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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>Connected Despite Lockdown: The Role of Social Interactions and Social Media Use in Wellbeing</strong> -
<div>
Humans are social beings, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world are periodically in lockdown and are required to try to physically distance themselves from others. The resultant limitation of face-to-face interactions presents a challenge to wellbeing. During periods of lockdown, people can, however, still connect to others via technology, but it is unknown whether such interactions offer benefits comparable to face-to-face interactions. In the present study, we examined how different ways of interacting with others impacted wellbeing during a period of lockdown in the United Kingdom. In a 30-day diary study conducted in April-June 2020, 110 adults reported the time they spent daily on face-to-face interactions and technology-mediated communication (video, phone, text) with different interaction partners. They also indicated the time they spent on active and passive social media use and their end-of- day wellbeing. Multilevel regressions indicated that more face-to-face interactions both within and outside of one’s household positively predicted wellbeing, while technology-mediated communication had less consistent positive effects. Additionally, more active and less passive social media use predicted better wellbeing. These results highlight the complexity of benefits of different kinds of social interactions during lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic and point to the importance of taking into account communication channels, interaction partners, and how people use social media when studying the effects of connecting to others.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/x5k8u/" target="_blank">Connected Despite Lockdown: The Role of Social Interactions and Social Media Use in Wellbeing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Ostracism and Conspiracy Beliefs About COVID-19: Personality and Existential Underlying Mechanisms in a Quote Sampling Study During the First Wave of the Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Aims: This paper examines the association between ostracism and endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, the mediating role of sense of vulnerability, self-uncertainty and individual/collective narcissism and the moderating role of conspiracy mentality. Methods: Participants were recruited in the United Kingdom via quote sampling (N=895). Power analysis and sample size checks were conducted beforehand. A cross-sectional design was deployed and in subsequent analyses we controlled for demographic variables. Results: Ostracism positively predicted endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and this association was mediated by sense of vulnerability, self-uncertainty, meaning seek, individual and collective narcissism. Furthermore, conspiracy mentality moderated the relationship between ostracism and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Conclusion: Our study expands on the still very few and scarce research on ostracism and conspiracy theories and building on existing findings, it explores further underlying personality and existential variables that explain this relationship. Theoretical and societal implications are discussed.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/q4hkn/" target="_blank">Ostracism and Conspiracy Beliefs About COVID-19: Personality and Existential Underlying Mechanisms in a Quote Sampling Study During the First Wave of the Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Bayesian Inference of Dependent Population Dynamics in Coalescent Models</strong> -
<div>
The coalescent is a powerful statistical framework that allows us to infer past population dynamics leveraging the ancestral relationships reconstructed from sampled molecular sequence data. In many biomedical applications, such as in the study of infectious diseases, cell development, and tumorgenesis, several distinct populations share evolutionary history and therefore become dependent. The inference of such dependence is a highly important, yet a challenging problem. With advances in sequencing technologies, we are well positioned to exploit the wealth of high-resolution biological data for tackling this problem. Here, we present a novel probabilistic model that relies on jointly distributed Markov random fields. We use this model to estimate past population dynamics of dependent populations and to quantify their degree of dependence. An essential feature of our approach is the ability to track the time-varying association between the populations while making minimal assumptions on their functional shapes via Markov random field priors. We provide nonparametric estimators, extensions of our base model that integrate multiple data sources, and fast scalable inference algorithms. We test our method using simulated data under various dependent population histories and demonstrate the utility of our model in shedding light on evolutionary histories of different variants of SARS- CoV-2.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.22.492976v1" target="_blank">Bayesian Inference of Dependent Population Dynamics in Coalescent Models</a>
</div></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Host-directed therapy with 2-Deoxy-D-glucose inhibits human rhinoviruses, endemic coronaviruses, and SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Rhinoviruses (RVs) and coronaviruses (CoVs) upregulate host cell metabolic pathways including glycolysis to meet their bioenergetic demands for rapid multiplication. Using the glycolysis inhibitor 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), we confirm the dose-dependent inhibition of minor- and major-receptor group RV replication. We demonstrate that 2-DG suppresses viral positive- as well as negative-strand RNA synthesis, resulting in lower amounts of progeny virus and RV-mediated cell death. In tissue culture with physiologic glucose levels, 2-DG has a pronounced antiviral effect. Further, assessment of 2-DG’s intracellular kinetics revealed that the active intermediate, 2-DG6P, is stored intracellularly for several hours. Our concurrent study of 2-DG’s impact on pandemic SARS-CoV-2 and endemic HCoVs demonstrated a significant reduction in viral load. Collectively, these results suggest 2-DG to be a broad-spectrum antiviral.
</div></li>
</ul>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.24.493068v1" target="_blank">Host-directed therapy with 2-Deoxy-D- glucose inhibits human rhinoviruses, endemic coronaviruses, and SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>RAGE engagement by SARS-CoV-2 enables monocyte infection and underlies COVID-19 severity</strong> -
<div>
The spread of SARS-CoV-2 has fueled the COVID-19 pandemic with its enduring medical and socioeconomic challenges due to subsequent waves and long-term consequences of great concern. Here we charted the molecular basis of COVID-19 pathogenesis, by analysing patients’ immune response at single-cell resolution across disease course and severity. This approach uncovered cell subpopulation-specific dysregulation in COVID-19 across disease course and severity and identified a severity-associated activation of the receptor for advanced glycation endproduct (RAGE) pathway in monocytes. In vitro experiments confirmed that monocytes bind the SARS-CoV-2 S1-RBD via RAGE and that RAGE-Spike interactions drive monocyte infection. Our results demonstrate that RAGE is a novel functional receptor of SARS-CoV-2 contributing to COVID-19 severity.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.22.492693v1" target="_blank">RAGE engagement by SARS-CoV-2 enables monocyte infection and underlies COVID-19 severity</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Predicting recognition between T cell receptors and epitopes using contextualized motifs</strong> -
<div>
We introduce TCRconv, a deep learning model for predicting recognition between T-cell receptors and epitopes. TCRconv uses a deep protein language model and convolutions to extract contextualized motifs and provides state-of-the- art TCR-epitope prediction accuracy. Using TCR repertoires from COVID-19 patients, we demonstrate that TCRconv can provide insight into T-cell dynamics and phenotypes during the disease.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html- link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.23.493034v1" target="_blank">Predicting recognition between T cell receptors and epitopes using contextualized motifs</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Genomic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 can be accelerated by a mutation in the nsp14 gene</strong> -
<div>
Nucleotide substitution rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is relatively low compared to the other RNA viruses because coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2 encode non-structural protein 14 (nsp14) that is an error-correcting exonuclease protein. In this study, to understand genome evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the current pandemic, we examined mutations of SARS-CoV-2 nsp14 which could inhibit its error-correcting function. First, to obtain functionally important sites of nsp14, we examined 62 representative coronaviruses belonging to alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and unclassified coronaviruses. As a result, 99 out of 527 amino acid sites of nsp14 were evolutionarily conserved. We then examined nsp14 sequences obtained from 28,082 SARS-CoV-2 genomes and identified 6 amino acid changes in nsp14 mutants that were not detected in the 62 representative coronaviruses. We examined genome substitution rates of these mutants and found that an nsp14 mutant with a proline to leucine change at position 203 (P203L) showed a higher substitution rate (35.9 substitutions/year) than SARS-CoV-2 possessing wild-type nsp14 (19.8 substitutions/year). We confirmed that the substitution rate of the P203L is significantly higher than those of other variants containing mutations in structural proteins. Although the number of SARS-CoV-2 variants containing P203L mutation of nsp14 is limited (26), these mutants appeared at least 10 times independently in the current pandemic. These results indicated that the molecular function of nsp14 is important for survival of various coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2 and that some mutations such as P203L of nsp14 inhibiting its error-correcting function are removed rapidly due to their deleterious effects.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.23.424231v2" target="_blank">Genomic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 can be accelerated by a mutation in the nsp14 gene</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) design features on the transmission of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2: an overview of reviews</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The 2019 novel coronavirus or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Almost two years later (early-February 2022), the WHO reported over 383 million cases of the disease caused by the virus with over 5.6 million deaths worldwide. Debate regarding routes of transmission was substantial early in the pandemic; however, airborne transmission emerged as an important consideration. Infectious airborne agents can spread within the built environment through heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Multiple features of HVAC systems can influence transmission (e.g., ventilation, filtration, ultraviolet radiation, humidity). Understanding how HVAC features influence airborne transmission is critical to mitigate the spread of infectious agents. Objective: Given airborne transmission of SARS- CoV-2, an overview of reviews was conducted to understand what is already known from the scientific literature about how virus transmission may be affected by HVAC design features in the built environment. Methods: Ovid MEDLINE and Compendex were searched from inception to January 2021. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts and full text of potentially relevant reviews, using a priori inclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria were systematic reviews examining effects of HVAC design features on virus transmission. Two reviewers independently assessed methodological quality using AMSTAR2. Results: Searching identified 361 citations, 45 were potentially relevant, and 7 were included. Reviews were published between 2007 and 2021, and included 47 virus studies. Two earlier reviews (2007, 2016) of 21 studies found sufficient evidence that mechanical ventilation (airflow patterns, ventilation rates) plays a role in airborne transmission; however, both found insufficient evidence to quantify minimum mechanical ventilation requirements. One review (2017) of 9 studies examining humidity and indoor air quality found that influenza virus survival was lowest between 40% and 80% relative humidity; authors noted that ventilation rates were a confounding variable. Two reviews (2021) examined mitigation strategies for coronavirus transmission, finding that transmission decreased with increasing temperature and relative humidity. One review (2020) identified 14 studies examining coronavirus transmission in air conditioning systems, finding HVAC systems played a role in virus spread during previous coronavirus outbreaks. One review (2020) examined virus transmission interventions on public ground transportation, finding ventilation and filtration to be effective. Conclusions: Seven reviews synthesizing 47 studies demonstrate a role for HVAC in mitigating airborne virus transmission. Ventilation, humidity, temperature, and filtration can play a role in viability and transmission of viruses, including coronaviruses. Recommendations for minimum standards were not possible due to few studies investigating a given HVAC parameter. This overview examining HVAC design features and their effects on airborne transmission of viruses serves as a starting point for future systematic reviews and identifying priorities for primary research.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.22.21263515v3" target="_blank">The impact of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) design features on the transmission of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2: an overview of reviews</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Incidence of Glomerulonephritis after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Numerous cases of glomerulonephritis manifesting shortly after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been reported, but causality remains unproven. We studied the association between mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and new-onset glomerulonephritis using a nationwide retrospective cohort and case-cohort design. Data from all Swiss pathology institutes processing native kidney biopsies served to calculate incidence of IgA nephropathy, pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis, minimal change disease and membranous nephropathy. The observed incidence during the vaccination campaign (Jan to Aug 2021) was not different from the expected incidence based on the years 2015 to 2019 (incidence rate ratio 0.86, 95%-credible interval 0.73-1.02) and did not cross the upper boundary of the 95% credible interval for any month. Among 111 patients aged &gt;18 years with newly diagnosed glomerulonephritis between January and August 2021, 38.7% had received at least one vaccine dose before biopsy, compared to 39.5% of the general Swiss population matched for age and calendar-time. The estimated risk ratio for the development of new-onset biopsy-proven glomerulonephritis was 0.97 (95% CI 0.66-1.42, P=0.95) in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals. Patients with glomerulonephritis manifesting within 4 weeks after vaccine did not differ clinically from the rest of the cohort. Results were consistent across all types of glomerulonephritis with the possible exception of minimal change disease. In conclusion, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was not associated with new-onset glomerulonephritis in these two complementary studies. Most temporal associations between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and glomerulonephritis are likely coincidental.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.18.22275112v1" target="_blank">Incidence of Glomerulonephritis after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Prosocial behavior in emergencies: Evidence from blood donors recruitment and retention during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The impact of COVID-19 represents a specific challenge for voluntary transfusional systems sustained by the intrinsic motivations of blood donors. In general, health emergencies can stimulate altruistic behaviors. However, in this context, the same prosocial motivations, besides the personal health risks, could foster the adherence to social distancing rules to preserve collective health and, therefore, discourage blood donation activities. In this work, we investigate the consequences of the pandemic shock on the dynamics of new donors exploiting the individual-level longitudinal information contained in administrative data on the Italian region of Tuscany. We compare the change in new donors’ recruitment and retention during 2020 with respect to the 2017-2019 period, considering donors’ and their municipalities of residence characteristics. Our results show an increment of new donors, with higher growth for older donors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the quality of new donors, as proxied by the frequency of subsequent donations, increased with respect to previous years. Finally, we show that changes in extrinsic motivations, such as the possibility of obtaining a free antibody test or overcoming movement restrictions, cannot explain the documented improvement in performances.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/6t72b/" target="_blank">Prosocial behavior in emergencies: Evidence from blood donors recruitment and retention during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Unveiling the G4-PAMAM capacity to bind and protect Ang-(1-7) bioactive peptide</strong> -
<div>
New therapies that allow natural healing processes are required. Such as the endogenous peptide called Angiotensin-(1-7), a safe and effective drug, which is able to re-balance the Renin-Angiotensin system affected during several pathologies, including the new COVID-19; cardiovascular, renal, and pulmonary disease; diabetes; neuropathic pain; Alzheimer and cancer. However, one of the limiting factors for its application is its unfavorable pharmacokinetic profile. In this work, we propose the coupling of Angiotensin-(1-7) to PAMAM dendrimers in order to evaluate the capacity of the nanocarrier to improve isolated peptide features and to gain insight into the structural as well as the energetic basis of its molecular binding. The In Silico tests were performed in acidic and neutral pH conditions as well as amino-terminated and hydroxyl-terminated PAMAM dendrimers. High-rigor computational approaches, such as molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations were used. We found that, at neutral pH, PAMAM dendrimers with both terminal types are able to interact stably with 3 Angiotensin-(1-7) peptides through ASP1, TYR4 and PRO7 critical amino acids, however, there are some differences in the binding sites of the peptides. In general, they bind on the surface in the case of the hydroxyl-terminated compact dendrimer and in the internal zone in the case of the amino-terminated open dendrimer. At acidic pH, PAMAM dendrimers with both terminal groups are still able to interact with peptides either internalized or in its periphery, however, the number of contacts, the percentage of coverage and the number of HBs are lesser than at neutral pH, suggesting a state for peptide release. In summary, amino-terminated PAMAM dendrimer showed slightly better features to bind, load and protect Angiotensin-(1-7) peptides.
</div>
<div class="article-link article- html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.23.493150v1" target="_blank">Unveiling the G4-PAMAM capacity to bind and protect Ang-(1-7) bioactive peptide</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Using a reverse genetics system to generate recombinant SARS-CoV-2 expressing robust levels of reporter genes</strong> -
<div>
Reporter-expressing recombinant virus represents an excellent option and a powerful tool to investigate, among others, viral infection, pathogenicity, and transmission, as well as to identify therapeutic compounds that inhibit viral infection and prophylactic vaccines. To combat the still ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we have established a robust bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC)-based reverse genetics (RG) system to rapidly generate recombinant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (rSARS-CoV-2) to study the contribution of viral proteins in viral pathogenesis. In addition, we have also engineered reporter-expressing recombinant viruses in which we place the reporter genes upstream of the viral nucleocapsid (N) gene to promote high levels of reporter gene expression that facilitates the study of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and in vivo. Although successful, the genetic manipulation of the BAC containing the entire SARS-CoV-2 genome of ~30,000 nucleotides, is challenging. Herein, we depict the technical details to engineer rSARS-CoV-2 expressing reporter genes using the BAC-based RG approach. We describe i) assembly of the full- length (FL) SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences into the empty pBeloBAC, ii) verification of the pBeloBAC-FL, iii) cloning of a Venus reporter gene into the pBeloBAC-FL, and iv) recovery of the Venus-expressing rSARS-CoV-2. By following this protocol, researchers with basic molecular biology and gene engineering techniques knowledge will be able to generate wild-type and reporter-expressing rSARS-CoV-2.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492922v1" target="_blank">Using a reverse genetics system to generate recombinant SARS-CoV-2 expressing robust levels of reporter genes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Reduced Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Sera from SARS-CoV-1 Survivors after 3-dose of Vaccination</strong> -
<div>
Recent studies found that Omicron variant escapes vaccine-elicited immunity. Interestingly, potent cross-clade pan- sarbecovirus neutralizing antibodies were found in survivors of the infection by SARS-CoV-1 after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination (N Engl J Med. 2021 Oct 7;385(15):1401-1406). These pan-sarbecovirus neutralizing antibodies were observed to efficiently neutralize the infection driven by the S protein from both SARS-CoV and multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) including B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) (N Engl J Med. 2021 Oct 7;385(15):1401-1406). However, whether these cross-reactive antibodies could neutralize the Omicron variant is still unknown. Based on the data collected from a cohort of SARS-CoV-1 survivors received 3-dose of immunization, our studies reported herein showed that a high level of neutralizing antibodies against both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 were elicited by a 3rd-dose of booster vaccination of protein subunit vaccine ZF2001. However, a dramatically reduced neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant (B.1.1.529) is observed in sera from these SARS-CoV-1 survivors received 3-dose of Vaccination. Our results indicates that the rapid development of pan-variant adapted vaccines is warranted.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492903v1" target="_blank">Reduced Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Sera from SARS-CoV-1 Survivors after 3-dose of Vaccination</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds and modulates estrogen receptors</strong> -
<div>
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) protein binds angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) at the cell surface, which constitutes the primary mechanism driving SARS-CoV-2 infection. Molecular interactions between the transduced S and endogenous proteins likely occur post-infection, but such interactions are not well understood. We used an unbiased primary screen to profile the binding of full-length S against &gt;9,000 human proteins and found significant S-host protein interactions, including one between S and human estrogen receptor alpha (ER). After confirming this interaction in a secondary assay, we used bioinformatics, supercomputing, and experimental assays to identify a highly conserved and functional nuclear receptor coregulator (NRC) LXD-like motif on the S2 subunit and an S-ER binding mode. In cultured cells, S DNA transfection increased ER cytoplasmic accumulation, and S treatment induced ER-dependent biological effects and ACE2 expression. Noninvasive multimodal PET/CT imaging in SARS- CoV-2-infected hamsters using [18F]fluoroestradiol (FES) localized lung pathology with increased ER lung levels. Postmortem experiments in lung tissues from SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters and humans confirmed an increase in cytoplasmic ER expression and its colocalization with S protein in alveolar macrophages. These findings describe the discovery and characterization of a novel S-ER interaction, imply a role for S as an NRC, and are poised to advance knowledge of SARS- CoV-2 biology, COVID-19 pathology, and mechanisms of sex differences in the pathology of infectious disease.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492920v1" target="_blank">The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds and modulates estrogen receptors</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Intranasal pediatric parainfluenza virus-vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate is protective in macaques</strong> -
<div>
Pediatric SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are needed that elicit immunity directly in the airways, as well as systemically. Building on pediatric parainfluenza virus vaccines in clinical development, we generated a live-attenuated parainfluenza virus-vectored vaccine candidate expressing SARS-CoV-2 prefusion-stabilized spike (S) protein (B/HPIV3/S-6P) and evaluated its immunogenicity and protective efficacy in rhesus macaques. A single intranasal/intratracheal dose of B/HPIV3/S-6P induced strong S-specific airway mucosal IgA and IgG responses. High levels of S-specific antibodies were also induced in serum, which efficiently neutralized SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Furthermore, B/HPIV3/S-6P induced robust systemic and pulmonary S-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses, including tissue-resident memory cells in lungs. Following challenge, SARS-CoV-2 replication was undetectable in airways and lung tissues of immunized macaques. B/HPIV3/S-6P will be evaluated clinically as pediatric intranasal SARS-CoV-2/parainfluenza virus type 3 vaccine.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492923v1" target="_blank">Intranasal pediatric parainfluenza virus-vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate is protective in macaques</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>The Role of Glutathione Deficiency and MSIDS Variables in Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) , Alpha lipoic acid (ALA), liposomal glutathione (GSH)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of California, Irvine;   Hudson Valley Healing Arts 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 to Evaluate the Efficacy of IN STI-9199 in Treating Symptomatic COVID-19 in Outpatient Adults and Adolescents</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: STI-9199;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc.<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 Safety and Efficacy Study of Hymecromone Tablets for the Treatment of Patients With COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Hymecromone tablets;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital<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>Study on Sequential Immunization of Omicron Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine and Prototype Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine in Population Aged 18 Years Old and Above</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Omicron COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:  <br/>
China National Biotec Group Company Limited;   Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd.;   Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention<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 Phase Ia, Dose-finding Study to Assess the Safety and Immunogenicity of a COVID-19 Vaccine Booster in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Prime-2-CoV_Beta<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:  <br/>
University Hospital Tuebingen;   FGK Clinical Research GmbH;   VisMederi srl;   Staburo GmbH;   Viedoc Technologies AB<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>Neuro-inflammation and Post-infectious Fatigue in Individuals With and Without COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Radiation: [18F]DPA-714 positron emission tomography (PET) scan<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc;   ZonMw: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development<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>Phase II Safety Single-arm Study of CDK4/6 Inhibition With Palbociclib in Hospitalized, Moderate COVID-19 Cases to Prevent Thromboinflammation</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Palbociclib<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   biotx.ai GmbH<br/><b>Active, not 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 the Study Medicine (Called Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir) in Pregnant Women With Mild or Moderate COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: nirmatrelvir;   Drug: ritonavir<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Pfizer<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>Phase I Clinical Trial of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: COVID-19 mRNA vaccine;   Biological: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   CanSino Biologics Inc.<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>Phase II Clinical Trial of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: COVID-19 mRNA vaccine;   Biological: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   CanSino Biologics Inc.<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>Evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccines Given as a Booster in Healthy Adults in Indonesia (MIACoV Indonesia)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Pfizer-BioNTech Standard dose;   Biological: AstraZeneca Standard dose;   Biological: Pfizer-BioNTech Fractional dose;   Biological: AstraZeneca Fractional dose;   Biological: Moderna Standard dose;   Biological: Moderna Fractional dose<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Murdoch Childrens Research Institute;   Universitas Padjadjaran (UNPAD);   Universitas Indonesia (UI);   Health Development Policy Agency, Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia;   Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations;   The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity<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>THEMBA II T-Cell Vaccine: Vaccination With saRNA COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AAHI-SC2 Vaccine;   Biological: AAHI- SC3 Vaccine;   Biological: EUA or approved vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   ImmunityBio, Inc.<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>To Evaluate SSD8432/Ritonavir in Adults With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SSD8432 750mg;   Drug: SSD8432 placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<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 Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of DXP604 in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: DXP604<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd<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>Evaluation of SSD8432 and Ritonavir in Adult Subjects With COVID-19 Clinical Study</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SSD8432 300mg;   Drug: SSD8432 750mg;   Drug: SSD8432Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<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>Efficacy of oleandrin and PBI-05204 against bovine viruses of importance to commercial cattle health</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: The research demonstrates the potency of oleandrin and PBI-05204 to inhibit infectivity of three important enveloped bovine viruses in vitro. These data showing non-toxic concentrations of oleandrin inhibiting infectivity of three bovine viruses support further investigation of in vivo antiviral efficacy.</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 accessory proteins ORF7a and ORF3a use distinct mechanisms to downregulate MHC-I surface expression</strong> - Major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules, which are dimers of a glycosylated polymorphic transmembrane heavy chain and the small protein β (2) -microglobulin (β (2) m), bind peptides in the endoplasmic reticulum that are generated by the cytosolic turnover of cellular proteins. In virus-infected cells these peptides may include those derived from viral proteins. Peptide-MHC-I complexes then traffic through the secretory pathway and are displayed at the cell surface where those…</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 Rare Case of COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia in a Young Patient</strong> - The syndrome of pulmonary SARS-Cov-2 resulted in significant morbidity and mortality, with new variants spreading rapidly. Vaccines to prevent COVID-19 have been developed to minimize the impact and severity; however, adverse effects of the vaccine have been documented in several studies. In our case, we report a case of a young female who presented to the emergency department with fever, dizziness, headache, vomiting, blurring of vision, numbness, and weakness of left upper and lower limbs….</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>Neutralizing antibody and T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern following ChAdOx-1 or BNT162b2 boosting in the elderly previously immunized with CoronaVac vaccine</strong> - CONCLUSION: Boosting with either ChAdOx-1 or BNT162b2 in CoronaVac-primed healthy elderly individuals induced high NAb production against all examined VOCs except Omicron. BNT162b2 stimulated higher NAb and some T-cell responses than ChAdOx-1. Vaccine boosting is, therefore, recommended for elderly individuals previously immunized with CoronaVac.</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>Red blood cell distribution width as a marker of hyperinflammation and mortality in COVID-19</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: RDW predicts COVID-19-associated ARDS mortality and reflects the hyperinflammatory background and the effects of cytokines such as IL-6, irrespective of tocilizumab treatment.</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>Antiviral Activity of Medicinal Plants against Human Coronavirus: a systematic scoping review of and experimentations</strong> - CONCLUSION: This review shows that complementary medicine have the potential for new drug discovery against coronavirus. Further research is needed before definitive conclusions can be made concerning the safety and efficacy of the use of these medicinal plants.</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>Repurposing of cyclophilin A inhibitors as broad-spectrum antiviral agents</strong> - Cyclophilin A (CypA) is linked to diverse human diseases including viral infections. With the worldwide emergence of severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), drug repurposing has been highlighted as a strategy with the potential to speed up antiviral development. Because CypA acts as a proviral component in hepatitis C virus, coronavirus and HIV, its inhibitors have been suggested as potential treatments for these infections. Here, we review the structure of cyclosporin A and…</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>Pyronaridine Protects against SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Mouse</strong> - There are currently relatively few small-molecule antiviral drugs that are either approved or emergency-approved for use against severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). One of these is remdesivir, which was originally repurposed from its use against Ebola. We evaluated three molecules we had previously identified computationally with antiviral activity against Ebola and Marburg and identified pyronaridine, which inhibited the SARS-CoV-2 replication in A549-ACE2 cells. The in vivo…</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>Long-term treatment with chloroquine increases lifespan in middle-aged male mice possibly via autophagy modulation, proteasome inhibition and glycogen metabolism</strong> - Previous studies have shown that the polyamine spermidine increased the maximum life span in C. elegans and the median life span in mice. Since spermidine increases autophagy, we asked if treatment with chloroquine, an inhibitor of autophagy, would shorten the lifespan of mice. Recently, chloroquine has intensively been discussed as a treatment option for COVID-19 patients. To rule out unfavorable long-term effects on longevity, we examined the effect of chronic treatment with chloroquine given…</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>Gelatin Stabilizes Nebulized Proteins in Pulmonary Drug Delivery against COVID-19</strong> - Delivering medication to the lungs via nebulization of pharmaceuticals is a noninvasive and efficient therapy route, particularly for respiratory diseases. The recent worldwide severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS- CoV-2) pandemic urges the development of such therapies as an effective alternative to vaccines. The main difficulties in using inhalation therapy are the development of effective medicine and methods to stabilize the biological molecules and transfer them to 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>A novel property of hexokinase inhibition by Favipiravir and proposed advantages over Molnupiravir and 2 Deoxy D glucose in treating COVID-19</strong> - CONCLUSION: Favipiravir could continue to be part of the COVID-19 treatment regimen due to its resistance to host esterases, hexokinase inhibition potential and proven safety through human trials.</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>Thiazole-based SARS-CoV-2 protease (COV M<sup>pro</sup> ) inhibitors: Design, synthesis, enzyme inhibition, and molecular modeling simulations</strong> - As an attempt to contribute to the efforts of combating the pandemic virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) responsible for COVID-19, new analogs of the repurposed drug nitazoxanide which showed promising inhibitory efficacy on a viral protease enzyme were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their inhibitory activity on the main protease of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, using the COV2-3CL protease inhibition assay. The obtained results showed that 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>Anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of various PET-bottled Japanese green teas and tea compounds in vitro</strong> - The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2) is a serious threat to global public health. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants is a significant concern regarding the continued effectiveness of vaccines and antiviral therapeutics. Thus, natural products such as foods, drinks, and other compounds should be investigated for their potential to treat COVID-19. Here, we examined the in vitro antiviral activity against…</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>Highly polymerized proanthocyanidins (PAC) components from blueberry leaf and stem significantly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection via inhibition of ACE2 and viral 3CLpro enzymes</strong> - With the current worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, there is an urgent need to develop effective treatment and prevention methods against SARS-CoV-2 infection. We have previously reported that the proanthocyanidin (PAC) fraction in blueberry (BB) leaves has strong antiviral activity against hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human T-lymphocytic leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). In this study, we used Kunisato 35 Gou (K35) derived from the rabbit eye blueberry (Vaccinium virgatum Aiton), which has a high PAC…</p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Copper(II) Schiff base complex derived from salen ligand: structural investigation, Hirshfeld surface analysis, anticancer and anti-SARS-CoV-2</strong> - This work deals with the synthesis and characterization of copper(II) complex <a href="1">Cu(salen)(H(2)O)</a> of salen-type Schiff base ligand derived from the condensation of 5-bromo-2-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde and ethylenediamine in EtOH. This complex was characterized by different spectroscopic and physicochemical methods. Single crystal X-ray crystallography study revealed that Cu(II) in complex (1) is five-coordinate and adopts a distorted square pyramidal geometry. A DFT calculation was employed…</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>Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Ever End?</strong> - If Americans decide too soon that it is over, it could paradoxically drag on even longer. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/will-the-coronavirus-pandemic-ever-end">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Consequential Gun Ruling After the Buffalo Massacre</strong> - The racist killings showed the horror of firearms; the Supreme Court may be about to make the problem worse. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/30/a-consequential-gun-ruling-after-the-buffalo-massacre">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An Insurrectionist Could Be the Next Governor of Pennsylvania</strong> - Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican nomination, has pushed Trump’s lies about the election and sent busloads of supporters to the Capitol riot. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/an-insurrectionist-could-be-the-next-governor-of-pennsylvania">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Eileen Myles Reads Joy Harjo</strong> - The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “Without,” by Joy Harjo, and their own poem “Dissolution.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/poetry/eileen-myles-reads-joy-harjo">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Putin’s Pivot to a “Really Big War” in Ukraine</strong> - As his invasion enters its fourth month, the Russian leader is preparing for the long haul. Meanwhile, the military is chattering about its losses, and putting out calls for supplies on Telegram. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/putins-pivot-to-a-really-big-war-in-ukraine">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Masculinity, explained by WWE</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/xPqaiR83cAA-F6AkOBgXVqlIh_U=/105x0:3320x2411/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70908353/142808997.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, right, takes on John Cena at the 2012 edition of WWE’s WrestleMania. Both men started out as wrestlers and have become huge movie stars. | Ron Elkman/Sports Imagery/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
An expert tells us how professional wrestling endlessly evolves to reflect changing masculine gender norms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5M9Vmc">
For several years now, I’ve been fascinated by the rise of a new crop of musclebound male stars, who are seemingly everywhere in film and TV.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dn8A5B">
Yes, there have always been musclemen in our pop culture, but in the past, they were largely assigned to very narrow archetypes: the brawny action hero or the snarling henchman to the main villain. In recent years, however, more and more big men are following in the footsteps of Arnold Schwarzenegger and playing all sorts of roles in all sorts of movies. Notably, John Cena seems just as comfortable playing an antiheroic superhero with a bad dad as he is playing an overbearing father who comedically gets super involved in his teen daughter’s sex life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b78jWX">
Cena, like fellow hulking hunks Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dave Bautista, first rose to fame as a professional wrestler, and the more I thought about Cena’s surprising vulnerability, the more I realized that, perversely, the over-the-top shenanigans and violence of the wrestling ring might be key to his appeal. Especially in the 21st century, wrestling has turned its wrestlers’ private lives into fodder for its storytelling, creating a kind of need to authentically and vulnerably perform the self.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i5fmtk">
Was there anything to this idea? I asked Sharon Mazer, professor of theater and performance studies at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. She literally wrote the book on this topic, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvx5w9pw"><em>Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle</em></a>, and she dug into the ways that performance within wrestling has shifted and evolved, as well as the ways that shift has been influenced by our evolving ideas on what it means to be a man — and how wrestling has influenced societal notions of masculine performance right back.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vKmZF1">
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WPdyen">
<strong>For as long as I’ve been alive, wrestlers have tried to break through as movie stars. Hulk Hogan was the biggest wrestling star when I was a kid, but he flopped as a movie star. And now Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista and John Cena have all had real success in movies. Do you think these guys are better actors than Hulk was? Or has wrestling changed in a way that better prepared them to star in movies?</strong>
</p></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tzoEEc">
If you look at the evolution of wrestling since the glam years of the 1980s, obviously, [WWE CEO] Vince McMahon has a lot to answer for. Vince brought the cameras into the arena in a much closer and more calculated way. He brought scriptwriters in in a closer and more calculated way. So wrestling itself began to leave behind its carnival roots and its improvisatory structures and became much more scripted toward the end of the ’80s and certainly into the ’90s. Now, it’s very heavily controlled and contained. It’s mapped for cameras. The live spectacle is much more controlled and contained and aimed toward the cameras.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="okqMV1">
In that late’ 80s, early ’90s phase, what was interesting was to watch the wrestlers who could work the camera versus those who were just very good at being caught by the cameras and to watch how deft that technology was starting to be in picking up the action and getting us in closer than we used to be.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RK4HQj">
As a consequence, I think there’s been a naturalization of the wrestler’s persona, especially male wrestlers. We hear about their wives and their children. They have storylines where one of the wrestlers is chasing the other and attacking his wife. This isn’t at all the same as the triangle between <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUFLQ6jKtA">Macho Man, Miss Elizabeth, and Hulk Hogan</a> in the 1980s. This is something entirely different because the cameras go into their homes — or what are meant to be their homes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rT015Z">
So performances that have become mobile, from the squared circle into the realm of film and television, is also a movement from a very social presentation of a wrestler’s persona into a very individuated, very personal persona, devoid of a larger social set of identifications.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CpEESs">
Now, these guys present themselves almost straight [in the sense of basic and unaffected] to begin with. They’re usually in basic briefs, maybe a pretty robe here or there. But they’re so straight in their presentation as wrestlers. They’re just strong guys. There’s no exaggeration to let go of. They’re presented as regular, working guys. They’ve got muscles, but so do other working guys.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3nBDyd">
I wonder if their real role model is Arnold Schwarzenegger more than any other wrestler. He made a really good transition into film from his bodybuilding, and he was much more extreme as a bodybuilder. But if you look at <em>Pumping Iron</em> [the documentary that broke Schwarzenegger through to global fame], he was the breakout star in part because he seemed like a real person onscreen, and he worked the screen really well. He had a knack for it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MtmInB">
So these guys seem to have been brought into the game because of some humanist appeal, for lack of a better word. When he’s working, you can see who Dwayne Johnson is. You can see who John Cena is when he’s working. You get one generation beyond them [the group that came up in the ’90s and 2000s], and they’re looking much more like a normal person. The least looking-like-a-person wrestlers right now are Vince McMahon himself and his son Shane.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qCi2es">
<strong>I do wonder if the camera coming into these guys’ houses, as scripted as it is, has added an element of their ability to be real and vulnerable and play some version of themselves on camera. It’s heightened, but it’s a heightened version of who they are.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y99dbx">
The big innovations of the early Vince years were that the cameras would go backstage. You’d have wrestlers racing backstage, punching each other backstage, sometimes racing out into the street. But cameras have become much more mobile, and we carry cameras with us all the time, so people are much more used to staging ourselves that way and seeing ourselves staged that way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tx0PNt">
Wrestlers have had to go through an evolution about dialing it back [as cameras have entered the ring more]. They do much more holding still. There’s a much clearer distinction between when they’re showing us a persona and when they’re actually doing the thing live. And a lot of that’s enforced because they go from town to town and have to deliver much the same show, in much the same way, from one city to the next, whether it’s in the United States or overseas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9QeiHq">
This whole generation of young wrestlers has lived in a different world than Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage came up in. And they’re just different men more generally. Men have changed, and this might just be changing norms of masculinity. They’re still exaggerated from what we would hope to see in everyday life, but not in the same way that they were 20 to 30 years ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9XJipn">
<strong>I don’t know how big of an evolution of masculinity it is, but the shift toward more personal stories in wrestling from the days of Hulk Hogan or whoever feels of a piece with something larger in the culture, to me at least.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2i61uX">
In the US, there are competing masculinities, and whatever war is being fought this week or the next, even the war on women’s bodies, those wars are being fought about definitions of masculinity at base and whose ideological stance is going to prevail in terms of masculine performance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OqsjrC">
We have assumptions about the 1950s and ’60s and homophobia and masculine dominance and how it was a truly oppressive era. So you have the wrestler Gorgeous George, who’s a villain, fluffing his hair and his robe and doing his fancy thing. The crowd just loved hating him. And yet when he stripped down and started wrestling, yes, he cheated in the end of his matches, but there’s always a period where you could say he was a really good wrestler. At the same time, you’d have Ricky Starr, a ballet dancer from Greenwich Village, prancing around in ballet slippers with little miniature ballet slippers that he would fling into the audience. And they loved him! He was so tiny that he could leap on his opponent’s back and legitimately win.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w3gWoZ">
The point seemed to be in the ’50s and ’60s that just being a man was enough. If you had a penis, that was enough. The only thing that matters is that, at some point, you could beat another guy up, and you could demonstrate that in wrestling in a way that was unlike any other arena. It was a very reassuring portrayal of masculinity. Yes, it was rife with sexism, homophobia, all of that, but at base, its message was: You’re a man, and therefore, we’re all men, and that’s all that matters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f1zT5X">
The symbol of a real man is that he shows he can win. He loses often, but he gets back up and he fights again. The only difference is a good man wins by following the rules and defending the community, and a bad man wins by breaking the rules and thumbing his nose at the community. Those were the moral, ethical, ideological paradigms of the period, and they held even through the ’80s.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B8WLBp">
What makes [wrestling] so fascinating is that it is so representative of and informative to whatever is going on in the dominant culture at any given moment, and the thread that runs through it is one about defining what a real man is and somehow extending that definition to every man.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OWzPmI">
<strong>Yeah, our political battles, especially in the US but everywhere around the world, are so often about what masculinity is. But wrestling and action movies externalize that question in really interesting ways. So how has wrestling evolved along with our idea of what being a man is? Or hasn’t it?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n1FWrF">
To some degree, what you’re observing in these wrestlers-turned-actors is reflective of the evolving understanding of what a real man is and how a real man is to behave in the real world. But these are not exclusive. It’s not like the representation is on one side and the reality is on the other.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tDcpwl">
One of the things that was always fascinating to me about wrestlers is how gentle they were with each other. When wrestlers greeted each other back in the day at the gym, they would go, “Hey, man,” and they would slide two fingers [on both sides of the other man’s wrist] and barely touch. And that was how they would touch each other in the ring. You’d barely feel it. Because they have to work together to make the spectacle, wrestlers have to be extraordinarily sensitive to each other’s bodies and spirits in the ring. You can’t throw someone across the ring safely unless the two of you are communicating really well and your bodies are touching in exactly the right way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rfq3sB">
I always felt in the wrestlers’ gym that the point of the gentle greeting that I saw was that they were saying to each other, “I can hold it back. I am in control of this. I don’t have to hurt you. But if you push me the wrong way, I will pound you into the pavement.” And I’ve seen that as well. So masculinity [in the wrestling gym] was about having the power but also the restraint and following the rules.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bP59ng">
If you’re talking about the guys on Fox News or Donald Trump, they didn’t learn that lesson. What’s appealing about a John Cena or a Dwayne Johnson is that they’ve had that lesson. What’s revolting about these other men is that they didn’t get the memo that first you learn to cooperate, and then you beat someone up.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CXu09z">
Donald Trump in 2007 for the Battle of the Billionaires was taught very carefully his stunt with Vince McMahon where he threw him down and pretended to punch him. And then he actually almost hurt Vince McMahon in throwing him down and punching him. He didn’t pull his punches. He wasn’t gentle. He missed the lesson he was given and went for it because he didn’t know the difference between how one is supposed to perform in this context.
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When I was teaching a women and trauma course at Columbia over 30 years ago, I used to argue with the women in my class. “Do you simply want to hear what everybody playing by the rules says, or do you want to see what they’re suppressing, what violence, what impulses are really there? Is it better to have those things repressed so that we can all get along and pretend to be civilized? Or should we, once in a while, open up and see what’s really going on here?” It’s no less violent for being oppressed. It’s no less violent for being gentle. It just means that we know how to be acceptable in those performances.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MMYfg2">
It may be appealing to see these wrestlers-turned-actors being vulnerable and showing us their feeling selves. But I wonder what is not being seen as a result and if that’s still the more meaningful takeaway from these performances.
</p>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The plant-based future of food doesn’t always taste that great</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A pixelated drawing of a hamburger." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/HteDtm9siiS37k_Nb6PH2Tf_1gM=/504x142:3013x2024/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70908254/GettyImages_1337469153.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Plant-based meat, milk, and egg products have come a long way in the last decade, but they still have a ways to go to make a dent in conventional animal product sales. | Getty Images/iStockphoto
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What I’ve learned from four months of vegan food samples.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gtmjGO">
I cover the plant-based food industry for Vox, so I get a lot of free food samples. A lot. Some of the products that startups mail me are delicious, many are just okay, and a few have been downright awful, bad enough to make me wonder out loud, “Why are they letting people eat this stuff?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yXUiaQ">
A plant-based steak from the startup Juicy Marbles in Slovenia was meaty and, well, quite juicy, while another startup’s steak was watery and flavorless. A new plant-based milk product from Silk, one of the more established brands,<strong> </strong>was rich and smooth, while a new startup’s milk was much too sweet and left behind a chalky aftertaste.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FD7Z8H">
I’ve also sampled enough vegan chicken nuggets and tenders to feed a small village, though that village would be left gastronomically unsatisfied, as most were mediocre, with only a few standouts: nuggets from VFC and Tindle, and wings from Simulate.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qZoKgh">
The new foods I’ve tried are just a smattering of what’s on offer from the <a href="https://newprotein.org/maps">dozens and dozens (and dozens) of plant-based startups</a> that have sprung up in recent years, fueled by <a href="https://gfi.org/press/record-5-billion-invested-in-alt-proteins-in-2021/">billions of dollars</a> in venture capital cash. It’s the vegan gold rush, and while all that investment has been great for the companies, I worry about the downside for consumers and the plant-based movement: a glut of mediocre products.
</p>
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/nt1J5LdXfTF3d6EoPAkr3GUXYSM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23585516/2Eoj6_investment_in_plant_based_food_companies_has_skyrocketed_in_recent_years_but_risks_a_decline.png"/>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gtDiTt">
The vegan gold rush is a direct effect of the sheer difficulty of changing hearts and minds — not to mention diets — on meat-eating by trying to appeal to consumers’ stomachs. <a href="https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates">Nearly all meat</a>, milk, and eggs are produced on factory farms that pose a risk of <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/22/21228158/coronavirus-
pandemic-risk-factory-farming-meat">incubating the next pandemic</a> while polluting the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23003487/north-carolina-hog-pork-bacon-farms-environmental-racism-black-
residents-pollution-meat-industry">air and water</a>, not to mention <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/21437054/chickens-factory-farming-animal-cruelty-welfare">condemning animals</a> to a lifetime of misery<strong> </strong>and subjecting meatpacking workers to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia3abCiYX3w">hazardous conditions</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Su9XQb">
Despite a majority of Americans <a href="https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/aft-
survey-2020">telling pollsters</a> they support a societal shift toward plant-based eating, moral pleas have largely gone unrequited: US per capita meat consumption <a href="https://www.dailylivestockreport.com/documents/dlr%2002-23-21.pdf">continues to rise</a>, while <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8697883/">global meat consumption</a> (excluding fish) jumped from 65 pounds per person in 2000 to 75 pounds in 2019 and is projected to <a href="https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/4395-global-meat-consumption-to-rise-73-percent-by-2050-fao">increase significantly in coming decades</a>, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5P3HLz">
The new generation of animal-free meat, milk, and eggs has been promoted as a way to shortcut the moral debate by using technology to make plant-based ingredients taste uncannily like animals. If that can happen, the thinking goes, consumers will be more eager to switch over because they won’t feel as though they’re sacrificing their taste buds to their ethics.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SmC1Lf">
It’s much too early to tell if that theory of change is right. It usually <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518305901">takes decades</a>, not years, for a new technology to achieve widespread adoption, and many never do. The same goes for new <a href="https://stacker.com/stories/2500/50-ways-food-has-changed-last-50-years">culinary categories</a>. But for that shift to happen on a wider scale, plant-based foods need to deliver on their gastronomic promise, and the glut of mediocre products that have landed in my mailbox certainly isn’t going to help the sector’s long-term goal, and may very well threaten it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="asoXpZ">
“If there’s a plethora of really poor products on the market, and people who don’t do their research or haven’t been exposed to [better] products choose one of those as their first foray into plant- based foods, that can certainly create a negative halo around the category,” says Jennifer Bartashus, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VltEfr">
It’s hard to tease out the effect of sub-par products on the broader plant-based meat sector, but after years of startups capturing the public’s curiosity — and food dollars — there is evidence that the category is starting to plateau.
</p>
<h3 id="EWHFhh">
The plant-based industry’s growing pains
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0SzeaF">
The president of Maple Leaf Foods, a major Canadian food company that entered the plant-based market in 2017, said in a February 2022 earnings call<strong> </strong>that the refrigerated plant-based meat category experienced explosive growth in 2019 (59 percent) and 2020 (75 percent), but <a href="https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/20778-maple-leaf-foods-pivoting-to-the-plant-based-meat-markets-new-
reality">just 1 percent in 2021</a>. His explanation: “Consumers’ needs simply were not met, and they did not repeat purchases.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A8jBRh">
Plant-based meat is hurting<strong> </strong>at the drive-thru too; analysts say sales of McDonald’s McPlant burger, made with Beyond Meat, are <a href="https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/btig-mcplant-faces-
tepid-sales-in-test-markets/620927/">lower than anticipated</a>. The single<strong> </strong>largest Burger King franchise operator in the US said in late 2020 that Impossible Whopper sales had <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/which-fast-food-has-fake-meat-not-many-serve-beyond-meat-
impossible-foods?sref=qYiz2hd0">fallen by half</a> from around <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/burger-king-cuts-impossible-whopper-price-as-sales-taper-
off?sref=qYiz2hd0">30 per store per day</a> compared to<strong> </strong>when it first launched in August 2019.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Uqfeam">
It was unrealistic for the explosive growth of the past few years to be sustained, and many players in Big Food<strong> </strong>are as bullish as ever on plant-based food. For example, Nestlé is <a href="https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2021/10/07/What-s-next-in-plant-based-Nestle-accelerates-innovation-with-
new-shrimp-and-egg-alternatives">quickly launching</a> new products across Europe (hopefully not too quickly, though), while <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22883795/food-industry-plant-based-vegan-meat-dairy-climate-
pledges">Unilever</a> has pledged to make one-fifth of its ice-cream portfolio dairy-free by 2030.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4s9n5o">
But to meaningfully displace conventional animal agriculture, the plant-based sector will need to entice disengaged consumers with new and superior offerings; after all, according to one survey, consumers say <a href="https://foodinsight.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IFIC-Plant-Alternative-to-Animal-Meat-Survey.pdf">novelty and curiosity</a> are their primary motivations to give meat from plants a shot. Producers maintaining a much higher bar for taste and texture will be key.
</p>
<h3 id="OJmJwl">
Patience pays (and so does feedback)
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hsniDW">
One lesson that can be learned from the biggest players in the field is that patience pays. Impossible Foods was in stealth mode for five years developing its burger before it launched, and it’s now available in every Burger King. Eat Just toiled away on its egg product for almost six years and it says it now has <a href="https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/eat-justs-mung-bean-protein-in-plant-based-eggs-greenlighted-for-eu-
commercial-rollout.html">99 percent</a> of the US plant-based egg market (though they have very little competition). Beyond Meat spent several years on its flagship burger before its <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/beyond-
meat-soars-163-in-biggest-popping-us-ipo-since-2000-2019-05-02">massive IPO in 2019</a>. The company says it allocates 14.4 percent of its net revenue to R&amp;D.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bXmVT7">
Today, though, many startups are putting out products just a couple of years after securing funding, and unreasonable expectations from investors could be a cause. “We are seeing more generalists [investors] enter the space and we’re seeing that education is important so they understand what’s happening in order to make the products that they’re backing,” says Laine Clark of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for alternative proteins like plant-based and cell-cultured meats. “When these startups come to market with a product, they’re taking a significant risk that consumers won’t give the brand a second chance if the first experience isn’t pretty darn good.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4RZIMU">
But much of the blame can’t be laid at the feet of investors; startup founders, like the rest of us, can be too optimistic in estimating how long something will take to do, says Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, which makes plant-based eggs and cell-cultured chicken meat. “An entrepreneur truly will believe that they [can launch a product] in 18 months, let’s say, and they’re raising capital to do that, and they made that outside commitment [to investors]. And understandably so, now there’s pressure and expectations to do that.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IcxKq4">
One upside of getting a product to market — even if it’s too soon — is that it can light a fire underneath startups to make it better. “When you know something is out there, there is a bit more of a motivation to improve it,” Tetrick says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gg0IAL">
And when startups feel they have improved a product, some use it as an opportunity to communicate their iterative approach to consumers. While food companies are constantly reformulating their products, some plant-based startups number each reformulation like a software company would; for example, Beyond Meat is now on <a href="https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/whats-new/introducing-the-new-beyond-beef-3-0">version 3.0</a> of its “beef” burger, while <a href="https://simulate.com/releases/">Simulate</a> is on version 2.0 of its “chicken” nugget.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iOF3lD">
Consumers say taste is the top factor when deciding which meat alternative brand to buy, but <a href="https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/21280-paving-a-road-to-repeat-meat-alternative-
sale">“clean labels/recognizable ingredients”</a> comes in second. Bartashus argues that too many startups are shaping products around that second expectation, which could also help explain the mediocrity of the results. “So if the focus is on all-organic, non-GMO, and all-vegan, and it’s got no gluten — you’re in the pursuit of labels that sometimes you lose sight [that] the product itself has to taste good.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NGVBOR">
All food companies conduct taste tests, but when I visited Beyond Meat’s headquarters earlier this year, it was apparent just how seriously they take feedback. The company has a room dedicated to gathering it, conducting dozens of sensory tests each week, and third-party off-site taste tests too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mBNsU8">
“The room was specifically designed to remove bias — from the paint color on the walls to the light bulbs used in the booths — to ensure that we can get unbiased real-time feedback on our product development work,” a Beyond Meat spokesperson told me over email.
</p>
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SQDTOn_h5UTEzG56JPmY5VUE3CI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23582987/3d825e2c_33c7_4b15_8e89_facaa43edaa3.jpeg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Beyond Meat</cite>
<figcaption>
Taste-test participants in the sensory room at Beyond Meat headquarters.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9moaBY">
If big R&amp;D budgets, rigorous taste-testing,<strong> </strong>and mega-celebrity partnerships (Beyond Meat just <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-24/beyond-meat-signs-kim-
kardashian-as-first-chief-taste-consultant?sref=qYiz2hd0">appointed Kim Kardashian</a> as its “chief taste consultant”) aren’t enough to dethrone animal meat from the center of the plate, cell-cultured meat — created by taking a small sample of animal cells and growing them in bioreactors — might win over consumers, at least on taste.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7lKiWI">
During a recent trip to San Francisco, I tried cell-cultured salmon, chicken, bacon, sausage, burgers, and meatballs. While some were 100 percent cell-cultured — meaning they were biologically almost identical to meat from animals — most included both cell-cultured and plant-based ingredients. But one thing was for certain: All of the products were noticeably meatier — juicier, firmer, and tastier — than their purely plant-based counterparts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zJHQps">
Whether these startups will be able to produce cell-cultured meat at scale at an affordable price point, and get consumers on board with such a novel food product, is an open question. They currently lack US regulatory approval to commercially sell their products, and in Singapore, the one country that has approved a cell-cultured product, Eat Just is selling its chicken nuggets at a loss.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zMhoyWa7x_9VqJc1qdO2qM-FdFQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23583686/DSC06553.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Eat Just</cite></p>
<figcaption>
Eat Just’s cell-cultured chicken.
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8EpJ55">
The distance that even the best startups still have to go to make hyperrealistic analogues — despite billions in collective investment — illustrates just how hard it is to make plant-based meat, milk, and eggs that can compare to conventional products. And easy money might be drying up; venture capital firms are <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-cash-burn-vc-
fundraising-runway-layoffs-2022/">tightening their belts</a> in the current economic environment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qz8oUD">
We’re in the boom times of the vegan gold rush and, eventually, many startups will go bust. That’s just the nature of Silicon Valley and the business cycle more broadly. If a tech startup goes bust with a bad product, however, it doesn’t sour people on computers and smartphones. But there’s a real risk that if the plant-based industry doesn’t improve its offerings, all that consumers will be left with is a bad taste in their mouths.
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The rise of the sadboi big man</strong> -
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
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Beth Hoeckel for Vox/Getty Images
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From John Cena to Jason Momoa, our most muscular movie stars are increasingly our most vulnerable too.
</p>
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</p>
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" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
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<em>Part of the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/23023682/welcome-to-the-may-issue-of-the-
highlight"><em><strong>May 2022 issue</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><em>of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
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Early in the first season of HBO Max’s 2022 series <em>Peacemaker</em>, the titular antihero collapses on the bed in his tiny trailer and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3aNVWn49qs">breaks down sobbing</a>. He’s finally processing the events of the 2021 film <em>The Suicide Squad</em>, which introduced John Cena as Peacemaker. In that film, he killed government agent and nominally good guy Rick Flag. He feels bad about it. Maybe he and Rick could have been friends? But he didn’t even give them a shot.
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Cena, who plays the complicated hero, is a former wrestler built like an extremely buff, smooth version of <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warner-bros-
entertainment/images/b/b0/Gosamer_300.gif/revision/latest?cb=20180416165910">Gossamer</a>, the big monster covered in red hair who was always threatening Bugs Bunny. Because of pop culture’s longstanding ambivalence toward the idea of a man of Cena’s size and stature openly weeping, it’s hard to watch this <em>Peacemaker</em> scene and not think there’s meant to be an ironic gloss on it. This is … supposed to be funny, right? Like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfsGgp4go6k">the scene</a> from the 2018 comedy <em>Blockers</em> in which the same actor sobs as he butt chugs?
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The ironic gloss falls away the more you look at it. Yes, the emotions are so heightened that the scene is a little ridiculous, but both Cena and director James Gunn play this moment as sincere. When Peacemaker slaps himself and says that nobody likes him, there’s something more raw there than you might expect.
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Still, this is a superhero show, and the question of “How seriously am I meant to take this?” is endemic to everything James Gunn makes. He’s fond of complicated tonal mishmashes that sometimes involve asking the audience to take seriously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZ9tT8OwFk">a sentient raccoon tearing up</a>. <em>Peacemaker</em> is thornier than even that, however, because it’s balancing that tonal mishmash across eight full episodes of television, with more to come, and in every episode, John Cena invites you to be baffled by his try-hard dad energy.
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This scene strikes me as a useful synecdoche for a larger cultural moment. We’re living through a new boomlet of muscle boys in our biggest movies and TV shows. In addition to Cena, Jason Momoa (the heartthrob) and Dave Bautista (the slightly too-intense coworker) have broken through to starring roles in the last decade, following in the footsteps of the enormously successful Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel.
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Yet this new wave of absolute units feels like a direct response to — and a subversion of — Johnson’s on- screen persona. Where The Rock tends to play unflappable, effortlessly charismatic guys who never met an earthquake or skyscraper or jungle-themed board game they couldn’t dominate, the new crop of stars is comfortable with the emotional tension that arises when you’re not sure whether to laugh at them or cry with them.
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This new trio of bulky himbo friends embraces our growing understanding that men can cry, too. So does this new wave of anhedonic Adonises represent a substantial break from the past? The answer is: a qualified possibly.
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A brief history of musclemen, vulnerable and (mostly) otherwise
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Before we get into how Bautista, Cena, and Momoa subvert (or don’t subvert) the archetype of a man so enormous even God cannot lift him, it’s worth understanding what that archetype is. A complete rundown of the role of the muscleman in American culture would be impossible in so limited a space, so let’s narrow things down. When considering the current crop, it’s worth understanding three major roles that mountains of man-flesh have played in our popular imagination: the action star, the professional wrestler, and the object of queer desire.
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The action star will be the easiest lens through which many people will view the up-and-coming hunks. Musclebound movie heroes have been with us always, but the ultra-buff hero archetype has its roots in two 1980s and ’90s stars: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two men came to stand in for a very Hollywood brand of hyper-machismo that wedded the taciturn stoicism of classic movie men to an enormous brawn that appealed to the consumerist Reagan era.
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Stallone started out in vulnerable roles — he broke through with 1976’s <em>Rocky</em>, in which he played a down-on-his-luck working-class boxer — but he very quickly hardened himself. Schwarzenegger traveled a roughly opposite path, going from playing monosyllabic killer robots to family men as he became the biggest star in the world.
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“The deeper Schwarzenegger got into his marriage [to Maria Shriver], the more domestic subjects became prevalent in all of his movies,” says Matt Singer, the editor of ScreenCrush, who has argued at length for <a href="https://screencrush.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-is-an-
auteur/">Schwarzenegger as an auteur</a>. “Can this Arnold figure settle down? Can he play a married man? Can he be happy being a married man?”
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The enormous popularity of Schwarzenegger worldwide created the stardom archetype that all musclemen to follow would offer their own spin on, none more successfully than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson first obtained fame as a professional wrestler, another avenue through which big men could make their name. Though many wrestling superstars who attempted to move into other forms of performance found themselves unable to (Hulk Hogan bombed as a movie star), the performance sport commands a healthy audience even in this age of depressed TV ratings.
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In wrestling, “the symbol of a real man is that he shows he can win. He loses, often, but he gets back up and he fights again,” says Sharon Mazer, a professor of theater and performance studies at the Auckland University of Technology and the author of the book <em>Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle</em>. “The only difference is a good man wins by following the rules and defending the community. And a bad man wins by breaking the rules and thumbing his nose at the community.”
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Almost all wrestlers switch with abandon between playing good guys (“faces”) and bad guys (“heels”) across their careers. Those roles also echo the simplistic roles they tend to play on the big screen when they break through, either taking on the role of the unstoppable force who will do anything to save the day or the burly brick wall who protects the villain from seeing any consequences.
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Yet if you notice a commonality between the brawny action star and the hyper-muscular wrestler, it’s that both archetypes feel a little sexless. There’s a simple reason for this, theorizes Lee Mandelo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky who teaches a course on gender in popular culture: For much of the first half of the 20th century, you were most likely to encounter the muscleman in the era’s equivalent of gay porn.
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To get around obscenity laws at that time, many magazines catering to queer men would bill themselves as “physique” magazines. They would have articles about how to build a better, more muscular body, but they would also come with lots and lots of pictures of barely clad men showing off their figures. Most subscribers weren’t getting these magazines for the articles. As such, for most of the early 20th century, strongmen were heavily associated with homosexuality. That’s a legacy musclemen have run from, in complicated ways.
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The poses in those magazines are not all that dissimilar to the poses that Schwarzenegger made as a bodybuilder or that wrestlers ape in the ring. Indeed, Mazer says, for much of the early history of mainstream professional wrestling, many “villainous” wrestlers were queer-coded, with names like “Gorgeous George.” They could still fight, but they were also suggested to be gay.
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Mandelo theorizes that all of that combined into a weird psychosexual soup that added up to: Straight men should want to look like this but never want to fuck it. And that continues to this day.
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“There’s a sexuality to that that made straight men very uncomfortable. You cannot have the power fantasy for straight cisgender men by staring at a John Cena without being able to completely desexualize it,” Mandelo says. “If the body that you’re staring at to fantasize about this ideal masculine man is erotic, then you are participating in that eroticization of a man’s body.”
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As obscenity laws lifted and it became easier to legally obtain images of half-naked or even completely naked men, the idea of the muscleman as an object of queer desire never entirely lifted. Offsetting this, Schwarzenegger and The Rock tend to star in very chaste love scenes (if they do at all), and when characters played by Cena or Bautista suggest that they might be sexual beings, the other characters tend to find that idea mildly ridiculous. Obviously, individual attractions vary, and you might think any one of these actors is incredibly hot. In the wider popular culture of the US, however, our movies and TV shows typically present these men as action figures who almost might seem to lack genitalia.
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So, burly action star, professional wrestler, extremely buff but weirdly sexless man: Put ’em all together and whaddya get?
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On the significance of John Cena dancing in the <em>Peacemaker </em>opening credits
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Big men never left our collective subconscious. For much of the 21st century, one of the biggest stars in the world has been Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson, however, is … kind of boring as a movie star. He stars in movies with names like <em>Skyscraper</em> and <em>Rampage</em> and <em>Jungle Cruise</em>, movies where the title pretty much tells you what you’re going to get.
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“His body of work has the same effect as pouring some water on a sizzling hot sidewalk. In a few minutes, it’s going to disappear,” says critic Angelica Jade Bastién, who works for Vox’s sister site Vulture. “I’ve seen so many of his movies, and I barely, barely remember most. He’s not doing anything interesting physically or with humor. He’s just a block of body that has been sculpted, like some automaton that’s been created in a Hollywood lab.”
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The hyper-competence and artificiality of Johnson left plenty of space for an enormous man who would show his softer side. A few dudes stepped into that niche. Vin Diesel became the chief creative mastermind behind the <em>Fast &amp; Furious</em> movies and turned them into <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22547330/f9-fast-and-
furious-franchise-explained-vin-diesel-dominic-toretto-michelle-rodriguez-letty-ortiz">maybe the sappiest thing at the multiplex</a>. Similarly, the work of Channing Tatum and Joe Manganiello in the <em>Magic Mike</em> franchise presented two big, beefy boys who only cared about <em>her</em> pleasure.
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“These are very buff dudes, and they’re presenting themselves overtly as like, ‘Hey, you can look at me. This is fine. This is for you,’” says writer and critic Jude Doyle. “When men have the humility that allows them to be soft and approachable and funny and when we feel like they’re presenting themselves to us, for our enjoyment, and not just inflicting themselves on the world, there are ways in which that shifts and challenges power.”
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Thus, the stage was set for the rise of our current sensitive (but not too sensitive!) big men: Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista, and John Cena. And that means it’s time to talk about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mrr3UNALww">opening credits of HBO Max’s <em>Peacemaker</em></a>, specifically John Cena’s dancing.
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This sequence could have come off as ridiculous. Cena seems uncomfortable, and his moves are stiff and unconvincing, particularly compared to some of his costars. Indeed, Cena wasn’t terribly comfortable! “I don’t dance; it’s something I’m not very comfortable with,” he told <a href="https://www.polygon.com/22878714/peacemaker-opening-theme-song-dance-john-cena-james-gunn">Vox sister site Polygon</a> of a different dance number in <em>Peacemaker</em>.
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Cena’s discomfort is a potent example of what makes these men seem so vulnerable on screen: They have a willingness to seem imperfect, despite their enormous, sculpted bodies. Directors like <em>Guardians of the Galaxy</em> and <em>The Suicide Squad</em> auteur James Gunn (who has worked with both Bautista and Cena) and <em>Dune</em>’s Denis Villeneuve (who has worked with both Bautista and Momoa) love to use those imperfections against the actors’ assumed on-screen personas. Villeneuve might turn Bautista into a sad robot who just <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku-zAIRXk6o">wants to be a farmer</a> or have Momoa play an expert warrior who nevertheless spends several moments before a huge fight staring at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDOgos9PkPs">a bug crawling around on his hand</a>.
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Gunn is deeply invested in forcing you to see his stars’ imperfections. In the second <em>Guardians of the Galaxy</em> film, he slowly but surely shows you the soft underbelly of Bautista’s humongous, destructive warrior Drax the Destroyer. Drax has the requisite tragic backstory (his family was murdered), which is explored in the first film. In the second, Drax opens up even more, becoming friends with the new character Mantis, in a relationship that is as close to a raw, genuine friendship as the Marvel Cinematic Universe allows itself to get. The scenes are touching and even tender, laced with deep melancholy and occasional bursts of self-deprecating laughter.
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Within the tightly controlled confines of the MCU, only so much in the way of genuine emotion that’s not undercut with snark is possible. Maybe that’s why Gunn goes even further in <em>Peacemaker</em>. Or maybe it’s just John Cena.
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“I knew there was a vulnerability to John Cena that I would be able to help carve out and present to the world,” <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/peacemaker-james-gunn-tv-series-guardianas-3-1235074249/">Gunn told the Hollywood Reporter</a> shortly before <em>Peacemaker</em> debuted. And <em>Peacemaker</em> in particular goes over the top in terms of its attempts to get you to see Cena as more than his physique. He argues with his racist dad. He sincerely befriends the other members of his elite assassin squad. He makes fun of himself with abandon. And he dances, <a href="https://uproxx.com/tv/john-cena-dancing-peacemaker-underwear/">including in his tighty-whities</a>.
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The wonders and limitations of big men being vulnerable on screen
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Momoa, Bautista, and Cena have very different on-screen energies. For instance, Momoa tends to play big guys who yell a lot, which would seem the opposite of vulnerability, but he’s also quite comfortable with being an object of on-screen desire. Of this trio of brawny stars, he seems most capable of pulling off a genuine love scene. And you can’t be comfortable being desired if you’re not comfortable letting your guard down just a little bit.
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What’s more, both Cena and Momoa have been more than willing to show off their off<em>-</em>screen vulnerability in ways that underscore that they’re just enormous dudes who seem fun to hang out with. Momoa did a whole press cycle about how <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a30064845/jason-momoa-cool-dad/">he’s glad to be super sensitive</a>. Cena has arguably spent even more time expressing the idea that his vulnerability and his status as an enormous hunk can live right next door to each other.
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“John Cena has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MdK8hBkR3s">done commercials about</a> how the average American is not a white man, [in which he’s] speaking to predominantly other straight white men who would idolize him for his body and his fitness,” Mandelo says. “He talks about softness being important and how men should open up more.”
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The degree to which these mountains of man-flesh have made that vulnerability core to their on-screen personas goes beyond what earlier musclemen have made central to who they are. It feels as though it’s in conversation with a larger willingness in our culture to talk about how men need to embrace their emotions.
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Is that enough? Maybe not. Vulture’s Bastién threw a bit of cold water on my notion that these performers represent something exciting. Yes, they’re more interesting on-screen performers than Johnson, but … what a low bar! Bastién argues that these stars put on imperfections as an affectation. It doesn’t matter that John Cena can’t dance if his body is completely perfect.
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“Leading men’s bodies and their star image exist at the intersection of virile and vulnerable. We’re in a moment where there’s no balance between those two poles. Someone like Timothée Chalamet is vulnerable to the point of being joked about as if he’s the ghost of a Victorian child,” Bastién says. “On the other end of the spectrum, they’re so muscular it feels like it’s in some weird, uncanny valley territory. We’re not really seeing male stars who exist on a more interesting continuum.” Cena, Bautista, Momoa — they’re all the virile subsuming the vulnerable, trying to be everything all at once. And that chokes out anything else.
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No matter how vulnerable these actors are on screen, none of that re-sexualizes the muscular man because the idea that an enormous guy could also be hot runs headlong into our cultural homophobia. Mandelo points to K-pop star Wonho as the kind of big, muscular guy that would cause many American brains to short-circuit. Yeah, he’s built, but he’s also in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZHmCkP4OTI">videos like this one</a>, where he’s just rolling around in bed.
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“It is not the Superman body that is untouchable and idealized. This is a body that can be naked, that can roll around and get sweaty,” Mandelo says. “I think our discourse around desire has gotten so wonky and hyper-conservative since the ’70s that we have trouble seeing being the object of desire as a positive, particularly for men.”
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When vulnerability is a weapon
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The understandable temptation when thinking about how Peacemaker’s tears are a very, very slight course correction from former, more impervious heroes is to label those tears as somehow vaguely feminist or progressive. “Finally! Someone is saying men can have emotions!” goes the clickbait headline in my mind. As several of the people I talked to suggested, however, overstating the value of such an advance might run the risk of saying that all men have to do to build a better masculinity is be a little more open with their vulnerability. Men’s vulnerability isn’t nothing, but it’s not everything either.
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That said: I don’t want to understate the importance either, because contrast John Cena dancing in the <em>Peacemaker</em> credits with <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1515130557675581442/">whatever this is</a>.
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I promise you are not prepared for Tucker’s latest montage <a href="https://t.co/8tdvYTW2cn">pic.twitter.com/8tdvYTW2cn</a>
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— nikki mccann ramírez (<span class="citation" data-cites="NikkiMcR">@NikkiMcR</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1515130557675581442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2022</a>
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Excerpted from Tucker Carlson’s nightly Fox News talk show by Nikki McCann Ramírez, an associate research director at Media Matters for America, the clip is a forthright celebration of testosterone, which Carlson fears is disappearing from American life. The clip depicts manly men flipping over tires and firing guns and irradiating their testicles (like you do). It is, frankly, bonkers. (Mandelo snarked to me that “just about every gay man on the internet was, like, ‘Somehow he accidentally made the intro to a porn.’”)
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When you contrast Carlson’s clip with the more sensitive performances and off-screen personas of Bautista, Cena, and Momoa, it’s tempting to read the two cultural movements as being in direct opposition, or at least pulling in wildly different directions. To some degree, that’s true. Carlson’s celebration of testosterone isn’t directly in conversation with a dancin’ John Cena, but they’re definitely two different visions of American masculinity. And Carlson’s vision is one designed to cater to and comfort an audience whose own manhood might feel less immediately potent as they age.
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“Fox News’s audience tends to be a little older, and a lot of this masculine testosterone craze is targeted at people who are going through a natural cycle of aging. Their testosterone levels are decreasing. They’re not the virile men they were in their 20s,” says Ramírez. “What Fox does very effectively is conflate a natural progression of life and society as a personal attack by political forces.”
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What’s super weird about this is that outside of the mega-buff Joe Rogan (who isn’t a Fox News personality but is deeply involved in the extremely masculine world of UFC), the right- of-center audience Fox News targets doesn’t have a physical form to hold up as “what a man is.” Instead, Carlson’s clip imagines a man who might possibly exist somewhere and will come to save testosterone. Or something.
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“What they have are strains and pieces of things that they like, but there’s no whole person for them to project that onto. There’s no figurehead, really, outside of Rogan,” Kristen Warner, an associate professor of journalism and creative media at the University of Alabama, says. “There is no symbol. There is no image to cast your eyes and your fantasies upon. So what they do is just kind of make shit up to approximate something real as best as possible.”
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Yet Fox News keeps trying to prop up that imagined man all the same. Every few months, it turns up with <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6265808987001#sp=show-clips">another story</a> about how <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/5019786390001#sp=show-clips">maybe it’s weird</a> when <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/3639869217001#sp=show-clips">men cry</a>. However, when emotions are expressed for a purpose that the network reads as worthy, then those emotions become okay to express. I probably only need to mention <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/11/22775093/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-kenosha-testimony-crying">Brett Kavanaugh’s or Kyle Rittenhouse’s tears</a> to make this point, but the network’s entire m.o. involves stoking anger and fear and frustration in its viewers.
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“I actually think hegemonic masculinity allows for a lot of emotions,” Mandelo says. “In fact, it may mythologize that men are supposed to be stoic, but in reality, it’s more of an excuse to feel extremes of emotion and make them other people’s problem.”
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That’s the thing: On-screen vulnerability is always being used somehow, whether to make a larger political point or just to get you to consider that maybe if John Cena can cry, you can cry too (which is also a larger political point). I don’t know if there’s a lot of value in seeing big, vulnerable dudes, but it’s also not valueless. And that’s why I and so many others I talked to for this article keep coming back to John Cena.
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“He pushes farther than what Schwarzenegger and his peers did or thought they wanted to do,” Warner says. “He’s pushing into this place where he’s, like, ‘No, my body isn’t a symbol of all these things that you read it as. I would actually like to re-appropriate what my body signals and what my body stands for.’”
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Peacemaker, after all, is a literal tool of the US government, a hard body who was used to do terrible things. Yet the arc of his TV show is about what it might mean to try to break free of that mold, to find a way to be a hero that doesn’t involve simply doing what he’s told. Maybe that’s not revolutionary to someone like me, who spends lots of time thinking about this stuff, but it sure seems like it’s revolutionary to somebody. Maybe, just maybe, it’s chipping away at some very old, very suffocating ideas, one tighty-whitie dance at a time.
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<em>Emily St. James is Senior Correspondent for Vox.</em>
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<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>French Open | Emma Raducanu eliminated by Sasnovich in Round 2</strong> - British teenager Emma Raducanu, participating in her first French Open, was defeated by Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 3-6 6-1 6-1 in the second round</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>Indian Open surfing competition at Panambur beach in Mangaluru from May 27</strong> - The Indian Open Surfing or National Surfing Championship is the premier surfing competition of India, and is recognised by the International Surfing Association, the global governing body for the sport</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>Champions League final | Liverpool’s Salah out for revenge, Madrid looking past Mbappe saga</strong> - Ahead of the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday, revenge is on Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah's mind, while Real Madrid wants to quickly forget the Kylian Mbappé transfer saga</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>NBA coach Steve Kerr pleads for gun control after Texas school shooting</strong> - Following the Texas school shooting that killed at least 18 children on May 24, Steve Kerr, coach of NBA team Golden State Warriors made an impassioned plea for stricter gun control in the U.S.</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>Australian cricketers raise ethical concerns about touring Sri Lanka during crisis</strong> - Australia are scheduled to play a T20 series, five ODIs and two Tests in Sri Lanka in June-July, but the players are worried about the ethical issue of playing in the country as it battles a severe economic crisis</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Andhra Pradesh: BJP MP blames YSRCP government for violence in Amalapuram</strong> - No discussions held to sort out issues pertaining to renaming Konaseema district amicably, says GVL</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>India Cements ties up with startup to develop raw materials</strong> - The collaboration is expected to offer mutual strategic support for cost- and time-effective dwelling solutions</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>Thiruvananthapuram Corporation draws up ₹18.3-crore health action plan</strong> - Civic body aims to improve affordable primary health-care facilities</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>Maharashtra to appoint woman with ‘male’ chromosome to Police department</strong> - State government responds to petitioner’s plea in Bombay High Court; she was categorised ‘male’ by Karyotyping test</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>No differences between me and Nitish: R.C.P. Singh</strong> - JD(U) leader dismisses speculations about his impending resignation from Modi Cabinet on account of losing his RS perch</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>Ukraine war: Bodies of dead Russian soldiers abandoned near Kyiv</strong> - Shallow graves are discovered on the outskirts of the capital, weeks after Russia’s attempted advance.</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>Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says back Ukraine despite economic pain</strong> - The former heavyweight champions visit World Economic Forum in Davos to urge support for 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>Europa Conference League final: Police injured as Roma and Feyenoord fans clash in Albania</strong> - Nineteen police officers are injured and 80 Roma fans are deported as supporters clash in the build-up to the Europa Conference League final.</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>Ukraine war: Put values over profits, Nato chief tells countries</strong> - Jens Stoltenberg says the Ukraine war has highlighted the cost of trade with “authoritarian regimes”.</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>Ukraine war: World faces ‘dark hour’, Biden tells Quad summit</strong> - The US president meets key Asia allies to discuss China’s influence and differences over Russia’s invasion.</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>Server hack yields harrowing images of life inside Chinese detention camps</strong> - Leak is latest bright light shined on China’s persecution of ethnic minorities. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1856217">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What the public wants in COVID news vs. what the press provides</strong> - There’s a contrast between what people search for and what reliable media provide. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1856205">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Big-budget The Lord of the Rings: Gollum video game gets a 2022 release date</strong> - It’s the first triple-A video game set in Middle-earth since 2017. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1856182">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dial M for more power, more handling: The 2023 BMW iX M60, tested</strong> - BMW’s latest EV trades a few miles of range for more than 600 horsepower. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1856074">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Third-party widgets are coming to Windows 11, which might actually make them useful</strong> - Devs will get a chance to save one of Windows 11’s most-ignorable features. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1856126">link</a></p></li>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<li><strong>My last girlfriend said I was unnecessarily mysterious.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Or did she?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ricerly"> /u/ricerly </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux62sc/my_last_girlfriend_said_i_was_unnecessarily/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux62sc/my_last_girlfriend_said_i_was_unnecessarily/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>One day, Einstein has to speak at an important science conference.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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On the way there, he tells his driver that looks a bit like him:<br/> “I’m sick of all these conferences. I always say the same things over and over!”
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The driver agrees: “You’re right. As your driver, I attended all of them, and even though I don’t know anything about science, I could give the conference in your place.”
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“That’s a great idea!” says Einstein. “Let’s switch places then!”
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So they switch clothes and as soon as they arrive, the driver dressed as Einstein goes on stage and starts giving the usual speech, while the real Einstein, dressed as the car driver, attends it.
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But in the crowd, there is one scientist who wants to impress everyone and thinks of a very difficult question to ask Einstein, hoping he won’t be able to respond. So this guy stands up and interrupts the conference by posing his very difficult question. The whole room goes silent, holding their breath, waiting for the response.
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The driver looks at him, dead in the eye, and says :
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“Sir, your question is so easy to answer that I’m going to let my driver reply to it for me.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ReaIZx"> /u/ReaIZx </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uxdhrf/one_day_einstein_has_to_speak_at_an_important/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uxdhrf/one_day_einstein_has_to_speak_at_an_important/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Russian elementary school assignmen: “please tell us an anecdote that demonstrates the kindness of our great leader Putin”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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On the due date, the teacher has some students stand up and read their assignments in front of the class.
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Little Igor goes first : “one day President Putin was walking down the street when he noticed a crying little girl. He asked what was troubling her, and she told him that her cat went up the tree and won’t come down. President Putin personally climbed the tree and rescued the cat.”
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Everyone applauds and the teacher commends little Igor on his assignment.
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Little Olga is next :“One day President Putin was inspecting a steel factory, and he noticed that the workers had no adequate safety gear. He then personally ordered the factory to stop and had them supplied using his own personal wealth.”
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Everyone applauds, the teacher commends little Olga on her assignment.
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Little Sasha is next :" One day President Putin was working in his office for the good of the Russian people, even though he had a terrible headache because of all the problems with Ukraine. But he couldn’t concentrate on his work because a bunch of kids were playing soccer on the street beneath his window. So he opened the window and said to them:
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“Stop with your fucking game you little shits and scram!”
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The whole class falls silent. The teacher asks little Sasha : “but, how on earth does this anecdote demonstrates the kindness of President Putin?”
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Little Sasha replies : “Well, he could have ordered them shot instead!”
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(Note : originally a soviet era joke with Lenin)
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/TheSinisterSex"> /u/TheSinisterSex </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux54l2/russian_elementary_school_assignmen_please_tell/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux54l2/russian_elementary_school_assignmen_please_tell/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>what do you call an extremely clingy alien?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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A personal space invader.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/tsmgo23"> /u/tsmgo23 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux44tu/what_do_you_call_an_extremely_clingy_alien/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ux44tu/what_do_you_call_an_extremely_clingy_alien/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>I got a sweater on my birthday</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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I would have preferred a moaner or screamer.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ProfessionalVolume93"> /u/ProfessionalVolume93 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwui2w/i_got_a_sweater_on_my_birthday/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwui2w/i_got_a_sweater_on_my_birthday/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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