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<title>11 April, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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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>Natural Environments, Psychosocial Health, and Health Behaviors in a Crisis – A Scoping Review of the Literature in the COVID-19 Context</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 outbreak has led to major restrictions globally, affecting people’s psychosocial health and their health behaviors. Thus, the purpose of this scoping review was to summarize the available research regarding the nature-health-association in the COVID-19 context. Keywords related to natural environments and COVID-19 were combined to conduct a systematic online search in six major databases. Eligibility criteria were a) published since 2020 with data collected in the COVID-19 context b) peer-reviewed, c) original empirical data collected on human participants, d) investigated the association between natural environments and psychosocial health or health behavior, and e) English, German, or Scandinavian language. Out of 8,568 articles being obtained, we identified 82 relevant articles representing 80 unique studies. Most studies focused on adults in the general population and were predominantly conducted in the USA and Europe. Overall, the findings tentatively indicate that nature mitigates the impact of COVID-19 on psychological health and physical activity. Through thematic analysis of the extracted data, three primary themes were identified: 1) type of nature assessed, 2) psychosocial health and health behaviors investigated, and 3) heterogeneity in the nature-health relationship. Research gaps in the COVID-19 context were identified regarding I) nature characteristics that promote psychosocial health and health behaviors, II) investigations of digital and virtual nature, III) psychological constructs relating to mental health promotion, IV) health behaviors other than physical activity, V) underlying mechanisms regarding heterogeneity in the nature-health relationship based on human, nature, and geographic characteristics, and VI) research focusing on vulnerable groups. Overall, natural environments demonstrate considerable potential in buffering the impact of stressful events on a population level on mental health. However, future research is warranted to fill the mentioned research gaps and to examine the long-term effects of nature exposure during COVID-19.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/a9unf/" target="_blank">Natural Environments, Psychosocial Health, and Health Behaviors in a Crisis – A Scoping Review of the Literature in the COVID-19 Context</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>NULISA: a novel proteomic liquid biopsy platform with attomolar sensitivity and high multiplexing</strong> -
<div>
The blood proteome holds great promise for precision medicine but poses daunting challenges due to the low abundance of the majority of plasma proteins and the vast dynamic range across the proteome. We report the development and validation of a novel proteomic analysis technology - NUcleic acid Linked Immuno-Sandwich Assay (NULISA) - that incorporates a dual capture and release mechanism to suppress the assay background to the minimum, thus drastically improving the signal-to-noise ratio. NULISA improves the sensitivity of the proximity ligation assay by over 10,000-fold to the attomolar level, which is enabled by antibody-conjugated DNA sequences that mediate the purification of immunocomplexes and contain target- and sample-specific barcodes for next-generation sequencing-based, highly multiplexed analysis. To demonstrate its performance and utility, we developed a 200-plex NULISA targeting 124 cytokines and chemokines and 80 other immune response-related proteins that demonstrated superior sensitivity for detecting low-abundance proteins and high concordance with other immunoassays. The ultra-high sensitivity enabled the detection of previously difficult-to-detect but biologically important, low-abundance biomarkers in patients with autoimmune diseases and COVID-19. Fully automated NULISA uniquely addresses longstanding challenges in the proteomic analysis of liquid biopsy samples and makes broad and in-depth proteomic analysis accessible to the general research community and future diagnostic applications.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.09.536130v1" target="_blank">NULISA: a novel proteomic liquid biopsy platform with attomolar sensitivity and high multiplexing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary capacity is mostly driven by host antiviral molecules</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has been characterised by sequential variant-specific waves shaped by viral, individual human and population factors. SARS-CoV-2 variants are defined by their unique combinations of mutations and there has been a clear adaptation to human infection since its emergence in 2019. Here we use machine learning models to identify shared signatures, i.e., common underlying mutational processes, and link these to the subset of mutations that define the variants of concern (VOCs). First, we examined the global SARS-CoV-2 genomes and associated metadata to determine how viral properties and public health measures have influenced the magnitude of waves, as measured by the number of infection cases, in different geographic locations using regression models. This analysis showed that, as expected, both public health measures and not virus properties alone are associated with the rise and fall of regional SARS-CoV-2 reported infection numbers. This impact varies geographically. We attribute this to intrinsic differences such as vaccine coverage, testing and sequencing capacity, and the effectiveness of government stringency. In terms of underlying evolutionary change, we used non-negative matrix factorisation to observe three distinct mutational signatures, unique in their substitution patterns and exposures from the SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Signatures 0, 1 and 3 were biased to C-&gt;T, T-&gt;C/A-&gt;G and G-&gt;T point mutations as would be expected of host antiviral molecules APOBEC, ADAR and ROS effects, respectively. We also observe a shift amidst the pandemic in relative mutational signature activity from predominantly APOBEC-like changes to an increasingly high proportion of changes consistent with ADAR editing. This could represent changes in how the virus and the host immune response interact, and indicates how SARS-CoV-2 may continue to accumulate mutations in the future. Linkage of the detected mutational signatures to the VOC defining amino acids substitutions indicates the majority of SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary capacity is likely to be associated with the action of host antiviral molecules rather than virus replication errors.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.07.536037v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary capacity is mostly driven by host antiviral molecules</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Antibodies that neutralize all current SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern by conformational locking</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve and evade most existing neutralizing antibodies, including all clinically authorized antibodies. We have isolated and characterized two human monoclonal antibodies, 12-16 and 12-19, which exhibited neutralizing activities against all SARS-CoV-2 variants tested, including BQ.1.1 and XBB.1.5. They also blocked infection in hamsters challenged with Omicron BA.1 intranasally. Structural analyses revealed both antibodies targeted a conserved quaternary epitope located at the interface between the N-terminal domain and subdomain 1, revealing a previously unrecognized site of vulnerability on SARS-CoV-2 spike. These antibodies prevent viral receptor engagement by locking the receptor-binding domain of spike in the down conformation, revealing a novel mechanism of virus neutralization for non-RBD antibodies. Deep mutational scanning showed that SARS-CoV-2 could mutate to escape 12-19, but the responsible mutations are rarely found in circulating viruses. Antibodies 12-16 and 12-19 hold promise as prophylactic agents for immunocompromised persons who do not respond robustly to COVID-19 vaccines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.08.536123v1" target="_blank">Antibodies that neutralize all current SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern by conformational locking</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Unbiased spectral cytometry immunome characterization predicts COVID-19 mRNA vaccine failure in older adults and patients with lymphoid malignancies.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
COVID-19 affects the population unequally with a higher impact on aged and immunosuppressed people. Hence, we assessed the effect of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in immune compromised patients (older adults and oncohematologic patients), compared with healthy counterparts. While the acquired humoral and cellular memory did not predict subsequent infection 18 months after full immunization, spectral and computational cytometry revealed several subsets within the CD8+ T-cells, B-cells, NK cells, monocytes and CD45RA+CCR7- Tγδ cells differentially expressed in further infected and non-infected individuals not just following immunization, but also prior to that. Of note up to 7 subsets were found within the CD45RA+CCR7- Tγδ population with some of them being expanded and other decreased in subsequently infected individuals. Moreover, some of these subsets also predicted COVID-induced hospitalization in oncohematologic patients. Therefore, we hereby have identified several cellular subsets that, even before vaccination, strongly related to COVID-19 vulnerability as opposed to the acquisition of cellular and/or humoral memory following vaccination with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.10.23288350v1" target="_blank">Unbiased spectral cytometry immunome characterization predicts COVID-19 mRNA vaccine failure in older adults and patients with lymphoid malignancies.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Global surveillance of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Earlier global detection of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants gives governments more time to respond. However, few countries can implement timely national surveillance resulting in gaps in monitoring. The UK implemented large-scale community and hospital surveillance, but experience suggests it may be faster to detect new variants through testing UK arrivals for surveillance. We developed simulations of the emergence and importation of novel variants with a range of infection hospitalisation rates (IHR) to the UK. We compared time taken to detect the variant though testing arrivals at UK borders, hospital admissions, and the general community. We found that sampling 10 to 50% of arrivals at UK borders could confer a speed advantage of 3.5 to 6 weeks over existing community surveillance, and 1.5 to 5 weeks (depending on IHR) over hospital testing. We conclude that directing limited global capacity for surveillance to highly connected ports could speed up global detection of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.10.23288358v1" target="_blank">Global surveillance of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A cross-sectional study of the association between COVID-19 infection and psychological distress in Japanese workers</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic infected many people worldwide with SARS-CoV2. Psychological distress is one of the sequelae reported to occur in many of those infected (Choutka et al., 2022). We investigated the association between personal experience of COVID-19 infection and psychological distress in Japan. A total of 18,560 persons participated in the original survey, conducted in December 2020. After excluding unreliable responses, data from 14,901 persons who participated in a follow-up survey in December 2022-were included in the analysis. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated by univariate and multiple logistic regression analysis with history of COVID-19 infection as the independent variable and presence of psychological distress as the dependent variable. This results showed that the experience of COVID-19 infection is associated with psychological distress. Moreover, most cases of mental distress among those who experienced COVID-19 infection can be at least partly explained by a perception of unfair treatment.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.08.23288312v1" target="_blank">A cross-sectional study of the association between COVID-19 infection and psychological distress in Japanese workers</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Data-driven control of airborne infection risk and energy use in buildings</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The global devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to calls for a revolution in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to improve indoor air quality (IAQ), due to the dominant role of airborne transmission in disease spread. While simple guidelines have recently been suggested to improve IAQ mainly by increasing ventilation and filtration, this goal must be achieved in an energy-efficient and economical manner and include all air cleaning mechanisms. Here, we develop a simple protocol to directly, quantitatively, and optimally control transmission risk while minimizing energy cost. We collect a large dataset of HVAC and IAQ measurements in buildings and show how models of infectious aerosol dynamics and HVAC operation can be combined with sensor data to predict transmission risk and energy consumption. Using this data, we also verify that a simple safety guideline is able to limit transmission risk in full data-driven simulations and thus may be used to guide public health policy. Our results provide a comprehensive framework for quantitative control of transmission risk using all available air cleaning mechanisms in an indoor space while minimizing energy costs to aid in the design and automated operation of healthy, energy-efficient buildings.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.19.23287460v2" target="_blank">Data-driven control of airborne infection risk and energy use in buildings</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Pre-pandemic humoral immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective: To assess the evidence on the presence of antibodies that are cross-reactive with SARS-CoV-2 antigens in pre-pandemic samples from African populations. Methods: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies evaluating pre-pandemic African samples for anti-SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive antibodies using pre-set assay-specific thresholds for seropositivity. Results: 24 articles with 146 datasets were eligible, including 3,194 positives among 27,269 measurements (11.7%) with large between-dataset heterogeneity. Positivity was similar for anti-N and anti-S antibodies (14% and 11%, respectively) and it was higher for anti-S1 (23%) and lower for anti-RBD antibodies (7%). Positivity was non-significantly higher for IgM than for IgG antibodies. Positivity was seen prominently in countries where malaria transmission occurs throughout and in datasets enriched in malaria cases (14%, 95% CI, 13-17%) versus 2%, 95% CI 1-3% in other datasets). Substantial SARS-CoV-2 reactivity was seen in high malaria burden with or without high dengue burden (15% and 12%, respectively), and not without high malaria burden (2% and 0%, respectively). Lower SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactivity was seen in countries and cohorts of high HIV seroprevalence, but this association was not validated in individual samples. Conclusions: Pre-pandemic samples from Africa show high levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity. Levels of cross-reactivity tracks especially with malaria prevalence.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.07.22280814v2" target="_blank">Pre-pandemic humoral immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Accurately Estimating Total COVID-19 Infections using Information Theory</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract One of the most significant challenges in the early combat against COVID-19 was the dif- ficulty in estimating the true magnitude of infections. Unreported infections drove up disease spread in numerous regions, made it very hard to accurately estimate the infectivity of the pathogen, therewith hampering our ability to react effectively. Despite the use of surveillance- based methods such as serological studies, identifying the true magnitude is still challenging today. This paper proposes an information theoretic approach for accurately estimating the number of total infections. Our approach is built on top of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) based models, which are commonly used in epidemiology and for estimating such infec- tions. We show how we can help such models to better compute the number of total infections and identify the parameterization by which we need the fewest bits to describe the observed dynamics of reported infections. Our experiments show that our approach leads to not only substantially better estimates of the number of total infections but also better forecasts of infec- tions than standard model calibration based methods. We additionally show how our learned parameterization helps in modeling more accurate what-if scenarios with non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our results support earlier findings that most COVID-19 infections were un- reported and non-pharmaceutical interventions indeed helped to mitigate the spread of the outbreak. Our approach provides a general method for improving epidemic modeling which is applicable broadly.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.14.21263467v3" target="_blank">Accurately Estimating Total COVID-19 Infections using Information Theory</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Childcare burden and changes in fertility desires of mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Background: Previous studies have documented a decline in fertility desires following the COVID-19 outbreak, but reasons for this decline are not well understood. This study examined whether greater childcare burden on mothers during the lockdowns and quarantines, COVID-related stress and COVID-19 exposure were associated with a change in desired number of children. Methods: The survey was conducted in Poland in April–July 2021 and completed by 622 non-pregnant mothers without diagnosed infertility. Women were asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their reproductive plans. Childcare burden was reported during lockdown and quarantines. Results: Almost 30% of mothers reported decrease in their fertility desires because of the pandemic. Associations were observed between childcare responsibilities during the quarantine (but not lockdown) and fertility desires: mothers who solely or mainly took care of their children during the quarantine(s) were more likely to decrease their desired number of children ([adjusted] aOR = 1.91, 95% CI = 1.16–3.15). Mothers with higher levels of COVID-related stress (aOR = 1.81, 95% CI = 1.48–2.22) and greater COVID exposure index (aOR = 1.39, 95% CI = 1.12–1.72) were more likely to decrease their fertility desires. Conclusions: Mothers who bare more childcare responsibilities during quarantine had lower desire to have more children. At the same time, both greater COVID-related stress and exposure were associated with a decreased wish to have children, regardless of the childcare responsibilities during the pandemic.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/3m9zs/" target="_blank">Childcare burden and changes in fertility desires of mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake And Its Associated Factors among general population In Basmaia City in Baghdad 2022</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective: Vaccination is a vital cornerstone of public health, which has saved countless lives throughout history. Therefore, achieving high vaccination uptake rates is essential for successful vaccination programs. Unfortunately, vaccine uptake has been hindered by deferent factors and challenges. The objective of this study is to assess COVID-19 vaccine uptake and associated factors among the general population. Methods: This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in Basmaia city, Baghdad from June to October 2022. Data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire using multi-stage random sampling. Statistical analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, chi-square analysis, Mann-Whitney test, and binary and multivariable logistic regression. Results: the prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine uptake was 70.4%. The most common reason for getting vaccinated was protection from the disease, while fear of side effects and not needing the vaccine were the main reasons for refusal. The study found that gender, age, education level, job title, risk perception, knowledge, and attitude towards the vaccine were significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Males were 2.273 times more likely to get vaccinated than females, and older age groups had higher odds of vaccination than younger age groups. Those with higher education levels were also more likely to receive the vaccine. Participants with higher risk perception, knowledge, and positive attitude towards the vaccine were more likely to get vaccinated. And found that mandatory vaccination policies may negatively impact uptake of subsequent vaccine doses. Conclusion: the study found a high prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine uptake, with gender, age, education level, and job title being significant factors associated with vaccine uptake. Additionally, mandatory vaccination policies may have a negative impact on the uptake of subsequent vaccine doses. Public health efforts should prioritize addressing these factors to increase vaccine uptake.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.07.23288262v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake And Its Associated Factors among general population In Basmaia City in Baghdad 2022</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Spatial and Temporal Origin of The Third SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak in Taiwan</strong> -
<div>
Since the first report of SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019, Taiwan has gone through three local outbreaks. Unlike the first two outbreaks, the spatial and temporal origin of the third outbreak (April 20 to November 5, 2021) is still unclear. We assembled and analyzed a data set of more than 6,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes, including 300 from Taiwan and 5812 related sequences downloaded from GISAID as of 2021/12/08. We found that the third outbreak in Taiwan was caused by a single virus lineage belonging to Alpha (B.1.1.7) strain. This lineage, T-III (the third outbreak in Taiwan), carries a distinct genetic fingerprint, consisting of spike M1237I (S-M1237I) and three silent mutations, C5812T, C15895T, and T27869C. The T-III is closest to the sequences derived from Turkey on February 8, 2021. The estimated age of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of T-III is March 23, 2021 (95% highest posterior density [HPD] February 24 - April 13, 2021), almost one month before the first three confirmed cases on April 20, 2021. The effective population size of the T-III showed approximately 20-fold increase after the onset of the outbreak and reached a plateau in early June 2021. Our results reconcile several unresolved observations, including the occurrence of two infection clusters at the same time without traceable connection and several airline pilots who were PCR negative but serum IgM-/IgG+ for SARS-CoV-2 in late April. Therefore, in contrast to the general notion that the third SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Taiwan was sparked by two imported cases from USA on April 20, 2021, which, in turn, was caused by the partial relaxation of entry quarantine measures in early April 2021, our comprehensive analyses demonstrated that the outbreak was most likely originated from Europe in February 2021.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.04.498645v3" target="_blank">Spatial and Temporal Origin of The Third SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak in Taiwan</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A new tractable method for generating Human Alveolar Macrophage Like cells in vitro to study lung inflammatory processes and diseases</strong> -
<div>
Alveolar macrophages (AMs) are unique lung resident cells that contact airborne pathogens and environmental particulates. The contribution of human AMs (HAM) to pulmonary diseases remains poorly understood due to difficulty in accessing them from human donors and their rapid phenotypic change during in vitro culture. Thus, there remains an unmet need for cost-effective methods for generating and/or differentiating primary cells into a HAM phenotype, particularly important for translational and clinical studies. We developed cell culture conditions that mimic the lung alveolar environment in humans using lung lipids, i.e., Infasurf (calfactant, natural bovine surfactant) and lung-associated cytokines (GM-CSF, TGF-{beta}, and IL-10) that facilitate the conversion of blood-obtained monocytes to an AM-Like (AML) phenotype and function in tissue culture. Similar to HAM, AML cells are particularly susceptible to both Mycobacterium tuberculosis and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. This study reveals the importance of alveolar space components in the development and maintenance of HAM phenotype and function, and provides a readily accessible model to study HAM in infectious and inflammatory disease processes, as well as therapies and vaccines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.05.535806v1" target="_blank">A new tractable method for generating Human Alveolar Macrophage Like cells in vitro to study lung inflammatory processes and diseases</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Rous sarcoma virus Gag polyprotein forms biomolecular condensates driven by intrinsically-disordered regions</strong> -
<div>
Biomolecular condensates (BMCs) play important roles in cellular structures including transcription factories, splicing speckles, and nucleoli. BMCs bring together proteins and other macromolecules, selectively concentrating them so that specific reactions can occur without interference from the surrounding environment. BMCs are often made up of proteins that contain intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), form phase-separated spherical puncta, form liquid-like droplets that undergo fusion and fission, contain molecules that are mobile, and are disrupted with phase-dissolving drugs such as 1,6-hexanediol. In addition to cellular proteins, many viruses, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2, and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) encode proteins that undergo phase separation and rely on BMC formation for replication. In prior studies of the retrovirus Rous sarcoma virus (RSV), we observed that the Gag protein forms discrete spherical puncta in the nucleus, cytoplasm, and at the plasma membrane that co-localize with viral RNA and host factors, raising the possibility that RSV Gag forms BMCs that participate in the virion intracellular assembly pathway. In our current studies, we found that Gag contains IDRs in the N-terminal (MAp2p10) and C-terminal (NC) regions of the protein and fulfills many criteria of BMCs. Although the role of BMC formation in RSV assembly requires further study, our results suggest the biophysical properties of condensates are required for the formation of Gag complexes in the nucleus and the cohesion of these complexes as they traffic through the nuclear pore, into the cytoplasm, and to the plasma membrane, where the final assembly and release of virus particles occurs.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.07.536043v1" target="_blank">The Rous sarcoma virus Gag polyprotein forms biomolecular condensates driven by intrinsically-disordered regions</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Nasal Treatment for COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Optate;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Indiana 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>RCT for Yinqiaosan-Maxingganshitang in the Treatment of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Chinese Herb;   Diagnostic Test: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Chinese University of Hong Kong<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>Tailored COVID-19 Testing Support Plan for Francophone African Born Immigrants</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID19 Testing<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: FABI tailored COVID-19 testing pamphlet;   Behavioral: Standard COVID-19 home-based test kit<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Texas Woman’s University;   National Institutes of Health (NIH)<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>Complementary Self-help Strategies for Patients With Post-COVID-19 Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Complementary self-help strategies in addition to treatment as usual;   Other: Treatment as usual<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universität Duisburg-Essen<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Understand the Effect and Safety of the Study Medicine PF-07817883 in Adults Who Have Symptoms of COVID-19 But Are Not Hospitalized.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: PF-07817883;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Pfizer<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of a Health Pathway for People With Persistent Symptoms Covid-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: usual care and follow-up by a nurse;   Other: Personalized Multifactorial Intervention (IMP)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Saint Etienne<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>Traditional Chinese Medicine or Low-dose Dexamethasone in COVID-19 Pneumonia</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: conventional western medicine treatment;   Drug: Dexamethasone oral tablet;   Other: Traditional Chinese medicine decoction<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   China-Japan Friendship 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>A Clinical Study on Safety and Effectiveness of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Exosomes for the Treatment of COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Extracellular Vesicles from Mesenchymal Stem Cells<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University;   REGEN-αGEEK (SHENZHEN) MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.<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>Inpatient COVID-19 Lollipop Study</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Diagnostic Test<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Lollipop<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Wisconsin, Madison<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>Building Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Randomized Controlled Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Healthy;   COVID-19;   Distress, Emotional<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: RASMUS Resilience Training;   Behavioral: Progressive Muscle Relaxation<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Medical University Innsbruck<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>Effectiveness of Testofen Compared to Placebo on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Testofen;   Drug: Microcrystalline cellulose<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   RDC Clinical Pty Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Care for Veterans Post-COVID</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Concordant Care Training;   Behavioral: Education Packet Training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   VA Office of Research and Development<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>Safety &amp; Immunogenicity of RVM-V001/RVM-V002 or RVMV001+RVMV002 (Co Administered as Separate Injections) in Healthy Individuals</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Infectious Disease;   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: RVM-V001 30 µg;   Biological: RVM-V002 30 µg;   Biological: RVM-V001 (15 µg) + RVM-V002 (15 µg) co-administration<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   RVAC Medicines (US), Inc.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>HH-120 Nasal Spray for Post-exposure Prevention of SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: HH-120 Nasal Spray;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Huahui Health<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>Addressing Vaccine Acceptance in Carceral Settings Through Community Engagement</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: ADVANCE Steering Committee interventions<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Yale University;   National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>L-Tartaric Acid Inhibits Diminazene-induced Vasorelaxation in Isolated Rat Aorta</strong> - CONCLUSION: This investigation provides important experimental evidence of the efficacy of L-tartaric acid in inhibiting diminazene-induced vasorelaxation.</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>Deep learning-based network pharmacology for exploring the mechanism of licorice for the treatment of COVID-19</strong> - Licorice, a traditional Chinese medicine, has been widely used for the treatment of COVID-19, but all active compounds and corresponding targets are still not clear. Therefore, this study proposed a deep learning-based network pharmacology approach to identify more potential active compounds and targets of licorice. 4 compounds (quercetin, naringenin, liquiritigenin, and licoisoflavanone), 2 targets (SYK and JAK2) and the relevant pathways (P53, cAMP, and NF-kB) were predicted, which were…</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>Discovery and characterization of the covalent SARS-CoV-2 3CL<sup>pro</sup> inhibitors from Ginkgo biloba extract via integrating chemoproteomic and biochemical approaches</strong> - CONCLUSION: Collectively, GBE50 and some constituents in this herbal product could strongly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 3CL^(pro) in dose- and time-dependent manner. Gallocatechin and sciadopitysin were identified as potent SARS-CoV-2 3CL^(pro) inhibitors, which offers promising lead compounds for the development of novel anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs.</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>Enhanced inhibition of MHC-I expression by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOCs) possess mutations that confer resistance to neutralizing antibodies within the Spike protein and are associated with breakthrough infection and reinfection. By contrast, less is known about the escape from CD8+ T cell-mediated immunity by VOC. Here, we demonstrated that all SARS-CoV-2 VOCs possess the ability to suppress major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) expression. We identified several viral…</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>Neurological damages in COVID-19 patients: Mechanisms and preventive interventions</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel coronavirus, causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which led to neurological damage and increased mortality worldwide in its second and third waves. It is associated with systemic inflammation, myocardial infarction, neurological illness including ischemic strokes (e.g., cardiac and cerebral ischemia), and even death through multi-organ failure. At the early stage, the virus infects the lung epithelial cells and is slowly…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Unexpected Protective Role of Thrombosis in Sepsis-Induced Inflammatory Lung Injury Via Endothelial Alox15</strong> - CONCLUSION: We have demonstrated that moderate levels of thrombosis protect against sepsis-induced inflammatory lung injury via endothelial Alox15. Overexpression of Alox5 inhibits severe pulmonary thrombosis-induced increase of ALI. Thus, activation of ALOX15 signaling represents a promising therapeutic strategy for treatment of ARDS, especially in sub-populations of patients with thrombocytopenia and/or severe pulmonary thrombosis.</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>Massively Parallel Profiling of RNA-targeting CRISPR-Cas13d</strong> - Type VI CRISPR enzymes cleave target RNAs and are widely used for gene regulation, RNA tracking, and diagnostics. However, a systematic understanding of their RNA binding specificity and cleavage activation is lacking. Here, we describe RNA c hip- h ybridized a ssociation- m apping p latform (RNA-CHAMP), a massively parallel platform that repurposes next-generation DNA sequencing chips to measure the binding affinity for over 10,000 RNA targets containing structural perturbations, mismatches,…</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>Immune and ionic mechanisms mediating the effect of dexamethasone in severe COVID-19</strong> - CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that dexamethasone attenuates inflammatory cytokine release via Kv1.3 suppression, and this mechanism contributes to dexamethasone-mediated immunosuppression in severe COVID-19.</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>Transporter Inhibition Profile for the Antivirals Tilorone, Quinacrine and Pyronaridine</strong> - Pyronaridine, tilorone and quinacrine are cationic molecules that have in vitro activity against Ebola, SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses. All three molecules have also demonstrated in vivo activity against Ebola in mice, while pyronaridine showed in vivo efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 in mice. We have recently tested these molecules and other antivirals against human organic cation transporters (OCTs) and apical multidrug and toxin extruders (MATEs). Quinacrine was found to be an inhibitor of OCT2,…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The therapeutic effect and mechanism of parthenolide in skeletal disease, cancers, and cytokine storm</strong> - Parthenolide (PTL or PAR) was first isolated from Magnolia grandiflora and identified as a small molecule cancer inhibitor. PTL has the chemical structure of C15H20O3 with characteristics of sesquiterpene lactones and exhibits the biological property of inhibiting DNA biosynthesis of cancer cells. In this review, we summarise the recent research progress of medicinal PTL, including the therapeutic effects on skeletal diseases, cancers, and inflammation-induced cytokine storm. Mechanistic…</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>Immune-mediated liver injury following COVID-19 vaccination</strong> - Liver injury secondary to vaccination is a rare adverse event that has recently come under attention thanks to the continuous pharmacovigilance following the widespread implementation of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination protocols. All three most widely distributed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccine formulations, e.g., BNT162b2, mRNA-1273, and ChAdOx1-S, can induce liver injury that may involve immune-mediated pathways and result in autoimmune hepatitis-like…</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>Happily Distant or Bitter Medicine? The Impact of Social Distancing Preferences, Behavior, and Emotional Costs on Subjective Wellbeing During the Epidemic</strong> - To inhibit the spread of COVID-19 Public health officials stress, and governments often require, restrictions on social interaction (“social distancing”). While the medical benefits are clear, important questions remain about these measures’ downsides: How bitter is this medicine? Ten large non-probability internet-based surveys between April and November 2020, weighted statistically to reflect the US population in age, education, and religious background and excluding respondents who even…</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>5-alpha reductase inhibitors use in prostatic disease and beyond</strong> - 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (5-ARIs) are commonly used and widely available, with benefits observed from their effect on androgen signalling. Their effect relies on the inhibition of the 5-alpha reductase enzyme which aids in the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. 5-ARIs have increasing clinical relevance outside of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Such development requires clinicians to have an updated review to guide clinical practices. This review details the pharmacology…</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>Suramin binds and inhibits infection of SARS-CoV-2 through both spike protein-heparan sulfate and ACE2 receptor interactions</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domains (RBDs) interact with both the ACE2 receptor and heparan sulfate on the surface of host cells to enhance SARS-CoV-2 infection. We show that suramin, a polysulfated synthetic drug, binds to the ACE2 receptor and heparan sulfate binding sites on the RBDs of wild-type, Delta, and Omicron variants. Specifically, heparan sulfate and suramin had enhanced preferential binding for Omicron RBD, and suramin is most potent against the live SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant…</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>Metabolic dysregulation impairs lymphocyte function during severe SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - Cellular metabolic dysregulation is a consequence of SARS-CoV-2 infection that is a key determinant of disease severity. However, how metabolic perturbations influence immunological function during COVID-19 remains unclear. Here, using a combination of high-dimensional flow cytometry, cutting-edge single-cell metabolomics, and re-analysis of single-cell transcriptomic data, we demonstrate a global hypoxia-linked metabolic switch from fatty acid oxidation and mitochondrial respiration towards…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inside the Hush-Money Payments That May Decide Trump’s Legal Fate</strong> - Years of interviews with potential witnesses provide insights into the Manhattan D.A.’s case. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-the-hush-money-payments-that-may-decide-trumps-legal-fate">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What’s Behind the Fight Between Pope Francis and the Latin Mass Movement?</strong> - The discord has become a stand-in for conflicts over the decline in Catholics’ participation in Mass, over the progressive orientation of Francis’s pontificate, and over Vatican II itself. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/whats-behind-the-fight-between-pope-francis-and-the-latin-mass-movement">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How Putin Criminalized Journalism in Russia</strong> - The case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter being held in Moscow on espionage charges, is only the most recent example of the Kremlin’s crackdown on reporters. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-putin-criminalized-journalism-in-russia">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Behind the Expulsions of Two State Representatives in Tennessee</strong> - How Republican super-majorities in state legislatures are undermining the democratic process. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/behind-the-expulsions-of-two-state-representatives-in-tennessee">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ro Khanna’s Progressive Case for Saving Silicon Valley Bank</strong> - The ambitious California congressman has made a career of navigating the demands of Big Tech and the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/ro-khannas-progressive-case-for-saving-silicon-valley-bank">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why Austin Butler still sounds like Elvis, explained by his own vocal coach</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="a man in front of the word ELVIS in big shiny letters" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PsS0esdc4B3gf1wcXlbvbi_p-9M=/200x0:3400x2400/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72168604/GettyImages_1400306566.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Austin Butler at the UK <em>Elvis</em> premiere. | Neil Mockford/FilmMagic
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Can a movie role change an actor forever?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s3KIQS">
Baz Luhrmann’s <em>Elvis </em>follows the King from the cradle to the grave. We meet him as a teenager in Memphis, dressed in grandiose hot pink leisure suits, issuing a slew of rockabilly hits on acetate discs at the very dawn of pop music history. Two hours later, the audience finds a rotund, greasy, pill-addled Elvis in Las Vegas, belting out portentous Righteous Brothers covers at the twilight of his life. As the King, Austin Butler was required to embody the full scope of that story; possessed by Presley’s spirit throughout all the peaks and valleys. So, for three years, Butler was singularly consumed by the project. “I didn’t see my family,” he told Variety<em> </em><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leylamohammed/austin-butler-didnt-see-family-for-3-years-elvis">in an interview about his creative process last December</a>. “I had months where I wouldn’t talk to anybody. And when I did, the only thing I was thinking about was Elvis.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5HRy0K">
Shortly after that interview, on January 10, Butler finally earned his coronation. The Golden Globes awarded him the trophy for Best Actor, and Butler appeared onstage as a changed man. His voice, formerly a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rOQuajgkX0">SoCal drawl</a>, was deep and leathery and seemed to possess a furtive mid-South lilt. He rounded his vowels. He thanked his “mama.” In other words, Butler sounded like Elvis, as if those three years of ascetic research and training — all the takes, all the hunks of burning love — had permanently mutated his vocal cords.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZD2MJO">
The implications of this supposed transformation were both funny and slightly ominous. Nobody was sure what to make of it. Is it possible that by committing yourself wholly to a performance, your unconscious physical traits — like the tone of your voice — can become altered long after the wrap party? Accents, of course, are theorized to be the result of social bonding; a latent instinct <a href="https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/blogs/carnegie-education/2021/06/where-do-accents-come-from/#:~:text=Accents%20develop%20and%20change%20over,way%20we%20speak%20and%20communicate.">to modify our vowels and consonants to better meld with a community from a very young age</a>. They don’t go away easily. My dad has lived in America for 40 years, but there’s still a hint of London on his tongue. It certainly seems unlikely that Elvis could become embedded within Butler’s cadence, but stranger things have happened in Hollywood.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ym8xl2">
That is why I reached out to Erik Singer, Butler’s primary dialect coach during his <em>Elvis </em>odyssey. Singer is a master of his craft — logging work for Disney, Paramount, HBO, and Warner Bros. — but you might know him best <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXyWwirLfcg&amp;ab_channel=WIRED">for his YouTube videos breaking down the nuances of accent intonation</a>, and how a brief lapse of tongue placement might desecrate, say, a west Texan drawl. (Singer is a perfectionist, after all.) “I was an actor; I trained in London and went to drama school for two years,” he said. “I gradually started shifting careers after having kids, and I always had a real interest in accents and voice. So I started doing teaching and coaching at graduate school programs.”
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lJqxAN">
Singer told me that Butler first sought out his expertise before he even officially secured the starring role<em>, </em>because he wanted to put his own native California English through the wringer and achieve, in Singer’s words, “the degree of specificity, tracking changes over time, and the overall tonality of vocal quality” that would add up into a transcendent Elvis performance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lHcMei">
The pair frequently sessioned until Butler officially secured the part. Afterward, they engaged in what Singer described as “intensive work,” meeting three to four hours a day, five days a week, for nine months. It was there where Butler became fluent in the intricacies of Elvis Presley, which can only be accomplished bit by bit, as if he were mastering the subtle, reflexive muscle memory of a jump shot or a pole vault.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VmQBAp">
“Learning an accent is really hard, even before you get to the level of the idiolect” — a term that refers to the way an individual person speaks. “Making it so it’s textured, and detailed, and internally consistent and inconsistent in the way that real people are, and having it fully absorbed so you can live and react truthfully through that, takes a lot of time,” said Singer. “In a session, we’re going to be warming up the voice and the articulators, so that you’re not working from a base of habitual patterns, and creating a blank canvas to work with. And then you’re studying, very closely, the physical actions of the entire speech system. Once you have the basic pattern and the spine built, you’re grounding it in the specific reality of the story you’re trying to tell.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZbWfi7">
Singer notes that when Butler was filming <em>Elvis, </em>he’d sometimes be asked to do multiple versions of the singer’s voice across multiple decades in a single day of shooting — embodying the wet-behind-the-ears heartthrob of the ’50s, the revitalized rock ’n’ roll crooner of the ’60s, and the immobile, deteriorating lounge lizard of the ’70s. In some sense, Butler was learning three different voices at the exact same time. “We needed to be incredibly clear about what the handholds were for each of those three periods,” said Singer. “We broke it down with an incredibly fine-toothed comb.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fqF1vv">
All of that labor added up into a genuinely metamorphic performance. <em>Elvis</em> shattered box office records, and made Butler, with his down-home charm and ridiculous good looks, a star. When he toasted the Golden Globe patrons with his newfound sepia timbre, it almost seemed like the King was back. But what does Singer make of all of this? Can a cycle of intensive accent training reforge someone’s voice? Or even their own breed of charisma? The answer is much more nuanced than we might think. Yes, clearly Butler’s voice has changed, but Singer reminds us that he first became famous as a Disney Channel teen in the early 2010s. Nobody should be surprised that he sounds different as a 31-year-old man.
</p>
<div id="EMi8RY">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BSVojR">
“A big part of that discourse is based on the change in his voice overall. The depth and resonance of his voice can be chalked up to maturity. His voice is getting deeper over time, because that’s what voices do,” Singer says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="46eLT6">
Another major component of the shift, he explains, is the countless hours Butler spent singing over the course of his three-year Presley sojourn. If you spent entire days refining “Suspicious Minds” over multiple years, that’s going to “open” and “deepen” your voice, he asserts, regardless if you’re trying to replicate Elvis’s tonality. Singer also says there are elements in Butler’s accent that already resembled Presley’s speech pattern. Both of them — the King and the protégé — possess what linguists call “price smoothing,” where the vowel sound in words like “price” and “time” are reshaped to “Ah” instead of “Aye.” Butler got the role for a reason, after all.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WnyDhQ">
All those factors aside, Singer does posit that it is possible that some of Butler’s accent training did shine through during his acceptance speech. He asks us to pay close attention to the beginning of Butler’s remarks, when he’s clearly overwhelmed by the moment and unleashes a very Elvis-ish interjection: “My boy, my boy.” It was an obvious echo of Elvis; a way to indulge the fans at home, much in the same way Matthew McConaughey tosses out an, “Alright, alright, alright,” in his charming-dirtbag drone. However, once you allow an accent you’ve mastered the slightest bit of oxygen, says Singer, you might find that it sticks around for a while.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8gqli9">
“When you spend all of that time going that deep into Elvis, you’ve carved that groove really deep. The accent is eager to come out and play. You just have to push the right button. And when you start by saying, ‘My boy, my boy,’ you’ve created the conditions that say, ‘Come out and play,’” said Singer. “But even in that speech, you see it somewhere and not in other places. Yes, Austin shortens the vowel sound in the middle of ‘Hollywood’ in the same way Elvis would, but not the one at the end of ‘generosity’ — that one’s just Austin. There are little flickers coming out, but I think most people are reacting to the vocal change, which is mostly due to all of that singing.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9bwrG8">
Singer does not believe that this vocal transformation is a particularly common occurrence. Butler spent an unusual amount of time working on his Elvis idiolect — especially with the Covid intermission that disrupted the film’s production cycle — and by all accounts, he was uniquely committed to conquering every unique nuance of the King. Butler basically said as much on the Golden Globes red carpet, when <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/austin-butler-addresses-elvis-voice-185101726.html">he compared the process of learning <em>Elvis </em>to living in a foreign country</a>. “I’m sure there’s just pieces of my DNA that will always be linked in that way.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JVUAst">
I’m eager to see Butler attempt another magic trick in the future. Perhaps he could star in a definitive Springsteen biopic, and a Dylan one after that. He’s carved the grooves once; I’m sure he can do it again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XcQqlD">
“The thing we’re most compelled by with actors is when they convince you that you’re seeing a full person, who talks a certain way, and lives a certain way, whose speech is connected to their soul and identity. That’s a massive act of the imagination,” finishes Singer. “So, an occupational hazard? Sure.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>The case against pet ownership</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A picture of a large brown-and-white dog on a dirt road, looking down the road away from the camera." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fa18ZaxPYfMFdnRA-W1xDF1Leq4=/304x0:5168x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72168533/GettyImages_1396828732__1_.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Elena Zaretskaya/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why we should aim for a world with fewer but happier pets.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MTIcPC">
Some days, when the doomscrolling becomes too much, I switch up my social media consumption to something I call petscrolling. It’s the act of swiping through an <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thedodo/">endless feed of Instagram reels</a> featuring resilient three-legged rescue dogs hiking in the woods, feisty yet charming shop cats, and the occasional potbellied pet pig splashing around in a kiddie pool.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mgEqJu">
The internet is awash in this feel-good content starring some of the <a href="https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics">250 million</a> animals — nearly one for every person — who populate American households. It all reinforces the inherent goodness of the ancient human-animal bond, and lets us believe that where there are pets — whom most owners consider to be <a href="https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/2sdz2tupqw/toplines_Pets.pdf">family members</a> — there is joy, love, play, and hope.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mjMJ4p">
There’s plenty of all that in my household, thanks to my sweet and spunky rescued pit bull mix, Evvie, one of many animals I’ve lived with during my lifetime. In the middle of 2020, she was picked up as a stray puppy in Greenville, North Carolina, before being passed through several foster homes. My partner and I took her home the day we met her, but only after hours of deliberation over whether I felt I had the time and energy to give her the life she deserved. (Evvie was young and full of energy, and I had just started at Vox.)
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two photos of the authors dog. In one, she’s sitting next to a plant, in the other she’s on the beach." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XZoQBpwMYwSGPqf31ED4FEs-2mM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569814/Collage_Maker_07_Apr_2023_03_29_PM_2527.jpg"/> <cite>Kenny Torrella/Vox; Amruza Birdie</cite>
<figcaption>
Nine-month-old Evvie being cute at home and at the beach.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Auz5WH">
Evvie instantly added so much to our lives, and for a while, I assumed our relationship was reciprocal and that she gets just as much from our bond as I do. But recently I’ve begun to wonder if she’s a lot more bored and frustrated than I previously thought. That led me to read the stirring 2016 book <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo19416930.html"><em>Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets</em></a> by author and bioethicist Jessica Pierce.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Sz1hJ">
Pierce wants to show people like me the shadows beneath the sunny narrative of pet ownership, things like <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2017.1371305?journalCode=gpcl20">physical abuse</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583418/">animal hoarding</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23562811/puppy-mills-pets-dog-breeding-adoption-usda">puppy mills</a>, <a href="https://www.aspca.org/investigations-rescue/dogfighting">dog fighting</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9219431/">bestiality</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dctvq8">
But beyond such extremes, Pierce’s work aims to direct our gaze to where more subtle, but far more common, forms of everyday neglect and cruelty lie. To Pierce, even well-meaning pet owners may have a lot to answer for: punitive training, prolonged captivity and extreme confinement, mutilations (declawing, ear and tail docking), outdoor tethering, lack of autonomy, verbal abuse, monotonous and unhealthy diets, lack of grooming, and inadequate veterinary care. (In 2016, about <a href="https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2019-01-15/pet-ownership-stable-veterinary-care-variable">one-fifth of dog owners and half of cat owners</a> didn’t bring their animal in for routine or preventive care, which is <a href="https://www.mypet.com/basic-pet-care/deserves-annual-checkup.aspx">highly recommended</a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d5njdR">
Add to the bill lack of exercise and socialization, boredom, and even abandonment. (Almost <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/27/inflation-pets-abandoned/">one-fifth</a> of pet owners surveyed late last year said they were considering giving up their pets due to cost amid high inflation, which is generally not an option for other “family members.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f3d3YC">
All this is possible because, unlike children, pets aren’t really family members — they’re property without legal rights and few laws to protect them. And because abuse and neglect primarily occur in the privacy of the home, there’s little accountability for it. Even the most responsible pet owners, which I’d count myself among, are bound to fail to meet the needs of their animals due to other responsibilities and the inherent challenges of keeping a dog or cat in a world made for humans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tcn8uE">
We may see ourselves as the best of animal lovers, but we very well could be inflicting suffering on our pets every day.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5fcqBG">
Pet-keeping “is like a sacred cow in a way,” Pierce told me. “Everybody assumes that pets are well off, and in fact, pampered … All they have to do is lay around in a bed and get fed treats every now and then and catch a Frisbee if they feel like it — like, who wouldn’t want that life?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GxBSch">
“Underneath that is the reality that doing nothing but laying on a bed and having treats fed to you is profoundly frustrating and boring and is not a meaningful life for an animal.”
</p>
<h3 id="YLPLL4">
Animals in a human world
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ISrtw3">
Since humans domesticated dogs (over <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010083118#:~:text=Most%20significantly%2C%20it%20suggests%20that,of%20the%20Last%20Glacial%20Maximum.">20,000 years ago</a>) and cats (over <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-taming-of-the-cat/#:~:text=Experts%20traditionally%20thought%20that%20the,agriculture%20was%20getting%20under%20way.">10,000 years ago</a>), who some say are merely “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/are-cats-domesticated">semi-domesticated</a>,” their roles have evolved largely from one type of work — hunting and guarding — to another: companionship. And counterintuitively, says Pierce, being a constant companion is a tougher job.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tJO3PD">
“Dogs are still working dogs; they’re just doing a different kind of work,” she said. “I think it’s actually much more dangerous and difficult work than any other kind of work we’ve ever asked them to do.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rhJ9dK">
We demand companionship with as little friction as possible, expecting our pets (especially dogs) to be docile and agreeable, and to adapt quickly to the human world, with its countless rules and norms that mean nothing to them. And then when they inevitably fail to do so at first, we deem their natural habits <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/ted-talks-daily/episode/why-all-dogs-are-good-dogs-alexandra-horowitz-301050889">misbehavior</a> in need of correction, or abandonment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QeDKcS">
It’s telling that the world’s most popular dog trainer, Cesar Millan, partly relies on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/opinion/31derr.html">dominance and control</a> to bring his subjects to heel. (Millan popularized the <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/cesar-millan-dominance-theory-dog-training.html">“dominance theory”</a> approach to dog training, which has been <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/cesar-millan-dominance-theory-dog-training.html">debunked by scientists</a> and <a href="https://avsab.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dominance_Position_Statement-download.pdf">criticized</a> by the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior. A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7743949/">meta-analysis</a> found that punitive training can increase dogs’ fear, anxiety, and stress.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HwXlmP">
To serve the guard-to-companion evolution, a <a href="https://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp">$136 billion</a> pet industry has sprung up in recent decades to breed, transport, and sell tens of millions of animals a year — often in <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23562811/puppy-mills-pets-dog-breeding-adoption-usda">terrible conditions</a> — and provide all the accoutrements of the modern pet, from food to toys to veterinary care to <a href="https://design-milk.com/fetch-by-fetch-the-new-perfume-for-dogs/">perfume for dogs</a>. And just as Millan and his legion of followers bend some dogs’ behavior to their will, breeders have done the same for dogs’ genetics to make some breeds particularly <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1800455115">agile</a>, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/breeding-dogs-to-be-cute-and-anthropomorphic-is-animal-cruelty">small, or cute</a> — in other words, more attractive to humans. America’s current most popular breed, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22369273/frenchie-doodle-designer-dogs-problems-breeder-shelter">the French bulldog</a> — and other flat-faced dogs, like pugs, boxers, and Shih Tzus — suffer from a variety of health issues because of how they were bred, leading journalist and Vox contributor Tove Danovich to call the Frenchie “a breed that’s been broken to accommodate us.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Re1ssx">
And while approximately <a href="https://humanepro.org/page/pets-by-the-numbers">30 to 40 percent</a> of cats and dogs are acquired from shelters, not all of those adoptions work out — <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05101-5#:~:text=Garrison%20and%20Weiss4%20found,%2C9%2C10%2C11.">7 to 20 percent</a> are eventually returned, often due to complaints over the animals’ behavior. (Incompatibility with other pets, allergies, and cost are other top reasons).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GeSXHA">
Then there’s the estimated <a href="https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics">97 million</a> rabbits, birds, hamsters, gerbils, mice, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and other small animals kept as pets — mostly wild, social animals who spend their lives largely confined and isolated in cages and tanks. Their owners may love them, but their cramped and unnatural living arrangements are not so different from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2022/9/12/23339898/global-meat-production-forecast-factory-farming-animal-welfare-human-progress">pigs and chickens</a> we raise for food.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/A9zT4szQjNv_QRZnR8-ADZSfrgI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569833/Zi6p1_dogs_and_fish_are_tied_for_the_most_popular_pet_nbsp___2_.png"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uHGTsl">
A number of animal welfare scholars, like Pierce, are challenging the rosy picture that the pet industry — and pet owners, myself included — have painted around the domestic human-animal bond, and sometimes pose a radical question: should we end pet ownership? I’m increasingly inclined to think the answer could be yes — or that at the very least, there should be far fewer pets, and those owners should be prepared to put in the time and effort to provide them with far better lives.
</p>
<h3 id="mVqa8O">
The secret, boring life of pets
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IpEuAN">
Before the cat dads and dog moms come for me, know this: I am one of you.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iEfz8k">
I’m an “animal person,” having spent half my life advocating for, and now reporting on, their welfare. I’ll always share a house with a rescued dog or cat. But Evvie’s needs, and my constant inability to meet them, have led me to question the whole endeavor of pet keeping.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VJnU86">
As much as my partner and I lavish her with treats, walks, tug-of-war, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=767435644695483">playtime with other dogs</a>, enrichment games, and less than legal off-leash romps in the woods outside our home in Silver Spring, Maryland, she spends much of her days with nothing to do but look out the window. We both work from home, which means there’s a fair amount of commotion and engagement to keep her stimulated. But despite that, Evvie is inevitably left to herself for much of the day — and she seems quite bored, with her extended periods of sleep followed by barking at me for attention (which she stops as soon as we play or go on a walk). And Evvie is comparatively lucky: in 2011, the average pet owner spent just about <a href="https://www.scribd.com/read/163570548/The-Book-of-Times-From-Seconds-to-Centuries-a-Compendium-of-Measures#__search-menu_468365">40 minutes a day</a> with their supposed family member.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GMfBL3">
Scientists have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159110000377?via%3Dihub">set up</a> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159110003242?via%3Dihub">cameras</a> to see what dogs do when home alone all day, and it turns out there’s a lot of yawning, barking, howling, whining, and sleeping — signs of anxiety and frustration. Charlotte Burn, a biologist and associate professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London, thinks our pets could also become bored when left alone for hours at a time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Wp7dB">
“For most of us, [boredom is] a transient thing, and we can do something about it,” Burn told me. “But when you cannot do anything about it, it’s incredibly distressing. … Sometimes it’s thought of as a kind of luxury problem for animals, but actually, it may not be so luxurious if [an animal] can’t do anything about it, and it might be actually a massive welfare issue.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I7lGql">
Burn says there are two main animal responses to boredom. The first is drowsiness, brought on by an animal not having enough to do to stay awake, which looks to humans like staring into space, yawning, or sighing, even if the animal isn’t tired. The second is restlessness, even engaging in behaviors to help them stay awake. “They’ll try and escape their situation,” she says. “They’ll take risks, they’ll explore things even if they don’t like them, just basically to try and almost wake themselves up and make something happen.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A small white shih tzu dog with brown ears sits pressed between a set of blinds and an outer window, staring outside from a bay window on a blue house." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q9Dw9IDCQ4oA3GXFHVxy4iw_B8I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569866/GettyImages_1464300667.jpg"/> <cite>Gabriel Mello/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A Shih Tzu dog looking out a window in London, Ontario, Canada. Some animal welfare researchers worry dogs and other pets could experience a lot of boredom.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g9OoGh">
When we think about our pets, we naturally think about the brief time we spend with them — not their quiet, dull hours while we’re occupied with work, child care, friends, or errands while they’re cooped up. They might be excited when we come home not necessarily because they’re so delighted to see us, but because there’s finally an end to the silence that fills so much of their day.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zSD6dq">
“I think dogs are very adaptable, and become accustomed, often, to their lack of choices and autonomy,” said Alexandra Horowitz, a leading expert on dog behavior and head of the <a href="https://dogcognition.weebly.com/">Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab</a> at Barnard College, over email. “But I think that it’s not a good situation for them.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LVxsXA">
Just how uneven the relationship is between pets and their human owners was demonstrated during the pandemic when, lonely and stuck at home, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/07/covid-dogs-return-to-work/">one in five</a> households adopted a new pet. As new pet owners returned to work, however, their newly lonely pets struggled with the sudden change, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/pet-insurance/survey-78-pet-owners-acquired-pets-during-pandemic/">showing high rates</a> of chewing, digging, barking, escaping, pacing, hiding, and indoor urination and defecation.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A green bar chart shows the frequency of different behaviors displayed by pets when their owners spend more time away from home, from a 2022 survey. The top two, both at 47 percent, are barking and howling, and chewing, digging and destruction." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SLpTJfshqY1SowlCLwwerHG81Bo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569872/UKn5c_pandemic_pets_are_having_a_hard_time_adjusting_to_their_people_going_back_to_work_nbsp___7_.png"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PIGGcQ">
Our pets might not be so bored if they just had some autonomy, but having a pet means regularly denying it. If Evvie’s hungry, she can’t grab a snack from the fridge. If she wants to play with another dog, I have to schedule it, or take her to the dog park (which for some dogs can be a blast and for others, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/smarter-living/the-dog-park-is-bad-actually.html">overwhelming or dangerous</a>, with some dogs dominating others, leading to stress and injuries). If she wants to explore the great outdoors, she has to wait until I have the time to take her for a walk — and even then, she’s tethered to a pesky leash, which I gently pull whenever she does something so harmless as stray too far into a neighbor’s yard to smell something that interests her or race ahead to greet a nearby dog or human.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fArZ2V">
As good as Evvie has it compared to most pets, she’s still a dog living in a world built for humans, and that means a life of constantly thwarted desires. The ability to meet her basic needs is entirely dependent upon someone else. Pets as we own them live in our worlds, not theirs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bWxfNh">
What about cats? Cat behaviorists say they too can get <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/life/pets/boredom-can-be-bad-for-your-cat-s-health-here-s-how-you-can-help-1.6583934">bored</a>. Few issues in the pet community spark as much debate as to whether cats should stay indoors or be given the freedom to come and go as they please in order to meet their needs for exercise, mental stimulation, and hunting, especially when that hunting results in the mass death of wildlife. (A 2013 <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380">paper</a> estimates that cats in the US kill 1.3 to 4 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion small mammals annually, while wind turbines are estimated to kill a <a href="https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/">few hundred thousand</a> birds to <a href="https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/weekly-data-how-many-birds-are-really-killed-by-wind-turbines/">north of a million</a>, each year).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hRnVPC">
The estimate has been <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-really-know-that-cats-kill-by-the-billions-not-so-fast">contested</a>, but even if it’s grossly off-base, it’s still a whole lot of death that’s a direct result of humanity’s semi-domestication and breeding of a once-wild animal. It’s also another example of a complicated ethical issue in which the welfare of pets is in conflict with the welfare of other animals (like <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/petco-expands-popular-wholehearted-line-with-new-human-grade-fresh-food-for-dogs-301611352.html">killing animals for meat</a> to feed pets).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TibXpq">
So if we’re keeping more pets than ever, but many of the dogs are unhealthy and bored, the cats are either bored or cute little wildlife hunters, and the pet fish and birds are cruelly confined, what do we do about it? Some leading animal welfare experts say we ought to shrink the pet population and shift pet ownership from a casual hobby to a serious responsibility.
</p>
<h3 id="p9LW5n">
A world without pets — or one with happier pets?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4MMblp">
Starting in 1979, Bob Barker of <em>The Price is Right</em> signed off each episode with a public service announcement: “This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population — have your pets spayed or neutered.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vzwBQ5">
1979 was a different time for cats and dogs in America; by one estimate, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981279/">7.6 to 10 million</a> of them were euthanized annually around that time. While the national pet population has grown considerably in the years since, the number of shelter cats and dogs euthanized — while still depressingly high — has fallen to an <a href="https://www.aspca.org/helping-people-pets/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics">estimated 920,000</a> per year. There are a lot fewer strays, too. For example, in the mid-1980s New Jersey had 160,000 cats and dogs roaming the streets, which fell to 80,000 in 2014.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b4lL3T">
The dramatic reduction came about as a result of increased pet sterilization at veterinary clinics, a rise in shelters and animal welfare organizations, and PSA campaigns like Barker’s and others from animal welfare groups — such as “Adopt, don’t shop” — all contributing to a cultural shift in how we get, and treat, our pets. But while <a href="https://humanepro.org/page/pets-by-the-numbers">30 to 40</a> percent of cats and dogs are acquired from animal shelters, many of them — especially dogs — are still the product of breeding: whether at large-scale <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23562811/puppy-mills-pets-dog-breeding-adoption-usda">puppy mills</a>, in which dogs are raised and sold more like livestock than family members, or from more informal, small-scale home operations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SzNfnA">
But what if every prospective dog and cat owner were to actually follow the “adopt, don’t shop” motto and Barker’s plea to spay or neuter their pet? It would be a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men"><em>Children of Men</em></a> situation for domesticated pets. The pet population would rapidly shrink before virtually disappearing altogether, ushering in a world unimaginable — perhaps not even worth inhabiting — for the most diehard cat and dog lovers.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A line chart follows the ups and downs of what percent of US households have a pet, from 2011 to 2020. It starts around 62 percent and ends at 70 percent." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ktJfC8K_jZgOPnn_tos6iZtpmBY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569891/LhdTO_the_share_of_households_with_a_pet_grew_8_percentage_points_from_2011_to_2020__2_.png"/>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CZ0ROy">
Would that be so bad? For pet-loving humans, definitely. My relationship with Evvie is deeply enriching (for me, at least). I’m excited to see her each morning, to watch her run full-speed through the forest, roughhouse with other dogs, and wag uncontrollably each time I walk through the front door. Life without dogs would be far duller.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fYFfk9">
But keeping pets shouldn’t only be about me or you — it’s a relationship, and one in which humans arguably take much more than they give. And by continuing pet keeping as it’s done now — by breeding millions of new puppies, kittens, fish, and other animals each year — we’re making the decision that all the overt abuse and lower-grade cruelty and neglect is more than made up for by the joy wrought by the human-animal bond. I’m no longer so sure it is.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZiTK2D">
Gary Francione and Anna Charlton, a firebrand animal rights couple who teach law at Rutgers University, don’t think it is and have advocated for the abolition of pet ownership.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FrN67b">
“Domesticated animals are completely dependent on humans, who control every aspect of their lives,” they wrote in a <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-keeping-a-pet-is-fundamentally-unethical">provocative essay</a> for Aeon<em> </em>in 2016. “Unlike human children, who will one day become autonomous, non-humans never will. That is the entire point of domestication — we want domesticated animals to depend on us. They remain perpetually in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything that is of relevance to them.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pb13Fs">
Because pets are property under the law, they argue, welfare standards will always be too low. We need to care for the ones in existence, but stop breeding new ones.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sLSdzq">
“I love living with dogs, but even I think that owning dogs can easily be considered morally questionable and may change in the future,” said Horowitz, the dog cognition expert.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XZYp8x">
I relate to Horowitz’s doubts, and find Francione’s and Charlton’s arguments persuasive, though given the popularity of pets — and the ancient human-animal bond — abolishing pet ownership is a political and cultural nonstarter. What might be more realistic is to radically rethink how we acquire and treat them, and just what we owe them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k7BYfK">
When I asked <a href="https://marcbekoff.com/">Marc Bekoff</a>, an ethologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who’s co-authored books with Pierce (and Jane Goodall), about whether we should phase out pet ownership, he said it’s perhaps a few thousand years too late to ask that question.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DgLzgy">
“In the best of all possible worlds, we wouldn’t have evolved to where we are now with dogs, because so many of the problems with dogs come down to selective breeding by humans deciding which traits they find cute or appealing,” he said, pointing to flat-faced dogs like the French bulldog.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mU4NRw">
He’d like to see puppy and kitten mills phased out amid a major cultural shift wherein people would only get a dog or cat if they have the time, money, patience, and energy to give them a good life. The motto would be: fewer pets with better lives. “You’re dealing with a sentient being who has very specific and enduring needs, and if you can’t fulfill them,” you should think twice, he said.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Seven dogs sit, stand and jump in a row of five metal cages at an animal shelter." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/u_yn5ktP7ZGZkYLZ9Er4FzMt4OI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569895/GettyImages_1409550436.jpg"/> <cite>Brandon Bell/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Dogs are kept in cages at an animal shelter on July 18, 2022, in Houston, Texas. The shelter had reported being over capacity and understaffed as a steady increase of animal returns and rescues overwhelmed the facility.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZThV78">
Pierce, a parent herself, has written about the importance of families with children thinking twice about getting a pet. Kids can be excited about a new pet one month and move on to another interest the next month — or just fail to take good care of the animal in the unique ways the pet needs (because they’re a child!). Families with children can also be more prone to neglecting their pets because child care, understandably, comes first.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GvFy4q">
While a lot of people call their pets “fur babies,” we’d be wise to think of them more as actual dependents, because they are. For most of human history, childhood <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-3938-0_2">wasn’t really a thing</a> — children existed, at least in part, in service of their parents as additional labor. That has, of course, changed drastically over the last few hundred years, and with it, attitudes and habits around how we treat children. As part of that shift, though, the expectations for parenting rose as well, so much so that those expectations <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html#:~:text=Financial%20concerns%20also%20led%20people,lack%20of%20paid%20family%20leave.">have become a major reason why people are having fewer or no children</a>. Perhaps the same should happen for pets in the future. While the average pet probably has a much better life today than they did just 50 years ago, there’s still much room for improvement, but the demands would be such that fewer people would be in a position to become pet owners.
</p>
<h3 id="S9zGoO">
What pet owners should know
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Va91WY">
If you do decide to get a cat or dog, it’s imperative to adopt so as to prevent one more euthanasia among the <a href="https://www.aspca.org/helping-people-pets/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics">millions of animals</a> languishing in shelters, living lives that are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3398531/">likely worse</a> than what they might experience even with a generally neglectful owner. And experts say it’s critical to understand that a good life is subjective — every individual animal is different — but it goes far beyond the basic requirements of sufficient food and water, protection from injury, and a walk here and there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XMDV1q">
When <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=LOJTcpUrr80C&amp;q=companionship#v=snippet&amp;q=%22for%20the%20children%22&amp;f=false">surveyed</a>, people are motivated to acquire a pet to fulfill their own emotional or practical needs: companionship, love, and affection, someone to greet them, property protection, or help while hunting. But taking a more animal-centered approach to keeping pets — focusing as well on what the human can <em>give</em> in the relationship — would go a long way to improving their quality of life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wQp99q">
For example, it doesn’t just mean taking the dog on a walk but letting them direct the route and giving them as much time as they’d like to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/science/dogs-can-train-us-to-have-a-better-sense-of-smell.html">smell</a>, which is how they make sense of the world around them. For Bekoff, it also means ensuring they’re not left alone all day while their human is at work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T02xZg">
“Some people I know just leave their house at seven in the morning, they go to work, they go work out, or they go out for dinner, so the average dog is just going to be alone all day,” he said. “And then they get home and they’re tired, and they don’t walk them and they give them crappy food. Those people should not have a dog.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g4FP0x">
While most <a href="https://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/do-you-let-your-cat-roam-outside-we-polled-veterinary-professionals-and-readers">veterinarians</a> oppose letting cats free to roam outdoors, largely to prevent more cats from becoming roadkill, only <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7909512/">six out of 10</a> are kept entirely indoors. Whichever side of the indoor-outdoor debate you choose, there are ways to give cats more of what they need. If your cat does have outdoor access, try giving them a <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/how-stop-cats-killing-birds">colorful collar</a>, which catches birds’ attention, gives them time to fly away, and can drastically reduce the avian body count. You can also try taking your <a href="https://www.inverse.com/science/should-you-take-your-cat-on-walks">cat for a walk</a> on a leash (even if your neighbors might give you a double take).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r5YUrT">
“If you decide to keep a cat indoors, then you really have to work hard to compensate for what you’ve taken from them,” Pierce said. “[Your house] should look like a house where a cat lives, with perches and highways that they can walk across high up above the floor.” She recommends the book — this is the real title and author name — <em>Total Cat Mojo: The Ultimate Guide to Life with Your Cat</em> by <a href="https://www.jacksongalaxy.com/blog/">Jackson Galaxy</a>, whose YouTube channel includes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaVttlOqcX4">videos</a> on how to cat-ify one’s home.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two cats sit on perches in an elaborate outdoor “catio,” with netting draped in a large area, and carpets, ramps, and toys throughout it." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3XtJxAwNRtDteWgem9FbY-vCq6k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569911/GettyImages_1452054239.jpg"/> <cite>David Russell/EyeEm/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Cats in an elaborate “catio” at a home in Labrador City, Canada. Cat experts recommend cats be given plenty of perches and walkways — even elaborate catios as seen in this photo — for enrichment.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l3qwfE">
Pets could benefit from more <a href="https://www.rd.com/list/best-diet-for-dogs-according-to-vets/">diverse</a> <a href="https://consciouscat.net/rotation-diet-for-cats/">diets</a>, and there are also plenty of “enrichment” toys for cats and dogs. More importantly, <a href="https://wdwacademy.dog/the-importance-of-enrichment-for-dogs/">enrichment games</a> can be played with dogs to put their innate scavenging and sniffing skills to work. Good starting points for more animal-centered pet keeping include applying concepts like <a href="https://time.com/5880219/science-of-dog-training/">positive reinforcement training</a> and <a href="https://iaabcjournal.org/cooperative-care/">cooperative care</a>, and studying material from experts like Pierce, Horowitz, Galaxy, Bekoff, and anthrozoologist and cat expert John Bradshaw.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4hkRZ2">
It’s harder for me to conceive of how one could ethically keep smaller animals, like <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/2/582">birds</a>, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/10/2964">reptiles</a>, <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&amp;context=acwp_lab">rodents</a>, <a href="https://iaabcjournal.org/the-welfare-of-captive-fish/">fish</a>, and <a href="https://bvajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/vetr.2180">amphibians</a>. Unlike cats and dogs, these are naturally wild, undomesticated animals who are social and meant to fly, swim, or move great distances in a single day. As pets, they suffer in isolation and intensive confinement. It might be time we stop breeding them (or taking them from the wild, as some are actually <a href="https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion-exotic-pet-trade">trafficked wildlife</a>). We should give as good a life as possible to the ones who remain, through larger and more enriching enclosures, and eventually phase out of keeping them as pets.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A colorful bird, with a green and yellow body, orange head, and red beak, looks at the camera from a small black eye, its head tilted. It sits on a white plastic perch inside a black birdcage." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fq0Chk1Jry0XHmJscvINL_V_4ho=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569915/GettyImages_1249191001.jpg"/> <cite>Rizky Panuntun/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A Fischer’s lovebird, a species of parrot, in a cage. <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3976323/" target="_blank">Research</a> has found that captive parrots age faster.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A pet bearded dragon in a tank, with a sandy floor, natural rocks, and a living plant nearby." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NILieo7rlNJMuccaHqj02Ec1hOY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24569919/GettyImages_1318443429.jpg"/> <cite>iStockphoto/Freer Law/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Bearded dragons are among the most popular reptiles kept as pets.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kTcLfH">
For the animals we do have in our homes, we need to bring an attitude of give and take to the relationship, and we’re going to have to give a lot more than we’re currently taking.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aRJpfw">
“You’re really still asking these dogs or cats or other animals to live in a human-dominated world,” Bekoff said. “Cutting them some slack and giving them more choice and control or agency over their lives is a win-win for everyone.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="50O2p8">
When my partner and I adopted Evvie six months into the pandemic, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pandemic-pet-boom-has-legs-11654853400">like so many others</a>, I figured that a brisk walk or two a day, occasional playtime with other dogs, and brief games of tug-of-war between work meetings was enough to give her a good life. I’ve come to realize that’s the bare minimum.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l7ey7r">
I think a world with far fewer pets is a better one, though I know Evvie won’t be my last, so long as there are animals in need of adoption from shelters. But rescuing a dog or cat is just the start. Those who are mildly interested in acquiring a pet need to think long and hard about the steep responsibility that lies ahead, and us self-described animal lovers ought to do much more to live up to our stated values.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The ongoing scandal over leaked US intel documents, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An old, dripping outdoor water faucet." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CyvdvU9f6l0JPWk5SzUSKr9UCmA=/220x0:4936x3537/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72167442/1239625064.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Wolfram Steinberg/picture alliance via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
What you need to know about those top-secret files that got posted on Discord.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tZ4CXl">
On Friday, news organizations realized something quite remarkable: A trove of 100 secret US military and intelligence documents had been posted in the far-flung corners of the internet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tW0WDA">
The files reveal closely held information about US operations, like a suggestion there are up to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/09/leaked-pentagon-documents-draw-denials-from-us-allies">100 NATO special operations officials</a> in Ukraine, and details about casualty counts for both Russia and Ukraine. They indicate that the US has infiltrated Russian intelligence groups and has inside knowledge of <a href="https://zetter.substack.com/p/leaked-pentagon-document-claims-russian">hacking attempts on a Canadian pipeline</a>. And they show in some detail what the US has gleaned from spying on partners such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/08/leaked-documents-israel-mossad-judicial-reform/">Israel</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2023/russia-ukraine-war-documents-leak#leak-pentagon-south-korea-ukraine">South Korea</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Bh7lN">
And most bizarrely, the documents surfaced more than a month earlier on anonymous, decentralized web forums dedicated to gaming, like a <a href="https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/09/the-thug-shaker-leaks/">Discord channel</a> devoted to Minecraft and after that on 4chan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SDk3eI">
The classified files emerged as recently photographed folded documents that may have appeared as daily briefings for the military’s top leaders. If they are authentic, the documents represent a major intelligence breach and offer insights into the US role in defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion and other major geopolitical arenas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N09eqd">
For now, the documents’ ambiguous provenance, the somewhat surprising platform on which they were first posted, the signs that at least several were <a href="https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1644226867623280641">doctored</a>, and the inability to independently verify them means it’s difficult to draw sweeping conclusions. The motive for the documents’ publication is obscured by the jokey online exchanges in which they were shared.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VPlYCh">
But the US government seems to be treating the documents as legitimate. The Justice Department opened an investigation into the leaks, the Defense Department and several other government agencies are together assessing any impact on national security, and Pentagon leaders are <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/pentagon-shocked-leak-classified-plans-00091278">angry and scrambling</a> to undo the damage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="itGb0J">
Gavin Wilde, a Carnegie Endowment expert who previously worked in the White House and at the National Security Agency, says the documents expose the contradiction between the incredible intelligence-gathering capacity of US agencies and their apparent sloppiness in handling sensitive information. “It’s just the latest indication that the intelligence bureaucracy is both remarkably adept and remarkably inept in this new misinformation environment,” he told me. “The way we think about counterintelligence clearly needs to be more coherent.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AiulF8">
“That’s a paradox to me,” Wilde continued, “that on one hand, these documents appear to show an intelligence community that excels at what it’s charged with doing, while being kind of catastrophically inept at another aspect of what it’s supposed to do. … It really vexes me that it took over a month for them to gain popular notice.”
</p>
<h3 id="ttVQNI">
What the leaks reveal
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bRmvTl">
The documents, according to several former officials I spoke with, seem to be photographed from a briefing book for a high-level US military leader and perhaps shared with allies. The number of individuals who might have access to such documents, these sources speculated, might number into the hundreds or even low thousands. What was most noteworthy is the scope of the information, which includes a variety of maps that show Ukrainian and Russian positions and in-depth intelligence reports.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zpU8ur">
“The documents appear — and I want to emphasize appear — to potentially reveal sources and methods,” says Glenn Gerstell, who served as general counsel of the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020 and now works as an adviser to the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FiRBLS">
This may compromise the US’s ability, for example, to spy on Russia.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZXxnQe">
The breadth and depth of the documents are also important. The documents are current — dated in late February or early March of this year — and cover a wide range of topics, beyond just Ukraine. While 100 documents is a lot, it’s not near the scale of the leaks published by Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden. Asked if the leak was contained or whether more files were out there, White House spokesperson John Kirby <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/nsc-classified-military-documents-leak-00091258">said</a>, “We don’t know. We truly don’t.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AaxozN">
Among other surprising findings, the documents reveal the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad supported protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he pushed for a <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23629744/why-israelis-protesting-netanyahu-far-right-government-judiciary-overhaul">major judicial overhaul in the country</a>. The Washington Post cites a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/08/leaked-documents-israel-mossad-judicial-reform/">document</a> that says Mossad leaders “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government, according to signals intelligence.” Israel has not provided weapons to Ukraine, and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2023/russia-ukraine-war-documents-leak/leak-suggests-us-could-try-to-press-israel-to-provide-lethal-aid-to-ukraine">document</a> from February 2023 shows “scenarios that could drive Jerusalem to provide lethal aid” to Ukraine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j9JhgL">
The leaked files offer new details about personnel losses in the Russia-Ukraine war, which both sides of the conflict have tried to keep secret. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/us/politics/leaked-documents-russia-ukraine-war.html">says</a>, “One document reports the Russians have suffered 189,500 to 223,000 casualties, including up to 43,000 killed in action,” while another notes that “as of February, Ukraine had suffered 124,500 to 131,000 casualties, with up to 17,500 killed in action.” Pro-Russia accounts on the social media platform Telegram doctored some of those casualty numbers before recirculating the documents.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f5NchT">
Several maps show detailed troop movements, the state of Ukrainian and Russian weaponry, and even the “Mud-Frozen Ground Timeline,” by month, which could be helpful in assessing the path of tanks on the battlefield. Some of that information may already be outdated, but given the dates printed on the files, it may give Russia and other US adversaries the ability to reverse-engineer the sources of US intelligence.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QCuiyb">
“This has the real potential for actually genuinely hurting national security,” says Gerstell. “In prior leaks, people said that, but what they really meant was it was politically embarrassing or awkward or hurt our relationships with allies. And this is a little different.”
</p>
<h3 id="OHVtAN">
Why did these documents get leaked, and what happens now?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NBUVF7">
It’s not at all clear who the source of the leak might be — a disgruntled US civilian or uniformed official? Someone simply trying to win an argument online? The timing might imply someone who is trying to shape the US and NATO response to an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. But that could be meant to box in the Western response to push for unmitigated support, or to embarrass the US, or to show the depth of US assistance to Ukraine on the ground.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SiYOxH">
Whatever the content of the files, the leak itself is likely to be favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin in at least two regards: netting a propaganda win and showing valuable insights into how US agencies work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="02olBr">
Though some analysts have argued that its origin is Russian intelligence, it’s not clear why they would want to blow up such a goldmine of a source and publicize inside information. And the hastiness of the files being posted on seemingly arbitrary forums suggests it’s not an influence operation or malevolent intelligence agency. “I cannot comment on this in any way. You and I know that there is in fact a tendency to always blame everything on Russia,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-asked-if-russia-behind-us-intelligence-leaks-says-moscow-is-always-2023-04-10/">said</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cYrItn">
The Biden administration will now be racing to ensure that the leak is plugged. That may result in a major tightening of access, and probably in some cases a blanket shutdown of certain intelligence sharing, perhaps to the detriment of US policymaking as different channels get more siloed. “It will definitely kick off another cycle of caution, where everybody kind of starts to lock things down and start to reassess how much they’re comfortable sharing with each other,” Wilde told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F2px6y">
In a statement, Discord said that they were cooperating with the investigation and could not provide any additional details.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OWYpvj">
“This is information that has no business in the public domain,” Kirby told reporters from the White House lectern. “It has no business, if you don’t mind me saying, on the front pages of newspapers or on television. It is not intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WySnu5">
But now that it is out there, it reveals the very human aspects of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/9/21/23356800/us-testing-tech-ukraine-russia-war">high-tech wars</a> the US is engaged in. For all of the advanced weaponry the US is giving Ukraine, this is a war between humans, and when you have a lot of humans with access to highly secret information, there is always the potential for a breach. People make mistakes, and they apparently love to show off their access in posts on platforms like Discord.
</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>Spare a thought for the unfortunate, too: Ashwin</strong> - The understanding of a bowler needs to come from the team management and the situation is improving with good captains around</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>Chennai, Kolkata could well be Pakistan’s preferred venues for their World Cup games</strong> - The World Cup will start tentatively on October 5, with 46 matches, including final set to be played across 12 Indian cities</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>Chennai ITF title-winner Digvijay vows to get better</strong> - The triumph, after three first-round losses, comes as no surprise given his skills</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>IPL 2023: CSK vs RR | Rajasthan’s Jaiswal and Buttler face Chepauk ‘test’ against formidable Chennai</strong> - The toss is always an important factor in Chennai as chasing anything above 170 to 175 could be a risky proposition.</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>BCCI plans massive upgrade of 5 stadiums ahead of ODI World Cup</strong> - The Eden Gardens in Kolkata, Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi and Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai are among those that will be revamped ahead of the 2023 ODI World Cup</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>Amrita School of Ayurveda, RAV sign MoU to create repository of clinical cases</strong> - The MoU was signed by Kousthubha Upadhyaya on behalf of the Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth and Swami Sankaramritananda Puri on behalf of the Amrita School of Ayurveda.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BJP task force on TSPSC paper leaks to reach out to President</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>Watch | This Kerala family handcrafts and restores violins</strong> - A video on Vinay Murali who handcrafts and customises violins for musicians across the country</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>Amritpal’s aide Daljit Kalsi detained under NSA after due process of law: Punjab Govt tells HC</strong> - Relatives of other NSA detainees in the Amritpal Singh case have also petitioned the court to quash the detention orders</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>India rejects China’s objection to Amit Shah’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh</strong> - External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said China objecting to such visits does not stand to reason and will not change the reality</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: The deadly landmines killing hundreds</strong> - In Ukraine, thousands of landmines scattered throughout the Kharkiv region are destroying lives.</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>Shiveluch volcano: Video shows Russian village under 8.5cm of ash</strong> - Footage shows streets covered in a thick layer of dust as a 10km ash plume rises from the volcano.</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>Pentagon leak shows S Korea torn on sending Ukraine weapons</strong> - The document, seen by the BBC, reveals a conversation between high-level South Korean officials.</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>Europe migrant crisis: Italy moves to rescue 1,200 people on boats</strong> - Two overcrowded fishing boats carrying 800 and 400 people are found off the coast of Sicily.</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>Evan Gershkovich: US says journalist is wrongfully detained in Russia</strong> - Russia accuses Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal of spying, but the publication denies this.</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>No drug is safe: Drug developers decry Texas abortion pill ruling</strong> - Over 400 biopharma leaders are calling for the ruling to be reversed. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930602">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Today’s best deals: Microsoft Spring Sale discounts Xbox games, Surface, and more</strong> - Microsoft’s Spring Sale also includes a ton of cheap movies and game titles - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930480">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ex-Twitter CEO who was fired by Musk sues company over unpaid legal expenses</strong> - Lawsuit: Twitter refuses to reimburse costs related to federal investigations. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930592">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>For the first time, you can now watch every Star Trek movie in 4K HDR</strong> - 13 Star Trek movies are available in 4K, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930523">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Apple releases last week’s security patches for older iPhones, iPads, and Macs</strong> - iOS 15.7.5, macOS 12.6.5 and 11.7.6 patch “actively exploited” security holes. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1930503">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>What do French people call a really bad Thursday?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A trajeudi
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/CyndersParadigm"> /u/CyndersParadigm </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12i8rpy/what_do_french_people_call_a_really_bad_thursday/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12i8rpy/what_do_french_people_call_a_really_bad_thursday/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Soviet joke: A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, “You don’t have any meat?”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The clerk says, “No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.”
</p>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OskarTheRed"> /u/OskarTheRed </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12id0k0/soviet_joke_a_man_walks_into_a_shop_he_asks_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12id0k0/soviet_joke_a_man_walks_into_a_shop_he_asks_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Soviet joke: A worker standing in a liquor line says: “I have had enough, save my place, I am going to shoot Gorbachev.”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Two hours later he returns to claim his place in line.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
His friends ask, “Did you get him?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“No, the line there was even longer than the line here.”
</p>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OskarTheRed"> /u/OskarTheRed </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12id1zd/soviet_joke_a_worker_standing_in_a_liquor_line/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12id1zd/soviet_joke_a_worker_standing_in_a_liquor_line/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A classic from Barry Cryer</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Three guys are walking through the woods when they find a lamp. One of them picks it up, rubs it, and out pops a Genie. It booms “You have finally freed me after all these years, so I grant each one of you 3 wishes.” The first guy immediately blurts out “I want a billion dollars.” POOF, he’s holding a printout that shows his account balance is now in fact $1,000,000,003.50. The second man thinks for a bit, then says “I want to be the richest man alive.” POOF, he’s holding papers showing his net worth is now well over 100 billion. The third guy thinks even longer about his wish, then says “l want my left arm to rotate clockwise for the rest of my life.” POOF, his arm starts rotating.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Genie tells them it’s time for their second wish. First guy says: “I want to be married to the most beautiful woman on earth.” POOF, a stunning beauty wraps herself around his arm. Second guy says “I want to be good-looking and charismatic, so I can have every girl I want.” POOF, his looks change and the first guy’s wife immediately starts flirting with him. Third guy says “l want my right arm to rotate counter-clockwise until I die.” POOF, now both his arms are rotating, in opposite directions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The genie tells them to think very carefully about their third wish. First guy does, and after a while says “I never want to become sick or injured, I want to stay healthy until I die.” POOF, his complexion improves, his acne is gone and his knees don’t bother him any more. Second guy says “I never want to grow old. I want to stay 29 forever.” POOF, he looks younger already. Third guy smiles triumphantly and says “My last wish is for my head to nod back and forth.” POOF, he’s now nodding his head and still flailing his arms around. The genie wishes them good luck, disappears, and the men soon go their separate ways.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Many years later they meet again and chat about how things have been going. First guy is ecstatic: “I’ve invested the money and multiplied it many times over, so me and my family will be among the richest of the rich pretty much forever. My wife is a freak in the sheets, and I’ve never gotten so much as a cold in all these years.” Second guy smiles and says “Well, I built charities worldwide with a fraction of my wealth, I’m still the richest guy alive and also revered for my good deeds. I haven’t aged a day since we last met, and yes, your wife is pretty wild in bed.” Third guy walks in, flailing his arms around and nodding his head, and says: “Guys, I think I fucked up.”
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Rich-P"> /u/Rich-P </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12hv2fu/a_classic_from_barry_cryer/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12hv2fu/a_classic_from_barry_cryer/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>For a morale boost and publicity stunt, Putin visits a Moscow elementary school</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He talks to them about how Russia is a powerful country admired around the world. At the end of the talk, there is some time for questions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Little Sasha puts her hand up and says “I have a question: why did we invade Crimea and Ukraine?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Putin says “Good questions…” But just as he is about to answer, the bell goes, and the kids go for lunch.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When they come back, they sit back down and there is time for some more questions so another girl, Misha, puts her hand up and says,
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I have three questions. My Questions are: Why did the Russians invade Crimea and Ukraine? Why did the bell go 20 minutes early for lunch? And where is Sasha?”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/FireF1ghtersSoldOut"> /u/FireF1ghtersSoldOut </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12hijqu/for_a_morale_boost_and_publicity_stunt_putin/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/12hijqu/for_a_morale_boost_and_publicity_stunt_putin/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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