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<title>18 July, 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>Pre-existing interferon gamma conditions the lung to mediate early control of SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Interferons (IFNs) are critical for anti-viral host defence. Type-1 and type-3 IFNs are typically associated with early control of viral replication and promotion of inflammatory immune responses; however, less is known about the role of IFN{gamma} in anti-viral immunity, particularly in the context of SARS-CoV-2. We have previously observed that lung infection with attenuated bacteria Mycobacterium bovis BCG achieved though intravenous (iv) administration provides strong protection against SARS-CoV-2 (SCV2) infection and disease in two mouse models. Assessment of the pulmonary cytokine milieu revealed that iv BCG induces a robust IFN{gamma} response and low levels of IFN{beta}. Here we examined the role of ongoing IFN{gamma} responses due to pre-established bacterial infection on SCV2 disease outcomes in two murine models. We report that IFN{gamma} is required for iv BCG induced reduction in pulmonary viral loads and that this outcome is dependent on IFN{gamma} receptor expression by non-hematopoietic cells. Further analysis revealed that BCG infection promotes the upregulation of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) with reported anti-viral activity by pneumocytes and bronchial epithelial cells in an IFN{gamma}-dependent manner, suggesting a possible mechanism for the observed protection. Finally, we confirmed the importance of IFN{gamma} in these anti-viral effects by demonstrating that the recombinant cytokine itself provides strong protection against SCV2 challenge when administered intranasally. Together, our data show that a pre-established IFN{gamma} response within the lung is protective against SCV2 infection, suggesting that concurrent or recent infections that drive IFN{gamma} may limit the pathogenesis of SCV2 and supporting possible prophylactic uses of IFN{gamma} in COVID-19 management.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.15.549135v1" target="_blank">Pre-existing interferon gamma conditions the lung to mediate early control of SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Using big sequencing data to identify chronic SARS-Coronavirus-2 infections</strong> -
<div>
The evolution of SARS-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been characterized by the periodic emergence of highly divergent variants, many of which may have arisen during chronic infections of immunocompromised individuals. Here, we harness a global phylogeny of ~11.7 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes and search for clades composed of sequences with identical metadata (location, age, and sex) spanning more than 21 days. We postulate that such clades represent repeated sampling from the same chronically infected individual. A set of 271 such chronic-like clades was inferred, and displayed signatures of an elevated rate of adaptive evolution, in line with validated chronic infections. More than 70% of adaptive mutations present in currently circulating variants are found in BA.1 chronic-like clades that predate the circulating variants by months, demonstrating the predictive nature of such clades. We find that in chronic-like clades the probability of observing adaptive mutations is approximately 10-20 higher than that in global transmission chains. We next employ language models to find mutations most predictive of chronic infections and use them to infer hundreds of additional chronic-like clades in the absence of metadata and phylogenetic information. Our proposed approach presents an innovative method for mining extensive sequencing data and providing valuable insights into future evolutionary patterns.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.16.549184v1" target="_blank">Using big sequencing data to identify chronic SARS-Coronavirus-2 infections</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>SIRT-1 is required for release of enveloped picornaviruses</strong> -
<div>
Enterovirus D68 is a re-emerging enterovirus that causes acute respiratory illness in infants and has recently been linked to Acute Flaccid Myelitis. Here, we show that the histone deacetylase, SIRT-1, is essential for autophagy and EV-D68 infection. Knockdown of SIRT-1 inhibits autophagy and reduces EV-D68 extracellular titers. The proviral activity of SIRT-1 does not require its deacetylase activity or functional autophagy. SIRT-1’s proviral activity is, we demonstrate, mediated through the repression of ER stress. Inducing ER stress through thapsigargin treatment or SERCA2A knockdown in SIRT-1 knockdown cells had no additional effect on EV-D68 extracellular titers. Knockdown of SIRT-1 also decreases poliovirus and SARS-CoV-2 titers but not coxsackievirus B3. In non-lytic conditions, EV-D68 is primarily released in an enveloped form, and SIRT-1 is required for this process. Our data show that SIRT-1, through its translocation to the cytosol, is critical to promote the release of enveloped EV-D68 viral particles.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.12.503821v3" target="_blank">SIRT-1 is required for release of enveloped picornaviruses</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Megakaryocyte infection by SARS-CoV-2 drives the formation of pathogenic afucosylated IgG antibodies in mice</strong> -
<div>
Despite more than 90% of total plasma fucosylated IgG, specific IgGs with low core fucosylation are found sporadically in response to enveloped virus infections and to alloantigens on blood cells. IgG responses with low core fucosylation are directly pathogenic in SARS-CoV-2 and dengue infections. In COVID-19, formation of IgG with low core fucosylation (afucosylated IgG) against spike protein (S) predicts and directly mediates disease progression to severe form. Low fucosylation of IgG causes increased antibody-dependent cellular toxicity mediated by intense Fc{gamma}R-mediated stimulation of platelets, monocytes, macrophages, and natural killer cells. The mechanism of afucosylated IgG formation has remained elusive thus far in COVID-19, dengue infection, and other disorders. This study demonstrates that infection of megakaryocytes by SARS-CoV-2 drives the formation of pathogenic anti-S afucosylated IgGs, causing pulmonary vascular thrombosis, acute lung injury, and death in Fc{gamma}-expressing mice.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.549113v1" target="_blank">Megakaryocyte infection by SARS-CoV-2 drives the formation of pathogenic afucosylated IgG antibodies in mice</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The lasting effects of the pandemic: A time series analysis of first-time speech delays in kids under 5 years of age</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Given the profound effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the way individuals interact, we sought to understand if there was an increase in pediatric first-time speech and language delay diagnoses in. We identified children under five years of age with a first-time speech delay diagnosis between January 1, 2018 and February 28, 2023, in Truveta Data. We calculated the monthly rate of first-time speech delay diagnoses per children with an encounter within the last year and no previous speech delay diagnosis. The Seasonal-Trend decomposition using LOESS (STL) method was used to adjust for seasonality. We also compared the difference in means between the 2018/2019 and 2021/2022 time periods. Significant increases in the mean of rates between 2018/2019 and 2021/2022 exist for the overall population and each age strata (p&lt;0.001). Likely the causes of these trends are multifaceted and future research is needed to understand the specific drivers at play.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.18.23290122v2" target="_blank">The lasting effects of the pandemic: A time series analysis of first-time speech delays in kids under 5 years of age</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Remote self-report and speech-in-noise measures predict clinical audiometric thresholds</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Developments in smartphone technology and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the feasibility and need for remote, but reliable hearing tests. Previous studies used remote testing but did not directly compare results in the same listeners with standard lab or clinic testing. This study investigated reliability of remote, self-administered digits-in-noise (remote-DIN) compared with lab-based, supervised (lab-DIN) testing. Predictive validity was further examined in relation to a commonly used self-report, Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing (SSQ-12), and lab-based, pure tone audiometry. DIN speech reception thresholds (SRTs) of adults (18-64 y/o) with normal-hearing (NH, N=16) and hearing loss (HL, N=18), were measured using English-language digits (0-9), binaurally presented as triplets in one of four speech-shaped noise maskers (broadband, low-pass filtered at 2, 4, 8 kHz) and two digit phases (diotic, antiphasic). High, significant intraclass correlation coefficients indicated strong internal consistency of remote-DIN SRTs, which also correlated significantly with lab-DIN SRTs. There was no significant mean difference between remote- and lab-DIN on any tests. NH listeners had significantly higher SSQ scores, and remote- and lab-DIN SRTs than listeners with HL. All versions of remote-DIN SRTs correlated significantly with pure-tone-average (PTA), with the 2-kHz filtered test the best predictor, explaining 50% of variance in PTA. SSQ total score also significantly and independently predicted PTA (17% of variance) and all test versions of the remote-DIN, except the antiphasic BB test. This study shows that remote SSQ-12 and remote-DIN are sensitive tools for capturing important aspects of auditory function.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.09.22274843v3" target="_blank">Remote self-report and speech-in-noise measures predict clinical audiometric thresholds</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Comparative Analysis of Decision Trees on Two COVID-19 Symptom Datasets</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objective: This study compares decision trees on two COVID-19 symptom datasets to assess their performance and feature importance in predicting and understanding infection patterns. Methods: We created decision trees on Israeli and Swedish COVID-19 infection datasets. Performance metrics were used to assess their predictive capabilities, and feature importance analysis identified significant variables in the decision-making process. Results: The study observed different performance levels of decision trees on the COVID-19 datasets. The Swedish dataset achieved high accuracy and F1-score without hyperparameter tuning, while the Israeli dataset improved significantly with Extreme Gradient Boosting. Dataset characteristics impact the selection of an optimal decision tree algorithm. The key variable in both datasets was sore throat. Conclusion: This study compares decision trees on COVID-19 infection datasets, emphasizing the importance of dataset characteristics in selecting an optimal algorithm. Identifying significant features enhances understanding of infection patterns, benefiting decision-making and prediction accuracy in infectious disease analysis.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.02.23290867v2" target="_blank">Comparative Analysis of Decision Trees on Two COVID-19 Symptom Datasets</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Causal association of COVID-19 with brain structure changes: Findings from a non-overlapping 2-sample Mendelian randomization study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Recent cohort studies suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with changes in brain structure. However, the potential causal relationship remains unclear. We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis to determine whether genetic susceptibility of COVID-19 is causally associated with changes in cortical and subcortical areas of the brain. This 2-sample MR (Mendelian Randomization) study is an instrumental variable analysis of data from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative (HGI) meta-analyses round 5 excluding UK Biobank participants (COVID-19 infection, N=1,348,701; COVID-19 severity, N=1,557,411), the Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis (ENIGMA) Global and regional cortical measures, N=33,709; combined hemispheric subcortical volumes, N=38,851), and UK Biobank (left/right subcortical volumes, N=19,629). A replication analysis was performed on summary statistics from different COVID-19 GWAS study (COVID-19 infection, N=80,932; COVID-19 severity, N=72,733). We found that the genetic susceptibility of COVID-19 was not significantly associated with changes in brain structures, including cortical and subcortical brain structure. Similar results were observed for different (1) MR estimates, (2) COVID-19 GWAS summary statistics, and (3) definitions of COVID-19 infection and severity. This study suggests that the genetic susceptibility of COVID-19 is not causally associated with changes in cortical and subcortical brain structure.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.16.23292735v1" target="_blank">Causal association of COVID-19 with brain structure changes: Findings from a non-overlapping 2-sample Mendelian randomization study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Deep spatial proteomic exploration of severe COVID-19-related pulmonary injury in post-mortem specimens</strong> -
<div>
The lung, as a primary target of SARS-CoV-2, exhibits heterogeneous microenvironment accompanied by various histopathological changes following virus infection. However, comprehensive insight into the protein basis of COVID-19-related pulmonary injury with spatial resolution is currently deficient. Here, we generated a region-resolved quantitative proteomic atlas of seven major pathological structures within the lungs of COVID-19 victims by integrating histological examination, laser microdissection, and ultrasensitive proteomic technologies. Over 10,000 proteins were quantified across 71 dissected FFPE post-mortem specimens. By comparison with control samples, we identified a spectrum of COVID-19-induced protein and pathway dysregulations in alveolar epithelium, bronchial epithelium, and pulmonary blood vessels, providing evidence for the proliferation of transitional-state pneumocytes. Additionally, we profiled the region-specific proteomes of hallmark COVID-19 pulmonary injuries, including bronchiole mucus plug, pulmonary fibrosis, airspace inflammation, and hyperplastic alveolar type 2 cells. Bioinformatic analysis revealed the enrichment of cell-type and functional markers in these regions (e.g. enriched TGFBI in fibrotic region). Furthermore, we identified the up-regulation of proteins associated with viral entry, host restriction, and inflammatory response in COVID-19 lungs, such as FURIN and HGF. Collectively, this study provides spatial proteomic insights for understanding COVID-19-caused pulmonary injury, and may serve as a valuable reference for improving therapeutic intervention for severe pneumonia.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.548971v1" target="_blank">Deep spatial proteomic exploration of severe COVID-19-related pulmonary injury in post-mortem specimens</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors that associated with people reported adopting public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = -.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/ydt95/" target="_blank">National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.</strong> -
<div>
Numerous polls suggest that COVID-19 is a profoundly partisan issue in the U.S. Using the geotracking data of 15 million smartphones per day, we found that U.S. counties that voted for Donald Trump (Republican) over Hillary Clinton (Democrat) in the 2016 presidential election exhibited 14% less physical distancing between March and May 2020. Partisanship was more strongly associated with physical distancing than numerous factors, including counties’ median income, COVID-19 cases, population density, and racial and age demographics. Contrary to our predictions, the observed partisan gap strengthened over time and remained when stay-at-home orders were active. Additionally, county-level consumption of conservative media (Fox News) related to reduced physical distancing. Finally, the observed partisan differences in distancing were associated with subsequently higher COVID-19 infection and fatality growth rates in pro-Trump counties. Taken together, these data suggest that U.S. citizens’ responses to COVID-19 are subject to a deep—and consequential—partisan divide.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/t3yxa/" target="_blank">Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/y38m9/" target="_blank">Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Social and moral psychology of COVID-19 across 69 countries</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behavior change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behavior, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of individual differences and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/a3562/" target="_blank">Social and moral psychology of COVID-19 across 69 countries</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Letter to the Editors of Psychological Science: Meta-Analysis Reveals that Accuracy Nudges Have Little to No Effect for U.S. Conservatives: Regarding Pennycook et al. (2020)</strong> -
<div>
According to recent work, subtly nudging people to think about accuracy can reduce the sharing of COVID-19 misinformation online (Pennycook et al., 2020). The authors argue that inattention to accuracy is a key factor behind the sharing of misinformation. They further argue that “partisanship is not, apparently, the key factor distracting people from considering accuracy on social media” (p. 777). However, our meta-analysis of data from this paper and other similar papers finds that partisanship is indeed a key factor underlying accuracy judgments on social media. Specifically, our meta-analysis suggests that the effectiveness of the accuracy nudge intervention depends on partisanship such that it has little to no effect for U.S. conservatives or Republicans. This changes one of Pennycook and colleague’s (2020) central conclusions by revealing that partisanship matters considerably for the success of this intervention. Further, since U.S. conservatives and Republicans are far more likely to share misinformation than U.S. liberals and Democrats (Guess et al., 2019; Lawson &amp; Kakkar, 2021; Osmundsen, 2021), this intervention may be ineffective for those most likely to spread fake news.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/945na/" target="_blank">Letter to the Editors of Psychological Science: Meta-Analysis Reveals that Accuracy Nudges Have Little to No Effect for U.S. Conservatives: Regarding Pennycook et al. (2020)</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>National Narcissism and the Belief and the Dissemination of Conspiracy Theories During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From 56 Countries</strong> -
<div>
Conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 have propagated around the globe, leading the World Health Organization to declare the spread of misinformation an ‘Infodemic’. We tested the hypothesis that national narcissism —a belief in the greatness of one’s nation that requires external recognition— is associated with the spread of conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic. In two large-scale national surveys (NTotal = 950) conducted in the US and the UK, and secondary analysis of data from 56 countries (N = 50,757), we found a robust, positive relationship between national narcissism and proneness to believe and disseminate conspiracy theories related to COVID-19. Further, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories was related to less engagement in health behaviors and less support for public-health policies to combat COVID-19. Our findings illustrate the importance of social identity factors in the spread of conspiracy theories and provide insights into the psychological processes underlying the COVID-19 pandemic.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/4c6av/" target="_blank">National Narcissism and the Belief and the Dissemination of Conspiracy Theories During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From 56 Countries</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>Homologous Booster Study of COVID-19 Protein Subunit Recombinant Vaccine</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 Subunit Recombinant Protein Vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   PT Bio Farma<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>Role of Ivermectin and Colchicine in Treatment of COVID-19: Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Ivermectin Tablets;   Drug: Colchicine 0.5 MG;   Drug: Standared managment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Ain Shams University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of A Recombinant Protein COVID-19 Vaccine as Booster Vaccines</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01E-2;   Biological: SCTV01E<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech 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>Smell in COVID-19 and Efficacy of Nasal Theophylline (SCENT 3)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: theophylline;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Washington University School of Medicine<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>Developing an Effective Intervention to Address Post-Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 Balance Disorders, Weakness and Muscle Fatigue in Individuals Aged 65+</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Resistance Training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education<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>Multimodal Long Covid19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Multimodal intervention in Long Covid19<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universidad de Magallanes;   Teaching Assistance and Research Center of the University of Magallanes CADI-UMAG;   Clinical Hospital Dr. Lautaro Navarro Avaria<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Trial of the Candidate Vaccine MVA-SARS-2-S in Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: MVA-SARS-2-S;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf;   German Center for Infection Research;   Philipps University Marburg Medical Center;   Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich;   University Hospital Tuebingen;   CTC-NORTH<br/><b>Withdrawn</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>Treatment of Long COVID (TLC) Feasibility Trial</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Low-dose Naltrexone (LDN);   Drug: Cetirizine;   Drug: Famotidine;   Drug: LDN Placebo;   Drug: Cetirizine Placebo;   Drug: Famotidine Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Emory University;   CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory (CDRC)<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>Efficiency and Safety of Paxlovid for COVID-19 Patients With Severe Chronic Kidney Disease</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Renal Insufficiency, Chronic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Chinese PLA General 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>Safety, Efficacy, and Dosing of VIX001 in Patients With Neurological Symptoms of Post Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS).</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Cognitive Impairment;   Neurological Complication<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: VIX001<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Neobiosis, LLC<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Music Combined With Sports Games on Alleviating Psychological Stress, Anxiety and Mental Energy Among Adolescents During COVID-19 Pandemic in Lanzhou Gansu Province China</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Stress;   Anxiety and Fear<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Music intervention only;   Behavioral: Sports games intervention only;   Behavioral: Music and sports games intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Wu Jiarun<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Evaluation of the Safety and Efficacy of Randomized Placebo Versus the 8-aminoquinoline Tafenoquine for Early Symptom Resolution in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease and Low Risk of Disease Progression</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID 19 Disease;   Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease;   SARS-CoV-2;   Infectious Disease;   Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Tafenoquine Oral Tablet;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   60P Australia 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>A Study to Evaluate the Efficacy, Safety, Tolerability and PK of SNS812 in Mild to Moderate COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Disease Caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (Disorder)<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MBS-COV;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Oneness Biotech Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy of the Therapy With BRAINMAX® Using fMRI for the Treatment of Patients With Asthenia After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Asthenia;   COVID-19;   Functional MRI;   Cognitive Impairment<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Structural and functional MRI;   Drug: Ethyl methyl hydroxypyridine succinate + Meldonium;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Promomed, LLC<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>NDV-HXP-S Vaccine Clinical Trial (COVIVAC)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: COVIVAC vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, Vietnam;   National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), Vietnam;   Center for Disease Control of Thai Binh Province, Vietnam<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 Nsp1 regulates translation start site fidelity to promote infection</strong> - A better mechanistic understanding of virus-host interactions can help reveal vulnerabilities and identify opportunities for therapeutic interventions. Of particular interest are essential interactions that enable production of viral proteins, as those could target an early step in the virus lifecycle. Here, we use subcellular proteomics, ribosome profiling analyses and reporter assays to detect changes in polysome composition and protein synthesis during SARS-CoV-2 (CoV2) infection. We identify…</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>Seasonal coronavirus infections trigger NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages but is therapeutically targetable</strong> - Seasonal coronaviruses widely circulate in the global population, and severe complications can occur in specific vulnerable populations. Little is known on their pathogenic mechanisms and no approved treatment is available. Here, we present anecdotal evidence that the level of IL-1β, a hallmark of inflammasome activation, appears elevated in a subset of seasonal coronavirus infected patients. We found that cultured human macrophages support the full life cycle of three cultivatable seasonal…</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>Proxalutamide reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection and associated inflammatory response</strong> - Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, data suggested that males had a higher risk of developing severe disease and that androgen deprivation therapy might be associated with protection. Combined with the fact that TMPRSS2 (transmembrane serine protease 2), a host entry factor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was a well-known androgen-regulated gene, this led to an upsurge of research investigating androgen receptor (AR)-targeting drugs. Proxalutamide, an AR antagonist, was shown in initial clinical studies…</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>Exploring epigenetic drugs as potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease: a docking and MD simulation study</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc around the globe since 2019 and is considered the largest global epidemic of the twentieth century. Although the first antiviral drug, Remdesivir, was initially introduced against COVID‑19, virtually no tangible therapeutic drugs exist to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. FDA-approved Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir supplemented by Ritonavir) was recently announced as a promising drug against the SARS-CoV-2 major protease (M^(pro)). Here we report for the first time the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibition of Cysteine Proteases via Thiol-Michael Addition Explains the Anti-SARS-CoV-2 and Bioactive Properties of Arteannuin B</strong> - Artemisia annua is the plant that produces artemisinin, an endoperoxide-containing sesquiterpenoid used for the treatment of malaria. A. annua extracts, which contain other bioactive compounds, have been used to treat other diseases, including cancer and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. In this study, a methyl ester derivative of arteannuin B was isolated when A. annua leaves were extracted with a 1:1 mixture of methanol and dichloromethane. This methyl ester was thought to…</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>M<sup>pro</sup>-targeted anti-SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor-based drugs</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is a global health emergency. The main protease is an important drug target in coronaviruses. It plays an important role in the processing of viral RNA-translated polyproteins and is highly conserved in the amino acid sequence and three-dimensional structure, making it a good drug target for which several small molecule inhibitors are available. This paper describes the various anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome…</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>New perspective on the immunomodulatory activity of ginsenosides: Focus on effective therapies for post-COVID-19</strong> - More than 700 million confirmed cases of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) have been reported globally, and 10-60% of patients are expected to exhibit “post-COVID-19 symptoms,” which will continue to affect human life and health. In the absence of safer, more specific drugs, current multiple immunotherapies have failed to achieve satisfactory efficacy. Ginseng, a traditional Chinese medicine, is often used as an immunomodulator and has been used in COVID-19 treatment as a tonic to increase…</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>Terpenoid phytocompounds from mangrove plant Xylocarpus moluccensis as possible inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2: In silico strategy</strong> - COVID-19 shook the world during the pandemic, where the climax it reached was vaccine manufacturing at an unfathomable pace. Alternative promising solutions to prevent infection from SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will remain crucial in the years to come. Due to its key role in viral replication, the major protease (Mpro) enzyme of SARS-CoV-2 can be an attractive therapeutic target. In the present work, natural terpenoids from mangrove medicinal plant Xylocarpus moluccensis (Lam.) M. Roem. 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>‘Pterocephalodes hookeri-Onosma hookeri’ decoction protects against LPS-induced pulmonary inflammation via inhibiting TLR4/ NF-κB signaling pathway</strong> - CONCLUSION: In summary, the combination therapy of ‘P-O’ exhibited good antioxidant activity and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro, as well as a therapeutic effect against pulmonary inflammation in vivo. These findings provide evidence for the clinical application of ‘P-O’ and offer new approaches for treating pneumonia.</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>Intranasal insulin - effects on the sense of smell</strong> - Intranasal insulin (IN) administration is a promising way to deliver the peptide to the central nervous system (CNS), bypassing the blood-brain-barrier and gastrointestinal absorption inhibition. IN receptors are localized in the olfactory mucosa and the brain, mainly in the olfactory bulb, hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum. The pleiotropic mechanism of insulin action is characterized by its anti-inflammatory properties, antithrombotic, vasodilatory, and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces lung endothelial cell dysfunction and thrombo-inflammation depending on the C3a/C3a receptor signalling</strong> - The spike protein of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can interact with endothelial cells. However, no studies demonstrated the direct effect of the spike protein subunit 1 (S1) in inducing lung vascular damage and the potential mechanisms contributing to lung injury. Here, we found that S1 injection in mice transgenic for human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) induced early loss of lung endothelial thromboresistance at 3 days, as revealed by thrombomodulin loss…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain perturbates intracellular calcium homeostasis and impairs pulmonary vascular endothelial cells</strong> - Exposure to the spike protein or receptor-binding domain (S-RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 significantly influences endothelial cells and induces pulmonary vascular endotheliopathy. In this study, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 humanized inbred (hACE2 Tg) mice and cultured pulmonary vascular endothelial cells were used to investigate how spike protein/S-RBD impacts pulmonary vascular endothelium. Results show that S-RBD leads to acute-to-prolonged induction of the intracellular free calcium concentration…</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>Immunothrombosis and its underlying biological mechanisms</strong> - The evolutionary conserved link between coagulation and innate immunity is a biological process characterized by the thrombosis formation stimulus of immune cells and specific thrombosis-related molecules. In physiological settings, the relationship between the immune system and thrombosis facilitates the recognition of pathogens and damaged cells and inhibits pathogen proliferation. However, when deregulated, the interplay between hemostasis and innate immunity becomes a pathological process…</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>CHO-produced RBD-Fc subunit vaccines with alternative adjuvants generate immune responses against SARS-CoV-2</strong> - Subunit vaccines feature critical advantages over other vaccine platforms such as stability, price, and minimal adverse effects. To maximize immunological protection of subunit vaccines, adjuvants are considered as main components that are formulated within the subunit vaccine. They can modulate adverse effects and enhance immune outcomes. However, the most suitable formulation providing the best immunological outcomes and safety are still under investigation. In this report, we combined…</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>Determining the clinical and cost-effectiveness of nasal sprays and a physical activity and stress management intervention to reduce respiratory tract infections in primary care: A protocol for the ‘Immune Defence’ randomised controlled trial</strong> - BACKGROUND: Most adults in the UK experience at least one viral respiratory tract infection (RTI) per year. Individuals with comorbidities and those with recurrent RTIs are at higher risk of infections. This can lead to more severe illness, worse quality of life and more days off work. There is promising evidence that using common nasal sprays or improving immune function through increasing physical activity and managing stress, may reduce the incidence and severity of RTIs.</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>Can a New Spanish-Language Media Group Help Donald Trump?</strong> - Americano Media hopes to reach a nationwide conservative audience. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-a-new-spanish-language-media-group-help-donald-trump">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Evolving Free-Speech Battle Between Social Media and the Government</strong> - A recent court ruling dramatically curtailed the federal bureaucracy’s ability to communicate with Internet platforms. What’s at stake when free speech harms the public? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-evolving-free-speech-battle-between-social-media-and-the-government">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Vermont’s Catastrophic Floods and the Spread of Unnatural Disasters</strong> - In parts of the Northeast, two months of rain fell in two days. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/vermonts-catastrophic-floods-and-the-spread-of-unnatural-disasters">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Florida’s Vanishing Sparrows</strong> - A group of eccentric endangered birds serves as a bellwether of the climate crisis. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/floridas-vanishing-sparrows">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Mysterious Third Party Enters the Presidential Race</strong> - No Labels is obscure but well funded. Could it have an outsized impact on the election? Plus, the journalist Donovan Ramsey on his chronicle of the crack-cocaine epidemic. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/a-mysterious-third-party-enters-the-presidential-race">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Colson Whitehead on the heists, fire, and movie magic of his new novel Crook Manifesto</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="The cover of Colson Whitehead’s book “Crook Manifesto.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/al6lOz79C7dx-gT8AZ7RlB-OmCA=/0x722:1875x2128/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461384/9780385545150.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Doubleday Books
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The two-time Pulitzer winner is using his Harlem Shuffle trilogy to tell the history of New York.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6mu9n3">
Colson Whitehead has had a big decade. He won back-to-back Pulitzers for his novels <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-underground-railroad-colson-whitehead/7280984"><em>The Underground Railroad</em></a> (2016) and <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-nickel-boys-colson-whitehead/16569430"><em>The Nickel Boys</em></a> (2019). Then he saw <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22423837/underground-railroad-review-amazon-miniseries-barry-jenkins-colson-whitehead-book"><em>The Underground Railroad</em></a> get adapted into one of the most critically acclaimed TV series of 2021. Now, he’s following it all up with his new novel <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/crook-manifesto/18888269"><em>Crook Manifesto</em></a>, the second volume in the trilogy he began with 2021’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/harlem-shuffle-colson-whitehead/16311673"><em>Harlem Shuffle</em></a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KYEzkH">
The Harlem Shuffle books have a deceptively simple premise. They deal with one Ray Carney, a midcentury Harlem furniture salesman striving after upper-middle-class respectability — with the help of a modest sideline in reselling stolen goods. In each novel, Carney falls half-accidentally into one criminal caper after another, with results that are often moving, frequently funny, and always extremely fun to read.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FyTwR4">
Whitehead’s great trick is to make Carney not only a compelling protagonist but also a window. Through his eyes, we see Harlem and New York shift and realign themselves through the turbulent 20th century. <em>Harlem Shuffle</em> takes place in the gleaming, prosperous New York of the 1960s, with crime-ridden Harlem hidden in northern Manhattan like a dirty secret. In <em>Crook Manifesto</em> we reach the 1970s, when, as Carney observes, “You knew the city was going to hell if the Upper East Side was starting to look like crap, too.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="duVrh8">
I called up Whitehead to find out more about how he built Carney’s world. Together, we talked about police corruption, how to write a three-act structure, and the ever-changing landscape of New York City. Highlights of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, are below.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zc1XHn">
<strong>One of the big arcs in this book is the destabilization of New York in the 1970s. What drew you to writing about that moment in time?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wthJZf">
I started with an idea to write about a heist novel set in the ’60s, and then it sort of expanded. It became two books and then three books. It’s tracing the main character, Ray Carney, over 30 years, but also the city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MYzsR3">
It’s a cliché to say, “The city’s almost a character,” but it became apparent that the city was a character. The same way that Ray Carney has his ups and downs, a city is going through its transformations as well. In the ’70s, New York was a pretty hard place to live in. The city was bankrupt. Crime was at an all-time high. It makes a compelling stage for Ray Carney’s adventures, and also is an important part of the city’s history.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W9ZNsb">
<strong>What made you decide to expand </strong><em><strong>Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> out into a trilogy?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PEfkro">
I was enjoying it. I kept coming up with different stories for Ray. It started off as one story: <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. And then I kept coming up with more capers. So that first book became three different adventures. Halfway through writing that book, I came up with even more and it was too big for one book, so it became two. I’ve never done a trilogy before, but I’ve never had a world that I want to keep exploring. If I step back, it’s maybe not three books, but one 1,200-page story about a man and the city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TWA6hU">
<strong>What’s interesting is that to me is that the book feels more serialized than a lot of your other work. I mean, I’m always very impressed by your three-act structuring. It’s always very crisp and clean. But the three sections of </strong><em><strong>Crook Manifesto</strong></em><strong> feel very discrete in a way that I haven’t seen from you before.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dg2EOJ">
I sort of see him as three novellas that come together, Voltron-style, to make one book through their themes. Each adventure can stand alone, but I think they gain power together. Fire is an important thing. It builds from chapter to chapter, starting off in the margins in the first section in 1971 and of course becoming a major driver of the plot in the third section.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uipp4f">
I am plotting each story individually and each story does have its three acts, but also, each story is one act in the overall book itself.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sHdwB7">
<strong>I want to talk a little about the </strong><a href="https://www.wnyc.org/series/knapp-commission-hearings"><strong>Knapp Commission</strong></a><strong>, this 1970 investigation into corruption in the NYPD, which looms over the first section of the book. Was that a story that you were familiar with before you started writing, or did you come upon it during research?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QpmTWQ">
I knew about it from <em>Serpico</em>. I was a big movie fan growing up, and part of the book is inspired by ’70s crime <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies">movies</a> like <em>Dog Day Afternoon</em>, another Sydney Labette movie. He did the movie <em>Serpico</em>, and I was 11 or 12 and saw it on afternoon <a href="https://www.vox.com/tv">television</a> and that’s how I first heard of the Knapp Commission. With this book, I’m trying to find different things in New York history I can hang on for a story that will serve Ray Carney, and it was cool to go back to Peter Moss’s nonfiction book about Frank Serpico, to go to the original <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/knapp-commission-report-police-corruption">Knapp Commission documents</a>. So I learned about it from a movie and then ended up making my own story out of it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mXyh7f">
<strong>I was researching it to talk about it with you, and I found this</strong><a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2020/01/25/the-knapp-connection/"><strong> Village Voice article</strong></a><strong> written shortly after the report from the Commission came out in 1973. It says, “There is no more talk of a few rotten apples in the barrel. It is the barrel that is rotten. The only trouble is that we are all still inside it, and the Commission has not told us how to get out.” </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wiLEf1">
<strong>It really speaks to this sense that the book evokes so beautifully, that the legal system has no strategies in place to fix this catastrophe developing in the city, and the strategies it does present turn out to be just another grift. Was that one of the ideas you were interested in developing as you wrote?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MhmOXk">
There’s no institution that remains uncorrupted in this book: City Hall, real estate, the police department. The worldview of this book is not very cheerful — except, I don’t know, I think Ray Carney seems to be having a good time most of the time. I think we can put our trust in individuals and our family unit or friends, but all the institutions in the book are definitely corrupt.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kVKQMA">
<strong>You evoke this sense of persistent corruption and a kind of stasis that it creates. At the same time, you’re also dealing with this idea that the city is in constant flux and a cycle of destruction and recreation. So how do you think about keeping those ideas in dialogue with each other?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="90vE4J">
They exist at the same time, that idea of “churn” as I call it in the book, the renewal. Transformation is part of our own personal lives. So Ray Carney has his ups and downs and of course the city is going through its own transformations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PIKV1k">
The end of<em> Harlem Shuffle</em> deals with the days of Camelot and JFK-era optimism. The space race. The World’s Fair in Queens is underway. But two miles away in Harlem, the city’s in disrepair. We’re going to the ’70s after that. And then the ’80s, when the city does sort of climb out of its fiscal crisis. Wall Street becomes another powerful engine of change again. And then in the late ’80s, if you lived in New York City, you can see the AIDS crisis and the crack epidemic and the recession coming again. That’s the cycle of people’s lives and life in a city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I6hzHa">
I had to research the history of Harlem, and the city’s always being laid low. By a <a href="https://www.vox.com/terrorism">terrorist attack</a>. A pandemic, which was happening when I was writing the book. We’re at war with the British. We’re at war with the Native Americans we stole the island from. There’s fires and yellow fever and terrorist attacks, and the city has to come back and always does. So there’s a resiliency there that’s in our main character, that’s in the supporting cast, and also in the city itself.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4nvaCV">
<strong>Besides the corruption in government institutions, we also see corruption reaching into the entertainment industry. That’s most apparent with the second section about the blaxploitation movie. But I kept thinking about it also in the first section, when Carney’s daughter is just obsessed with the Jackson 5, and she especially loves Michael. Were you thinking as you wrote about the way that we eventually learned about Michael Jackson would inflect those passages?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FjkVcF">
I wrote a book called <em>Sag Harbor</em> that dealt with <em>The Road Warrior</em> and Mel Gibson and Afrika Bambaataa, who was canceled for sexually abusing young people. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/24/17460392/mel-gibson-comeback-metoo-times-up">Mel Gibson</a>, of course, is a horrible anti-Semite and racist. And there’s also a section on Bill Cosby and the Cosby family of the ’80s. I feel like a poison touch when I deal with pop culture, all that stuff that happened after I wrote the book.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0z99nC">
In this case, I knew Michael Jackson’s history does overlap with the themes of the book. There’s this hidden corruption underneath. Everything looks legit, but of course, we know what’s gonna happen later on, what he’s gonna do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CjA0C2">
It’s the same way that I open with Radio Row in <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. It’s a neighborhood that was destroyed to make way for the World Trade Center, creating this crater. Then the World Trade Center goes up. There’s another crater. And then we have the Freedom Tower. We have the perspective of reading it in the early 21st century, so we know all that hidden history of these things that the characters aren’t aware of.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZMguxJ">
<strong>And then we also have the bicentennial, which looms over the third section. Carney finds himself reacting to that very cynically and keeps trying to figure out how he can keep that view out of public consumption. So how did you decide the bicentennial would become a set piece? Did you know as soon as you were dealing with the ’70s that would have to?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7gfT2T">
I’m trying to find moments that speak to the themes of the book. The blackout of 1977 seems a good opportunity. It’s almost too obvious. So I sort of avoided that. But 1976, our bicentennial, is a good place to talk about how we don’t necessarily, in our actions, live up to our ideals. There’s a corruption there in the American ideal because we let down the Declaration. So it’s a moment of ironic commentary in very different ways for Ray.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tkdWrM">
There’s a Frederick Douglass speech, “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html">What is the Fourth of July to a slave</a>,” and every year on <a href="https://www.vox.com/twitter">Twitter</a>, someone retweets that and it’s like, “Yes.” What does the bicentennial mean for Black citizens? It was true in Frederick Douglass’s time, and we have that question now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SQYKzK">
<strong>You talked a little bit earlier about how the book is united through the motif and the theme of fire, which was sort of interesting for a crime novel. </strong><em><strong>Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> is a heist novel. There’s lots and lots of heist novels out there. You kind of have a set of tropes. But there’s really not as many arson books out there that offer tropes to play with. So did you turn to any other crime novels or movies to see how other people have written about arson?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5wowwn">
It’s always good when you’re the first person. There aren’t a lot of crime novels about fences [who sell stolen goods]. They’re a lot of stories where our heroes, or antiheroes, have stolen $2 million in jewels and they’re being pursued by the police. Half of them are dead. And then they bring their ill-gotten gains to the fence, who says, “I’ll give you 10 cents on the dollar.” I always found that figure appalling, and then I thought, “Who was that person?” These sort of underserved supporting characters are an opportunity for me, in terms of storytelling.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Cb9Yc0">
Of course, municipal corruption is a big thing in nonfiction and movies and I always found that investigation very attractive. I think <em>Chinatown</em> is the most accessible example. On one level, there’s a simple crime, but behind that is the whole citywide corruption. That is a common noir theme.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wuYPZp">
<strong>It was interesting to notice a shift in perspective between these two books.</strong><em><strong> Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> is in Carney’s mind pretty much the whole way through. I think there’s a few jumps out. But in </strong><em><strong>Crook Manifesto</strong></em><strong> there are whole sections that are from the points of view of other characters. How did you come to the conclusion that you would have to shift narrative modes between these two books?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e5s8HD">
The story allows or prohibits those kinds of shifts. In <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>, I may go to somebody’s POV for a couple of pages. Pepper [a career criminal and Carney’s occasional ally] gets a section here and there. In this book, he gets his own full-story novella, and Carney’s on the sidelines. The canvas gets bigger. I’ve got more opportunities as a storyteller to explore different perspectives.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sc8H7u">
One thing is, I love Pepper. Once he appeared in the first book, I had a strong feeling he’d get his own story. He has a different perspective on crime, on city, on family. He’s a loner. So what does he see when he interacts with Carney and Elizabeth [Carney’s wife] and the kids? Carney has one idea about the criminal activities conducted, and of course Pepper, being a pro, has a more mature and idiosyncratic perspective.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="glaKl5">
It was fun and a great storytelling opportunity to give Pepper his due. And also to bring back people like Zippo, who’s a minor character in the first book and becomes a driving force of some of the action in the second book. We get to know him more.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gTtYZg">
I knew, when I finished <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>, that I would write a second one. I was able to plot some of the second book into the third book and put in clues or set up things in <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. So Alexander Oakes is mentioned in passing in the first book and becomes a major player in this book. It’s a big city. I try to populate it. There are corners that Carney can’t see, and that becomes an opportunity for me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ldd0e2">
<strong>Pepper’s novella is the second section of the book, which takes place largely on the set of a blaxploitation movie. A lot of the details in that section are so fun and feel very grounded in the experience of having watched what happens on a movie set. Was any of that drawn from your experience of watching </strong><em><strong>Underground Railroad</strong></em><strong> be adapted?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1ks2YF">
Not <em>Underground</em>, but I’ve had friends who have done low-budget movies, so I’ve been on a set a few times. But it’s really informed by loving those movies as a kid. There weren’t a lot of Black-oriented movies in the ’70s. The ones that came out were blaxploitation movies, and I gravitated toward them. In my early 20s I was a critic, and I was often writing about Black imagery and pop culture. I would go back to those movies as a 20-something and analyze them, and now I come to them in my 50s as a novelist.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PETr6b">
How can a crime movie comment on criminal activity, like my fictional criminal activity? We have actors who are playing criminals who get caught up in a real-life criminal scheme. So it’s all that sort of nice play that was sort of delightful for me to fool around with.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mapbT4">
We have Lucinda Cole, who’s a rising star in the ’60s. We see her in the ’70s and her career hasn’t gone that well. There’s this injustice in the film industry. A character who seems to be on the way up is going to be brought down by institutional failures.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ed0jx">
It’s fun also because Pepper is such a weirdo and his perspective on humans provides a lot of humor, but also, hopefully, touches on some other themes in the book.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xwwgMo">
<strong>You’ve said that you tend to think of your projects as alternating fun books and heavier books. Do you imagine that after this trilogy, you’ll be picking up something darker, or do you think you’ll keep going on a fun streak for a while?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kPzXev">
The novel I have planned once my schedule is clear has some jokes but also kind of a downer. So maybe in my age, I’m going to integrate those separate ideas of the light and the dark. We’ll see if I pull the trigger on that one once I’m done with the trilogy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r115SQ">
<strong>And is there anything you can share about the final volume of the trilogy?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r8z3yv">
It’s in the 1980s, so: Ed Koch. I’m still in the early pages but he’s appearing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0o2BQh">
I’m picking my spots for Carney and for Pepper, and ways to talk about the evolving city. What happens after the fiscal crisis is over, what other crises loom large. New York is a great big complicated place and it’s providing a lot of great material.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Telephone operation was a good career for women. Then it got automated.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A black-and-white photo shows a row of young women in 1940s fashion working at a telephone switchboard." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mp68SA2k7RFd0MLcDFcvYD3Tv8A=/0x0:4948x3711/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461344/1031557866.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania operators in 1945. By that point, the process of automating telephone operation was well underway. | Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania/Federal Communications Commission/PhotoQuest/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
How automation wiped out a whole career for young women — and how young women adapted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9137rh">
If you were a young (white) woman looking for work in the early 1920s, you could do worse than becoming a telephone operator.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pc0jOu">
In the early 1920s, AT&amp;T, the telephone monopoly that grew out of Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Telephone, was <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29580/w29580.pdf#page=3">America’s largest employer</a>, and specifically employed many women as operators, who manually connected callers by plugging wires into inputs on switchboards. In 1929, when employment peaked in the last months before the Great Depression, a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41861181">government report</a> estimated the number of operators working for AT&amp;T at 161,669.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CaESSn">
The company <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/race-on-the-line">refused to hire Black operators</a> until 1944, immigrants rarely got hired, and some exchanges barred Jewish women too. But for white, gentile, American-born women, especially young and unmarried women (as women often left the labor force after marriage, and married women faced discrimination in hiring), connecting calls at the switchboard was a common way to make a living.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hoaFCk">
“In 1920, telephone operators were roughly 2 percent of the US female workforce and 4 percent of nearly three million young, white, American-born working women,” economists James Feigenbaum and Daniel Gross <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28061/w28061.pdf">observe</a>. “As much as 15 percent of cohorts born at the turn of the century might have <em>ever</em> been an operator.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SEFvKt">
Then it all went away. In the 1920s, as telephone coverage was expanding and the ranks of operators were growing, AT&amp;T began to roll out a “mechanical switching” system in which people would manually dial other numbers from their home, using a rotary system. Human operators were no longer needed. The profession took decades to die out completely, as AT&amp;T switched gradually, exchange by exchange. But eventually, automation killed off the telephone operator as a profession, by around 1978.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W7dwLi">
That’s what made telephone operators so interesting to Feigenbaum and Gross, two economic historians who wanted to examine a clear case where automation led to an entire job class being automated away.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eb3dgC">
For existing operators, they find that automation had real costs. Operators in a city that transitioned to mechanical switching were substantially less likely to have any job 10 years later than operators in cities that were slower to automate; those that did find work tended to find worse, lower-paying jobs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ig7X9F">
But Feigenbaum and Gross also examine the results for young white women coming of age during automation, who just a few years earlier would’ve been ideal candidates for telephone operator jobs. Remarkably, they find little or no negative effects at all: they were just as likely to find work as they would have been before, and job openings in fields like secretarial work and restaurants increased even as telephone operation was automated away. Some of those jobs (like restaurant work) paid less, but others were competitive with telephone operation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WNu0wr">
This is just one case, and economists have a long way to go in understanding how automation affects workers — a question that is more important than ever with the rapid progress in AI. But telephone operation appears like a mostly heartening example. Even though a job that once employed 2 percent of all working women was automated away, new workers entering the labor market were not significantly worse off.
</p>
<h3 id="E76Gda">
The curious case of the completely automated job
</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="In a black-and-white photo, a uniformed elevator operator closes the door for his two passengers, a sheep and a goose. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lccprxRqjGRJSbsFz49PEYa0Trc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24793363/514685668.jpg"/> <cite>Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
An elevator operator carries a sheep and a goose in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, circa 1930. This is what happens when you search a photo archive for “elevator operator.”
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="86wJre">
Of course, automation leading to job losses in a particular job category or whole sector of the economy is pretty common. As websites like Expedia and Kayak and Google Flights emerged, the <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254497900A">number of travel agents</a> in the US fell from 100,000 in 2000 to 45,000 last year, even as the <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S">working population</a> grew by 29 million people. From 1948 to 2019, a recent <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/october/u-s-agricultural-output-has-grown-slower-in-response-to-stagnant-productivity-growth/#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20data%2C%20U.S.,of%200.06%20percent%20a%20year.">Department of Agriculture report</a> found, the amount of labor on US farms fell by 74 percent, while the <em>output </em>of those farms grew by 175 percent. We grew nearly three times as much food<strong> </strong>with a quarter of the labor because of <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44197/13566_eib3_1_.pdf">intensive investment</a> in advanced combine harvesters, fertilizers, and other innovations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CbK1Wk">
But that didn’t eliminate the need for farm workers, and travel agents still exist (in fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/travel-agents.htm#tab-6">expects the number of travel agents to grow rapidly</a> in the next decade as part of the travel industry’s overall recovery from Covid). It’s pretty rare for a job to be fully automated out of existence the way telephone operators were. The economist James Bessen, for instance, has <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2690435">argued</a> that since 1950, only one job (elevator operators) has ever been fully automated away. The Bureau of Labor Statistics still estimates <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes432021.htm">some 4,000 people</a> working as telephone operators, though their work is highly specialized and very different from that of early 20th-century women on switchboards who saw their jobs swept away.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EfzBYt">
“Jobs are bundles of tasks,” Gross told me. “We had a job that was defined by one task: call-switching. … Part of why there aren’t as many examples of entire categories being eviscerated is that most jobs have workers doing multiple things.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hym97F">
My job as a reporter, for instance, can be divvied up into many individual tasks: scheduling calls with sources, conducting interviews, transcribing those interviews, conducting online research and reading past coverage and academic papers, collating all of the above into a final article. Even if one of those tasks is automated (as transcription largely has been in recent years), the rest remain. Most jobs, from janitorial labor to factory assembly to medicine and law, are like this: complex combinations of discrete tasks, and the job itself doesn’t vanish if one task is automated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="REsjQR">
The technology to automate call-switching <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US492850A/en">emerged in the 1890s</a>, only 16 years after <a href="https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/technology/item/who-is-credited-with-inventing-the-telephone/">Bell’s invention of the telephone</a>. Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri, developed the so-called “Strowger switch,” the first electric system for connecting phone lines without a human operator.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1OONJa">
A possibly apocryphal but extremely funny <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/strowger-switch-purple-reign-redux/transcript/">origin story</a> alleges that Strowger was inspired to invent his switch because he thought the operator at the local telephone exchange, who was married to a rival undertaker, was conspiring to divert calls from bereaved families to her husband instead of Strowger. I haven’t been able to source this to anything other than a series of poorly footnoted books and articles but I like the anecdote too much to leave it out. It also seems to fit later anecdotes from people who knew Strowger and <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/111684614/the-automatic-phone-sprang-from-a-collar/">attested to his … difficult … temperament</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZWMBGr">
In any case, switching failed to take off in the 1890s. It didn’t offer clear cost savings over human operators, and it produced more errors. It wasn’t until 1917, Feigenbaum and Gross note in a <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29580/w29580.pdf">companion paper</a>, that “mechanical switching could match manual operation on connection times and error rates, and internal estimates suggested it may generate savings in large cities.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WCcqrp">
A major factor was the exponentially rising complexity of telephone networks as more and more people got phone lines in their homes and workplaces. “It only takes 50,000 subscribers to have a billion possible pairwise connections,” Gross said. “Adding a 50,001st subscriber adds another 50,000 potential connections. Having the mechanisms to connect that many different people manually is incredibly costly and complicated.” While human operators had managed this complexity for a few decades, it beggared belief that they could handle a country where every home had a phone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L8g8Hr">
Automation proceeded in stages, city by city, and with important limits. Initially more complex tasks, like long-distance switching, were reserved for human operators even in cities that transitioned to mechanical switching. The Great Depression slowed investment in mechanical switching systems, as did restrictions on non-military uses of copper imposed during World War II. (Copper was the main material for phone lines). The full transition to mechanized call switching only ended in 1978, Feigenbaum and Gross observe, at which point computerized switching systems far more complex than anything Almon Strowger imagined were beginning to be implemented.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UMeMaz">
The staggered rollout is a godsend for economists: they let Feigenbaum and Gross compare employment outcomes for young white women before and after AT&amp;T transitioned to mechanical operation in a given city, and by combining these before/after comparisons in the 261 different cities they examine through 1940, and roughly 2,500 additional cities which were not yet converted to mechanical service, they can estimate an average effect of the transition.
</p>
<h3 id="nWi1Wg">
What automation did to existing telephone operators — and those who would’ve taken their place
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6kSfcw">
Transitions to mechanical switching led, unsurprisingly, to a dramatic reduction in the share of young, white, US-born women working as operators: in cities instituting the change, the share fell <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28061/w28061.pdf">by 1.7 percentage points</a>, which is a huge change given that on average 3.9 percent of this group was working in telephone operation before automation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="12njQz">
Operating was a relatively high-turnover job; among operators in cities that didn’t transition to mechanical switching, only 24 percent were still operators 10 years later. But the share was even lower in cities that automated: only 16 percent stayed in the field (presumably moving to cities or exchanges that hadn’t yet been automated). A large share of operators who dropped out of the profession post-automation didn’t find other work at all. Older operators (meaning those who were over 25 when automation occurred) were 7 percentage points less likely to be working, which Feigenbaum and Gross note accounts for “more than half of the displacement of operators in this age group.” They had no future in telephones, and most of them got booted out of the labor force entirely.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PluOTA">
Those who kept working tended to get worse jobs. About 10 percent of operators exposed to automation were in a lower-paying profession a decade later, compared to only 1 percent of operators not exposed to automation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1zuuF">
So that’s the bad news: getting hit head-on by a wave of automation had serious negative effects on these women. But what about women coming of age in the 1930s who might have earlier been telephone operators? Were they worse off for lacking this job opportunity? Surprisingly, Feigenbaum and Gross find the answer is no.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zJZ4wo">
“We find no effects on the fraction of young women working, in school, married, or with children for any group,” they conclude. This is true even after they narrow their analysis to white, American-born women, and down to relatively narrow age bands (16 to 20, say, or 21 to 25). What appears to have happened is that other professions open to young women with just a high school diploma saw job opportunities increase as those in telephone operation were shrinking. Secretarial work, for instance, boomed, as did restaurant work.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YyMfj6">
“This is the era of the drugstore lunch counter, the soda fountain,” Gross says. “There’s growing demand in this broad line of work in new places.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A bunch of hep teens in the 1950s hang out at a soda fountain" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FHikLrT9QzjMx5K0fqkrbhYYpTI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24793376/GettyImages_563937513.jpg"/> <cite>H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Telephone operator jobs gave way to more modern careers, like working at a soda fountain.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r8nxb1">
The idea that demand for young women in the workforce surged in these industries exactly enough to offset the jobs lost to automation in telephony seemed almost magical to me. It’s such a neat story, and a such hopeful one for automation generally.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VpJ5d9">
One possible story is that the spread of the telephone, enabled by automated switching, led to increased productivity elsewhere in the economy which enabled more hiring in positions like secretarial labor. Secretaries spend a lot of time on the phone, after all. That’s not what seems to have happened, though. “We don’t really think there are any kind of direct productivity impacts of the technology outside of AT&amp;T itself,” Gross says. “If there are, they’re minuscule, too small to explain these effects.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eki8Z6">
So what <em>did</em> happen? The closest thing to an answer we have is that the overall economy adapted. Moving to mechanical switches didn’t reduce the total amount of spending in the economy. The money that used to pay operators’ salaries, the money AT&amp;T made from telephone bills and then spent on wages, was still there, and it went to <em>something</em>. Moreover, the presence of a sudden glut of young women available to work gave businesses a reason to try out what Feigenbaum and Gross call “organizational innovations”: new ways to structure their firm to make use of these female workers. Around this time, doctors and hospitals had begun hiring “medical stenographers” to take down symptoms and other information from patients, in person or via phone. None of the tech behind that job was new, but the availability of young women to do it <em>was</em> new.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BrZNa1">
“There’s a time dimension that’s really important,” Feigenbaum says. “If you’re an incumbent worker, the technology shock is bad for you. If you’re a future worker, you have time to adjust.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="55EupN">
Feigenbaum and Gross are hesitant to draw overly broad conclusions from this work for the whole economy. “We’d need to study 10 more, 100 more automation events to really know how, this phenomenon operates,” Feigenbaum says. “Are there some cases where the other jobs are <em>not</em> growing at the same time?” It’s possible. We just don’t know.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jbftwn">
But the ability of the next generation of female workers to adapt to the telephone automation shock gives me some hope as we face a new wave of automation led by AI. Of course, sufficiently general AI threatens to automate vast swathes of tasks at once, quite quickly, without giving us much time to transition. If that happens, rapid job loss seems inevitable. But it hasn’t happened so far, and smaller shocks like mechanical telephone operation seem more common.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LucjtF">
The telephone operators’ example gives me some reason to think the next generation of would-be <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/03/28/automation-long-haul-truckers-jobs">truck drivers</a>, or <a href="https://medicalfuturist.com/the-future-of-radiology-and-ai/">radiologists</a>, will be able to sort into new work. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we can avoid existing drivers getting hurt the way existing telephone operators were.
</p></li>
<li><strong>You’re going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lupQiR2HTcIu2g1F7F5RGBYaFn4=/222x0:4302x3060/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461305/1241463939.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller at a 2022 conference. | Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why G/O Media thinks we should have more stories written by bots.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XzeLwN">
In early July, managers at G/O media, the digital publisher that owns sites like <a href="https://gizmodo.com/">Gizmodo</a>, the <a href="https://www.theonion.com/">Onion</a>, and <a href="https://jezebel.com/">Jezebel</a>, published four stories that had been almost entirely generated by <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a> engines. The stories — which included multiple errors and which ran without input from G/O’s editors or writers — <a href="https://twitter.com/gmgunion/status/1676705007201075201">infuriated</a> G/O staff and generated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/08/gizmodo-ai-errors-star-wars/">scorn</a> in media circles.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jauqnh">
They should get used to it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2E3asg">
G/O executives, who say that AI-produced stories are part of a larger experiment with the technology, plan on creating more of them soon, according to an internal memo. And G/O managers told me they — and everyone else in media — <em>should</em> be learning how to make machine-generated content.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8bZh4d">
“It is absolutely a thing we want to do more of,” says Merrill Brown, G/O’s editorial director.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TYcL0t">
G/O’s continued embrace of AI-written stories puts the company at odds with most conventional publishers, who generally say they’re interested in using AI to help them produce content but aren’t— for now — interested in making stuff that is almost 100 percent machine-made.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uDM9YN">
But it’s easy to see a future where publishers looking at replacing humans increasingly rely on this tech. Or, if you’d like a less dystopian projection, a future where publishers use <a href="https://www.vox.com/robots">robots</a> to churn out low-cost, low-value stuff while human journalists are reserved for more interesting work.
</p>
<aside id="9yTJt3">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t8l9Mj">
In a note sent to top editors at his company last Friday, Brown said that editors of <a href="https://jalopnik.com/">Jalopnik</a>, a car-focused site, and the pop-culture site <a href="https://www.avclub.com/">A.V. Club</a> are planning to create “content summaries or lists that will be produced by A.I.” Brown’s memo also notes that the <a href="https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2023/ap-open-ai-agree-to-share-select-news-content-and-technology-in-new-collaboration">Associated Press recently announced a partnership with OpenAI</a>, the buzzy AI company that created ChatGPT.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U68PQk">
A different internal G/O note, produced earlier this month, calls for “2-3 quality stories” made by AI to run on Jalopnik and the A.V. Club on July 21. Brown told Vox that document, published after the first set of machine-generated stories ran — and which notes that AI engines “alone (currently) are not factually reliable/consistent” and will need human assistance — “has nothing whatsoever to do with publishing or editorial deadlines.“
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qw4jSq">
But Brown and G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller both argue that AI will be transformative for <a href="https://www.vox.com/media">the media</a> industry — like the internet was in the last couple decades, or maybe more so — and that ignoring it would be a terrible mistake.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2O9Ouc">
“I think it would be irresponsible to not be testing it,” Spanfeller told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PXGPLJ">
Spanfeller and Brown say their AI-written stories aren’t the only way they want to use the tech. Like many publishers, they bring up the idea that reporters could use AI to do research for a story; Spanfeller also says he wants to use AI to automate some tasks humans currently perform on the business side of his company, like preparing basic marketing plans for advertisers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eHAjjO">
But G/O employees, who tell me they don’t want to talk on the record for fear they’ll be disciplined by managers, say they’ve received no information from their managers about any use of AI — except a heads-up that the AI-written stories were going to appear on the site on July 5, which was sent the same day the stories ran.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gkIpaD">
G/O journalists tell me they’re upset about the execution of the stories — <a href="https://gizmodo.com/a-chronological-list-of-star-wars-movies-tv-shows-1850592566">a bot-written item about how to watch all the Star Wars movies in chronological order</a> had errors, for instance — but even more so, the fact that they exist at all.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HYHxRd">
“It’s a disaster for employee morale,” a G/O journalist told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SQ10Du">
Brown now says the next round of stories will receive input from the top editors at each publication. “We won’t do another editorial project that I can possibly imagine, without an [editor-in-chief] overseeing and reviewing it,” he told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ie8k9g">
Spanfeller and Brown also say they won’t use AI to replace G/O’s staff. “Our goal is to hire more journalists,” Spanfeller said. (Spanfeller notes that, like other media companies — including <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/vox-media-layoffs-130-employees-job-cuts-1235496467/">Vox Media, which owns this site</a> — <a href="https://twitter.com/OnionIncUnion/status/1669062355580231696">G/O has laid off employees</a> because of this “<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/28/23375164/advertising-slow-growth-economy-digital-facebook-apple-snap-peter-kafka-column">crappy economic market</a>” — but called it a “de minimis amount of reduction.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JCV9wb">
That argument doesn’t persuade G/O staff, who say they assume G/O will inevitably use the tech to replace them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7GpwyG">
“This is a not-so-veiled attempt to replace real journalism with machine-generated content,” another G/O journalist told me. “G/O’s MO is to make staff do more and more and publish more and more. It has never ceased to be that. This is a company that values quantity over quality.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kDS6nY">
Other newsrooms that have tried out AI-generated stories have since pulled back. CNET, which generated headlines when it admitted that dozens of stories it published were machine-made (and full of errors), has since said it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/6/23750761/cnet-ai-generated-stories-policy-update">won’t use made-from-scratch AI stories</a>. BuzzFeed, which briefly saw its stock shoot up when it announced its enthusiasm for AI earlier this year — and months later <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/20/23691852/buzzfeed-news-rip-digital-media-industry">shut down its entire BuzzFeed News operation</a> — produced an <a href="https://futurism.com/buzzfeed-publishing-articles-by-ai">embarrassing series of “travel guides”</a> that were almost entirely produced by AI. But a PR rep now says the company won’t make more of those.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wd173W">
And while both Insider and Axios have said they are exploring using generative AI to help journalists do their work, executives at both publications say they won’t use stories written entirely by bots. At the moment, at least.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pft4nO">
“Definitely looking at every aspect of AI augmenting our work but don’t see any upside in wholly AI-generated content right now,” Axios editor-in-chief Jim VandeHei wrote in an email to Vox. “Seems like all danger, no upside until A LOT more is known.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J4i4vA">
But there’s definitely at least one upside to machine-made content: It costs next to nothing. And it’s worth noting that there are many, many outlets publishing stories, written by actual humans, that promise to tell you, as the Gizmodo AI story did, how to watch <a href="https://www.vox.com/star-wars">Star Wars</a> movies in order. Among them: <a href="https://www.space.com/star-wars-movies-in-order">Space.com</a>, <a href="https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/star-wars-movies-in-order/">Rotten Tomatoes</a>, <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/star-wars-movies-order/">Reader’s Digest</a>, <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-watch-the-star-wars-movies-in-order">PC Magazine</a>, <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/star-wars-movies-in-order-how-to-watch/">the Wrap</a>, and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/07/star-wars-movies-in-order">Vanity Fair</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gYJ1Nj">
And for at least a few days, <a href="https://www.vox.com/google">Google</a> ranked Gizmodo’s machine-made output among the top results for “star wars movies” queries. That’s something Brown noted when he told me that he’s learned that AI content “will, at least for the moment, be well-received by search engines.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gagmhq">
Which points out both the appeal and the limitations of this kind of stuff: There’s <em>some</em> audience for it. And Google — for now — will steer people to sites that make it, which translates to page views and at least the potential for ad revenue.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FdohNu">
But making the exact same content producible by dozens of other people — or an unlimited number of robots — doesn’t build long-term value for your publication. And whatever financial return you earn will keep shrinking as more people and bots make the same thing, creating more competition and pushing ad prices down. (Unless, of course, Google decides that it’s better off not sending people away from its results page at all — like it now does for “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=what+time+is+the+super+bowl&amp;oq=what+ti&amp;aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j35i39i650j0i457i512j0i402i512j0i402i650j69i60l2.931j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">What time is the Super Bowl</a>” results.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bRSnMU">
It’s also worth noting that the Gizmodo machine-made stories have since fallen way down on the Google rankings (perhaps because of the <a href="https://futurism.com/gizmodo-ai-star-wars-article-google">scrutiny</a> those search results generated).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1EjhER">
Years ago, I worked for Spanfeller when he was the publisher of Forbes.com, where he also produced a lot of content that wasn’t created by his employees, like republished stories from news wires, consultancies, and other outside sources. Spanfeller estimates that his staff produced around 200 stories each day but that Forbes.com published around 5,000 items.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j2Izt1">
And back then, Spanfeller said, the staff-produced stories generated 85 to 90 percent of the site’s page views. The other stuff wasn’t valueless. Just not that valuable.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kf2Iqe">
Spanfeller says he thinks that could play out again with AI stories, imagining a scenario where “there’s value to the site, there’s value to the end user for AI-generated content — whatever that means.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oFNHCs">
But he says the stuff the humans on his staff do will be much more valuable than the work the robots do. “I don’t think this is an existential moment for journalism.”
</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>WFI ad-hoc panel hands direct Asian Games entries to Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat, raises eyebrows</strong> - The IOA ad-hoc panel said in a circular that it has already selected wrestler in men’s freestyle 65kg and women’s 53kg but trials will be held in all six weight categories in each of the three styles</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>Ramiel, Shamrock, River Of Gold, Angeles, Polished Girl and The King N I excelled</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>Joaquin, Esperanza and Golden Neil pleased</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>Cummins more of old fashioned Test captain, Stokes tries to make something happen every ball: Ponting</strong> - Australia lead the series 2-1 heading into the fourth Test starting in Manchester on Wednesday</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>West Indies announce squad for 2nd Test against India, add uncapped spinner</strong> - Sinclair’s inclusion provides captain Kraigg Brathwaite with an additional bowling option and the opportunity for a Test debut alongside fellow spinner Rahkeem Cornwall at Queen’s Park Oval</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>BRS Govt. has the habit of targeting properties of Oppn leaders: Ponguleti</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>Oomen Chandy’s passing leaves Congress bereft</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>26 Opposition parties’ joint resolution pitches for conducting caste census</strong> - In their Samuhik Sankalp (joint resolution) released after the meeting, the parties expressed their steadfast resolve to safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution</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>Here are the big stories from Karnataka today</strong> - Welcome to the Karnataka Today newsletter, your guide from The Hindu on the major news stories to follow today. Curated and written by Nalme Nachiyar.</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>Oratorical contest to mark World Day for International Justice held</strong> -</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: Russia says Crimean bridge partially open to cars again</strong> - Moscow accuses Ukraine of attacking its huge sea bridge with drones, killing two people.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: No fast results in offensive, warns Ukraine’s General Syrskyi</strong> - Gen Syrskyi, overseeing the renewed push in the east, says quick success is practically impossible.</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>VanMoof: E-bike firm goes bust after Covid boom</strong> - The brothers who founded the Dutch electric bike-maker said they were unable to save the firm.</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>Heatwave: BBC correspondents on how people are coping</strong> - Climate change means places like Murcia in Spain and Phoenix, Arizona are only getting hotter.</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>Illegal Migration Bill: Government sees off final Lords challenge</strong> - The bill is central to the prime minister’s pledge to stop small boats crossing the English Channel.</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>For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon</strong> - “They’ve got a great adventure ahead of them.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954616">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Corsair is buying DIY mechanical keyboard brand Drop</strong> - Drop claims enthusiast roots will remain but product availability could improve. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954545">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When will we see Apple’s 3 nm M3? Let’s sort through conflicting rumors</strong> - New products are sure to come as soon as October, but details are fuzzy. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954417">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aspartame and cancer: Why you really shouldn’t worry about this</strong> - The FDA said bluntly that it disagrees with the WHO’s carcinogen classification. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954575">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>AT&amp;T stock fell to 29-year low on Friday and sank another 6.7% today</strong> - AT&amp;T, Verizon, Frontier, and Lumen all get hammered after lead-cable reports. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954536">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>I asked my girlfriend to describe me in 5 words. She said I’m mature, I’m moral, I’m pure, I’m polite and I’m perfect! Then she added that I..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
…also had a fundamental lack of understanding about apostrophes and spaces.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152g1nx/i_asked_my_girlfriend_to_describe_me_in_5_words/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152g1nx/i_asked_my_girlfriend_to_describe_me_in_5_words/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Three writers, Al, Ben, and Carl, who were attending a writing convention, booked a 3 bedroom suite on the 75th floor of a hotel.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When they arrived back at the hotel from the convention, the receptionist told them, “I’m terribly sorry, but all the elevators are broken. In the meantime, you will have to take the stairs.”
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Now, Al was a writer of funny stories, Ben was a writer of scary stories, and Carl was a writer of sad stories. The three of them agreed that, to make it less boring, Al would tell the other two his funniest stories while they climbed from floors 1 to 25, Ben would tell his scariest stories from floors 26 to 50, and Carl would tell his saddest stories from floors 51 to 75.
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They started to climb the stairs, and Al started to tell funny stories. By the time they reached the 25th floor, Ben and Carl were laughing hysterically.
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Then Ben started to tell scary stories. By the time they reached the 50th floor, Al and Carl were hugging each other in fear.
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Then Carl started to tell sad stories. “I’ll tell my saddest story of all first,” he said. “There once was a man named Carl who left the hotel room key in the car…”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Make_the_music_stop"> /u/Make_the_music_stop </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152vvc5/three_writers_al_ben_and_carl_who_were_attending/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152vvc5/three_writers_al_ben_and_carl_who_were_attending/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two Indians are walking beside a river…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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One reaches down into the mud and runs it through his fingers.
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“The White Man was here.”
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“How can you tell?”
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“We’re speaking English.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/The_Safe_For_Work"> /u/The_Safe_For_Work </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152a03c/two_indians_are_walking_beside_a_river/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152a03c/two_indians_are_walking_beside_a_river/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What are the three words you never want to hear while having sex?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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“Honey, I’m home!”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Yorkie_Mom_2"> /u/Yorkie_Mom_2 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152m6k1/what_are_the_three_words_you_never_want_to_hear/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152m6k1/what_are_the_three_words_you_never_want_to_hear/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A rich old man is on his deathbed…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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…but he does not have any heirs. But he has three good friends - a teacher, a doctor, and a lawyer.
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He calls them by his side and tells them, “I am dying. I wish to be buried with half my wealth. I will now give you $5 million each and you should bury half of that with my casket when I die.”
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All three agreed and soon the man died. On the day of the funeral, all three attended. Then it came time to bury the casket.
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The teacher said, “I’m sorry. I saw all the poor children who can’t afford to go to school so I built a school for them. I don’t have any money left to bury.”
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The doctor said, “I’m also sorry. I saw all the poor sick people and built a hospital for them and I don’t have any money left.”
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The lawyer said, “What kind of friends are you if you can’t even honour his dying wish!” and then placed a cheque for $2.5 million on the casket.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/CodingBuizel"> /u/CodingBuizel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152ormz/a_rich_old_man_is_on_his_deathbed/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152ormz/a_rich_old_man_is_on_his_deathbed/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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