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<title>08 August, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Online Asynchronous Learning English for Specific Purposes Terminology</strong> -
<div>
The pandemic and military actions in the country triggered our study in considering the challenges Ukrainian higher education faces referring asynchronous learning. We assume that the challenges are threefold – namely – psychological, technical (availability of means for providing asynchronous communication and technological (scientifically grounded methods of quality asynchronous learning). In our study the focus is on the methods of asynchronous learning specialized terminology. The background of the research was the study of the literature concerning benefits and limitations of asynchronous learning and implementing online courses into the learning process. The purpose of this research was to prove the effectiveness of asynchronous learning specialized vocabulary with the help of the Moodle-based course. The aim was achieved by fulfilling the following tasks: literary review to study the benefits and limitations of asynchronous and synchronous learning for finding the most suitable mode of communication for the Ukrainian students, to design a Moodle-based course, to verify it in the experimental learning. The experiment was conducted in 2020 in the time of Covid-19 pandemic at the National Technical University of Ukraine, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, and involved seventy students of the Power Engineering Department. The research purpose of both the article and the experiment was to assess the effectiveness of the developed online simulator which included audio recordings of native English specialists’ communication, interdisciplinary and industry-specific terminology, training tasks, and instructional guidelines. The outcome of the research proves the efficiency of applying an online simulator in the development of students’ professional competence in terms of adequate using interdisciplinary and industry-specific terminology.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/bwamx/" target="_blank">Online Asynchronous Learning English for Specific Purposes Terminology</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of COVID-19 on household energy consumption in England and Wales from April 2020 – March 2022</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way people lived, worked, and studied around the world, with direct consequences for domestic energy use. This study assesses the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns in the first two years of the pandemic on household electricity and gas use in England and Wales. Using data for 508 (electricity) and 326 (gas) homes, elastic net regression, neural network and extreme gradient boosting predictive models were trained and tested on pre-pandemic data. The most accurate model for each household was used to create counterfactuals (predictions in the absence of COVID-19) against which observed pandemic energy use was compared. Median monthly model error (CV(RMSE)) was 3.86% (electricity) and 3.19% (gas) and bias (NMBE) was 0.21% (electricity) and -0.10% (gas). Our analysis showed that on average (electricity; gas) consumption increased by (7.8%; 5.7%) in year 1 of the pandemic and by (2.2%; 0.2%) in year 2. The greatest increases were in the winter lockdown (January – March 2021) by 11.6% and 9.0% for electricity and gas, respectively. At the start of 2022 electricity use remained 2.0% higher while gas use was around 1.9% lower than predicted. Households with children showed the greatest increase in electricity consumption during lockdowns, followed by those with adults in work. Wealthier households increased their electricity consumption by more than the less wealthy and continued to use more than predicted throughout the two-year period while the less wealthy returned to pre-pandemic or lower consumption from summer 2021. Low dwelling efficiency was associated with a greater increase in energy consumption during the pandemic. Additionally, this study shows the value of different machine learning techniques for counterfactual modelling at the individual-dwelling level, and our approach can be used to robustly estimate the impact of other events and interventions.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/m5p3b/" target="_blank">The impact of COVID-19 on household energy consumption in England and Wales from April 2020 – March 2022</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Human-Network Regions as Effective Geographic Units for Disease Mitigation</strong> -
<div>
Susceptibility to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 depends on how those diseases spread, and many studies have examined the decrease in COVID-19 spread due to reduction in travel. However, less is known about how much functional geographic regions, which capture natural movements and social interactions, limit the spread of COVID-19. To determine boundaries between functional regions, we apply community-detection algorithms to large networks of mobility and social-media connections to construct geographic regions that reflect natural human movement and relationships at the county level in the continental United States. We measure COVID-19 case counts, case rates, and case-rate variations across adjacent counties and examine how often COVID-19 crosses the boundaries of these functional regions. We find that regions that we construct using GPS-trace networks and especially commute networks have the lowest COVID-19 case rates along the boundaries, so these regions may reflect natural partitions in COVID-19 transmission. Conversely, regions that we construct from geolocated Facebook friendships and Twitter connections yield less effective partitions. Our analysis reveals that regions that are derived from movement flows are more appropriate geographic units than states for making policy decisions about opening areas for activity, assessing vulnerability of populations, and allocating resources. Our insights are also relevant for policy decisions and public messaging in future emergency situations.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/4mp6x/" target="_blank">Human-Network Regions as Effective Geographic Units for Disease Mitigation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>OUTCOME OF COVID-19 PATIENTS ON STEROID THERAPY: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
ABSTRACT: Introduction: SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for global pandemic that originates from Wuhan, China (1). Patients presentation van be varied from asymptomatic to severe ARDS and multiorgan dysfunction likely due the dysregulated systemic inflammation (2). Glucocorticoids inhibits the inflammation by down streaming of cytokine receptor and promote resolution (3). The role of corticosteroid in COVID-19 still remains controversial. Corticosteroids associated with many long terms side effects. Previous MARS outbreak had experienced avascular necrosis with corticosteroid use (4). Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate the outcome of covid-19 patients on the corticosteroid therapy and estimate mortality rate with corticosteroid therapy and investigate potential long-term adverse events associated with its use. Methods: We did a longitudinal follow up study at the AIIMS Rishikesh to assess the side effects of corticosteroids in COVID-19 patients. Patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 pneumonia requiring the oxygen support were included in the study. According to the institutional protocol patients received conventional dose steroids versus pulse dose steroids. (Based on CT/ X-ray findings). Patients were followed up in the hospital till discharge/death for assessment of adverse events due to corticosteroids and all other biochemical parameters (Inflammatory markers) and SOFA score were obtained during hospitalisation till discharge. And at the 6 month follow up patient was assessed for infection and avascular necrosis of the femur. Results: A total of 600 patients were screened out of which 541 patients who received corticosteroids were included in this study. 71.3% were male and 26.6 % were females. Most prevalent comorbidity was systemic hypertension (38.8%) followed by diabetes mellitus (38%). Most common presenting symptoms was dyspnoea followed by fever and cough. Majority patients received dexamethasone (95%). 65.8 % patients received conventional dose while 34.2% of patients received pulse dose. Mortality was more associated with pulse dose (44%) then a conventional dose (30%) (p-value 0.0015). the median duration of the corticosteroids was 10 days with an IQR of 7-13 days. During the hospitalisation 142 patients (26.2%) develops hyperglycaemia. Hyperglycaemia was more prevalent in the pulse dose steroid group (16.8% versus 9.4%). One patient develops pancreatitis. There was a significant reduction in the levels of inflammatory markers (p&lt;0.005) after steroid initiation. At the 6th month of follow patients were assessed for AVN and suspected infection. 25 patients (8.25%) had infection out of which 19 received pulse dose. Out of 25 patients cultures was available for 7 patients and 2 patients grows pathogenic organism in the urine (pseudomonas and E. coli). 02 patients develop non-specific joint pain at 6 months. No patient had AVN during the follow up.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.03.23293425v2" target="_blank">OUTCOME OF COVID-19 PATIENTS ON STEROID THERAPY: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of COVID-19 on medication reviews in English primary care. An OpenSAFELY-TPP analysis of 20 million adult electronic health records.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruption to routine activity in primary care. Medication reviews are an important primary care activity to ensure safety and appropriateness of ongoing prescribing and a disruption could have significant negative implications for patient care. Aim Using routinely collected data, our aim was to i) describe the SNOMED CT codes used to report medication review activity ii) report the impact of COVID-19 on the volume and variation of medication reviews. Design and setting With the approval of NHS England, we conducted a cohort study of 20 million adult patient records in general practice, in-situ using the OpenSAFELY platform. Method For each month between April 2019 - March 2022, we report the percentage of patients with a medication review coded monthly and in the previous 12 months. These measures were broken down by regional, clinical and demographic subgroups and amongst those prescribed high risk medications. Results In April 2019, 32.3% of patients had a medication review coded in the previous 12 months. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, monthly activity substantially decreased (-21.1% April 2020), but the rate of patients with a medication review coded in the previous 12 months was not substantially impacted according to our classification (-10.5% March 2021). There was regional and ethnic variation (March 2022 - London 21.9% vs North West 33.6%; Chinese 16.8% vs British 33.0%). Following the introduction of “structured medication reviews”, the rate of structured medication review in the last 12 months reached 2.9% by March 2022, with higher percentages in high risk groups (March 2022 - care home residents 34.1%, 90+ years 13.1%, high risk medications 10.2%). The most used SNOMED CT medication review code across the study period was Medication review done - 314530002 (59.5%). Conclusion We have reported a substantial reduction in the monthly rate of medication reviews during the pandemic but rates recovered by the end of the study period.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.31.23293419v2" target="_blank">The impact of COVID-19 on medication reviews in English primary care. An OpenSAFELY-TPP analysis of 20 million adult electronic health records.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Predicting Protein-Ligand Binding Structure Using E(n) Equivariant Graph Neural Networks</strong> -
<div>
Drug design is a costly and time-consuming process, often taking more than 12 years and costing up to billions of dollars. The COVID-19 pandemic has signified the urgent need for accelerated drug development. The initial stage of drug design involves the identification of ligands that exhibit a strong affinity for specific binding sites on protein targets (receptors), along with the determination of their precise binding conformation (3-dimensional (3D) structure). However, accurately determining the 3D conformation of a ligand binding with its target remains challenging due to the limited capability of exploring the huge chemical and protein structure space. To address this challenge, we propose a new E(n) Equivariant Graph Neural Network (EGNN) method for predicting the 3D binding structures of ligands and proteins. By treating proteins and ligands as graphs, the method extracts residue/atom-level node and edge features and utilizes physicochemical and geometrical properties of proteins and ligands to predict their binding structures. The results demonstrate the promising potential of EGNN for predicting ligand-protein binding poses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.06.552202v1" target="_blank">Predicting Protein-Ligand Binding Structure Using E(n) Equivariant Graph Neural Networks</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A Framework for Moving Beyond Computational Reproducibility: Lessons from Three Reproductions of Geographical Analyses of COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
Despite recent calls to make geographical analyses more reproducible, formal attempts to reproduce or replicate published work remain largely absent from the geographic literature. The reproductions of geographic research that do exist typically focus on computational reproducibility - whether results can be recreated using data and code provided by the authors - rather than on evaluating the conclusion and internal validity and evidential value of the original analysis. However, knowing if a study is computationally reproducible is insufficient if the goal of a reproduction is to identify and correct errors in our knowledge. We argue that reproductions of geographic work should focus on assessing whether the findings and claims made in existing empirical studies are well supported by the evidence presented. We present three model reproductions of geographical analyses of COVID-19 that demonstrate how to achieve this goal. Each reproduction is based on a common, open access template and is published as an open access repository, complete with pre-analysis plan, data, code, and final report. We find each study to be partially reproducible, but moving past computational reproducibility, our assessments reveal conceptual and methodological concerns that raise questions about the predictive value and the magnitude of the associations presented in each study. Collectively, these reproductions and our template materials offer a practical framework others can use to reproduce and replicate empirical spatial analyses and ultimately facilitate the identification and correction of errors in the geographic literature.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/7jqtv/" target="_blank">A Framework for Moving Beyond Computational Reproducibility: Lessons from Three Reproductions of Geographical Analyses of COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Impact of the UK COVID-19 Lockdown on the Screening, Diagnostics and Incidence of Breast, Colorectal, Lung and Prostate Cancer in the UK: a Population-Based Cohort Study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objectives: This study aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the screening and diagnosis of breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer. The study also investigated whether the rates returned to pre-pandemic levels by December 2021. Design: Cohort study. Setting: Electronic health records from UK primary care Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) GOLD database. Participants: The study included individuals registered with CPRD GOLD between January 2017 and December 2021, with at least 365 days of prior observation. Main outcome measures: The study focused on screening, diagnostic tests, referrals and diagnoses of first-ever breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer. Incidence rates (IR) were stratified by age, sex and region, and incidence rate ratios (IRR) were calculated to compare rates during and after lockdown with the reference period before lockdown. Forecasted rates were estimated using negative binomial regression models. Results: Among 5,191,650 eligible participants, the initial lockdown resulted in reduced screening and diagnostic tests for all cancers, which remained dramatically reduced across the whole observation period for almost all tests investigated. For cancer incidence rates, there were significant IRR reductions in breast (0.69), colorectal (0.74), and prostate (0.71) cancers. However, the reduction in lung cancer incidence (0.92) was non-significant. Extrapolating to the entire UK population, an estimated 18,000 breast, 13,000 colorectal, 10,000 lung, and 21,000 prostate cancer diagnoses were missed from March 2020 to December 2021. Conclusion: The national COVID-19 lockdown in the UK had a substantial impact on cancer screening, diagnostic tests, referrals and diagnoses. Although incidence rates started to recover after the lockdown, they remained significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels for breast and prostate cancers and associated tests. Delays in diagnosis are likely to have adverse consequences on cancer stage, treatment initiation, mortality rates, and years of life lost. Urgent strategies are needed to identify undiagnosed cases and address the long-term implications of delayed diagnoses.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.21.23292937v2" target="_blank">The Impact of the UK COVID-19 Lockdown on the Screening, Diagnostics and Incidence of Breast, Colorectal, Lung and Prostate Cancer in the UK: a Population-Based Cohort Study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Quantification of biases in predictions of protein-protein binding affinity changes upon mutations</strong> -
<div>
Understanding the impact of mutations on protein-protein binding affinity is a key objective for a wide range of biotechnological applications and for shedding light on disease-causing mutations, which are often located at protein-protein interfaces. Over the past decade, many computational methods using physics-based and/or machine learning approaches have been developed to predict how protein binding affinity changes upon mutations. They all claim to achieve astonishing accuracy on both training and test sets, with performances on standard benchmarks such as SKEMPI 2.0 that seem overly optimistic. Here we benchmarked six well-known and well-used predictors and identified their biases and dataset dependencies, using not only SKEMPI 2.0 as a test set but also deep mutagenesis data on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in complex with the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. We showed that, even though most tested methods reach a significant degree of robustness and accuracy, they suffer from limited generalizability properties and struggle to predict unseen mutations. Undesirable prediction biases towards specific mutation properties, the most marked being towards destabilizing mutations, are also observed and should be carefully considered by method developers. We conclude from our analyses that there is room for improvement of the prediction models and propose ways to check, assess and improve their generalizability and robustness.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.04.551687v1" target="_blank">Quantification of biases in predictions of protein-protein binding affinity changes upon mutations</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 Viral Clearance and Evolution Varies by Extent of Immunodeficiency</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Despite vaccination and antiviral therapies, immunocompromised individuals are at risk for prolonged SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the immune defects that predispose to persistent COVID-19 remain incompletely understood. In this study, we performed detailed viro-immunologic analyses of a prospective cohort of participants with COVID-19. The median time to nasal viral RNA and culture clearance in the severe hematologic malignancy/transplant group (S-HT) were 72 and 40 days, respectively, which were significantly longer than clearance rates in the severe autoimmune/B-cell deficient (S-A), non-severe, and non-immunocompromised groups (P&lt;0.001). Participants who were severely immunocompromised had greater SARS-CoV-2 evolution and a higher risk of developing antiviral treatment resistance. Both S-HT and S-A participants had diminished SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral, while only the S-HT group had reduced T cell-mediated responses. This highlights the varied risk of persistent COVID-19 across immunosuppressive conditions and suggests that suppression of both B and T cell responses results in the highest contributing risk of persistent infection.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.31.23293441v2" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 Viral Clearance and Evolution Varies by Extent of Immunodeficiency</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Mucosal and systemic immune dynamics associated with COVID-19 outcomes: a longitudinal prospective clinical study</strong> -
<div>
Rationale: COVID-19 severity varies widely; children and African Americans have low and high risk, respectively. Mechanistic data from these groups and the mucosa is lacking. Objectives: To quantify mucosal and systemic viral and immune dynamics in a diverse cohort to identify mechanisms underpinning COVID-19 severity and outcome predictors. Methods: In this prospective study of unvaccinated children and adults COVID-19 outcome was based on an ordinal clinical severity scale. We quantified viral RNA, antigens, antibodies, and cytokines by PCR, ELISA, and Luminex from 579 longitudinally collected blood and nasal specimens from 78 subjects including 45 women and used modeling to determine functional relationships between these data. Measurements and Main Results: COVID-19 induced unique immune responses in African Americans (n=26) and children (n=20). Mild outcome was associated with more effective coordinated responses whereas moderate and severe outcomes had rapid seroconversion, significantly higher antigen, mucosal sCD40L, MCP-3, MCP-1, MIP-1, and MIP-1{beta}, and systemic IgA, IgM, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-15, IL-1RA, and IP-10, and uncoordinated early immune responses that went unresolved. Mucosal IL-8, IL-1{beta}, and IFN-{gamma} with systemic IL-1RA and IgA predicted COVID-19 outcomes. Conclusions: We present novel mucosal data, biomarkers, and therapeutic targets from a diverse cohort. Based on our findings, children and African Americans with COVID-19 have significantly lower IL-6 and IL-17 levels which may reduce responsiveness to drugs targeting IL-6 and IL-17. Unregulated immune responses persisted indicating moderate to severe COVID-19 cases may require prolonged treatments. Reliance on slower acting adaptive responses may cause immune crisis for some adults who encounter a novel virus.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.04.551867v1" target="_blank">Mucosal and systemic immune dynamics associated with COVID-19 outcomes: a longitudinal prospective clinical study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 lacking initiating and internal methionine codons within ORF10 is attenuated in vivo</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 has been proposed to encode ORF10 as the 3' terminal gene in the viral genome. However, the potential role and even existence of a functional ORF10 product has been the subject of debate. There are significant structural features in the viral genomic RNA that could, by themselves, explain the retention of the ORF10 nucleotide sequences without the need for a functional protein product. To explore this question further we made two recombinant viruses, firstly a control virus (WT) based on the genome sequence of the original Wuhan isolate and with the inclusion of the early D614G mutation in the Spike protein. We also made a second virus, identical to WT except for two additional changes that replaced the initiating ORF10 start codon and an internal methionine codon for stop codons (ORF10KO). Here we show that the two viruses have apparently identical growth kinetics in a VeroE6 cell line that over expresses TMPRSS2 (VTN cells). However, in A549 cells over expressing ACE2 and TMPRSS2 (A549-AT cells) the ORF10KO virus appears to have a small growth rate advantage. Growth competition experiments were used whereby the two viruses were mixed, passaged in either VTN or A549-AT cells and the resulting output virus was sequenced. We found that in VTN cells the WT virus quickly dominated whereas in the A549-AT cells the ORF10KO virus dominated. We then used a hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection and determined that the ORF10KO virus has attenuated pathogenicity (as measured by weight loss). We found an almost 10-fold reduction in viral titre in the lower respiratory tract for ORF10KO vs WT. In contrast, the WT and ORF10KO viruses had similar titres in the upper respiratory tract. Sequencing of viral RNA in the lungs of hamsters infected with ORF10KO virus revealed that this virus frequently reverts to WT. Our data suggests that the retention of a functional ORF10 sequence is highly desirable for SARS-CoV-2 infection of hamsters and affects the virus's ability to propagate in the lower respiratory tract.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.04.551973v1" target="_blank">Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 lacking initiating and internal methionine codons within ORF10 is attenuated in vivo</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 infection of human pluripotent stem cell-derived vascular cells reveals smooth muscle cells as key mediators of vascular pathology during infection</strong> -
<div>
Although respiratory symptoms are the most prevalent disease manifestation of infection by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), nearly 20% of hospitalized patients are at risk for thromboembolic events. This prothrombotic state is considered a key factor in the increased risk of stroke, which has been observed clinically during both acute infection and long after symptoms have cleared. Here we developed a model of SARS-CoV-2 infection using human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cells, pericytes, and smooth muscle cells to recapitulate the vascular pathology associated with SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Our results demonstrate that perivascular cells, particularly smooth muscle cells (SMCs), are a specifically susceptible vascular target for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Utilizing RNA sequencing, we characterized the transcriptomic changes accompanying SARS-CoV-2 infection of SMCs, and endothelial cells (ECs). We observed that infected human SMCs shift to a pro-inflammatory state and increase the expression of key mediators of the coagulation cascade. Further, we showed human ECs exposed to the secretome of infected SMCs produce hemostatic factors that can contribute to vascular dysfunction, despite not being susceptible to direct infection. The findings here recapitulate observations from patient sera in human COVID-19 patients and provide mechanistic insight into the unique vascular implications of SARS-CoV-2 infection at a cellular level.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.06.552160v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 infection of human pluripotent stem cell-derived vascular cells reveals smooth muscle cells as key mediators of vascular pathology during infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>phuEGO: A network-based method to reconstruct active signalling pathways from phosphoproteomics datasets</strong> -
<div>
Signalling networks are critical for virtually all cell functions. Our current knowledge of cell signalling has been summarised in signalling pathway databases, which, while useful, are highly biassed towards well-studied processes, and don't capture context specific network wiring or pathway cross-talk. Mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics data can provide a more unbiased view of active cell signalling processes in a given context, however, it suffers from low signal-to-noise ratio and poor reproducibility across experiments. Methods to extract active signalling signatures from such data struggle to produce unbiased and interpretable networks that can be used for hypothesis generation and designing downstream experiments. Here we present phuEGO, which combines three-layer network propagation with ego network decomposition to provide small networks comprising active functional signalling modules. PhuEGO boosts the signal-to-noise ratio from global phosphoproteomics datasets, enriches the resulting networks for functional phosphosites and allows the improved comparison and integration across datasets. We applied phuEGO to five phosphoproteomics data sets from cell lines collected upon infection with SARS CoV2. PhuEGO was better able to identify common active functions across datasets and to point to a subnetwork enriched for known COVID-19 targets. Overall, phuEGO provides a tool to the community for the improved functional interpretation of global phosphoproteomics datasets.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.07.552249v1" target="_blank">phuEGO: A network-based method to reconstruct active signalling pathways from phosphoproteomics datasets</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Purifying selection and adaptive evolution proximate to the zoonosis of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Over the past two decades the pace of spillovers from animal viruses to humans has accelerated, with COVID-19 becoming the most deadly zoonotic disease in living memory. Prior to zoonosis, it is conceivable that the virus might largely be subjected to purifying selection, requiring no additional selective changes for successful zoonotic transmission. Alternatively, selective changes occurring in the reservoir species may coincidentally preadapt the virus for human-to-human transmission, facilitating spread upon cross-species exposure. Here we quantify changes in the genomes of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1 proximate to zoonosis to evaluate the selection pressures acting on the viruses. Application of molecular-evolutionary and population-genetic approaches to quantify site-specific selection within both SARS-CoV genomes revealed strong purifying selection across many genes at the time of zoonosis. Even in the viral surface-protein Spike that has been fast-evolving in humans, there is little evidence of positive selection proximate to zoonosis. Nevertheless, in SARS-CoV-2, NSP12, a core protein for viral replication, exhibited a region under adaptive selection proximate to zoonosis. Furthermore, in both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, regions of adaptive selection proximate to zoonosis were found in ORF7a, a putative Major Histocompatibility Complex modulatory gene. These findings suggest that these replication and immunomodulatory proteins have played a previously underappreciated role in the adaptation of SARS coronaviruses to human hosts.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.07.552269v1" target="_blank">Purifying selection and adaptive evolution proximate to the zoonosis of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
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<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>Effect of Natural Food on Gut Microbiome and Phospholipid Spectrum of Immune Cells in COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: Freeze-dried Mare Milk (Saumal)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Exercise Training on Patients With Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangdong Provincial People’s 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>Intradermal Administration of a COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in Elderly</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Vaccination; Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Comirnaty<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Radboud University Medical Center<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase 2/3 Open-Label Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of an XBB.1.5 (Omicron Subvariant) SARS CoV-2 rS Vaccine.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: XBB.1.5 Vaccine (Booster);   Biological: XBB.1.5 Vaccine (single dose)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<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 Immune Response Study to Evaluate Varying Doses of an mRNA Vaccine Against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 10μg;   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 30μg;   Biological: mRNA-CR-04 vaccine 100μg;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   GlaxoSmithKline<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 Phase 3, Randomized, Double-Blinded Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of Omicron Subvariant and Bivalent SARS-CoV-2 rS Vaccines in Adolescents Previously Vaccinated With mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: NVX-CoV2601 co-formulated Omicron XBB.1.5 SARS-CoV-2 rS vaccine;   Biological: Prototype/XBB.1.5 Bivalent Vaccine (5 µg)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<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>Hyperbaric on Pulmonary Functions in Post Covid -19 Patients.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Patients<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: hyperbaric oxygen therapy;   Device: breathing exercise;   Drug: medical treatment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dietary Intervention to Mitigate Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Fatigue<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Dietary intervention to mitigate Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Other: Attention Control<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Maryland, Baltimore<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>HD-Tdcs and Pharmacological Intervention For Delirium In Critical Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Delirium;   Critical Illness<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Active HD-tDCS;   Combination Product: Sham HD-tDCS<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Suellen Andrade;   City University of New York<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RECOVER-VITAL: Platform Protocol, Appendix to Measure the Effects of Paxlovid on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID-19;   Long COVID<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Paxlovid 25 day dosing;   Drug: Paxlovid 15 day dosing;   Drug: Control<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Kanecia Obie Zimmerman<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>A Study on the Safety and Immune Response of a Booster Dose of Investigational COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines in Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent High dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Medium dose;   Biological: CV0701 Bivalent Low dose;   Biological: CV0601 Monovalent High dose;   Biological: Control vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   GlaxoSmithKline;   CureVac<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>RECOVER-NEURO: Platform Protocol, Appendix_A to Measure the Effects of BrainHQ, PASC CoRE and tDCS Interventions on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID;   Long Covid19;   Long Covid-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: BrainHQ/Active Comparator Activity;   Other: BrainHQ;   Other: PASC CoRE;   Device: tDCS-active;   Device: tDCS-sham<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<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>Directed Topical Drug Delivery for Treatment for PASC Hyposmia</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post Acute Sequelae Covid-19 Hyposmia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Beclomethasone;   Other: Placebo;   Device: Microsponge<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<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>RECOVER-NEURO: Platform Protocol to Measure the Effects of Cognitive Dysfunction Interventions on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Long COVID;   Long Covid19;   Long Covid-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: BrainHQ/Active Comparator Activity;   Other: BrainHQ;   Other: PASC CoRE;   Device: tDCS-active;   Device: tDCS-sham<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Duke University<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>Impact of COVID-19 on Sinus Augmentation Surgery</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Bone Loss<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Procedure: Sinus lift in patients with positive COVID-19 history;   Procedure: Sinus lift with negative COVID-19 history<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Completed</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"><strong>A Developmental Pathway From Early Behavioral Inhibition to Young Adults’ Anxiety During the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study identifies a developmental pathway from toddlerhood BI to young adults’ elevated anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings have implications for early identification of individuals at risk for dysregulated worry and the prevention of anxiety during stressful life events in young adulthood.</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>The Death of a Ukrainian Writer</strong> - Victoria Amelina was a gifted novelist who put fiction aside to devote herself to documenting the atrocities of Putin’s war. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-death-of-a-ukrainian-writer-victoria-amelina">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What the Webb Space Telescope Will Show Us Next</strong> - The astrophysicist Jane Rigby talks about the beauty of space, the possibility of life on other planets, and how the Webb sees hidden parts of the universe. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/what-the-webb-space-telescope-will-show-us-next">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Pizza Shop in the Middle of New York’s Migrant Crisis</strong> - An immigrant small-business owner sees himself in the asylum seekers who were sleeping on the street outside his restaurant in midtown. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/a-pizza-shop-in-the-middle-of-new-yorks-migrant-crisis">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The End of Legacy Admissions Could Transform College Access</strong> - After the fall of affirmative action, liberals and conservatives want to eliminate benefits for children of alumni. Could their logic lead to reparations? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-end-of-legacy-admissions-could-transform-college-access">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Mind-Bending World of Trump, His Indictments, and the 2024 Election</strong> - After weathering the former President’s assaults in late 2020 and early 2021, the American justice system, and its commitment to the rule of law, is about to be tested again. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-mind-bending-world-of-trump-his-indictments-and-the-2024-election">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>How the pandemic messed with our perception of time</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A swirly psychedelic illustration of visions entering a person’s perception." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iU2LVJs-_1tjQzrexlK7rHUreMo=/334x0:5667x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72524074/GettyImages_1447700717__1_.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A neuroscientist explains how history, mood, and surprise can make life feel like a slog — or go by in a blur.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i59tkG">
It’s tempting to imagine memory as a videotape that stores and plays back the past just as it happened. But the workings of the mind are <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/4/20/17109764/deepfake-ai-false-memory-psychology-mandela-effect">not so simple</a>. Memory is more of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-5356-1_9">a creative act</a>, reconstructing the past under the often hasty and biased influences of the present.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dpjeeO">
The “creation” of memory doesn’t only influence what we remember, it influences our sense of time’s duration too. Having more memories available for recall can stretch our sense of how much time has passed, while our moods and emotions can tune the richness of what we remember up or down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tOH5iI">
This all means news, current events, and the technologies that convey them (like the internet) can influence our perception of time passing slowly or quickly, by influencing how strongly we remember things.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hUoXsG">
But exactly how this interaction plays out, scientists still know very little about.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zamjcW">
2020’s seemingly endless brigade of big stories might’ve stretched time to feel like a decade passed. But that stream of news was delivered to populations on lockdown, where every day looked the same and time became something of an undifferentiated blurry<strong> </strong>lump. How did this all influence our perception of how much time passed?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="arHZkC">
Enter a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2221919120">new paper</a> by cognitive neuroscientist Nina Rouhani and colleagues, who analyzed Americans’ reported memories of 2020, leveraging the dual turbulences in news events and individual memories to learn more about how each shapes the other.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fIfiDR">
They found that the pandemic scrunched the distance between remembered events, like compressing a slinky. Everything seemed closer together. In our memories, if not in real life, time shrank. But as with most memories, there’s plenty more to unpack.
</p>
<h3 id="lnmZqD">
How the pandemic gave researchers a treasure trove of memory
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pSEdbs">
Well before the pandemic, Rouhani was busy studying how we remember surprising events. But a lot of this work was in computer models, where modeling the depths and complexities of human memory isn’t a perfect science. Then, as her PhD dissertation defense began approaching, the pandemic hit, and she decided to study memory formation in near-real time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7hiz97">
<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html">Timelines of major events in 2020</a> are almost comically overflowing — the headline frenzy, the tragedies, the uncertainty. It was a perfect time to study how current events impact memory.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="njIf2x">
Rouhani drew from <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01901-6">a large study</a> that was underway, which was collecting people’s psychological and social experiences during the pandemic. It was a trove of memories. A few times a month from April 2020 through January 2021, over 1,000 Americans were prompted by an online survey platform to report on their lives during the pandemic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="37qGtZ">
In addition to these monthly reports, Rouhani and colleagues collected three memory dumps from participants across three years: 2020, 2021, and 2023. These were prompts to tell the researchers everything they could possibly remember during a certain time period (with approximate dates) until no more came to mind.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GHdeR1">
These methods filled in the individual’s side of things, but Rouhani was also interested in the relationship between surprising collective events and personal memories. The literature on “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002777790018X?via%3Dihub">flashbulb memories</a>” — as these events are called by scientists — finds that we vividly remember the moments we first learn of surprising events. We remember<strong> </strong>where we were, how we felt, and maybe some other oddly particular detail or two.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I0zHHY">
The question, then, was how to collect “collective memories,” which presents a few challenges.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kM4L3p">
“The challenge we face here is: Whose collective memory?” Rouhani says. “Many different kinds of collective histories are formed, especially nowadays when people have access to their own local ways of defining what’s happening.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IoLZks">
They approximated collective memory by taking the two highest Google Trends for each month of 2020 — from Kobe Bryant’s fatal helicopter crash to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/8/22368881/derek-chauvin-trial-verdict-george-floyd-guilty">killing of George Floyd</a> (the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23596969/bad-news-negativity-bias-media">negative news bias</a> is on full display here). Participants were asked questions about each, from how vividly they could recall them to how far apart they remember them being.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VwMsfc">
So with a trove of memory data in hand, Rouhani could start to ask questions about how all these events altered the perception of time.
</p>
<h3 id="Gb7fbY">
Which impacted our pandemic memories more, monotony or surprise?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qsbZNt">
Going into the study, Rouhani and colleagues had a few sets of questions. The first centered on duration.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OMhyNV">
Past memory research found that surprising events <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32563083/">create “event boundaries” in memory</a>. Think of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., or 9/11. These events <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734391/">divide our pools of memory</a> into sections. We categorize memories as happening pre-9/11 or post, for example. Carving more boundaries into a given passage of time can ‘stretch’ our memory of duration. According to this hypothesis, our memory during the period of lockdowns would inflate — spreading events to seem farther away from each other.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mHHHnO">
But then, there was the monotony. Lockdowns imposed a sameness on our daily activities, where the lack of changing context could muddle everything into a compressed memory of time. “If you think about the processes you’re using when thinking about subjective time perception,” Rouhani said, “one of them is the number of memories. When you go on vacation and come back it feels like a century has passed.” That’s because changing scenery leads to more memories. “So it feels longer,” she said, “and lockdowns did the opposite of that.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LXmDCX">
Just as astronomers measure cosmic expansion by <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/mystery-of-the-universe-s-expansion-rate-widens-with-new-hubble-data">tracking the growing</a> distance between galaxies, Rouhani and colleagues looked at the subjectively reported distances between big news events, and found evidence that the compression hypothesis wins out. When recalling events during Covid, participants remembered them as being closer together than when they recalled events of similar distance before or after the pandemic. The sense of time, in other words, shrank.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Eimj7i">
A separate set of hypotheses focused on emotion. Especially charged events, whether positive or negative, tend to be easier to recall. But during negative times, chronic stress tends to block memory formation. Rouhani explained that in clinical disorders like depression or PTSD, memory is often blunted. While you may have plenty of flashbacks or ruminations, the details blur, and your ability to reconstruct the particulars fades.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RkOJri">
The study analyzed the reported memories to find any links between emotional states and memory. Their results confirmed that bad moods lead to a greater volume of memory recall, especially for those who scored high on markers of depression or PTSD. But the blurring effect was also confirmed — while they recalled more memories, the actual quality of memory was worse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZBF3PX">
“Having strong negative emotions can improve your memory,” Rouhani said. “But if you enter into this chronic state of trauma or depression, it removes the specificity of those memories.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9HrffO">
There’s also a wrinkle here: Despite the higher volume of memory recall among those most emotionally impacted by the pandemic, the fabric of memory still grew closer together across all participants, and perceived time compressed in memory.
</p>
<h3 id="f3rZzv">
Using the past to heal the future
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L6NrNd">
If the pandemic feels like a blur, or if details don’t readily come to mind, the study helps explain why. Learning more about these flourishes of memory gives us a fuller perspective on the relationship between the worlds our minds conjure and the experiences they reflect.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GlNhvd">
But the research has more to offer. How we remember the past can provide clues as to the ways stressful or anxious memories may continue to distort our present, or even how we envision the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yd3AZ0">
It’s tempting to let stressful memories, like low points from the lockdowns, remain as Rouhani found them: blurred, compressed, and behind us. But “not having specific markers of your past can lead to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/tp2015196">many external events that trigger</a> trauma-related emotions, generating repetitive, crippling memory,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3IJpWn">
In other words, lack of detail in remembering one’s stressful past raises the odds that it may show up and haunt the present. But the good news is that you can flip this all around. Since memory is always recreated on the fly, it’s always open to reinterpretation. Intentionally remembering the past in more vivid detail — called <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0034885">episodic memory induction</a> — can untangle its hold on the present, and even <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027717302342?via%3Dihub">expand our ability to imagine</a> alternative, brighter futures. All that’s required is a focus on recalling specific details from stressful memories in the past, meaning you can take your pick of journaling, talking with a friend or therapist, or just remembering on your own.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LEiiAt">
While the study of emotion’s effects on memory is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11409-023-09335-0#:~:text=Consistently%2C%20the%20current%20meta%2Danalysis,memory%20advantage%20for%20emotional%20information.">already well established</a>, we’re still in the very early days of understanding how time perceptions can get distorted. This study suggested that monotony may have a greater impact than surprising news stories (i.e. flashbulb memories), but do some forms of monotony carry more weight than others?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="soW209">
For example, the study suggests that the extended sameness of our lockdown days compressed how we remember the time. But sameness can come in a variety of forms — physical environments, activities, moods. “If we go through 10 different emotions during a day versus 10 different geographic locations,” Rouhani mused, “how do those two contribute to my time perceptions? Do they affect it the same or differently?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nz3Ybu">
She’s not yet sure. “Memory is biased in such unintuitive but consistent ways,” she says. It will take further research to figure out.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RGoMDv">
The stakes of understanding memory may be on the rise. We’re on the brink of a new era of <a href="https://www.nature.com/subjects/brain-machine-interface">brain-machine interfaces</a> that will likely throw <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22716264/memory-science-memorability">a new set</a> of questions, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4299435/">functions</a>, and biases around memory into the mix.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y3mNIq">
“There’s a lot of really exciting new work that’s applying collective memory to cognitive science, but it’s rather new still,” Rouhani said. “In terms of open questions, I could go on forever. There’s so much more that’s unanswered.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>What went wrong in Ukraine’s counteroffensive</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Soldiers walk in a field. A tank is seen in the distance. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Whrd9UT4EYN-nLZG1Cg3Mr1b7Ro=/839x0:7548x5032/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72523931/1587734748.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Soldiers of the 128th Brigade of Ukraines Territorial Defense force walk across a field beside a camouflaged vehicle after they receive training to counter Russian mines that litter Russia’s built-up defense lines in the Zaporizhzhia region on August 2, 2023. | Scott Peterson/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
And what’s changed now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QuyP4U">
At the very end of July,<a href="https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/7141"> Ukrainian forces</a> liberated<a href="https://apnews.com/video/donetsk-ukraine-government-ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-national-363c962294d44e4db65d453836062d33"> Staromaiorske</a>, a tiny village in southeastern Ukraine. It wasn’t a full breakthrough — at least not yet. But it was a real victory in Ukraine’s otherwise lackluster weeks-old <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/6/10/23750041/russia-ukraine-war-counteroffensive-begins-explained">counteroffensive</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m6HSpT">
Ukraine had tried to tamp down expectations about the counteroffensive long before it had begun. But Kyiv’s<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/11/9/23449707/kherson-russia-retreat-ukraine-war"> past successes</a> and<a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/5/22/23732453/bakhmut-ukraine-war-russia-wagner-zelenskyy-counteroffensive"> Moscow’s past failures</a>, the<a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/3/29/23652435/debate-weapons-ukraine-abrams-leopard-tanks-biden-zelenskyy"> deliveries of new advanced Western weapons</a>, and a fresh crop of Western-trained Ukrainian recruits all had a lot of folks very hyped — maybe overly so — about what Kyiv could achieve.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Wx7VY">
This, despite<a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/6/10/23750041/russia-ukraine-war-counteroffensive-begins-explained"> sober analysis from plenty of observers</a> who said this counteroffensive would more likely be a slog, especially given the impressive, heavily mined<a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/4/22/23693259/ukraine-counteroffensive-russia-spring"> Russian fortifications along a vast front line</a>. Experts were also uncertain how well Ukrainian troops would be able to maneuver with advanced weapons, like main battle tanks, and whether they could overcome supply and logistics challenges.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MXU35S">
The good news is that, weeks into a counteroffensive, we have some clearer answers to those questions. The bad news is those answers were not great, if you’re Ukraine or its backers. Russian fortifications are as formidable as advertised. Western equipment can withstand a lot, but vast minefields are vast minefields, and Kyiv and its newly trained forces have largely failed at conducting combined arms operations on a large scale — that is, coordinating troops and all this different weaponry, like armored vehicles and artillery, to blitz through Russian lines. Kyiv has also<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/us/politics/ukraine-leopards-bradleys-counteroffensive.html"> suffered high casualties in its attempts to do so</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2JlrZF">
Ukraine knows this, and has now shifted strategies to a much more attritional approach, trying to degrade Russian forces and logistics as it focuses its operation<a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2023/08/01/no-breakthrough-yet-in-ukraines-counteroffensive-00109205"> on three axes of attack</a>. “It’s not so much about killing Russian troops at the front line, but more weakening some critical enablers like artillery — but also things like command posts, ammunition supplies, electronic warfare systems, air defense systems, these sorts of things,” said Niklas Masuhr, a military analyst at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vNArjs">
It is a cautious and methodical approach, said Federico Borsari, who focuses on defense and transatlantic security at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). It helps reduce the number of casualties Ukrainian troops suffer, but it forces Kyiv to rely more heavily on artillery. It is slow going, by design.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4bBEH6">
This <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2023.2193092">model has favored Ukraine’s military in the past</a>. That does not make this a surefire strategy. <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia">Russia</a>, again, has learned from past mistakes, and the battlefield dynamics have changed since Ukraine<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/blinken-visits-ukraine-pivotal-moment-kyiv-claims-gains-2022-09-08/"> retook parts of the Kharkiv region</a> and forced<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/11/9/23449707/kherson-russia-retreat-ukraine-war"> a Russian retreat in Kherson last year</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V66HUz">
That makes this next phase of the counteroffensive far from certain. “Phase 1 probably failed, but doesn’t mean they can’t win,” said Patrick Bury, a senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath. “They can still win in Phase 4 or 3 or 5, even, this summer. What it means is that there’s less time in which to do that.”
</p>
<h3 id="o3C2Jy">
Russian defenses have made things very, very difficult for Ukraine
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uDdTgI">
Ukraine’s progress in its counteroffensive is being measured in hundreds of meters,<a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2023/08/01/no-breakthrough-yet-in-ukraines-counteroffensive-00109205"> as a Pentagon official characterized it to Politico last week</a>. Russian defenses are a big reason why.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qrow7L">
Russian fortifications in Ukraine are some of the most extensive in Europe<a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-offensive-operations-shifting-offense-defense-balance"> since World War II</a>, stretching across the front lines, from Kherson in the south all the way to the north. The Russian military spent months in advance of the counteroffensive digging in, building layers and layers of complex anti-tank defenses.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GVWRY7">
The minefields, most of all, have stymied Ukraine. The Ukrainian front line is carpeted with mines,<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/"> miles deep</a>. They are trip-wired or <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-landmine-strewn-front-even-corpses-can-kill-2023-08-03/">booby-trapped</a>. Even if Ukraine’s Western armored vehicles can withstand the blasts, the layers of anti-tank mines hinder forward movement, leaving them vulnerable. “As soon as Ukrainian units become stuck in an area, they are immediately targeted by artillery, drones, and attack helicopters,” Borsari said. Russia has built trenches that are filled with explosives, so when Ukraine approaches, prepared to clear a Russian position, Russian forces<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-built-fake-explosive-trench-traps-to-lure-ukrainian-troops-2023-7"> can detonate them remotely</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="62OWjg">
All of this is making Ukraine’s progress incremental and slow, which gives Russia time to re-fortify and re-mine, further impeding Ukrainian movement. “The whole dilemma for Ukraine is actually one of maneuver, because to overcome prepared Russian defensive lines, you need to force Russian movement,” said Oscar Jonsson, founder of Phronesis Analysis and researcher at Swedish Defence University.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PMA8Ib">
Russia has had other advantages in artillery and aviation —<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-aviation-helicopters-cause-headaches-for-ukraine-armored-assaults-counteroffensive-2023-6"> particularly its use of attack helicopters</a>, which have been able to pick off Ukrainian targets beyond the protection of Ukraine’s air defenses. On the whole, Russia has managed to make adjustments and compensate for some of its weaknesses. It has done things like trying to keep its artillery launchers and ammunition dumps farther out of range of Ukrainian fire. “It would be really stupid to not grant the Russians the ability to learn from their mistakes and to adapt constantly — and they’ve done that,” said Simon Schlegel, senior Ukraine analyst at the International Crisis Group.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t5L2ZN">
Still, Russia has not solved all of its logistical and equipment constraints, especially when it comes to artillery. Troops are plagued by<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/europe/captured-russian-soldiers-ukraine-intl-cmd/index.html"> low morale</a>, and some are poorly trained. Ukraine can still exploit all of these. But as a Western intelligence official said at a briefing in late July, “The ability of the Russians just to grit it out should not be underestimated.”
</p>
<h3 id="HmlL6h">
Ukraine hasn’t been able to master combined arms warfare at scale
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UoahqA">
Billions in Western military donations have helped transform Ukraine into a formidable military. It has advanced battle tanks and a cadres of NATO-trained troops. All of this was supposed to give Ukraine an edge in its counteroffensive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g8uR3y">
And in some ways, it has. But it’s complicated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FmOmVE">
Ukraine’s newly trained troops were also untested and inexperienced in battle when the counteroffensive began. And even with all this Western equipment and training, Ukraine has struggled to conduct combined arms operations – that is, using all of its military systems and platforms together on a large scale.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jq89yh">
In the early days of the counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces attempted to break through Russian lines with mechanized combined arms formations, but these were largely repulsed by Russia because of its deep defenses. Ukraine suffered heavy casualties as a result. American and European officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/us/politics/ukraine-leopards-bradleys-counteroffensive.html">said some 20 percent of Western equipment</a> was destroyed or damaged in battle in the opening weeks of the counteroffensive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eH521t">
Not a lot of armies can successfully pull off a fluid, mechanized offense — let alone one compiled and trained in a matter of months, and against an army like Russia’s. This is a big reason why Ukraine has shifted its battlefield tactics, focused instead on wearing Russia down rather than trying to blitz through enemy lines.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1PDYvf">
Kyiv faces additional logistical and supply challenges. It needs advanced weapons, but it also needs tools like<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/"> de-mining and engineering equipment</a>. Ukrainian troops have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/">said they need more of these tools,</a> and Russia is reportedly targeting such equipment in strikes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rVuIua">
Ukraine is burning through a lot of ammunition, and it is relying on a lot of different munitions from a lot of different countries. These systems work together, but imperfectly; artillery may fire, but it might not travel as far or be as accurate. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/world/europe/weary-soldiersunreliable-munitions-ukraines-many-challenges.html?smid=tw-share">But Ukraine often has no choice but to use what’s available, when it’s available</a> — even if it complicates offensive operations. These are not necessarily new difficulties for Ukrainian forces, but they’re amplified given Ukraine’s ambition for this counteroffensive.
</p>
<h3 id="8D3gD0">
Ukraine enters the next phase of its counteroffensive. What now?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zwSeXT">
Ukraine is currently fighting on three axes — two in the south and one in the east, near Bakhmut. The retaking of Staromaiorske represented progress along<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/07/27/world/russia-ukraine-news"> one very critical axis in the Ukrainian push south</a>, where Kyiv seeks to reach the Sea of Azov, with the goal of slicing up Russian-controlled territory. The military balance of power has yet not shifted in this region. But Staromaiorsk was a sign, at least, that Ukraine could turn things around in this next phase of the counteroffensive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rmMBbH">
“We may reach a point where Ukraine really can start to attack first the first line of defenses, and the strongest one, built by Russia,” Borsari said. “So far, most of the clashes and most of the attacks have been in an area that is like a gray zone; it’s not even the first line of defense by Russia.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OikdIl">
To achieve this, Ukraine is pursuing a more creeping advance, seeking to weaken and wear down Russian troops. It is doing this by targeting critical Russian components, like artillery and supply lines and transportation infrastructure. This helps Ukraine preserve manpower and equipment, but it costs a lot more in artillery and in time, without a lot of change in territory. “To some extent, I would say that is the trade-off that Ukraine is plagued with,” Masuhr said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c9t4Ow">
Manpower is one of the big questions around Ukraine’s capabilities right now. Kyiv kept thousands of newly trained troops in reserves, but in recent weeks it has started at least sending some of those<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/26/ukraine-new-push-stalled-counteroffensive-00108366"> into battle</a>. This may signal a more intense push by Ukraine, but it carries risks, too: The more reserves Ukraine commits, the fewer fresh troops it will have available to rotate out, or to respond to any shifts on the battlefield.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c9NBBn">
Artillery and ammunition are also key to Ukraine’s current strategy, and Ukraine will need a lot of it. Last month, <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/7/7/23785820/cluster-bombs-ukraine-united-states-biden-treaty">the United States made the controversial decision to send cluster munitions</a>, which was at least partially an attempt to help over tide the Ukrainians as the US and Europe <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/6/6/23744349/ukraine-artillery-counteroffensive-united-states-europe">ramp up artillery production</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/paulmcleary/status/1688544806853648384?s=20">Those efforts are already underway</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C2Y44C">
And then there’s the time factor. Ukraine’s strategy of attrition may be effective, but after the counteroffensive’s early stumbles, it has a lot less time to wear Russia down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qu5Q5E">
Autumn 2023 is not an official deadline, exactly, but it is likely going to be the time frame by which a lot of Western governments will judge Ukraine’s success or failure. The front lines haven’t changed substantially<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/11/9/23449707/kherson-russia-retreat-ukraine-war"> since Ukraine forced a Russian retreat in Kherson in November 2022</a>. If the boundaries remain largely frozen for more than a year, a decisive victory for either side will start looking less and less likely.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0nCm7">
That is not a foregone conclusion, and Ukraine can still succeed. And if it does, the slow, grinding counteroffensive may all of a sudden look very, very different. “It’s like bankruptcy — very slowly, and then all at once,” Bury said. “There could come a point where they wear down the Russians enough for them to break through somewhere, and then, out in the open, drive those Western tanks. But so far, we’ve not really seen it getting to that point.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y95d2X">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5zfvQH">
</p></li>
<li><strong>The right-wing backlash against the US women’s national soccer team, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pWumluuq7EwQFqqy8KSJUuB8BX0=/203x0:2891x2016/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72522880/1584746196.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, two stalwarts on the US Women’s National Soccer Team, have probably played in their last World Cup. | Carmen Mandato/USSF/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The real reason why the US women’s national soccer team lost.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ZjZ7Q">
Headed into the Women’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/fifa-world-cup">World Cup</a>, the <a href="https://www.ussoccer.com/teams/uswnt">US women’s national soccer team</a> (USWNT) was aiming to make history and become the first team — men or women — to win three consecutive world cups. That all came crashing down this weekend when the top-ranked US lost in penalty kicks to Sweden in the round of 16, the first of the competition’s four knockout rounds. The final will take place on August 20.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2FGyvo">
Given the expectations of excellence that the USWNT has set since the sport started to flourish on the international stage — four World Cup wins, four Olympic gold medals, and medaling in every major international competition except for the 2016 Olympics — it was no doubt a disappointment. This was the best team in the world trying to accomplish a feat that takes 12 years to achieve, as World Cups only happen every four years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nwWies">
The US women’s loss was international news.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GN9WuB">
If you ask soccer experts, the loss wasn’t too surprising given the injuries key players sustained and questionable coaching decisions that were made. It was a transitional year for the US, with the team trying to find its identity among a mix of old-guard stars like 38-year-old Megan Rapinoe and new talent like 22-year-old Sophia Smith. Sports media and fans alike <a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/page/uswntreport0807/uswnt-womens-world-cup-issues-andonovski-injuries-more">have already begun</a> examining what went wrong, what little went right, and what the future of US women’s soccer is going to look like.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j9eMiu">
But the defeat has also become a talking point among a group of people who usually don’t have much to say about the sport: right-wingers, like former president Donald Trump and pundit Benny Johnson. In the wake of their defeat, USWNT has become subject to the claim that the US women lost because they were too <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy">woke</a> and too progressive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IkvDxH">
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
</p>
<h3 id="UWOuXS">
The right-wing concern about the women’s soccer team isn’t really about winning or losing or soccer
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TxhvJc">
The game against Sweden kicked off at 5 am ET on Sunday, and the USWNT had lost on penalty kicks before most in their country had their first cup of coffee. The US team held even with Sweden during regulation, <a href="https://twitter.com/TheM_L_G/status/1688159054571413504?s=20">arguably playing one of the better matches of their tournament</a>, while repeatedly being stymied by the Swedish goalkeeper. But they lost 5–4 on penalty shots after Rapinoe, Smith, and Kelly O’Hara missed their opportunities. As the day went on, a specific type of criticism began to circulate among right-wing personalities: The US women’s national team lost because they had gone “woke.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GzZzvL">
In a politicized and misleading tweet, <a href="https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1688169005104648192?s=20">Benny Johnson wrote</a>, “BREAKING: Woke US Women’s Soccer Humiliation … After winning back-to-back World Cups the heavily favored Team USA has been ELIMINATED by Sweden in the 16th round. Team USA’s downfall was delivered by anti-America, anti-woman activist Megan Rapinoe’s EMBARRASSING free kick …”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ghcZuP">
Leaving aside the several technical errors in Johnson’s tweet (the US lost in the Round of 16, not the 16th round — there is no 16th round of the World Cup; and the video Johnson attached showed Rapinoe missing a crucial penalty kick, not a “free kick”), its tone didn’t capture what actually happened Sunday. The US is the top-ranked women’s soccer team in the world, and Sweden is ranked third — a margin that’s slimmer than Johnson suggests. Based on how poorly the US played in its group stage (the round-robin format that precedes the one-and-done matches), Sweden was always going to be a tough match for the US.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XepvCA">
Later in the day, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-indicted-jan-6-investigation-special-counsel-debb59bb7a4d9f93f7e2dace01feccdc">freshly indicted</a> former president Donald Trump weighed in on <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/110845290114601452">Truth Social</a>, warning that the loss was a signal of the United States’s fiery descent into the underworld: “Many of our players were openly hostile to America - No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="prjEED">
The same kind of “woke = failure” rhetoric was implied in Fox commentator <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexiLalas/status/1688322976083492865">Alexi Lalas’s tweet</a> about the game. (Fox happened to be the network broadcasting the Women’s World Cup.) Lalas wrote, “This USWNT is polarizing. Politics, causes, stances, &amp; behavior have made this team unlikeable to a portion of America. This team has built its brand and has derived its power from being the best/winning. If that goes away they risk becoming irrelevant.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q8Bt8a">
Despite playing on the US men’s national soccer team, Lalas never came close to winning a World Cup. As <a href="https://twitter.com/SIfill_/status/1688537770036207616?s=20">his critics point out</a>, in his own terms, this would make Lalas irrelevant. (Lalas has also previously <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexiLalas/status/1635999019561549824">tweeted support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis</a>, whose politics run diametrically opposed to that of some prominent US women’s players.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bek1L1">
But what are these guys, however inaccurately, trying to talk about? The US women’s national team has supported a number of progressive causes, mainly <a href="https://www.vox.com/lgbtq">LGBTQ</a> rights and equal pay for women.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f7B0Wd">
In 2016, the US women’s players began a legal battle demanding equal pay. They argued that despite winning major competitions and being the best team in the world, they did not receive the same pay and treatment (charter flights, hotels, facilities, etc.) as their male counterparts. The US men’s national soccer team hasn’t ever come close to winning any major international soccer competition, but still reaps much heartier financial rewards. The fight ended with a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html">$24 million settlement</a> in 2022, and a pledge from US Soccer to equalize pay.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aJE3YcFWCv9cmWTgBah47H3E2sw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24836616/1257647530.jpg"/> <cite>Brad Smith/ISI Photos/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Kristie Mewis of the United States wears wristbands supporting gender equity and trans rights at the 2023 SheBelieves Cup game in Florida.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TO8sjM">
Prominent members of the US women’s national team have also been staunch supporters of LGBTQ rights, a stance that puts them at odds with right-wing politicians and pundits who have embraced hostile viewpoints toward the queer and trans community. The <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2019/12/09/uswnt-white-house-visit-invite-megan-rapinoe">team did not accept an invitation</a> to visit the White House when it won the World Cup in 2019. “Your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of color, you’re excluding Americans that maybe support you,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/7/10/20688918/megan-rapinoe-anderson-cooper-cnn-interview-america">Rapinoe said in a 2019 televised interview</a>, speaking to then-President Donald Trump.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RxUlHr">
In a competition earlier this year in Florida, where LGTBQ rights are under legislative attack, the <a href="https://www.them.us/story/us-canada-womens-soccer-trans-allyship">team wore light blue, pink, and white wristbands</a> in support of trans rights.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HXFWCE">
The political criticism the US women’s national team is facing isn’t unlike the rhetoric used in<a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/4/12/23680135/bud-light-boycott-dylan-mulvaney-travis-tritt-trans"> conservative boycotts against Budweiser</a> following trans content creator Dylan Mulvaney’s sponsored content. That boycott isn’t unlike the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9707034/starbucks-red-cup-controversy">Starbucks boycott</a> that pops up year after year, or that time<a href="http://polygon.com/23567793/m-and-m-spokescandies-controversy-explained-shoe-change-green-tucker-carlson"> Tucker Carlson was mad</a> at the gender expression of M&amp;Ms. It’s also similar to the recent and extremely erroneous<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/07/25/right-wing-backlash-against-barbie-is-just-sad/?sh=19577dc2607a"> pronouncement that Greta Gerwig’s <em>Barbie</em></a> would make no money because it championed feminism and criticized the patriarchy. (Barbie is now poised to surpass <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/08/06/1191940267/barbie-billion-dollars-woman-greta-gerwig">$1 billion at the box office</a>.) In the world of sports, stars like<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/4/25/17257978/kaepernick-nfl-nike-protest-race-football"> Colin Kaepernick</a> an<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/lebron-james-doesnt-talk-about-politics-anymore.html">d LeBron James</a> have previously faced right-wing villainization for speaking out against police brutality.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="510hcN">
The ideology is simple: if you show progressive values, you are destined to lose. Go woke, go broke. But it’s a crooked connection and has very little to do with how sports works.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SbKVJ6">
This point of view fails to take into account that the women’s soccer team has been winning for a very long time, going back to the 2015 Women’s World Cup and even before then (the team has won four Women’s World Cups since 1991 and four Olympic gold medals since 1996). They’ve been fighting for equal pay and equal rights during their most impressive stretches of dominance in the sport. The US women have also been at the forefront of equal pay and treatment not just for US players, but for<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/women-world-cup-payment-1.6902927"> women’s soccer players</a> across the globe.<a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37629321/spain-female-footballers-receive-equal-bonuses-new-agreement"> Spain</a> and<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-england-pay/englands-mens-and-womens-teams-receive-equal-pay-says-fa-idUSKBN25U101"> England</a>, who are now considered favorites in the tournament, have equal pay structures among their men and women players.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="joPwv9">
Scapegoating the US women in this moment feels less like criticism of how they played and more like a political opportunity for right-wing politicians and politically adjacent figures to play to their base. Figures on the right who have been championing things like anti-trans legislation paint these women as political opponents, advance their own agendas, and grab some spotlight on what is an international news story.
</p>
<h3 id="NOfNZv">
Why the US women’s national soccer team really lost
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YWOEth">
The USWNT’s loss against Sweden wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the team over the last few months. This 2023 World Cup was always going to be a dogfight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a7F7ag">
Headed into the tournament, the US team lost several<a href="https://apnews.com/article/sauerbrunn-womens-world-cup-thorns-swanson-macario-18926f9e12624589a0d59aa0df86e088"> key players to injuries</a>, including talented scorer Mallory Swanson, defensive stalwart Becky Sauerbrunn, and star midfielders Sam Mewis and Catarina Macario. Those players are part of the reason the US is the top-ranked team in the world, but they were unable to start.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8VsStz">
The <a href="https://theathletic.com/4709069/2023/07/21/uswnt-world-cup-injury-news/">US roster also included players</a> who were injured and making their comebacks. Rose LaVelle, a standout in the midfield, injured her knee in April. The World Cup was her first tournament back. Similarly, Julie Ertz and Rapinoe were easing their way into competition after suffering injuries. While talented, these players weren’t playing at their peak.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rmmTvD">
The biggest criticism of the US team was against coach Vlatko Andonovski. Soccer insiders and experts posited that Andonovski didn’t pick a balanced roster, and further, his in-game decisions left many puzzled. As Kim McCauley pointed out in <a href="https://theathletic.com/4747722/2023/08/03/uswnt-portugal-analyis-world-cup/">the Athletic</a>, Andonovski’s tactics left the midfield vulnerable and disconnected, which in turn made the US offense a portrait of pure ugliness. “He wants to create overloads in wide areas and get numbers into the box so badly that he is willing to sacrifice having a midfield to do so. Personally, I think this sucks and leads to very bad soccer,” McCauley wrote.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Soccer players are distraught." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R1-gvkZkG20-qBJsIFyomR2pBJg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24836631/1596240460.jpg"/> <cite>Robin Alam/USSF/Getty Images for USSF</cite>
<figcaption>
The USWNT reacts to the penalty kick loss against Sweden at the 2023 Women’s World Cup
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jVruwE">
At the same time, it’s important to note that teams and players around the world are getting better and better. <a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/women?dateId=ranking_20230609">Teams that are great on paper</a> — like second-ranked Germany, seventh-ranked Canada, and eighth-ranked Brazil — failed to make it out of the group stage of the World Cup. The most impressive team of the tournament so far has been<a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2023/08/07/soccer/womens-world-cup/nadeshiko-japan-world-cup-quarterfinals/"> Japan</a>, currently ranked 11th in the world. Women’s soccer is getting more competitive, and the US was never going to dominate the game as it once did.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ap6zH0">
While the US lost in an unfortunate way to third-ranked Sweden — literal millimeters on a partially saved penalty kick — a surging Japanese team would’ve been their next opponent. Based on how good Japan has been playing and how poorly the US has played, that would’ve been another tough match and likely would’ve ended in a loss too. If that had been the case, we’d likely have had the same kind of discussions about what went wrong for the team that we’re subjected to now. A depleted US roster, puzzling coaching decisions, and a gummy offense are all extremely valid criticisms of the best women’s soccer team in the world, but they’re far less exciting options if you’re trying to make a hollow political point.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Snowfall and Son Of A Gun catch the eye</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Herman Kruis to oversee Indian hockey teams for Junior World Cups</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Polished Girl, Regency Smile, Honey Cake, All Attractive, Shamrock and Seventh Samurai impress</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Asian Champions Trophy 2023 | Chennai cheers for hockey as grandparents and children gather at the stadium</strong> - Chennai’s love for hockey manifests through vibrant weekday crowds at the ongoing Asian Champions Trophy at Egmore’s Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium</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>Herman Kruis to oversee Indian hockey teams for Junior WC</strong> - Kruis will join the teams during the 4-Nation tournament in Germany later this month</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>2 units of 5×800 MW YTPS likely to be commissioned in Dec., Centre tells RS</strong> - In reply to a question by K. Laxman, Centre states 72% to 81% work is completed on 5 units</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>Article 370 hearing: India seeks public opinion through established institutions not Brexit-type referendums, says CJI</strong> - Kapil Sibal argued that the Parliament and the Union government abrogated Article 370 “unilaterally”, without making an effort to understand the will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir</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>HC seeks response of govt. on plea against film awards</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Explained | How a changing monsoon is challenging forecasters and disaster managers</strong> - The monsoon is the lifeblood of the country’s $3 trillion economy, delivering nearly 70% of the rain that India needs to water farms and recharge reservoirs and aquifers</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>Handicrafts Development Corporation of Kerala to revive screw pine industry</strong> - Project aims at promoting manufacturing of screw pine, reed and cane products that will be procured and sold by HDCK</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>Portugal battles wildfires amid third heatwave of the year</strong> - Temperatures in excess of 40C are expected to hit much of the Iberian peninsula this week.</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: AEK Athens-Dinamo Zagreb qualifier postponed after fan killed</strong> - Tuesday’s Champions League qualifier between AEK Athens and Dinamo Zagreb is postponed after a fan is stabbed to death on the eve of the game.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch: Fiery ‘meteor’ over Australia probably Russian space rocket</strong> - Flaming debris was seen blazing across the night sky in Melbourne on Monday evening.</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: Seven killed in Russian missile strike on eastern town of Pokrovsk</strong> - Two missiles hit the town of Pokrovsk, the second as rescuers were searching for victims of the first.</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 arrests woman over alleged plot to kill Zelensky</strong> - Officials allege the suspect passed information to Russia about the Ukrainian president’s movements.</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>Efficient motors and LFP batteries will power this new medium-duty truck</strong> - Motiv has been making electric powertrains for other chassis for 14 years now. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1959475">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New SARS-CoV-2 variant gains dominance in US amid mild summer COVID wave</strong> - Absolute numbers are low, but several indicators show pandemic virus is on the rise. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1959483">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Starliner undergoing three independent investigations as flight slips to 2024</strong> - “The design changes were, I would say, minimal.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1959382">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Zoom has “Zoom fatigue,” requires workers to return to the office</strong> - Zoom surprisingly decides its teams are more effective working in-office. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1959432">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Report: Apple buys every 3 nm chip that TSMC can make for next-gen iPhones and Macs</strong> - TSMC is said to eat the cost of defective chips so it can keep Apple’s business. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1959335">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A guy boards an airplane to Detroit and makes his way to his seat where he notices the guy sitting next to him looks very worried. He asks him if he’s afraid of flying.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“No, my company is moving me to Detroit. I’ve heard terrible things about Detroit; I’m worried about my family.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The guy tells him, “Look, it’s not at all like the rumors. I’ve lived in Detroit my whole life. Find a nice home in a nice suburb, get your kids into a decent school, the community is great… you’ll be fine, trust me.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The other guy seems to perk up and says, “Hey, thanks man, you’ve really calmed my nerves, I feel better. So what do you do in Detroit?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I’m a tail-gunner on a Bud Light truck…”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Make_the_music_stop"> /u/Make_the_music_stop </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15lchhz/a_guy_boards_an_airplane_to_detroit_and_makes_his/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15lchhz/a_guy_boards_an_airplane_to_detroit_and_makes_his/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A joke I came up with when I was 8 (or I read it somewhere)</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
2 bats were sitting on a bench in the middle of the night and one turns to the other and says “I’m really thirsty for some blood”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
So he goes off into the darkness.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After a while he comes back with its mouth full of blood and the second bat says “wow where did you get so much blood in the middle of the night?!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Then the first bat says “do you see that lantern pole there?” “Yes” responds the second bat “Well I didn’t” says the first bat.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I hadn’t seen it posted here yet so I gave it a try.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/wolfslayer2"> /u/wolfslayer2 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15ldm1o/a_joke_i_came_up_with_when_i_was_8_or_i_read_it/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15ldm1o/a_joke_i_came_up_with_when_i_was_8_or_i_read_it/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What do you call a fat nazi?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
a wide supremacist
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/megacerealcrunch"> /u/megacerealcrunch </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15kt2vd/what_do_you_call_a_fat_nazi/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15kt2vd/what_do_you_call_a_fat_nazi/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My wife called out another man’s name during sex</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
If I ever find out who this “Ron Hole” is, I’m going to kill him
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MoggFanatic"> /u/MoggFanatic </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15leifk/my_wife_called_out_another_mans_name_during_sex/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15leifk/my_wife_called_out_another_mans_name_during_sex/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Putin is held hostage by a terrorist…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Putin is held hostage by a terrorist. A Russian truckdriver stops at the back of a long queue on the motorway. He sees a policeman walking down the line of stopped cars to briefly talk to the drivers. As the policeman approaches the truck, the truckdriver rolls down his window and asks, “What’s going on?” Policeman: “A terrorist is holding Putin hostage in a car. He’s demanding 10 million rubles, or he’ll douse Putin in petrol and set him on fire. So we’re asking drivers for donations.” Driver: “Oh, ok. How much do people donate on average.” Policeman: “About a gallon.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Royal_Tumbleweed_910"> /u/Royal_Tumbleweed_910 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15l4u45/putin_is_held_hostage_by_a_terrorist/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/15l4u45/putin_is_held_hostage_by_a_terrorist/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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