is possible that intolerance of uncertainty is also associated with the ability and tendency to regulate emotions. However, the relationships between intolerance of uncertainty and widely studied cognitive emotion regulation strategies — such as reappraisal and suppression — have received little attention. In two studies that recruited participants online from the United States, we tested the hypotheses that higher trait intolerance of uncertainty would be associated with greater worry, decreased capacity and tendency to use reappraisal, and increased tendency to use suppression in daily life. Study 1 provided an initial test of our hypotheses. Study 2 was a confirmatory, preregistered study that replicated findings in a young adult sample, demonstrating that scores on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS) were associated with greater COVID-related worry, decreased capacity to regulate negative emotions on a task that manipulated the use of reappraisal, and greater self-reported use of suppression in daily life. Together, these results indicate that intolerance of uncertainty is associated with the capacity and tendency to use emotion regulation strategies important for well-being.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/fsnvy/" target="_blank">Trait Intolerance of Uncertainty Is Associated with Decreased Reappraisal Capacity and Increased Suppression Tendency</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Boosting Positive Mood During Stress: A Daily Coping Toolkit Replication in College Undergraduates</strong> -
<div>
College students today face significant challenges. Evidence suggests mental-health burdens are substantial and resources limited. We sought to replicate prior evidence supporting a one-time daily ambulatory intervention to facilitate adaptive regulation of negative emotion and increase generation of positive emotions. The Daily Coping Toolkit (DCT) was developed at the outset of the COVID-19 Pandemic and was effective in boosting mood in front-line medical personnel (Coifman et al., 2021). This investigation aimed to replicate against a valid control condition in college students returning to campus in 2021. N = 125 college students were randomized to one of two experimental conditions (high v. low dose) or the control condition. Data analyses was pre-registered. Results indicated students in experimental groups experienced significant decreases in negative and increases in positive emotion when compared to controls, providing evidence of efficacy. This was notable because a high proportion of participants reported prior mental illness. Although, there was no difference by dose (high v. low) on emotional reports, there was preliminary evidence that low-dose condition was associated with greater adaptive coping (e.g., exercise, social support seeking). Overall, the results suggest the DCT is an efficacious emotion-regulation intervention that can boost mood during high stress.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/ah43p/" target="_blank">Boosting Positive Mood During Stress: A Daily Coping Toolkit Replication in College Undergraduates</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>copepodTCR: Identification of Antigen-Specific T Cell Receptors with combinatorial peptide pooling</strong> -
<div>
T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire diversity enables the orchestration of antigen-specific immune responses against the vast space of possible pathogens. Identifying TCR/antigen binding pairs from the large TCR repertoire and antigen space is crucial for biomedical research. Here, we introduce copepodTCR, an open-access tool for the design and interpretation of high-throughput experimental assays to determine TCR specificity. copepodTCR implements a combinatorial peptide pooling scheme for efficient experimental testing of T cell responses against large overlapping peptide libraries, useful for “deorphaning” TCRs of unknown specificity. The scheme detects experimental errors and, coupled with a hierarchical Bayesian model for unbiased results interpretation, identifies the response-eliciting peptide for a TCR of interest out of hundreds of peptides tested using a simple experimental set-up. We experimentally validated our approach on a library of 253 overlapping peptides covering the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We provide experimental guides for efficient design of larger screens covering thousands of peptides which will be crucial for the identification of antigen-specific T cells and their targets from limited clinical material.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.28.569052v2" target="_blank">copepodTCR: Identification of Antigen-Specific T Cell Receptors with combinatorial peptide pooling</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Investigating the Effectiveness of Vimida</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; Post COVID-19 Condition <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: vimida <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Gaia AG; Medical School Hamburg; Institut Long-Covid Rostock <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Physiotherapy Via Video Calls on Cardiopulmonary Functions, Physical Function, Cognitive Function, Activity Daily Livings, and Quality of Life in Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19; Long COVID-19; Cardiopulmonary Function; Physical Function <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Exercise training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Chulabhorn Hospital <br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Acute Cardiovascular Responses to a Single Exercise Session in Patients With Post-COVID-19 Syndrome</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Exercise session; Behavioral: Control session <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Nove de Julho <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reducing Respiratory Virus Transmission in Bangladeshi Classrooms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS-CoV2 Infection; Influenza Viral Infections; Respiratory Viral Infection <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Box Fan; Device: UV Germicidal Irradiation Lamp Unit; Device: Combined: Box Fan and UV Germicidal Irradiation Lamp Units <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Stanford University; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SMILE: Clinical Trial to Evaluate Mindfulness as Intervention for Racial and Ethnic Populations During COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Anxiety; COVID-19 Pandemic <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Mindfulness <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD); RTI International <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Learn About a Combined COVID-19 and Influenza Shot in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Influenza, Human; SARS-CoV-2 Infection; COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: BNT162b2 (Omi XBB.1.5)/RIV; Biological: BNT162b2 (Omi XBB.1.5); Biological: RIV; Other: Normal saline placebo <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Pfizer <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Effects of Nutritional Intervention on Health Parameters in Participants With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Diabetes Mellitus Type 2; Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 in Obese; Diabetes; Diabetes Mellitus Non-insulin-dependent; Hypertension; Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Nutritional Intervention <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Sao Jose do Rio Preto Medical School; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Orthopedic Trauma Management</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Trauma; COVID-19 Pandemic <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: epidemyolojical <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Bakirkoy Dr. Sadi Konuk Research and Training Hospital <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Open-label, Multi-centre, Non-Inferiority Study of Safety and Immunogenicity of BIMERVAX for the Prevention of COVID-19 in Adolescents From 12 Years to Less Than 18 Years of Age.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS CoV 2 Infection <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: BIMERVAX <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Hipra Scientific, S.L.U; Veristat, Inc.; VHIR; Asphalion <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study of Amantadine for Cognitive Dysfunction in Patients With Long-Covid</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Amantadine; Other: Physical, Occupational, Speech Therapy; Other: Provider Counseling; Other: Medications for symptoms management <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study on the Effect of Incentive Spirometer-based Respiratory Training on the Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pandemic; Diabetes; Hypertension; Cardiac Disease; Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Incentive Spirometer respiratory training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences; Tri-Service General Hospital <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Balance Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Long COVID</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID-19 Syndrome; Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Balance Acceptance and Commitment Therapy <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: King’s College London <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Predict + Protect Study: Exploring the Effectiveness of a Predictive Health Education Intervention on the Adoption of Protective Behaviors Related to ILI</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Influenza; Influenza A; Influenza B; COVID-19; Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: ILI Predictive Alerts, Reactive Content, and Proactive Content; Behavioral: ILI Predictive Alerts, Reactive Content; Behavioral: Proactive Content; Behavioral: No Intervention <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Evidation Health; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of molecular mechanisms of riboflavin anti-COVID-19 action reveals anti-inflammatory efficacy rather than antiviral activity</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that riboflavin reveals anti-inflammatory rather than antiviral activity for SARS-CoV-2 infection.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An enhanced broad-spectrum peptide inhibits Omicron variants in vivo</strong> - The continual emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOCs) poses a major challenge to vaccines and antiviral therapeutics due to their extensive evasion of immunity. Aiming to develop potent and broad-spectrum anticoronavirus inhibitors, we generated A1-(GGGGS)7-HR2m (A1L35HR2m) by introducing an angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-derived peptide A1 to the N terminus of the viral HR2-derived peptide HR2m through a long flexible linker,…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) as a therapeutic agent of inflammatory disease and infectious COVID-19 virus: live or dead mesenchymal?</strong> - The COVID-19 infection is a worldwide disease that causes numerous immune-inflammatory disorders, tissue damage, and lung dysfunction. COVID-19 vaccines, including those from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Sinopharm, are available globally as effective interventions for combating the disease. The severity of COVID-19 can be most effectively reduced by mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) because they possess anti-inflammatory activity and can reverse lung dysfunction. MSCs can be harvested from various…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Genetic justification of COVID-19 patient outcomes using DERGA, a novel data ensemble refinement greedy algorithm</strong> - Complement inhibition has shown promise in various disorders, including COVID-19. A prediction tool including complement genetic variants is vital. This study aims to identify crucial complement-related variants and determine an optimal pattern for accurate disease outcome prediction. Genetic data from 204 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between April 2020 and April 2021 at three referral centres were analysed using an artificial intelligence-based algorithm to predict disease outcome (ICU vs….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Milk Antiviral Proteins and Derived Peptides against Zoonoses</strong> - Milk is renowned for its nutritional richness but also serves as a remarkable reservoir of bioactive compounds, particularly milk proteins and their derived peptides. Recent studies have showcased several robust antiviral activities of these proteins, evidencing promising potential within zoonotic viral diseases. While several publications focus on milk’s bioactivities, antiviral peptides remain largely neglected in reviews. This knowledge is critical for identifying novel research directions…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Inhibition of Serine Proteases by Serpins Is Augmented by Negatively Charged Heparin: A Concise Review of Some Clinically Relevant Interactions</strong> - Serine proteases are members of a large family of hydrolytic enzymes in which a particular serine residue in the active site performs an essential role as a nucleophile, which is required for their proteolytic cleavage function. The array of functions performed by serine proteases is vast and includes, among others, the following: (i) the ability to fight infections; (ii) the activation of blood coagulation or blood clot lysis systems; (iii) the activation of digestive enzymes; and (iv)…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Narrative Review: The Role of NETs in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome/Acute Lung Injury</strong> - Nowadays, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) still has a high mortality rate, and the alleviation and treatment of ARDS remains a major research focus. There are various causes of ARDS, among which pneumonia and non-pulmonary sepsis are the most common. Trauma and blood transfusion can also cause ARDS. In ARDS, the aggregation and infiltration of neutrophils in the lungs have a great influence on the development of the disease. Neutrophils regulate inflammatory responses through various…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Unveiling the Antiviral Properties of Panduratin A through SARS-CoV-2 Infection Modeling in Cardiomyocytes</strong> - Establishing a drug-screening platform is critical for the discovery of potential antiviral agents against SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we developed a platform based on human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) to investigate SARS-CoV-2 infectivity, with the aim of evaluating potential antiviral agents for anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity and cardiotoxicity. Cultured myocytes of iPSC-CMs and immortalized human cardiomyocyte cell line (AC-16) were primarily characterized for the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ligand-Based Design of Selective Peptidomimetic uPA and TMPRSS2 Inhibitors with Arg Bioisosteres</strong> - Trypsin-like serine proteases are involved in many important physiological processes like blood coagulation and remodeling of the extracellular matrix. On the other hand, they are also associated with pathological conditions. The urokinase-pwlasminogen activator (uPA), which is involved in tissue remodeling, can increase the metastatic behavior of various cancer types when overexpressed and dysregulated. Another member of this protease class that received attention during the SARS-CoV 2 pandemic…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phytochemical Elucidation and Effect of <em>Maesa indica</em> (Roxb.) Sweet on Alleviation of Potassium Dichromate-Induced Pulmonary Damage in Rats</strong> - Maesa indica (Roxb.) Sweet is one of the well-known traditionally-used Indian plants. This plant is rich in secondary metabolites like phenolic acids, flavonoids, alkaloids, glycosides, saponins, and carbohydrates. It contains numerous therapeutically active compounds like palmitic acid, chrysophanol, glyceryl palmitate, stigmasterol, β-sitosterol, dodecane, maesaquinone, quercetin 3-rhaminoside, rutin, chlorogenic acid, catechin, quercetin, nitrendipine, 2,3-dihydroxypropyl…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 Nsp1 cooperates with initiation factors EIF1 and 1A to selectively enhance translation of viral RNA</strong> - A better mechanistic understanding of virus-host dependencies can help reveal vulnerabilities and identify opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Of particular interest are essential interactions that enable production of viral proteins, as those could target an early step in the virus lifecycle. Here, we use subcellular proteomics, ribosome profiling analyses and reporter assays to detect changes in protein synthesis dynamics during SARS-CoV-2 (CoV2) infection. We identify specific…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Application of a Biomimetic Nanoparticle-Based Mock Virus to Determine SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibody Levels in Blood Samples Using a Lateral Flow Assay</strong> - The presence of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in blood, acquired through previous infection or vaccination, is known to prevent the (re)occurrence of outbreaks unless the virus mutates. Therefore, the measurement of neutralizing antibodies constitutes an indispensable tool in assessing an individual’s and a population’s immunity against SARS-CoV-2. For this reason, we have developed an innovative lateral flow assay (LFA) capable of detecting blood-derived neutralizing antibodies…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kidney organoids reveal redundancy in viral entry pathways during ACE2-dependent SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - With a high incidence of acute kidney injury among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, considerable attention has been focussed on whether SARS-CoV-2 specifically targets kidney cells to directly impact renal function, or whether renal damage is primarily an indirect outcome. To date, several studies have utilized kidney organoids to understand the pathogenesis of COVID-19, revealing the ability for SARS-CoV-2 to predominantly infect cells of the proximal tubule (PT), with reduced infectivity…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Role of PCSK9 inhibition during the inflammatory stage of SARS-COV-2: an updated review</strong> - The potential role of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibition in the management of COVID-19 and other medical conditions has emerged as an intriguing area of research. PCSK9 is primarily known for its impact on cholesterol metabolism, but recent studies have unveiled its involvement in various physiological processes, including inflammation, immune regulation, and thrombosis. In this abstract, the authors review the rationale and potential implications of PCSK9…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Case report: Ensitrelvir for treatment of persistent COVID-19 in lymphoma patients: a report of two cases</strong> - Persistent COVID-19 is a well recognized issue of concern in patients with hematological malignancies. Such patients are not only at risk of mortality due to the infection itself, but are also at risk of suboptimal malignancy-related outcomes because of delays and terminations of chemotherapy. We report two lymphoma patients with heavily pretreated persistent COVID-19 in which ensitrelvir brought about radical changes in the clinical course leading to rapid remissions. Patient 1 was on ibrutinib…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Trying to Keep His Family Safe in Rafah</strong> - As Israel’s military campaign turns to what has become Gaza’s home for displaced civilians, a Palestinian aid worker describes his long journey to the city, and how he talks to his kids about air strikes. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/trying-to-keep-his-family-safe-in-rafah">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?</strong> - Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/is-the-media-prepared-for-an-extinction-level-event">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Friendship Challenge</strong> - How envy destroyed the perfect connection between two teen-age girls. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/12/the-friendship-challenge">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Art World Before and After Thelma Golden, by Calvin Tomkins</strong> - When Golden was a young curator in the nineties, her shows, centering Black artists, were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/12/the-art-world-before-and-after-thelma-golden">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld</strong> - After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents were shocked to learn that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/12/a-teens-fatal-plunge-into-the-london-underworld">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>What you can learn from regret</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a person standing before two branching paths, deciding which to take." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VDdM_-UsaPxPSMhWp4oI7PLlEFs=/289x0:2021x1299/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73130254/GettyImages_1291540152.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Forming a healthy relationship with regret means learning to look it in the face.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tRbV5f">
When Peter and Sjanna Leighton were in their early 20s, their marriage fell apart. Money was tight, and they each feared they were disappointing the other; neither one knew how to communicate their vulnerabilities and hurt.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PJfLOw">
So one day, almost a year after their vows, Peter packed his bags and moved out of their home in San Antonio, Texas. He got an apartment on his own and focused on building his career in the restaurant business.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VteJbO">
“From the outside world, it may have looked like I’d recovered from our marriage failing,” says Peter, who became chronically depressed. “But the memories of how powerful our togetherness could have been, and what could have happened if we had continued developing — all of that churned in me.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LPDmtQ">
Peter and Sjanna both quietly carried their regret over giving up on their relationship through other marriages, children, and divorce. Then in 2007, 33 years later, Sjanna searched Peter’s name online and found his <a href="https://www.pbleighton.com/">photography website</a>. “The first photo that came up was a picture of him that he’d taken in our bathroom when we were married, and the second picture was me on our honeymoon, which he had titled ‘The Muse,’” says Sjanna. She realized that he lived in Austin, not far from her, and after a few weeks, she built up the courage to send him an email. They met up for coffee. When they met up a second time a few weeks later, she asked him, “What happened with us, Peter?” He replied, “I don’t know, but you were the love of my life.” Within a month of reconnecting, they were dating again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f14WG3">
Today, at 75 and 72 years old, Peter and Sjanna have been happily remarried for 16 years. “When we got back together, we did it with our regrets and our perceived mistakes,” says Peter. “Because of that, when there have been storms, we’ve been able to weather them.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jNB4OH">
Few people have a second chance the way Peter and Sjanna did, but most of us live with regrets. We may not own up to them (maybe not even to ourselves), but we all have past actions we wish we could change — bullying a middle school classmate, not telling a loved one how much they meant to us, choosing a safe job rather than taking a creative risk — yet we rarely reckon with this universal feeling or recognize how it can benefit us. Since we can’t change the past, regret can seem useless and self-indulgent. But the emotion can clarify a disconnect between who we are and who we want to be. And it can show us how to change.
</p>
<h3 id="wGOYZZ">
What causes regret
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wh4Gtr">
“There are three pieces to regret,” says Amy Summerville, a research scientist who has led studies on the emotion. “One, it feels bad; two, it’s based on a thought about how things could have been better; three, the thought is focused on your own actions.” In other words, if you feel bad after acing an interview and not getting the job, that’s not regret; if you feel bad because you stayed up late playing video games and slept through the interview, that could be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cSHaM2">
According to Summerville, the most common regrets come from career and romance. As people age, entering their 60s and 70s, family and health start to come up as regrets, too, but romantic regret remains consistent through life stages.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ifd8aF">
She has also found that regrets of inaction are more common than regrets of action. In other words, we tend to regret the things we didn’t do rather than the things we did. “Human memory adaptively functions to remind us of open things on our to-do list, rather than things we’ve crossed off,” says Summerville, “which might mean that we have a better memory for unmet goals and they persist longer.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gx7R0H">
Another factor: When we think about the path we didn’t take, we only imagine the dreamy positives, overlooking the mundane details and inevitable disappointments. It’s harder to regret choices we actually made since they led to so many other specifics. “With action regrets, you can find a silver lining, but with inaction regrets, you can’t do that,” says Daniel Pink, author of <em>The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward</em>. It’s easy to regret not running away with that glamorous stranger at 22 since you don’t see the fights and heartbreak. It’s trickier to regret an unhappy marriage if it also led to wonderful kids.
</p>
<h3 id="8rMemT">
Placing regret in context
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aEutTq">
If you’re reckoning with regret, first, be kind to yourself — and realistic. It’s easy to imagine acting differently if we could do it all over with what we know now, but we didn’t yet have that experience. “If you’re middle-aged, with kids and a mortgage, it’s easy to say, ‘Why didn’t I take a year off and go live in Europe after college?’” says Summerville. “But if you really think about yourself after graduation, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/student-loan-debt">student loans</a> and family pressure to get a career, you remember how you did have responsibilities and stressors then.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g0TpsO">
It’s important to contextualize the emotion within your setting, too, especially if you live in a community that highly values personal choice and responsibility. “When we talk about how ‘people’ feel regret, we’re largely talking about how white Americans and Western Europeans experience it,” says Summerville. More collectivist cultures can turn down the inner spotlight on our personal choices: An arranged marriage or raising kids within the family compound can take away some of the pressure around finding your individual path. Some religions also provide established rituals for making sense of regret, like Catholic confession or Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. But in the US, people are taught that life is what we make it as individuals — so if something goes wrong, it’s a catastrophe and it’s our fault.
</p>
<h3 id="QP3IUk">
Come clean about regret
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U0mb2O">
The first step toward coming to terms with your regrets is owning up to them, which can be tough. “In the US, we’ve over-indexed on positivity,” says Pink, who has led surveys that documented thousands of regrets within the US and across the world. “We tend to think that the path to a life well-lived is to be positive all the time and never negative, to look forward and never look back.” When he started talking to others about regret in midlife, Pink says he felt sheepish, expecting them to disengage from the conversation. He found the opposite: Everyone else had regrets, too, although they often felt like they weren’t supposed to voice them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TIHgdj">
When Sjanna Leighton got back together with Peter in her 50s, it eased some of her sadness about the end of their marriage. But as they fell in love, rediscovering the joys of their relationship, she also felt acute regret: What if they had been vulnerable with each other in their 20s and stuck it out? What would their shared life have looked like through their 30s and 40s, as partners and parents?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oc8ea2">
“When we got back together, I felt safe and acknowledged, like he accepted me for who I was, which was an extraordinary feeling,” she says. “It also made me really sad. I wished we’d stayed together, that we had understood each other better.”
</p>
<h3 id="SH1Y9W">
Let that regret inform your life
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l8VdgA">
At first, Sjanna found that regret painful. But as she and Peter have sustained a happy second marriage to each other, she’s realized how the emotion informs her current relationship, which is full of gratitude, compassion, and wonder. “We’d both had difficult marriages and had kids, and know how precious it is to have someone that loves you for who you are,” she says. Sometimes she still thinks about the lifelong relationship that could have been, but when she sees couples her age bickering or bored with each other, she feels grateful that she and Peter never take each other for granted. “We’ve had some things happen that are difficult, but at the end of the day, there’s nowhere we’d rather be than beside each other,” says Sjanna.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="asAPO7">
If we let it, regret can clarify <a href="https://www.vox.com/life">how to live</a>: How is our life misaligned with our values? How do we want to act differently in the time we have left? “It can help us become clearer thinkers, better problem solvers, and better at finding meaning in life,” says Pink. “Some of us ignore regret; others wallow, but what we should be doing is confronting our regrets, using them as data and information.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SFEYVz">
For example, say you’re 60 years old and regret that you stayed in a lackluster job rather than starting your own business. First, instead of feeling contempt for your younger self, treat yourself with kindness and curiosity. Place your choices in context: What were the reasons you stayed in this job? What were the pressures and unknowns you faced at the time? Remember, this choice is only one small part of who you are; think about some of the choices you made that make you feel proud.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tOPkSy">
Next, analyze. What can you learn about yourself from this regret? For the 60-year-old, a lesson might be that with the security and clarity of age, you value boldness and risk-taking more than you used to. You can work with that. Maybe you start a creative side hustle, or mentor young people, or take on a leadership role in a group at the library.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wBroGA">
“You’re trying to look backward in order to move forward,” says Pink. “You can’t undo what you did, but you can use that piercing negative feeling as a signal about what you value, and a north star for guiding the rest of your life.”
</p>
<h3 id="AFT0Qb">
Remember to give yourself grace
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1B14G">
Reckoning with regret often feels painful and scary. If you admit to wishing you had acted differently, then you’re admitting your imperfections. You’re not someone who lives with “no regrets,” a glib success who never fails. But when you release yourself from the false binary of being a success or a failure, you’re free to live in a more thoughtful, informed way, one shaped by an understanding of your strengths and values. It’s never too late to learn from your regrets and use them to shape who you want to be today: If you wish you had taken English classes seriously in college, ask your friends about their favorite books and put together your own syllabus from their recommendations. If you regret the nights you spent working late while your kids were young, talk to them about how you’d like to build a closer relationship with them (and maybe their kids) now. Owning your regret is vulnerable, but it’s the best way to avoid accumulating more regrets in the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e9pgeG">
Sjanna and Peter still have arguments and tense periods in their marriage. But unlike in their 20s, they know how to work through it — and that their relationship is worth it. “Part of the regret we both carry with us is that we weren’t ready,” says Peter. “Now, we are.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>Why work is so miserable in America</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A black-and-white steel engraving of factory workers working at a wood gasifier." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ahHEiskLaL4RIh--6IzcwWkDtyg=/107x0:1814x1280/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73130036/GettyImages_701055354.0.png"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Protestant work ethic hijacked America. It’s time for a new pro-worker ethos.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aDPDo3">
When you hear the phrase “work ethic,” you might think of the perfect employee. The one who puts her job above everything else, who never complains, the type that lives to work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yjTn6Q">
That is certainly one version of the work ethic, and it’s a story that serves employers much more than it serves employees. But is that the only version of the work ethic? Or to put it more directly, is it the best version of the work ethic? <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hijacked/E7E4A7D850C1E7289BA7AAF910455136">A new book</a> by the University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that we should revisit the origins of the work ethic because the answer to both of those questions is no.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MKXjhO">
Anderson tells the history of the Protestant Work Ethic and how it gave rise to dueling interpretations. One of those interpretations was pro-worker and the other was not. And for various reasons, the anti-worker version is the one that ultimately prevailed — or at least it’s the one that dominates our society today.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tbbbiY">
So I invited her onto <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area"><em>The Gray Area</em></a> to talk about what happened and why she thinks we need to reclaim the work ethic for workers. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area"><em>The Gray Area</em></a> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/search/vox%20conversations">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6NOJ6IkTb2GWMj1RpmtnxP">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/vox-conversations">Stitcher</a>, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
</p>
<div id="eeJhgc">
</div>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="6BN4Us"/>
<h4 id="OflXU1">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KNEuv9">
Where does the phrase “Protestant work ethic” come from?
</p>
<h4 id="lAkrNi">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MUKqj5">
The phrase the Protestant work ethic comes from the great social theorist Max Weber, who wrote a book called <em>The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism</em>; the English translation came out in 1920. He set the basic terms for our understanding of the work ethic. In his description, the Protestant work ethic was an ethic of nose to the grindstone for the workers for the maximum profit of the capitalist. So it’s a pretty dreary ethic, and he himself, despite his profession of value neutrality and social science, condemned the work ethic as consigning us to an iron cage, and he contrasted the Puritan attitude toward work as recalling the capitalist version of the work ethic that came to us where we are forced to work in our calling.
</p>
<h4 id="0qOwnR">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GgqByD">
How important is the Protestant part of the Protestant work ethic? Is the religious foundation essential?
</p>
<h4 id="94Z87R">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oYOHDA">
This is coming right out of the Puritans. The Puritans in England were basically Calvinist in theology and obsessed with getting certainty about their salvation. Theologically, the Calvinists think we’re all doomed from the start except for a tiny number of people who are saved. The critical issue, then, is you’re all desperate to know whether you’re saved, and the Puritan said the only way to tell is if you are working really, really hard because that shows that God has graced you and that you really have faith.
</p>
<h4 id="vYwqhe">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VtCOqz">
There were contradictions built into the work ethic right from the start. You call them the “repressive” and “uplifting” dimensions, and these dimensions get teased apart during the Industrial Revolution, and out of that comes the conservative and progressive work ethics. Tell me about these competing work ethics and what happened here.
</p>
<h4 id="6Ar13t">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BJu8p5">
Probably most of us know the Puritans as the biggest killjoys in European history. They banned the celebration of Christmas. You’re not supposed to have any fun. You’re supposed to be full of sobriety and self-denial and frugality, and they definitely thought that you should be working crazy hard. You needed your rest. You have the Sabbath, but then you have to go straight back to work. The purpose of rest is to restore yourself to that end.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l4neyf">
But the important thing is they thought that workers would reap some rewards from all of this self-denial. You get to save up, you’ll be able to buy property, you’ll get wealthier. You can afford some conveniences, no luxury, but at least you’ll have a more comfortable life. And that was because the model workers in the 17th century, when the work ethic was perfected, both had capital and engaged in manual labor. The master craftsman who owned his own shop, even merchant sailors were entitled to a share of the profits of the commercial voyage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0A8PQM">
We don’t have a sharp distinction between manual workers and capitalists in the 17th century. The critical issue in the Industrial Revolution is then you get a very sharp split between wage laborers whose only source of income is the wage they get from their employer on the one hand, and capitalists on the other hand, whose entire income comes from profit or interest or some kind of income flow from ownership of an asset.
</p>
<h4 id="KzvBWu">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XSP2fi">
This is the hijacking of the term “Protestant work ethic” you’re talking about, right?
</p>
<h4 id="JoVjjM">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gN9gko">
Absolutely. The version that we received that ended up being neoliberalism as we know it today is the version that Max Weber described and condemned in 1920. That’s the version that I claim was hijacked by the capitalists and turned against the workers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NBFp59">
There’s another separate tradition of the work ethic, which is consistent because they kept to the class neutrality of the rights and duties of the work ethic. The whole idea was, yeah, you work really hard and then you’re entitled to reap the fruits of your labor, and that means you need decent pay, a living wage. You’re entitled to have improving prospects if you fulfill the demands of the work ethic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWacZI">
Now, what was happening, especially in the first half of the Industrial Revolution, is that because now you have a sharp division between capitalists and workers, the workers are working harder than ever under more grueling and dangerous conditions, and their wages stagnate all the way through the mid-19th century. They’re basically flat. Meanwhile, the capitalists are reaping all the gains of the Industrial Revolution. So their income is growing by leaps and bounds, even though they’re actually not doing much, they’re just investing assets. There’s a lot of passive income there. So you see a betrayal of the idea that working hard is going to enable you to improve your life.
</p>
<h4 id="qVygQB">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BKtK1X">
The rich have always wanted the poor to work for them — that’s as old as civilization. So what is the real innovation with the conservative work ethic? Is it that we get an ideology that morally justifies exploitation?
</p>
<h4 id="31Hi2d">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lZ3tUL">
To an extent, but it’s a particular kind of exploitation that’s quite extreme. So by the late 18th century, we see conservative thinkers, notably Edmund Burke and Thomas Robert Malthus, who are in an absolute panic about the rising radicalism of propertyless workers. Many of them are inspired by the French Revolution in 1789. They’re out in the streets. They’re starting to protest and demand that their voices be heard. Also, the welfare rolls are growing, and conservatives are in a complete panic over this.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gXoVOY">
Malthus had this idea that it must be because of population increase: Those lazy workers are having too many kids that they can’t afford to feed because they will not restrain their sexual impulses. And many of us might recall similar ideas being promulgated in all the controversies about welfare reform in the United States, despite the fact that there’s never any empirical evidence for this.
</p>
<h4 id="0mhtAy">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="624lXa">
That’s sort of the point, isn’t it? These ideologies have a material impact on how we see the world, on who we see, and who we ignore, and they color our moral intuitions in all kinds of ways.
</p>
<h4 id="rItTjO">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hh9N3J">
A lot of what I’m writing about, and this is especially true in the US, is a culture deeply imbued with the hijacked version of the work ethic, the capitalist version. And so, there’s unbelievable contempt and suspicion of the poor. The overwhelming majority of Republicans think that poor people, who maybe are getting <a href="https://www.vox.com/social-programs">food stamps</a> or some kind of public assistance, are lazy and life is easy for them. It’s like they’re just living in a hammock. Now, anyone who’s actually been poor knows that it’s in fact a lot of work to be poor, just getting the daily subsistence, and often they’re keeping down three part-time jobs. They can’t get full-time hours anywhere, and it’s enormously difficult just to pay for basic necessities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pdWK25">
But that’s not the image that many Americans have because we’re deeply imbued with the work ethic, suspicion of the poor, contempt for the poor, when in fact what social scientists have been telling us ever since the rise of social science is that a lot of poverty is structural. It has nothing to do with the virtues and vices of individuals. It’s already built into the system.
</p>
<h4 id="7ZRfU4">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zrVCaz">
You’ve mentioned the word neoliberalism, which is a boogeyman term at this point, but this is really what you’re contesting in this book.
</p>
<h4 id="2VHOLO">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ypomjE">
That is correct. Neoliberalism just is the late 20th century and early 21st century revival of the conservative work ethic. Really all the patterns of thinking were already set in the late 18th century, which became <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy">policies</a> that redistribute income from workers to property owners and the holders of assets. That’s what neoliberalism amounts to: a whole bunch of policies that secure an increasing share of income for the holders of capital assets.
</p>
<h4 id="0Sibod">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KO9rz0">
I’m wondering why you think neoliberalism won when it did. I mean, we had this long period of post-war social democracy in America. And then in the late ’70s or early ’80s, depending on who you ask, that gives way to the era of neoliberalism, the era we’re still living in today. Why did it win at that particular moment in history?
</p>
<h4 id="66OJjZ">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KHIZGX">
The late ’70s were a period of stagflation. We had the Vietnam War, rising distrust in institutions, and society was ripe for a critique of heavy-handed government. There was actually excessive regulation, I have to say. That’s a legacy of the New Deal. And so, society was ripe for a critique of many aspects of the New Deal regime that was still dominant in the 1970s, but it’s also the case that a lot of businesspeople themselves hated the New Deal from the start, never liked it, always resented it. Businesses, though, had won a great victory in 1948 with the Taft-Hartley Law, which undermined labor <a href="https://www.vox.com/unions">unions</a>, and they had to spend a couple of decades steadily chipping away at the power of unions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n4PtFC">
By the mid-70s, they had already undermined unions quite a lot. Reagan gets elected in 1980, and one of his most famous acts was to fire all of the striking air traffic controllers. That was a deliberate signal he was sending to corporations that they should be equally tough and break unions and employ very aggressive methods. And that, I think, got the ball rolling even faster.
</p>
<h4 id="dSZ87O">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8KkRI6">
Zooming out a bit, do you think it would just be better if our livelihoods and our status and sense of self-worth and all that weren’t anchored to our jobs?
</p>
<h4 id="KE2QhM">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Bkfrts">
I think that Americans probably excessively identify themselves with their jobs, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to do that. I think it depends on what the content of your job is.
</p>
<h4 id="6kwYDX">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rVtA71">
But that’s part of the problem though, right? To borrow a phrase from the late David Graeber, we have all these <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx">“bullshit jobs.”</a> The nature of the work we do matters a ton. If we were all working jobs that we truly enjoyed, well, that would be different.
</p>
<h4 id="D905eX">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S6BCW8">
Yes. And in fact, even the professional-managerial class has its difficulties. You might have come across this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/01/06/happiest-jobs-on-earth/">Washington Post article</a>, which was discussing who are the happiest workers in America. It’s the lumberjacks, the farmers, and the fishers. Professionals are actually way down there.
</p>
<h4 id="ts1Obl">
Sean Illing
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D59O3j">
What do you think is the most immediate thing we could do to empower workers so that they have more genuine freedom in their lives?
</p>
<h4 id="WsYufY">
Elizabeth Anderson
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n0SQSa">
Well, I do think unions would definitely help. I think paid vacations would help. Workers having more say at work would help. Making basic necessities more available to people without having that be tied to work is critical. In all the social democracies, access to health care is not contingent on your having a job, and you don’t have to pay a lot for it. The prices are way more reasonable than they are in the United States. So I think we have to have some kind of public provision there. And also, in the social democracies, you don’t have to pay for college. You have a rich public university system and your tuition’s paid for. In places like Denmark and Germany, 18-year-olds even get a stipend for going to college. So they’re not even financially dependent on their parents while they’re not working, they’re just going to school.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wDUbWL">
<em>To hear the rest of the conversation, </em><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-pro-worker-work-ethic/id1081584611?i=1000641692840"><em>click here</em></a><em>, and be sure to follow </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/thegrayarea">The Gray Area</a><em> on </em><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611"><em>Apple Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://podcasts.google.com/search/vox%20conversations"><em>Google Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6NOJ6IkTb2GWMj1RpmtnxP"><em>Spotify</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/vox-conversations"><em>Stitcher</em></a><em>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>What if public housing were for everyone?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dxmJcoq1GreVvOFOWxfgSwHx0aM=/290x0:1127x628/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73128202/Exterior_Full_Bldng_View_Rendering.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A 268-unit mixed-income, mixed-use, new construction project known as The Laureate in Montgomery County, Maryland. | Montgomery County’s Housing Opportunities Commission
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Local governments are trying a new way to address the housing crisis.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oHX9I9">
Quietly and with little fanfare, the idea of building new publicly owned housing for people across the income spectrum has advanced in the United States.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EhKf72">
Governments have successfully addressed housing shortages through publicly developed housing in places like <a href="https://citymonitor.ai/housing/red-vienna-how-austrias-capital-earned-its-place-in-housing-history">Vienna</a>, <a href="https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/20634-good-and-affordable-housing-for-everybody.html">Finland</a>, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-08-30/how-singapore-helped-90-of-households-to-own-their-homes-video">Singapore</a> in the past, but these examples have typically inspired little attention in the US — which has more restrictive welfare policies and a bias toward private homeownership.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iq6Nl8">
Then one US community started exploring social housing with a markedly more American twist: Leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland — a suburban region just outside Washington, DC, with more than 1 million residents — said they could increase their local housing supply not by ramping up European-style welfare subsidies but through essentially intervening in the traditional capitalist bidding process. Government, when it wants to, can make attractive bids.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LBZmZy">
Now, with an <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/23595421/biden-affordable-housing-shortage-supply">acute nationwide housing shortage</a>, and declining home construction due to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/7/26/23808688/interest-rates-federal-reserve-inflation">high interest rates</a>, the idea is spreading, and more local officials have been moving forward with plans to create publicly owned housing. They are very clear about not calling it “public housing”: To help differentiate these projects from the typical stigmatized, income-restricted, and underfunded model, leaders have coalesced around calling the mixed-income idea “social housing” produced by “public developers.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JwEAK2">
“What I like about what we’re doing is all we have effectively done is commandeered the private American real estate model,” Zachary Marks, the <a href="https://www.hocmc.org/extra/751-zachary-marks-chief-real-estate-officer.html">chief real estate officer</a> for Montgomery County’s housing authority, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23278643/affordable-public-housing-inflation-renters-home">told me in 2022.</a> “We’re replacing the investor dudes from Wall Street, the big money from Dallas.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1nHP4t">
By offering private companies more favorable financing terms, Montgomery County hoped to move forward with new construction that they’d own for as long as they liked. They had plans <a href="https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/COUNCIL/resources/EconomicDevelopment/affordable.html">to build thousands</a> of publicly owned mixed-income apartments by leveraging relatively small amounts of public money to create a revolving fund that could finance short-term construction costs. Eighteen months ago, this “revolving fund” plan was still mostly just on paper; no one lived in any of these units, and whether people would even want to live in publicly owned housing was still an open question.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="On345m">
Answers have since emerged: The first Montgomery County project opened in April 2023, a 268-unit apartment building called <a href="https://www.thelaureateapts.com/">The Laureate</a>, and tenants quickly came to rent. It’s not the kind of public housing most Americans are familiar with: It has a sleek fitness center, multiple gathering spaces, and a courtyard pool. “We’re 97 percent leased today, and it’s just been incredibly successful and happened so fast,” Marks said.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ro15knCq4xyF8gtInwolijn2jz8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25273024/Rendering_Fireplace_Seating__1_.jpg"/> <cite>Montgomery County’s Housing Opportunities Commission</cite>
<figcaption>
Fireplace seating inside The Laureate apartment complex.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gLO5WR">
Encouraged by the positive response, Montgomery County has been barreling forward with other social housing projects, like <a href="https://www.hocmc.org/images/files/committee/2022/Development_and_Finance_Committee_Packet_web_August262022_Version1_20220823.pdf">a 463-unit complex</a> that will house both seniors and families, and another 415-unit building across from The Laureate set to break ground in October. While construction has lagged nationwide as the Federal Reserve worked to rein in inflation, private developers in Montgomery County have been able to partner with the local government, enticed by their more affordable financing options.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dgjuW7">
As word started to get around, city leaders elsewhere began reaching out, curious to learn about this model and whether it could help their own housing woes. Montgomery County was getting so many inquiries, they decided to host a convening in early November, inviting other officials — from places like New York City, Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago —to tour The Laureate and talk collectively about the public developer idea. Roughly 60<strong> </strong>people were in attendance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wCmZZD">
“I am very bought into the Zachary Marks’s line that there is every reason for cities to be building up a balance sheet of real estate equity and we should be capturing that and using it to reinvest in public goods,” said one municipal housing leader who attended the Montgomery County conference and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. “That’s the vision — and you can just describe it in so many ways. You can say we’re socializing real estate value for public use, or you can describe it as we’re doing public-private partnerships to invest in our communities.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z3pN4Y">
Paul Williams, who leads the <a href="https://www.publicenterprise.org/">Center for Public Enterprise</a>, a think tank supportive of social housing, said growing interest in the public developer model has even led to new conversations with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Public agencies are clearly hungry for tools that allow them to produce a lot more housing, and in the past year and a half we’ve gone from working with Montgomery County and Rhode Island to establishing a working group with a few dozen state and municipal housing agencies who come to our regular meetings,” he told Vox. “That’s gotten HUD’s attention, and we’re now talking with them about ways the federal government can support this kind of innovation.”
</p>
<h3 id="DibN26">
Atlanta’s leaders are on track to implement the Montgomery County model
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zar9NV">
Perhaps no city has run as fast with the Montgomery County idea than Atlanta, Georgia. The city’s mayor, Andre Dickens, took office in early 2022 and set an ambitious goal to build or preserve 20,000 affordable housing units within his eight-year term. The Dickens administration wanted to find ways to do this that didn’t depend on the whims of Republicans in the state legislature or federal government.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9z4TWd">
One of the key strategies Dickens’s team has embraced is making use of property the city already owns, such as vacant land. “We did not have a good sense of what we had, what we did not have, and what was the best use for any of it,” said Josh Humphries, a senior housing adviser to the mayor.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gWPQ3q">
The Dickens administration convened an “affordable housing strike force” to get a better understanding of the city’s inventory and started studying affordable housing models around the world, including social housing in Vienna and Copenhagen. Atlanta leaders also participated in a national program called <a href="https://www.gfoa.org/paw">Putting Assets to Work</a> and learned about the efforts in Montgomery County.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eMa7mL">
Humphries said what “really sealed the deal” on social housing for them was simply the scarcity of alternative tools to build affordable housing, since they were already exhausting all the available funding they had from the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SvvALU">
By the summer of 2023, armed with money from a city housing bond, the Atlanta Housing Authority’s board of commissioners <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/atlanta-housing-oks-creation-of-nonprofit-to-create-social-housing/NVZYBSNJ5BADFMLIEGGC4DLE7M/#:~:text=Atlanta%20Housing%20OK's%20creation%20of%20nonprofit%20to%20build%20social%20housing,-The%20Atlanta%20Housing&amp;text=The%20Atlanta%20Housing%20Authority's%20board,used%20to%20develop%20affordable%20housing.">voted to create a new nonprofit</a> that would help build mixed-income public housing for the city. Leaders estimate it could lead to 800 new units by 2029.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YurY97">
Atlanta’s <a href="https://www.atlurbdevco.com/working-with-us">first bid</a> for private-market developers to construct social housing went out last month, and Humphries says they’re excited about how their new financing could spark new partnerships. “The combination of tools that we plan to use that are similar to what they’re doing in Montgomery County, like being able to decrease property taxes and have better interest rates in your financing, is very enviable,” Humphries said. “It has allowed us to have conversations with market-rate developers who maybe otherwise wouldn’t be interested because they haven’t been able to figure out how to make their other [private-sector] projects work.”
</p>
<h3 id="yjAP9g">
Boston wants to move forward with social housing, and Massachusetts might help
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bA2svH">
Since 2017, Boston has been working to redevelop some of its existing public housing projects by converting <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/06/17/ground-breaks-on-massive-1-4b-public-housing-redevelopment-in-charlestown/">them into denser</a>, <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/19/opinion/mary-ellen-mccormack-bha-public-housing-winn-southie-redevelopment/?event=event12">mixed-income housing</a>. Kenzie Bok, who was tapped by the city’s progressive mayor last spring to lead the Boston Housing Authority, said that existing work helped pave the way for leaders to more quickly embrace the Montgomery County model. As in Atlanta, Bok and her colleagues have been trying to figure out how to build more affordable housing when they have no more federal tax credits available.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gqZcw6">
“I think everyone in the affordable housing community is looking around and saying, ‘Gee, we have this [low-income housing tax credit] engine for development but it doesn’t have capacity to meet the level we need,’” Bok told me. And while the federal government could increase the tax credit volume, that requires action in Washington, DC, that for years has failed to materialize.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QgZam7">
Bok grew interested in the Montgomery County model since it seemed to offer a way for her city to augment its affordable housing production without Congress. Bok was also intrigued by the potential of the revolving fund to spur more market-rate construction in Boston, which has slowed not only because of rising interest rates but also because institutional investors typically demand such high rates of return.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7M4BWO">
“The default assumption is that affordable units are hard to build and market-rate ones will build themselves from a profit-motive perspective,” Bok said. “In fact, we have a situation now where ironically it’s often affordable LIHTC units that can get built right now and other projects stall out.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SFxGVC">
Bok and her colleagues realized it’s not that mixed-income projects don’t generate profits — those profits just aren’t 20 percent or higher. Mixed-income affordable housing wouldn’t need to be produced at a loss, Boston leaders concluded, they just might not be tantalizing to certain aggressive real estate investors. By creating a revolving fund and leveraging public land to offer more affordable financing terms, Boston officials realized they could help generate more housing — both affordable and market-rate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nZ8gkK">
In January, in her State of the City address, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu pledged to grow the city’s supply of public housing units by <a href="https://bankerandtradesman.com/how-can-boston-build-nearly-3k-new-public-housing-units/#:~:text=Boston%20Mayor%20Michelle%20Wu%20pledged,will%20rely%20on%20fast%20action.">about 30 percent</a> in the next 10 years, with publicly owned mixed-income housing being one way to get there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="svLHkL">
To help move things forward, state lawmakers are also exploring the idea. This past fall, Massachusetts’s governor <a href="https://www.mass.gov/doc/affordable-homes-act-brief-i-driving-production-and-preservation/download">put placeholder language in a draft housing bond bill</a> to support social housing and a revolving fund. The specifics are likely going to be hashed out later this spring, but the governor’s <a href="https://www.chapa.org/housing-news/governor-healey-files-housing-bond-bill">bond bill</a> is widely expected to pass.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wmNyAx">
In Rhode Island, too, state-level interest in supporting the notion of publicly developed affordable housing <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/31/metro/rhode-island-needs-public-developer-housing/">has grown</a>. Stefan Pryor, the state’s secretary of housing, attended the Montgomery County, Maryland conference in November, and Rhode Island recently announced it would be contracting with the Furman Center, a prominent housing think tank at New York University, to study models of social housing. “We look forward to the study’s observations and findings,” Pryor told Vox.
</p>
<h3 id="rW4Uzg">
Can mixed-income housing help those most in need?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e2QUfq">
Lawmakers intrigued by what Montgomery County is doing praise the fact that publicly owned mixed-income housing units theoretically offer affordable units to their communities forever, unlike affordable housing financed by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that can convert into market-rate rentals after 15 years. Leaders also like that after some initial upfront investment, the publicly owned projects start to pay for themselves, even delivering economic returns to the city down the line.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A brightly lit white kitchen with a central island that is also a dining table." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1-n7SVUQ5k_7Ho1ykiTSLJ6g3DE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25273062/Charles_Arrington___Interior_1.jpg"/> <cite>Charles Arrington</cite>
<figcaption>
Inside an apartment unit at The Laureate complex in Montgomery County.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DguPTj">
But while housing complexes like The Laureate can offer real relief to struggling middle-class tenants — a quarter of The Laureate’s units are restricted to those earning 50 percent or less<strong> </strong>of the area median income — an outstanding question is whether the social housing model could also help those who are lower-income, who might require even more deeply subsidized housing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uPzJEA">
In Washington, DC, some lawmakers <a href="https://dcist.com/story/24/01/17/dc-social-housing-green-new-deal/">have been exploring the social housing idea</a>, and one progressive council member introduced <a href="https://janeeseward4.com/introducing-green-new-deal-legislation-to-create-social-housing-and-remove-lead-pipes-in-dc/">a bill</a> calling to support mixed-income housing accessible to those making 30 percent or less of the area’s median income. But critics of the bill say that the rents of those living in nonsubsidized units would have to be so high to make that rental math work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4yPjS4">
A housing official speaking on the condition of anonymity told me they think it’s okay if the social housing model can only really work to support more middle-class tenants in neighborhoods that charge higher rents because leaders still have financing tools to build more deeply affordable housing in lower-cost areas. In other words, social housing can grow the overall pie of affordable units throughout a city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y11zAJ">
Other leaders, like in Boston and Atlanta, told me they’re exploring how they could “layer” the mixed-income social housing model with <a href="https://www.wbur.org/the-common/2023/06/22/public-housing-boston-massachusetts">additional subsidies</a> to <a href="https://www.novoco.com/periodicals/articles/faircloth-rad-conversions-pose-possibilities-phas-developers">make them more accessible</a> to lower-income renters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Vnx7Q4">
Marks, from Montgomery County, knows there’s still a lot of stigma and reservations about American public housing, which many perceive as being ugly, dirty, or unsafe. Few understand that many of the woes of existing public housing in the US have had to do with rules Congress passed nearly 100 years ago, such as <a href="https://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1937-Housing-Act.html">restricting the housing</a> to only the very poor. Besides getting <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-county-in-maryland-came-up-with-a-new/id1056200096?i=1000638915229">his message out</a>, Marks said he likes to just have people come see for themselves what’s being done.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kvdNSA">
“The temperature immediately comes down when people can walk around, see how attractive it is, how it’s clearly a high-quality community with nice apartments,” he said. “It’s why getting proof of concept is so important.”
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Creating a quality young national team is the only way to go up: Vukomanovic</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>China cancels second friendly with Argentina after Lionel Messi no-show</strong> - Beijing’s football association announced Saturday it will not organize a friendly scheduled for March between Argentina and the Ivory Coast</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Afif hat trick secures Qatar back-to-back Asian Cup titles after 3-1 win against Jordan</strong> - Akram Afif scored a hat trick of penalties to secure back-to-back Asian Cup titles for Qatar in a 3-1 win against Jordan</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Son Of A Gun should score over his rivals in the Bangalore Turf Club Trophy</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ranji Trophy | Looking forward to winning this game for the team: Hardik Raj</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BJP will cross 370 seats-mark in Lok Sabha polls, says PM Modi</strong> - The Congress will be wiped out in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Not an aspirant for Mandya Lok Sabha seat, Nikhil Kumaraswamy clarifies</strong> - Dispelling rumours, the JD(S) Youth Wing president said his focus is on strengthening the JD(S) and BJP alliance in the State and ensuring a third term for PM Modi</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch | Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code | What does the bill entail?</strong> - In this episode of talking politics, we discuss what the bill says with respect to divorce, inheritance of property, and live-in relationships</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BJP-RSS spreading hatred, while love is in India’s DNA, says Rahul Gandhi</strong> - In this country, people belonging to different faiths and having different thoughts live together peacefully with love, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Congress MP from Jharkhand appears before ED for second consecutive day in money laundering case</strong> - The ED sleuths had on Saturday interrogated Dhiraj Sahu for around 11 hours in connection with the money laundering case linked to alleged land fraud</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Faisal Islam: Russia’s war economy cannot last but has bought time</strong> - Western nations must now weigh up the risks of diverting some seized assets to Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Seven ‘burned alive’ as Russia hits Kharkiv oil depot</strong> - Three children are among the dead as one street turns “into a hellish melted mass”, Ukraine’s police say.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Ukrainians ‘disappearing’ in Russia’s prisons</strong> - Finding Ukrainian civilians in Russian captivity is hard - and there is no formal way to secure their release.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hungary president resigns over child abuse pardon</strong> - Katalin Novak steps down live on TV after pardoning man jailed for covering up sexual abuse at a children’s home.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>From Poland to Spain, farmers ramp up protests</strong> - Europe’s farmers block roads in several countries complaining about EU measures and rising prices.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Building durable basketball players from the ground up (way up)</strong> - Can new scientific insights help the newest crop of NBA stars stay healthy? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002458">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Fake grass, real injuries? Dissecting the NFL’s artificial turf debate</strong> - Artificial turf has its advantages, but the NFLPA wants it banished from the NFL. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002220">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown</strong> - How do you ban a device built with open source hardware and software anyway? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002579">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A sleuthing enthusiast says he found the US military’s X-37B spaceplane</strong> - Officials didn’t disclose details about the X-37B’s orbit after its December launch. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002584">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&amp;D</strong> - Senate report points to greed and “patent thickets” as key reasons for high prices. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002556">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>True encounter at Wendys</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
About two decades ago, a lady in central CA claimed to have found a severed finger in her Wendy’s chili. Her scam was eventually revealed in court, iirc.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What I did in Albuquerque the week following the news of the chili finger, was to ask the Wendy’s drive thru clerk for extra fingers in my chili, being the smart-ass that I am. Without any hesitation whatsoever, the order-taker came back with, “sorry sir, that’s only in our California stores”.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/tlbs101"> /u/tlbs101 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anv6wn/true_encounter_at_wendys/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anv6wn/true_encounter_at_wendys/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A dad walks past his Son’s room</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He notices the room is super clean, the beds well kept and everything looks organised. A bit suspicious he looks inside and finds a letter on the study table marked just DAD. With trembling hands he opens rhe letter and it reads “Dad, I have run away with Tracey. I know she is 30 years older than me but I love her. We had to elope as she became pregnant ,and she told me it’s my child. Didn’t have enough money so stole some from your wallet. We will live in the woods where she has a trailer and where we will be growing Marijuana and bartering it with cocaine and other drugs with the community there. Once we have enough money we can start treatment for her AIDS. We plan of having many children and we will visit you each year. Hey, don’t worry! I was just kidding around. I’m hanging out at Tim’s place right now. I just wanted to say there are scarier things than my report card, which is over on the other table if you want to check it out. Once you’re feeling calm, give me a call, and I’ll head back home .”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Your Son
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OzBeyondHorizon"> /u/OzBeyondHorizon </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1ao57i6/a_dad_walks_past_his_sons_room/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1ao57i6/a_dad_walks_past_his_sons_room/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My wife accused me of stealing her thesaurus!</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Not only was I shocked.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I was appalled.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Aghast.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And dismayed.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/traker998"> /u/traker998 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anuu8q/my_wife_accused_me_of_stealing_her_thesaurus/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anuu8q/my_wife_accused_me_of_stealing_her_thesaurus/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ole finally died,</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
so Lena went to the newspaper office to arrange for his obituary.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The editor said, “OK, Lena, what do you want it to say?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“‘Ole died.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Well, the lowest price is for one to five words, so you might as well make it five words.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“OK. ‘Ole died. Boat for sale.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Thanks to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/u/ImA12GoHawks">u/ImA12GoHawks</a> for posting an Ole and Lena joke today. It prompted me to share this one.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/EvadingDoom"> /u/EvadingDoom </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anwnv8/ole_finally_died/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anwnv8/ole_finally_died/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two teenage male friends named Bob &amp; Jim go on a cross-country road trip…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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…and while they’re in Colorado, they get stuck in a massive blizzard. They happen to find a huge house and they knock on the door. A beautiful woman in her 30s answers the door, invites them in and shows them to separate bedrooms. The next morning, she cooks them breakfast and they resume their trip without ever exchanging names.
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They remain friends and 30 years later, Bob calls Jim and asks, “Hey man, do you remember that cross country road trip we took 30 years ago?”
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Jim replies, “Yeah man, we had a blast!”
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Bob says, “That we did! How about that one night when we got stuck in that blizzard and that beautiful woman invited us into her house for the night?”
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Jim is quiet for a few seconds and says, “I think remember that, what about it?”
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“Did you go into the woman’s bedroom during the night and have sex with her? Then give her my name and contact info?”
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Jim comes clean, “Yeah, I did man. I’m sorry but I had a serious girlfriend at the time and you didn’t so I gave her your info.”
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Bob joyfully says, “No worries man! She just died and left me 10 million dollars, thanks bro!”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Indotex"> /u/Indotex </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anmgcw/two_teenage_male_friends_named_bob_jim_go_on_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1anmgcw/two_teenage_male_friends_named_bob_jim_go_on_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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