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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>How It Started, How It’s Going: Why past research does not encompass pandemic-induced remote work realities and what leaders can do for more inclusive remote work practices</strong> -
<div>
This paper presents a critical evaluation of recently published studies that attempt to address remote work and virtual team challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the increasing prevalence of remote work, these studies postulate a diverse set of recommendations to summarize what we know about remote work complexities and how to combat them. In this piece, we argue that most of these recommendations fail to serve the needs of leaders, virtual teams, and remote workers, as many of these recent publications gravely overlook the core challenges emerging from the forced nature of working remotely. Indeed, the unique nature of the pandemic poses particular challenges that go beyond previously identified ones. Thus, there is an urgent need to address unidentified obstacles and challenge misplaced recommendations to better equip executives and employees working remotely.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/5nyxp/" target="_blank">How It Started, How It’s Going: Why past research does not encompass pandemic-induced remote work realities and what leaders can do for more inclusive remote work practices</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Students’ Views Studying in Arabic Preparatory Class on Distance Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Countries have taken some urgent decisions in order not to experience an irreparable loss in the field of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic that affected the world as of the end of 2019. In this process, the distance education decision was among the measures taken for the students to get through the education period with the least damage and without loss of time. Distance education tools, which were previously used at a limited level in many areas, have become widespread and used at all levels of education processes. In Turkey, distance education tools were used in all stages of education in this process and universities had to expand this education tool that they were familiar with. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020-2021 academic year was carried out almost entirely with distance education tools. Due to the decision taken by the Higher Education Council (CoHE) and universities during the pandemic process, there were also students who had to take their foreign language learning with distance education tools. In this study, it is aimed to reveal the situation faced by students who had to take one year preparatory education through online programs before starting the Arabic Language Education undergraduate program. In this process, open-ended questions were asked with a semi-structured interview form to the students who continued their education. The answers given by the students to the questions posed were evaluated with descriptive analysis. While there are students who find distance education positive due to situations such as listening to lessons in a comfortable environment at home, being with the family, there are those who evaluate this process negatively due to situations such as the ineffectiveness of the lessons, the internet shortage, and the inability to take the exams in a reliable environment. Students stated that they generally see this education process negatively and that they don’t want to learn a foreign language with distance education tools if an option is offered.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/dar56/" target="_blank">Students’ Views Studying in Arabic Preparatory Class on Distance Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Artificial Intelligence-Based Analytics for Impacts of COVID-19 and Online Learning on College Students’ Mental Health</strong> -
<div>
COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), first emerged in Wuhan, China late in December 2019. Not long after, the virus spread worldwide and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. This caused many changes around the world and in the United States, including an educational shift towards online learning. In this paper, we seek to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic and increase in online learning impact college students’ emotional wellbeing. We use several machine learning and statistical models to analyze data collected by the Faculty of Public Administration at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in conjunction with an international consortium of universities, other higher education institutions, and students’ associations. Our results indicate that features related to students’ academic life have the largest impact on their emotional wellbeing. Other important factors include students’ satisfaction with their university’s and government’s handling of the pandemic as well as students’ financial security.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/gwkcf/" target="_blank">Artificial Intelligence-Based Analytics for Impacts of COVID-19 and Online Learning on College Students’ Mental Health</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A Brief Primer on Conducting Regression-Based Causal Mediation Analysis</strong> -
<div>
This is an R package “regmedint” tutorial on conducting regression-based causal mediation analysis, proposed by Valeri and VanderWeele (2013, 2015). We walk readers through a running example, using a publicly available dataset that was originally analyzed in a published longitudinal study to assess the extent to which children’s externalizing behavior mediates changes in parental negative feelings during the COVID-19 lockdown.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/jath7/" target="_blank">A Brief Primer on Conducting Regression-Based Causal Mediation Analysis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Neighborhood SES and the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Lower-income neighborhoods have higher numbers of COVID-19 infections than higher-income neighborhoods. Yet we know relatively little about why these neighborhoods are more vulnerable. Using neighborhood-specific COVID-19 data recently released by the City of Toronto, we (a) compare the COVID-19 trajectories in lower- and higher-income neighborhoods and (b) examine the extent to which neighborhoods’ physical infrastructure and sociodemographic composition account for this difference. Until early March, differences in the cumulative number of COVID-19 infections by neighborhood SES were minimal. However, COVID-19 has since spread faster in lower-income neighborhoods. Until the peak of the pandemic, the physical infrastructure of lower-income neighborhoods was the key reason why COVID-19 spread faster in these neighborhoods. After the peak, differences in physical infrastructure played a smaller role. Lower-income neighborhoods had greater difficulty curbing the pandemic because higher shares of their residents belong to groups particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Our findings illustrate how the pandemic may exacerbate inequalities across neighborhoods.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/3xg5q/" target="_blank">Neighborhood SES and the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Optimization and deoptimization of codons in SARS-CoV-2 and the implications for vaccine development</strong> -
<div>
The spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, has progressed into a global pandemic. To date, thousands of genetic variants have been identified across SARS-CoV-2 isolates from patients. Sequence analysis reveals that the codon usage of viral sequences decreased over time but fluctuated from time to time. In this study, through evolution modeling, we found that this phenomenon might result from the virus’ preference for mutations during transmission. Using dual luciferase assays, we further discovered that the deoptimization of codons on viruses might weaken protein expression during the virus evolution, indicating that the choice of codon usage might play important role in virus fitness. Finally, given the importance of codon usage in protein expression and particularly for mRNA vaccine, we designed several omicron BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5 spike mRNA vaccine candidates based on codon optimization, and experimentally validated their high levels of expression. Our study highlights the importance of codon usage in virus evolution and mRNA vaccine development.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.03.506470v1" target="_blank">Optimization and deoptimization of codons in SARS-CoV-2 and the implications for vaccine development</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>ApoE4 causes severe COVID-19 outcomes via downregulation of ACE2</strong> -
<div>
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); host cell entry by this virus relies on the interaction between the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of its spike glycoprotein and the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on cell membranes. In addition to serving as a receptor for SARS-CoV-2, ACE2 was originally discovered as a protective factor in the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) that catalyses the degradation of angiotensin II (Ang II) to Ang 1-7, which is involved in multiple organ pathology. Recent genetic and clinical studies reported that ApoE4 expression is associated with increased susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, but the underlying mechanism is currently unclear. In the present study, by using immunofluorescence staining, molecular dynamics simulations, proximity ligation assay (PLA) and coimmunoprecipitation (Co-IP) combined with a biolayer interferometry (BLI) assay, we found that ApoE interacts with both the spike protein and ACE2 but does not show obvious isoform-dependent binding effects. These data suggest that ApoE4 increases SARS-CoV-2 infectivity in a manner that may not depend on differential interactions with the spike protein or ACE2. Importantly, further immunoblotting and immunofluorescence staining results showed that ApoE4 significantly downregulates ACE2 protein expression in vitro and in vivo and subsequently decreases the conversion of Ang II to Ang 1-7, which could worsen tissue lesions; these findings provide a possible explain by which ApoE4 exacerbates COVID-19 disease.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.04.506474v1" target="_blank">ApoE4 causes severe COVID-19 outcomes via downregulation of ACE2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Combined Molnupiravir and Nirmatrelvir Treatment Improves the Inhibitory Effect on SARS-CoV-2 in Rhesus Macaques</strong> -
<div>
The periodic emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) with unpredictable clinical severity and ability to escape preexisting immunity emphasizes the continued need for antiviral interventions. Two small molecule inhibitors, molnupiravir (MK-4482), a nucleoside analog, and nirmatrelvir (PF-07321332), a 3C-like protease inhibitor, have each recently been approved as monotherapy for use in high risk COVID-19 patients. As preclinical data are only available for rodent and ferret models, we originally assessed the efficacy of MK-4482 and PF-07321332 alone and then in combination Against infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta VOC in the rhesus macaque COVID-19 model. Notably, use of MK-4482 and PF-07321332 in combination improved the individual inhibitory effect of both drugs. Combined treatment resulted in milder disease progression, stronger reduction of virus shedding from mucosal tissues of the upper respiratory tract, stronger reduction of viral replication in the lower respiratory tract, and reduced lung pathology. Our data strongly indicate superiority of combined MK-4482 and PF-07321332 treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infections as demonstrated here in the closest COVID-19 surrogate model.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.03.506479v1" target="_blank">Combined Molnupiravir and Nirmatrelvir Treatment Improves the Inhibitory Effect on SARS-CoV-2 in Rhesus Macaques</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Delayed SARS-CoV-2 Spread and Olfactory Cell Lineage Impairment in Close-Contact Infection Syrian Hamster Models</strong> -
<div>
Objectives: Close contact with patients with COVID-19 is speculated to be the most common cause of viral transmission, but the pathogenesis of COVID-19 by close contact remains to be elucidated. In addition, despite olfactory impairment being a unique complication of COVID-19, the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the olfactory cell lineage has not been fully validated. This study aimed to elucidate close-contact viral transmission to the nose and lungs and to investigate the temporal damage in the olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) lineage caused by SARS-CoV-2. Methods: Syrian hamsters were orally administered SARS-CoV-2 as direct-infection models. On day 7 after inoculation, infected and uninfected hamsters were housed in the same cage for 30 minutes. These uninfected hamsters were subsequently assigned to a close-contact group. First, viral presence in the nose and lungs was verified in the infection and close-contact groups at several time points. Next, the impacts on the olfactory epithelium, including olfactory progenitors, immature ORNs, and mature ORNs, were examined histologically. Then, the viral transmission status and chronological changes in tissue damage were compared between the direct-infection and close-contact groups. Results: In the close-contact group, viral presence could not be detected in both the nose and lungs on day 3, and the virus was identified in both tissues on day 7. In the direct-infection group, the viral load was highest in the nose and lungs on day 3, decreased on day 7, and was no longer detectable on day 14. Histologically, in the direct-infection group, mature ORNs were most depleted on day 3 (p &lt; 0.001) and showed a recovery trend on day 14, with similar trends for olfactory progenitors and immature ORNs. In the close-contact group, there was no obvious tissue damage on day 3, but on day 7, the number of all ORN lineage cells significantly decreased (p &lt; 0.001). Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted even after brief contact and subsequent olfactory epithelium and lung damage occurred more than 3 days after the trigger of infection. The present study also indicated that SARS-CoV-2 damages all ORN lineage cells, but this damage can begin to recover approximately 14 days post infection.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.03.506499v1" target="_blank">Delayed SARS-CoV-2 Spread and Olfactory Cell Lineage Impairment in Close-Contact Infection Syrian Hamster Models</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Predicting future spatial patterns in COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Vaccination is a critical tool for controlling infectious diseases, with its use to protect against COVID-19 being a prime example. Where a disease is highly transmissible, even a small proportion of unvaccinated individuals can have substantial implications for disease burdens and compromise efforts for control. As socio-demographic factors such as deprivation and ethnicity have been shown to influence uptake rates, identifying how vaccine uptake varies with socio-demographic indicators is a critical step for reducing vaccine hesitancy and issues of access, and identifying plausible future uptake patterns. Here, we analyse the numbers of COVID-19 vaccinations subdivided by age, gender, date, dose and geographical location. We use publicly available socio-demographic data, and use random forest models to capture patterns of uptake at high spatial resolution, with systematic variation restricted to fine spatial scale (~1km in urban areas). We show that uptake of first vaccine booster doses in Scotland can be used to predict with high precision the distribution of second booster doses across deprivation deciles, age and gender despite the substantially lower uptake of second boosters compared to first. This analysis shows that while age and gender have the greatest impact on the model fit, there is a substantial influence of several deprivation factors and the proportion of BAME residents. The high correlation amongst these factors also suggests that, should vaccine uptake decrease, the impact of deprivation is likely to increase, furthering the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on individuals living in highly deprived areas. As our analysis is based solely on publicly available socio-demographic data and readily recorded vaccination uptake figures, it would be easily adaptable to analysing vaccination uptake data from countries where data recording is similar, and for aiding vaccination campaigns against other infectious diseases.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.30.22279415v2" target="_blank">Predicting future spatial patterns in COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>People exposed to proton pump inhibitors shortly preceding COVID-19 diagnosis are not at an increased risk of subsequent hospitalizations and mortality: a nation-wide matched cohort study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Aim. To assess whether exposure to proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) shortly preceding COVID-19 diagnosis affected the risk of subsequent hospitalizations and mortality. Methods. This population-based study embraced first COVID-19 episodes in adults diagnosed up to August 15 2021 in Croatia. Patients were classified based on exposure to PPIs and burden of PPI-requiring morbidities as “non-users” (no issued prescriptions, no recorded treatment-requiring conditions between January 1 2019 and COVID-19 diagnosis), “possible users” (no issued prescriptions, but morbidities present; self-medication possible) and “users” (at least one prescription within 3 months prior to the COVID-19 diagnosis; morbidities present ). Subsets were mutually exactly matched for pre-COVID-19 characteristics. The contrast between “users” and “possible users” informed about the effect of PPIs that is separate of the effect of PPI-requiring conditions. Results. Among 433609 patients, “users” and “possible users” were matched 41195 (of 55098) to 17334 (of 18170) in the primary and 33272 to 16434 in the sensitivity analysis. There was no relevant difference between them regarding mortality [primary: RR=0.93 (95%CI 0.85-1.02; RD= -0.34% (-0.73, 0.03); sensitivity: RR=0.88 (0.78-0.98); RD=-0.45% (-0.80, -0.11)] or hospitalizations [primary: RR=1.04 (0.97-1.13); RD=0.29% (-0.16, 0.73); sensitivity: RR=1.05 (0.97-1.15); RD=0.32% (-0.12, 0.75)]. The risks of both were slightly higher in “possible users” or “users” than in “non-users” (absolutely by ≈0.4%-1.6%) indicating the effect of PPI-requiring morbidities. Conclusion. Pre-morbid exposure to PPIs does not affect the risk of death or hospitalization in adult COVID-19 patients, but PPI-requiring morbidities seemingly slightly increase the risk of both.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.30.22274526v2" target="_blank">People exposed to proton pump inhibitors shortly preceding COVID-19 diagnosis are not at an increased risk of subsequent hospitalizations and mortality: a nation-wide matched cohort study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>No evidence of association between HRV and training load in a pool of professional athletes before, during, and after the first COVID-19 lockdown.</strong> -
<div>
PURPOSE: The COVID-19 crisis also affected elite sport severely, as elite athletes either stopped or drastically reduced their training regimen due to the lack of competitions and the mandatory lockdown. The aim of this study was to test whether heart rate variability was a reliable index of training load, which was dramatically altered due to the mandatory lockdown that occurred as a consequence of the COVID-19. METHODS: Training (volume and intensity) and heart rate variability of sixteen professional male (n = 8; body mass index = 22.2 ± 2.0) and female cyclists (n = 8; body mass index = 20.3 ± 1.1) before (4 weeks), during (7 weeks), and after (4 weeks) the mandatory lockdown in Spain were monitored. RESULTS: Individual analyses showed that the mandatory lockdown caused reliable reductions in training volume in 13 subjects (-96 to -7 % reductions in minutes), that were followed by an increase after the lockdown in all subjects (5 to 270%). In contrast, changes in training load were not homogenous across individuals. Moreover, such changes were not matched by comparable variations in heart rate variability. A mixed model of the heart rate variability as a function of training volume and intensity revealed no significant modulation by these two variables, and subject specific effects on the slope. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we did not find evidence of association between heart rate variability and training load and/or intensity as many previous reports have suggested, even if training conditions changed dramatically overnight.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/sportrxiv/crm6q/" target="_blank">No evidence of association between HRV and training load in a pool of professional athletes before, during, and after the first COVID-19 lockdown.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>CoVidAffect, real-time monitoring of mood variations following the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 outbreak and the ensuing confinement measures are expected to bear a significant psychological impact on the affected populations. Here, we publish a dataset from CoVidAffect​, a citizen science project that was launched to provide direct, geolocalized data of changes in subjective feeling and physical arousal following the COVID-19 crisis. These publicly available data are continuously updated and visual summaries are displayed on the project website. The data can be further analyzed to identify affected geographical regions, quantify emotional responses to specific measures and policies, and to understand the effect of context variables, such as living space, socioeconomic status, and practice of physical exercise, on emotional regulation and psychological resilience. Our goal is to offer a resource that will help to anticipate the needs for psychosocial support and facilitate evidence-based policy making.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/3sv6r/" target="_blank">CoVidAffect, real-time monitoring of mood variations following the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Airborne Pathogen Detection in Fine Aerosol Exhaled Oral Breath Condensates</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Rationale: Exhaled breath condensate (EBC) promises a valuable, non-invasive, and easy to obtain clinical sample. However, it is not currently used diagnostically due to poor reproducibility, sample contamination, and sample loss. Objective: We evaluated whether a new, hand-held EBC collector (PBM-HALE) that separates inertially impacted large droplets (LD) before condensing fine aerosols (FA) in distinct, self-sealing containers, overcomes current limitations. Methods: Sampling consistency was determined in healthy volunteers by microbial culture, 16S phylogenetics, spectrophotometry, RT-PCR, and HILIC-MS. Capture of aerosolised polystyrene beads, liposomes, virus-like particles, or pseudotyped virus was analysed by nanoparticle tracking analysis, reporter expression assays, and flow cytometry. Acute symptomatic COVID-19 case tidal FA EBC viral load was quantified by RT-qPCR. Exhaled particles were counted by laser light scattering. Measurements and Main Results: Salivary amylase-free FA EBC capture was linear (R2=0.9992; 0.25-30 min) yielding RNA (6.03 ug/mL) containing eukaryotic 18S rRNA (RT-qPCR; p&lt;0.001) but not human GAPDH, RNase P, or beta actin mRNA;141 non-volatile metabolites included eukaryotic cell membrane components, and cuscohygrine 3 days after cocaine abuse. Culturable aerobe viability was condensation temperature-dependent. Breath fraction-specific microbiota were stable, identifying Streptococcus enrichment in a mild dry cough case. Nebulized pseudotyped virus infectivity loss &lt;67% depended on condensation temperature, and particle charge-driven aggregation. SARS-CoV-2 RNA genomes were detected only by forced expiration FA EBC capture, in 100% of acute COVID-19 patients. Conclusions: High purity, distal airway FA EBC can reproducibly and robustly inform contamination-free infectious agent emission sources, and be quantitatively assayed for multiple host, microbial, and lifestyle biomarker classes.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.25.22275435v2" target="_blank">Airborne Pathogen Detection in Fine Aerosol Exhaled Oral Breath Condensates</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The global distribution of COVID-19 vaccine: The role of macro-socioeconomics measures</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract Since coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has continued to spread globally, many countries have started vaccinations at the end of December 2020. This research examines the relationship between COVID-19 vaccine distribution and two macro-socioeconomics measures, including human development index and gross domestic product, among 25 countries for two points in time, including February and August 2021. The COVID-19 dataset is a collection of the COVID-19 data maintained by Our World in Data. It is a daily updated dataset and includes confirmed cases, vaccinations, deaths, and testing data. Ordinary Least Squares was applied to examine how macro-socioeconomic measures predict the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine over time. Results: The results indicate that a higher gross domestic product per capita is positively associated with higher COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and this relationship becomes more robust over time. However, some countries may have more successful vaccine distribution results regardless of their gross domestic product. In addition, the result shows human development index does not have a significant relationship with vaccine distribution. Conclusion: Economic measures may be counted as a more vital indicator for vaccine distribution as they have a more direct relationship distribution with health infrastructure than social measures such as human development index.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.09.21251436v2" target="_blank">The global distribution of COVID-19 vaccine: The role of macro-socioeconomics measures</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>Booster Study of COVID-19 Protein Subunit Recombinant Vaccine</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 subunit protein recombinant vaccine;   Biological: Active Comparator<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   PT Bio Farma;   Faculty of Medicine Universitas Padjadjaran;   Faculty of Medicine Universitas Udayana<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of a Recombinant Protein COVID-19 Vaccine SCTV01E-1 in Population Aged Above 18 Years</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01E-1 on D0;   Biological: SCTV01E-1 on D28;   Biological: SCTV01E-1 on D150;   Biological: SCTV01E on D0;   Biological: SCTV01E on D28;   Biological: SCTV01E on D150;   Biological: SCTV01E-1 on D120;   Biological: SCTV01E on D120<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>A Novel Parameter LIT/N That Predicts Survival in COVID-19 ICU Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Diagnostic Test: the LIT test<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Gazi University;   Oxford MediStress<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>Efficacy and Safety of ES16001 in Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: ES16001 40 mg;   Drug: ES16001 80 mg;   Drug: ES16001 160 mg;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Genencell Co. Ltd.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase 2a Trial to Evaluate Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 Vaccine Strategies in HIV-infected/Uninfected Adults.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Ad26.COV2.S (VAC31518, JNJ-78436735) Vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 rS (CovovaxTM), BNT162b2 (Pfizer)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   The Aurum Institute NPC;   Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations<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>COVID Protection After Transplant - Sanofi GSK (CPAT-SG) Study</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Kidney Transplant<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Sanofi-GSK monovalent (B.1.351) CoV2 preS dTM-AS03 COVID-19 vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID);   PPD;   Johns Hopkins University;   Sanofi Pasteur, a Sanofi Company<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 Vaccine, AdCLD-CoV19-1</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Vaccines<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: AdCLD-CoV19-1<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   International Vaccine Institute;   Cellid 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>Smartphone Intervention for Overdose and COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Substance Use Disorders;   Overdose;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: iThrive WI Intervention<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Wisconsin, Madison;   National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)<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 Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 and Influenza Combination Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Influenza<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: CIC Vaccine;   Drug: qNIV Vaccine;   Drug: SARS-CoV-2 rS Vaccine;   Drug: Influenza Vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study to Assess Efficacy and Safety of Treamid for Patients With Reduced Exercise Tolerance After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection;   Lung Fibrosis<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Treamid;   Drug: Treamid twice a day;   Drug: Treamid once a day;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   PHARMENTERPRISES 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>Self-proning and Repositioning in COVID-19 Outpatients at Risk of Complicated Illness</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   COVID-19 Pneumonia;   Proning;   Hospitalization;   Death;   Outpatient;   Complication<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Self-proning<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Unity Health Toronto;   Applied Health Research Centre<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>Effects of Immulina TM Supplements With PASC Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post Acute COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Dietary Supplement: Immulina TM;   Dietary Supplement: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Mississippi Medical Center;   National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of Clinical Performance and Usability of iStatis COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test at POC</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19 Virus Infection;   COVID-19;   Coronavirus Disease-19;   COVID-19 Pandemic;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Diagnostic Test: iStatis COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test;   Diagnostic Test: “COVID-19 RT-PCR Test EUA Number: EUA200011, Company: Laboratory Corporation of America (”Labcorp")<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   bioLytical Laboratories<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>Resilience Intervention for Health Professionals COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Mental Health Wellness 1<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Mindfulness-based Intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad de Monterrey<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>Addressing Post-COVID-19 Musculoskeletal Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Telemedicine;   Musculoskeletal Disease;   SARS-CoV-2;   Pain;   COVID-19;   Exercise<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Multicomponent exercise program;   Other: Tele-health primary care rehabilitation program<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad Europea de Madrid<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Beyond the vaccines: a glance at the small molecule and peptide-based anti-COVID19 arsenal</strong> - Unprecedented efforts of the researchers have been witnessed in the recent past towards the development of vaccine platforms for the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Albeit, vaccination stands as a practical strategy to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, supplementing the anti-COVID19 arsenal with therapeutic options such as small molecules/peptides and antibodies is being conceived as a prudent strategy to tackle the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. Noteworthy to mention that collective efforts from…</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>Targeting spike protein-induced TLR/NET axis by COVID-19 therapeutic NRICM102 ameliorates pulmonary embolism and fibrosis</strong> - The global COVID-19 pandemic remains a critical public health threat, as existing vaccines and drugs appear insufficient to halt the rapid transmission. During an outbreak from May to August 2021 in Taiwan, patients with severe COVID-19 were administered NRICM102, which was a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula developed based on its predecessor NRICM101 approved for treating mild cases. This study aimed to explore the mechanism of NRICM102 in ameliorating severe COVID-19-related embolic…</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>Computational investigation of potent inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 2’-O-methyltransferase (nsp16): Structure-based pharmacophore modeling, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations and binding free energy calculations</strong> - The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, has created unprecedented public health and economic crises around the world. SARS-CoV-2 2’-O-methyltransferase (nsp16) adds a “cap” to viral RNA to maintain the stability of viral RNA, and inhibition of nsp16 activity may reduce viral proliferation, making this protein an attractive drug target. Here, we report the identification of several small molecule inhibitors of…</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 Review of Safety Outcomes from Clinical Trials of Baricitinib in Rheumatology, Dermatology and COVID-19</strong> - Baricitinib is an oral, selective inhibitor of Janus kinase (JAK)1/JAK2 that transiently and reversibly inhibits many proinflammatory cytokines. This mechanism is a key mediator in a number of chronic inflammatory diseases; accordingly, baricitinib has been studied and approved for the treatment of several rheumatological and dermatological disorders, as well as COVID-19. This narrative review summarises and discusses the safety profile of baricitinib across these diseases, with special focus on…</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>Screening, molecular simulation and <em>in silico</em> kinetics of virtually designed Covid main protease inhibitors</strong> - Coronavirus (covid-19) infection is considered to deadliest ever pandemic experienced by the human being. It has very badly affected the socio-economic health of human and stuck the scientific community to think and rethink about its complete eradication. But due to no effective treatment or unavailability of vaccine the health professional could not show any significant improvement to control the pandemic. The situation needs newer molecule, vaccine or effective treatment to control covid-19…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ZnO-chlorogenic acid nanostructured complex inhibits Covid-19 pathogenesis and increases hydroxychloroquine efficacy</strong> - The study purpose was to compare the anti- the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) property of chlorogenic acid (CGA) and Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NP) with the new valid synthesized complex of ZnO /CGA-NPs. Methods The facile mixing method was utilized to prepare ZnO/CGA-NPs. The in vitro effect of different ZnO/CGA-NPs concentrations on papain-like protease (PL^(pro)) and spike protein- receptor-binding domain (RBD) was measured by ELISA technique. The compounds effects on SARS-CoV2…</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>Emodin from Aloe inhibits Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus in cell culture</strong> - Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) is an emerging swine enteropathogenic coronavirus that causes severe diarrhea in neonatal piglets, leading to serious economic losses to the pig industries. At present, there are no effective control measures for SADS, making an urgent need to exploit effective antiviral therapies. Here, we confirmed that Aloe extract (Ae) can strongly inhibit SADS-CoV in Vero and IPI-FX cells in vitro. Furthermore, we detected that Emodin from Ae had…</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>Folic acid restricts SARS-CoV-2 invasion by methylating ACE2</strong> - The current COVID-19 pandemic is motivating us to elucidate the molecular mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 invasion and find methods for decreasing its transmissibility. We found that SARS-CoV-2 could increase the protein level of ACE2 in mice. Folic acid and 5-10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) could promote the methylation of the ACE2 promoter and inhibit ACE2 expression. Folic acid treatment decreased the binding ability of Spike protein, pseudovirus and inactivated authentic SARS-CoV-2 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>SARS-CoV-2 Infection-Associated Aortic Thrombosis Treated with Oral Factor Xa Inhibition</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute complex systemic disorder caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).While SARS-CoV-2 is known to cause significant pulmonary disease, various extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19 have also been reported. Growing evidence suggests that COVID-19 is associated with coagulopathy leading to micro and macrovascular complications. Although in patients with COVID-19, venous thromboembolic events are more frequent,…</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>Investigation into the <em>in vivo</em> mechanism of diosmetin in patients with breast cancer and COVID-19 using bioinformatics</strong> - Patients with breast cancer are prone to SARS-CoV-2 infection [the causative virus of coronavirus disease (COVID-19)] due to their lack of immunity. In the current study, we examined the mechanism of action of Diosmetin, a flavonoid with anti-inflammatory properties, in patients with BRCA infected with SARS-CoV-2.We used bioinformatics technology to analyze the binding ability, biological function, and other biological characteristics of Diosmetin in vivo and examine the core target 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>Ruxolitinib inhibits cytokine production by human lung macrophages without impairing phagocytic ability</strong> - Background: The Janus kinase (JAK) 1/2 inhibitor ruxolitinib has been approved in an indication of myelofibrosis and is a candidate for the treatment of a number of inflammatory or autoimmune diseases. We assessed the effects of ruxolitinib on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)- and poly (I:C)-induced cytokine production by human lung macrophages (LMs) and on the LMs’ phagocytic activity. Methods: Human LMs were isolated from patients operated on for lung carcinoma. The LMs were cultured with ruxolitinib…</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>Nutraceutical prospects of <em>Houttuynia cordata</em> against the infectious viruses</strong> - The novel enveloped β-coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has offered a surprising health challenge all over the world. It develops severe pneumonia leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Like SARS-COV-2, other encapsulated viruses like HIV, HSV, and influenza have also offered a similar challenge in the past. In this regard, many antiviral drugs are being explored with varying degrees of success to combat the associated pathological conditions. Therefore, upon scientific…</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 DNA-based non-infectious replicon system to study SARS-CoV-2 RNA synthesis</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has seriously affected public health around the world. In-depth studies on the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 is urgently necessary for pandemic prevention. However, most laboratory studies on SARS-CoV-2 have to be carried out in BSL-3 laboratories, greatly restricting the progress of relevant experiments. In this study, we used a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) method to assemble a…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The mechanism of metal-based antibacterial materials and the progress of food packaging applications: A review</strong> - Food packages have been detected carrying novel coronavirus in multi-locations since the outbreak of COVID-19, causing major concern in the field of food safety. Metal-based supported materials are widely used for sterilization due to their excellent antibacterial properties as well as low biological resistance. As the principal part of antibacterial materials, the active component, commonly referred to Ag, Cu, Zn, etc., plays the main role in inhibiting and killing pathogenic microorganisms by…</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>Heterologous Prime-boost of SARS-CoV-2 Inactivated Vaccine and mRNA BNT162b2 among Healthy Thai Adolescents</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Heterologous prime-boost vaccination with CoronaVac followed by BNT162b2 induced high neutralizing titer against SARS-CoV-2 Delta strain. After 5-month interval, booster with BNT162b2 induced high neutralizing titer against Omicron strain.Thai Clinical Trials Registry (thaiclinicaltrials.org): TCTR20210923012.</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>The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy</strong> - Is a controversial curriculum, entrenched in New York City’s public schools for two decades, finally coming undone? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-and-fall-of-vibes-based-literacy">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mikhail Gorbachev, the Fundamentally Soviet Man</strong> - The last leader of the U.S.S.R. attempted to modernize and reform his country, even as he failed to imagine it as anything but an empire. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/mikhail-gorbachev-the-fundamentally-soviet-man">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Biden’s Student-Debt Plan Could Chip Away at the Racial Wealth Gap</strong> - Loan forgiveness and other measures don’t solve the problem of rising tuition costs, but they could help some Black families start to catch up. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/bidens-student-debt-plan-could-chip-away-at-the-racial-wealth-gap">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Terrifying Choices Created by Wildfires</strong> - Many Californians are confronting a series of confounding decisions—among them, whether they should fight or flee. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-terrifying-choices-created-by-wildfires">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joan Silber Reads “Evolution”</strong> - The author reads her story from the September 12, 2022, issue of the magazine. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/joan-silber-reads-evolution">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Same-sex marriage protections and 4 other big items on Congress’s to-do list</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xfEfiVoJObEh6nKXNw97iSpiBsE=/449x0:7153x5028/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71328586/1242373860.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
The Senate returns from recess this fall with a lengthy to-do list. | Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Lawmakers are finally back from recess. Here’s what they still need to get done.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dbIILo">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23293725/kyrsten-sinema-inflation-reduction-act-climate-taxes">Congress may have gotten one big agenda item</a> done before leaving for August recess, but a lengthy to-do list awaits lawmakers as they return this week (in the Senate) and next (in the House). At the top of it: a vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage that will force some Republicans to stop dithering and take a position <a href="https://www.vox.com/23274491/senate-republicans-same-sex-marriage-bill-respect-for-marriage-act">on an issue that some still view as politically fraught</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="INyD6G">
Although a Senate vote on the bill got delayed this summer, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the Democrat leading the push for the legislation, is working to ensure a vote can take place in September, according to a spokesperson.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aqB3fH">
There’s a lot more on Congress’s docket as well, and a very short time to do it: Both chambers are scheduled to take off a large chunk of October as the midterm elections approach on November 8.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vtELoK">
Between now and then, there’s a major deadline on passing appropriations to keep the government open, more judicial vacancies that Democrats want to fill, and a backlog of other bills lawmakers are eying. All of these items take on new urgency given the high likelihood Republicans will take control of the House in January, allowing them to block pretty much anything Democrats want to get done.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p2cScZ">
Here’s a look at what Congress needs to do, what Democrats really want to do, and one big priority that could crop up later in the year.
</p>
<h3 id="ulhaNc">
<ol type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Passing legislation to protect same-sex marriage
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SE1yvp">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/20/23271255/respect-for-marriage-act-house-vote-republicans-senate">In July, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act</a>, legislation that would codify protections for same-sex marriage into federal law. Since then, there’s been an ongoing question of if the bill can pass the Senate, given the 60 votes it would need to overcome the filibuster.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vZyZ26">
The bill passed with a surprising number of House Republican votes (though most of the caucus opposed it), seemingly catching Democratic leaders in the Senate off guard. Democrats in the upper chamber now have a chance to shepherd it into law before the end of this term.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XaZmhE">
Schumer said right before recess that he wanted to bring the bill to the floor and that Democrats were working to get the Republican support it needed to pass. Several Republicans including Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have already said they oppose the bill and don’t see a need for it since they don’t believe these rights will be threatened. Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed to an opinion written by Supreme Court <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256">Justice Clarence Thomas</a> that referenced <em>Obergefell </em>as a decision he would be interested in revisiting.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uXm3nc">
Thus far, four Republicans have publicly backed the bill including Sens. Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Rob Portman (OH), and Thom Tillis (NC). Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has signaled that he won’t oppose the bill but has not committed to supporting it, either. Baldwin and Collins, who is also a bill co-sponsor, are trying to address some outstanding Republican concerns by adding an amendment that would clarify the impact the bill would have on religious liberty, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/02/gay-marriage-senate-republicans">Axios reports</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uRXpiQ">
As of last week, Baldwin still seems bullish that the legislation will eventually garner sufficient Republican backing. “Senator Baldwin feels confident there is the Republican support needed to pass the bipartisan legislation,” her spokesperson said.
</p>
<h3 id="CJEiAq">
<ol start="2" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Keeping the government open
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="21bUwt">
It’s that time of year, again. Appropriations — also known as spending bills that fund government agencies — expire at the end of September. At that point, Congress has to pass a whole new set of 12 appropriations bills to keep the government funded and open.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Llve1">
Typically, Congress has been unable to complete its work on all 12 appropriations bills by this deadline, resulting in lawmakers passing what’s known as a continuing resolution (CR), or short-term funding bill, which keeps funding levels for all federal agencies at the same level as the previous year. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/17/22933441/congress-government-shutdown-continuing-resolution">That route may not be ideal</a>, especially for programs that may need new funding, but doing so means the government won’t shut down because it still has money to operate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xTm64I">
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chair of the Appropriations Committee, plans to introduce a CR in the coming weeks, according to a spokesperson for the panel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PXoilA">
The push to pass the CR could become more complicated if lawmakers try to attach other provisions to the legislation. Already, a group of House lawmakers is opposing the addition of measures that would bolster fossil fuel production, which were offered to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) as <a href="https://tyt.com/stories/16AJOKzVziKkKMUmsIUqMY/5f075c05eed5ba8f4">part of a deal to support the Inflation Reduction Act</a>. Given Democratic control of both chambers, it’s unlikely the government will shut down, though slim margins in the Senate give Republicans more leeway to put forth their priorities and slow the process.
</p>
<h3 id="aGOqUZ">
<ol start="3" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Judges, judges, judges
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dLndDr">
One major task the Senate has in addition to passing bills is confirming judicial and executive branch nominees. In the last two years, especially, it’s become a high priority for many Democrats who want to even the scales after the Trump administration aggressively filled vacancies. Thus far, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/08/09/biden-has-appointed-more-federal-judges-than-any-president-since-jfk-at-this-point-in-his-tenure/">Biden has already seen more judges confirmed</a> than recent administrations at the same time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GBbKQY">
If Democrats lose the Senate this fall, however, they would also lose the ability to push through judges without Republicans voting for them, meaning it would be hard to approve any judges. That possibility has fueled activist calls for Democrats to approve more judges while they still can. <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/why-democrats-giving-mitch-mcconnell-judges.html">In a recent Slate op-ed</a>, Chris Kang, Demand Justice’s chief counsel, noted that Democrats could still leave over 60 vacancies open at the end of the year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LLEGYC">
Kang is urging the White House to expedite the nominations of additional judges and the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold more confirmation hearings, and consider more nominees in those hearings. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) is committed to keeping judges a “top priority” for the upper chamber, according to a committee spokesperson.
</p>
<h3 id="E1masN">
<ol start="4" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Electoral Count Act reform
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OqRisR">
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to prevent another effort to overturn an election like the one that came to a head on January 6. They want to do that by making <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/22/23274312/electoral-count-act-congress-election-january-6">changes to the Electoral Count Act</a>, laying out how Congress counts each state’s electoral voters and would make it harder for lawmakers to challenge the outcomes in different states.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8mAT0S">
A new bill that has the backing of nine Republican senators would clarify the vice president’s role in the vote certification process and require more lawmakers to sign on in both the House and the Senate in order to register a contest to a state’s election results.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XdN1U7">
Lawmakers have stressed the importance of passing this bill quickly, as some Republicans continue to question the results of the 2020 election and indicate a willingness to do the same if their preferred candidate doesn’t win in 2024.
</p>
<h3 id="FrQBng">
<ol start="5" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">One they might not get to: Raising the debt ceiling
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="adgTZb">
An increase to the debt ceiling is less of an immediate priority and more of an issue that could come up during the lame-duck Congress session later this year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vaR9dt">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/12/14/22834318/debt-ceiling-vote-filibuster">Last December</a>, lawmakers raised the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, an amount that likely means another increase won’t be needed until 2023, <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/press-release/debt-limit-x-date-further-out-than-expected-but-still-looms-ahead/">according to the Bipartisan Policy Center</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="grspOR">
Still, Democrats may want to raise the debt ceiling during the lame-duck portion of the congressional session after the midterms if Republicans win back the House, as they are expected to. If control of Congress is split next year, it’s likely that routine votes like the debt ceiling and appropriations will become much more contentious.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="04Bamz">
In the last few decades, it’s become more common for lawmakers to use must-pass votes like the debt ceiling to make a political statement. One of the riskiest standoffs took place in 2011, when House Republicans refused to suspend the debt limit until President Barack Obama agreed to spending cuts. That year, the country nearly defaulted and saw its credit rating downgraded because of how close Congress cut to the deadline.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pWLvM3">
Democrats could raise the debt ceiling and avoid a repeat when they still have full congressional control, by the end of the year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AaYWiS">
Without the urgency of a pending deadline, however, Shai Akabas, the economic policy director of the Bipartisan Policy Center, thinks lawmakers probably won’t move quickly. “Given how much else they have on the table and that this won’t be an imminent problem at that time, my guess is that it’s less likely” to happen during lame duck, he told Vox.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Effective altruism’s most controversial idea</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Illustration of the moon rising over a dark hill." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kn3pfmhEhhOKD7z7XvouNW5mg9k=/144x0:2811x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71328447/long_lede.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Amanda Northrop/Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Longtermism is influencing billionaire philanthropy and shaping politics. Should it guide the future of humanity?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wFZF9D">
Maybe the<strong> </strong>noise hasn’t reached you yet. Or maybe you’ve heard rumblings as it picks up <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">more</a> and <a href="https://time.com/6204627/effective-altruism-longtermism-william-macaskill-interview/">more</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-will-macaskill.html">more</a> steam, like a train gathering momentum. Now, in any case, you might want to listen closely, because some of the world’s richest people are hopping on board this train — and what they do may change life for you and your descendants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zlkZS0">
The “train” I’m talking about is a worldview called longtermism. A decade ago, it was just a fringe idea some philosophy nerds at Oxford University<strong> </strong>were exploring. Now it’s shaping <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadonor-sam-bankman-fried-00049048">politics</a>. It’s changing who gets charity. And it’s very hot in Silicon Valley. Tech billionaires like Elon Musk take it to extremes, working to colonize Mars as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-09/twitter-deal-collapse-makes-musk-a-hot-ticket-at-sun-valley?sref=fqqmZ8gi">“life insurance”</a> for the human species because we have “a duty to maintain the <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation">light of consciousness”</a> rather than going extinct.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6WkucC">
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. At its core, longtermism is the idea that we should prioritize positively influencing the long-term future of humanity — hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years from now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="braf6b">
The idea emerged out of <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency">effective altruism</a> (EA), a broader social movement dedicated to wielding reason and evidence to do the most good possible for the most people. EA is rooted in the belief that all lives are equally valuable — us, our neighbors, and people living in poverty in places we’ve never been. We have a responsibility to use our resources to help people as much as we can, regardless of where they are.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ajXIsg">
When it started out a dozen years ago, EA was mostly concerned with the biggest problems of today, like global poverty and global health. Effective altruists<strong> </strong>researched effective ways to help others — and then they actually helped, whether by <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/10/20857132/malaria-eradication-2050-gene-drive-lancet-study">donating to charities that prevent malaria</a> or by <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map">giving cash directly to people in extreme poverty</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S2OgBN">
This work has been hugely successful in at least two ways: It’s estimated to have saved <a href="https://www.givewell.org/about#:~:text=More%20than%20110%2C000%20donors%20have,million%20to%20the%20global%20poor.">many, many lives</a> to date, and it’s pushed the charity world to be a lot more rigorous in evaluating impact.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZJDQOz">
But then some philosophers within the EA movement started emphasizing the idea that the best way to help the most people was to focus on humanity’s long-term future — the well-being of the many billions who have yet to be born. After all, if all lives are equally valuable no matter where they are, that can also extend to <em>when</em> they are.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XKcQgg">
Soon, effective altruists were distinguishing between “near-termist” goals like preventing malaria deaths<strong> </strong>and “longtermist” goals like making sure runaway <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/21/18126576/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-safety-alignment">artificial intelligence</a> doesn’t permanently<strong> </strong>screw up society or, worse, render Homo sapiens extinct.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bTlgWH">
And, hey, avoiding extinction sounds like a very reasonable goal! But this pivot generated controversial questions: How many resources should we devote to “longtermist” versus “near-termist” goals? Is the future<strong> </strong><em>a</em> key moral priority or is it <em>the</em> key moral priority? Is trying to help future people — the hundreds of billions who could live — more important than definitely helping the smaller number of people who are suffering right now?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AMpfrF">
This is why it’s useful to think of longtermism as a train: We can come up with different answers to these questions, and decide to get off the train at different stations. Some people ride it up to a certain point — say, acknowledging that the future is a key and often underappreciated<strong> </strong>moral priority — but they step off the train before getting to the point of asserting that concern for the future trumps every other moral concern. Other people go farther, and things get … weird.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z4OgOY">
Effective altruists <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-worldview-diversification/#worldview-diversification">sometimes</a> <a href="https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/william-macaskill/">talk</a> about this by asking each other: “Where do you get off the train to Crazy Town?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bfl2Xq">
I find it helpful to envision this as a rail line with three main stations. Call them weak longtermism, strong longtermism, and galaxy-brain longtermism.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="00EP6n">
The first is basically “the long-term future matters more than we’re currently giving it credit for, and we should do more to help it.” The second is “the long-term future matters more than anything else, so it should be our absolute top priority.” The third is “the long-term future matters more than anything else, so we should take big risks to ensure not only that it exists, but that it’s utopian.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D2kICp">
The poster boy for longtermism, Oxford philosopher Will MacAskill, recently published a new book on the worldview that’s been generating an astounding amount of media buzz for a work of moral philosophy. In its policy prescriptions,<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/william-macaskill/what-we-owe-the-future/9781541618633/"><em>What We Owe the Future</em></a> mostly advocates for weak longtermism, though MacAskill told me he’s “sympathetic” to strong longtermism and thinks it’s probably right.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JrwTsY">
Yet he said he worries about powerful people misusing his ideas and riding the train way farther than he ever intended. “That terrifies me,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HSYNxc">
“The thing I worry,” he added, “is that people in the wider world are like, ‘Oh, longtermism? That’s the Elon Musk worldview.’ And I’m like, no, no, no.”
</p>
<div id="62bWY8">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
Worth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy. <a href="https://t.co/cWEM6QBobY">https://t.co/cWEM6QBobY</a>
</p>
— Elon Musk (<span class="citation" data-cites="elonmusk">@elonmusk</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1554335028313718784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2022</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9UBNDG">
The publication of MacAskill’s book has brought increased attention to longtermism, and with it, increased debate. And<strong> </strong>the debate has become horribly confused.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s2jV0T">
Some of the most vociferous critics are conflating different “train stations.” They don’t seem to realize that weak longtermism is different from strong longtermism; the former is a commonsense perspective that they themselves probably share, and, for the most part, it’s the perspective that MacAskill defends in the book.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="upOgz9">
But these critics can also be forgiven for the conflation, because longtermism runs on a series of ideas that link together like train tracks. And when the tracks are laid down in a direction that leads to Crazy Town, that increases the risk that some travelers will head, well, all the way to Crazy Town.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z0x9SR">
As longtermism becomes more influential, it’s a good idea to identify the different stations where you can get out. As you’ll see, longtermism is not just an intellectual trend; it’s an intrinsically political project, which means we shouldn’t leave it up to a few powerful people (whether philosophers or billionaires) to define it. Charting the future of humanity should be much more democratic. So: Want to take a ride?
</p>
<h3 id="ZYZLQ1">
Station 1: Weak longtermism
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GdxAg0">
If you care about climate change, you’re probably a weak longtermist.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="72Oy62">
You may have never applied that label to yourself. But if you don’t want future generations to suffer from the effects of climate change, that suggests you believe future generations matter and we should try hard to make sure things go well for them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kFVKWZ">
That’s weak longtermism in a nutshell. The view makes intuitive moral sense — why should a child born in 2100 matter less than a child born in 2000? — and many cultures have long embraced it. Some Indigenous communities value the principle of “seventh-generation decision-making,” which involves weighing how choices made today will affect a person born seven generations from now. You may have also heard the term <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/">“intergenerational justice,”</a> which has been in use for decades.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ss2yGm">
But though many of us see weak longtermism as common sense, the governments we elect don’t often act that way. In fact, they bake a disregard for future people into certain policies (like climate policies) by using an explicit <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22643358/social-cost-of-carbon-mortality-biden-discounting">“discount rate”</a> that attaches less value to future people than present ones.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y4XXpt">
There’s a growing trend of people aiming to change that. You see it in <a href="https://davidsuzuki.org/project/youth-climate-lawsuit/#editor-1">the</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/climate/netherlands-climate-lawsuit.html">many</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/29/historic-german-ruling-says-climate-goals-not-tough-enough">lawsuits</a> <a href="http://climatecasechart.com/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/non-us-case-documents/2021/20210415_13410_judgment.pdf">arguing</a> that current government policies fail to curb climate change and therefore fail in their duty of care to future generations. You see it in Wales’s decision to appoint a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/5/11/23064319/longtermism-sophie-howe-future-generations-wales">“future generations commissioner”</a> who calls out policymakers when they’re making decisions that might harm people in the long run. And you see it in a recent <a href="https://www.un.org/common-agenda-report">United Nations report</a> that advocates for creating a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations and a Declaration on Future Generations that would grant future people legal status.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LemrrC">
The thinkers at the helm of longtermism are part of this trend, but they push it in a particular direction. To them, the risks that are most important are existential risks: the threats<strong> </strong>that don’t just make people worse off but could wipe out humanity entirely. Because they assign future people as much moral value as present people, they’re especially focused on staving off risks that could erase the chance for those future people to exist.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NQS6YR">
Philosopher <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21728925/charity-10-percent-tithe-giving-what-we-can-toby-ord">Toby Ord</a>, a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute and a co-founder of EA, emphasizes in his book <a href="https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/toby-ord/the-precipice/9780316484923/"><em>The Precipice</em></a><strong> </strong>that humanity is<strong> </strong>highly vulnerable to dangers in two realms: biosecurity and artificial intelligence. Powerful actors could develop <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/1/21243148/why-some-labs-work-on-making-viruses-deadlier-and-why-they-should-stop">bioweapons</a> or set off<strong> </strong>human-made pandemics that are much worse than those that occur naturally. AI could <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/21/18126576/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-safety-alignment">outstrip human-level intelligence</a> in the coming decades and, if not aligned with our values and goals, could wreak havoc on human life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="02iZIm">
Other risks, like a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/2/16/22935927/russia-ukraine-great-power-conflict">great-power war</a>, and especially nuclear war, would also present major threats to humanity. Yet we aren’t mounting serious efforts to mitigate them. Big donors like the MacArthur Foundation have <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/17/22976981/nuclear-war-russia-ukraine-funding-macarthur-existential-risk-effective-altruism-carnegie">pulled back from trying to prevent nuclear war</a>. And as Ord notes, there’s one international body in charge of stopping the proliferation of bioweapons, the Biological Weapons Convention — and its annual budget is <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipice-existential-risk-future-humanity/">smaller than that of the average McDonald’s</a>!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j0Eeu2">
Longtermist thinkers are making their voices heard — Ord’s ideas are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2021/sep/23/boris-johnsons-climate-speech-annotated-what-he-said-and-what-he-meant">referenced</a> by the likes of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson — and they say we should be devoting more money to countering neglected and important risks to our future. But that raises two questions: How much money? And, at whose expense?
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a5XKrYL1U-bTJUPZguqdFOmqMOI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23968709/long_break02.jpg"/> <cite>Amanda Northrop/Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="nvXrRg">
Station 2: Strong longtermism
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aQm4sF">
Okay, here’s where the train starts to get bumpy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OUxwdJ">
Strong longtermism, as laid out by MacAskill and his Oxford colleague Hilary Greaves, says that impacts on the far future aren’t just <em>one</em> important feature of our actions — they’re <em>the</em> most important feature. And when they say far future, they really mean <em>far.</em> They argue we should be thinking about the consequences of our actions not just one or five or seven generations from now, but thousands or even millions of years ahead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2aXPjN">
Their reasoning amounts to moral math. There are going to be far more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past. Of all the human beings who will ever be<strong> </strong>alive in the universe, the vast majority will live in the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="URUNPT">
If our species lasts for as long as Earth remains a habitable planet, we’re talking about at least 1 quadrillion people coming into existence, which would be 100,000 times the population of Earth today. Even if you think there’s only a 1 percent chance that our species lasts that long, the math still means that future people outnumber present people. And if humans settle in space one day and escape the death of our solar system, we could be looking at an even longer, more populous future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jftm9o">
Now, if you believe that all humans count equally regardless of where or when they live, you have to think about the impacts of our actions on all their lives. Since there are far more people to affect in the future, it follows that the impacts that matter most are those that affect future humans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qLdxag">
That’s how the argument goes anyhow. And if you buy it, it’s easy to conclude, as MacAskill and Greaves wrote in their 2019 paper laying out the case for strong longtermism: “For the purposes of evaluating actions, we can in the first instance often <em>simply ignore</em> all the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1000) years, focussing primarily on the further-future effects. Short-run effects act as little more than tie-breakers.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9nfQYw">
The <a href="https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/hilary-greaves-william-macaskill-the-case-for-strong-longtermism-2/">revised version</a>, dated June 2021, notably<strong> </strong>leaves this passage out. When I asked MacAskill why, he said they feared it was “misleading” to the public. But it’s not misleading per se; it captures what happens if you take the argument to its logical conclusion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="85A4bo">
If you buy the strong longtermism argument, it might dramatically change some of your choices in life. Instead of donating to charities that save kids from malaria today, you may donate to AI safety researchers. Instead of devoting your career to being a family doctor, you may devote it to research on pandemic prevention. You’d know there’s only a tiny probability your donation or actions will help humanity avoid catastrophe, but you’d reason that it’s worth it — if your bet does pay off, the payoff would be enormous.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a4AeoW">
But you might not buy this argument at all. Here are three of the main objections to it:
</p>
<h4 id="xjs2W1">
It’s ludicrous to chase tiny probabilities of enormous payoffs
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="USs6vA">
When you’re looking ahead at terrain as full of uncertainties as the future is, you need a road map to help you decide how to navigate. Effective altruists tend to rely on a road map known as “expected value.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PrBbUq">
To calculate a decision’s expected value, you multiply the value of an outcome by the probability of it occurring. You’re supposed to pick the decision that has the highest expected value — to “shut up and multiply,” as some effective altruists like to say.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GuUesL">
Expected value is a totally logical tool to use if you’re, say, a gambler placing bets in a casino. But it can lead you to ludicrous conclusions in a scenario that involves truly tiny probabilities of enormous payoffs. As one philosopher <a href="https://bostonreview.net/articles/the-new-moral-mathematics/">noted</a> in a critique of strong longtermism, according to the math of expected value, “If you could save a million lives today or shave 0.0001 percent off the probability of premature human extinction — a one in a million chance of saving at least 8 trillion lives — you should do the latter, allowing a million people to die.“
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A9wSeE">
Using expected value to game out tiny probabilities of enormous payoffs in the far future is like using a butterfly net to try to catch a beluga whale. The butterfly net was just not built for that task.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Uz0dv6">
MacAskill acknowledges this objection, known as the “fanaticism” objection in the longtermist literature. “If this were about vanishingly small probabilities of enormous amounts of value, I wouldn’t be endorsing it,” he told me. But he argues that this issue doesn’t apply to the risks he worries about — such as runaway AI and devastating pandemics — because they do not concern tiny probabilities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qsc5hC">
He cites <a href="https://aiimpacts.org/what-do-ml-researchers-think-about-ai-in-2022/">AI researchers</a> who estimate that AI systems will surpass human intelligence in a matter of decades and that there’s a 5 percent chance of that leading to existential catastrophe. That would mean you have greater odds of dying from an AI-related catastrophe than in a car crash, he notes, so it’s worth investing in trying to prevent that. Likewise, there’s a sizable chance of pandemics much worse than Covid-19 emerging in coming decades, so we should<strong> </strong>invest in <a href="https://www.vox.com/23001426/pandemic-proof">interventions that could help</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KMtRgP">
This is fine, as far as it goes. But notice how much taking the fanaticism objection seriously (as we should) has limited the remit of longtermism, making strong longtermism surprisingly weak in practice.
</p>
<h4 id="o45sxw">
We can’t reliably predict the effects of our actions in one year, never mind 1,000 years, so it makes no sense to invest a lot of resources in trying to positively influence the far future
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1yfRZl">
This is a totally reasonable objection, and longtermists like MacAskill and Greaves acknowledge that in a lot of cases, we<strong> </strong>suffer from “moral cluelessness” about the downstream effects of our actions. The further out we look, the more uncertain we become.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HpH7XL">
But, they argue, that’s not the case for <em>all</em> actions. Some are almost certain to do good — and to do the kind of good that will last.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5xyXUt">
They recommend targeting issues that come with “lock-in” opportunities, or ways of doing good that result in the positive benefits being locked in for a long time. For example, you could pursue a career aimed at establishing national or international norms around carbon emissions or nuclear bombs, or regulations for labs that deal with dangerous pathogens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rT0sNk">
Fair enough. But again, notice how acknowledging moral cluelessness limits the remit of strong longtermists. They must only invest in opportunities that look robustly good on most imaginable versions of the future. If you apply some reasonable bounds to strong longtermist actions — bounds endorsed by the leading champions of this worldview — you arrive, in practice, back at weak longtermism.
</p>
<h4 id="nd1GX3">
<strong>It’s downright unjust: People living in miserable conditions today need our help now</strong>
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wwUDTs">
This is probably the most intuitive objection. Strong longtermism, you might argue, smacks of privilege: It’s easy for philosophers living in relative prosperity to say we should prioritize future people, but people living in miserable conditions need us to help right now!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U1VO3E">
This may not be obvious to people who subscribe to a moral theory like utilitarianism, where all that matters is maximizing good consequences (like happiness or satisfying individuals’ preferences). A utilitarian will focus on the overall effects on everybody’s welfare, so even if poverty or disease or extreme weather is causing real suffering to millions today, the utilitarian won’t necessarily act on that if they think the best way to maximize welfare is to act on the suffering of hundreds of billions of future people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Ql9Yb">
But if you’re not a utilitarian longtermist, or if you acknowledge uncertainty about which moral theory is right, then you may conclude that aggregated effects on people’s welfare aren’t the only thing that matters. Other things like justice and basic rights matter, too.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="dx9i0I">
<q>Intellectual insularity is bad for any movement, but it’s especially egregious for one that purports to represent the interests of all humans now and for all eternity.</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vJFLLr">
MacAskill, who takes moral uncertainty too seriously to identify simply as a utilitarian, writes that “we should accept that the ends do not always justify the means; we should try to make the world better, but we should respect moral side-constraints, such as against harming others.” Basically, some rules supersede utilitarian calculations: We shouldn’t contravene the basic rights of present people just because we think it’ll help future people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w2iagJ">
However, he is willing to reallocate some spending on present people to longtermist causes; he told me he doesn’t see that as violating the rights of present people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ClNcw3">
You might disagree with this, though. It clearly does in some sense harm present people to withhold funding for them to get health care or housing — though it’s a harm of omission rather than commission. If you believe access to health care or housing is a basic right in a global society as rich as ours, you may believe it’s wrong to withhold those things in favor of future people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cwPsgm">
Even Greaves, who co-wrote the strong longtermism paper, feels squeamish about these reallocations. She <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22552963/how-to-be-a-good-ancestor-longtermism-climate-change">told me</a> last year that she feels awful whenever she walks past a homeless person. She’s acutely aware she’s not supporting that individual or the larger cause of ending homelessness because she’s supporting longtermist causes instead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rtOsVw">
“I feel really bad, but it’s a limited sense of feeling bad because I do think it’s the right thing to do given that the counterfactual is giving to these other [longtermist]<strong> </strong>causes that are more effective,” she said. As much as we want justice for present people, we should also want justice for future people — and they’re both more numerous and more neglected in policy discussions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a7ycFs">
Even though Greaves believes that, she finds it scary to commit fully to her philosophy. “It’s<strong> </strong>like you’re standing on a pin over a chasm,” she said. “It feels dangerous, in a way, to throw all this altruistic effort at existential risk mitigation and probably do nothing, when you know that you could’ve done all this good for near-term causes.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UfQ3sK">
We should note that effective altruists have long devoted <a href="https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/">the bulk of their spending</a> to near-term causes, with far more money flowing to global health, say, than to AI safety. But with effective altruists like the crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried beginning to direct millions toward longtermist causes, and with public intellectuals like MacAskill and Ord telling policymakers that we should spend more on longtermism, it’s reasonable to worry how much of the money that would’ve otherwise gone into the near-termism pool may be siphoned off into the longtermism pool.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CXX6y2">
And here, MacAskill demurs. On the very last page of his book, he writes: “How much<em> </em>should we in the present be willing to sacrifice for future generations? I don’t know the answer to this.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SjZfAg">
Yet this is the key question, the one that moves longtermism from the realm of thought experiment to real-world policy. How should we handle tough trade-offs? Without a strong answer, strong longtermism loses much of its guiding power. It’s no longer a unique project. It’s basically “intergenerational justice,” just with more math.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/47kRLoUzd_9qSuaqzuk88SXHRxU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23968598/train003.jpg"/>
</figure>
<h3 id="t0MVqD">
Station 3: Galaxy-brain longtermism
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wAmsmN">
When I told MacAskill that I use “galaxy-brain longtermism” to refer to the view that we should take big risks to make the long-term future utopian, he told me he thinks that view is “mistaken.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IjlUyt">
Nevertheless, it would be pretty easy for someone to get to that mistaken view if they were to proceed from the philosophical ideas he lays out in his book — especially an idea called <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.net/population-ethics">the total view of population ethics</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0K35mY">
It’s a complex idea, but at its core, the total view says that more of a good thing is better, and good lives are good, so increasing the number of people living good lives makes the world better. So: Let’s make more people!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WQDLiD">
A lot of us (myself included) find this unintuitive. It seems to presuppose that well-being is valuable in and of itself — but that’s a very bizarre thing to presuppose. I care about well-being because creatures exist to feel the well-being or lack of well-being in their life. I don’t care about it in some abstract, absolute sense. That is, well-being as a concept only has meaning insofar as it’s attached to actual beings; to treat it otherwise is to fall prey to a category error.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WYRq4W">
This objection to the total view is pithily summed up by the philosopher Jan Narveson, who says, “We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VCJ8m6">
MacAskill himself found the total view unintuitive at first, but he later changed his mind. And because he came to believe that more people living good lives is better, and there could be so many more people in the future, he came to believe that we really need to focus on preserving the option of getting humanity to that future (assuming the future will be decent). Looked at this way, avoiding extinction is almost a sacrosanct duty. In his book, MacAskill writes:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mmpCk9">
There might be no other highly intelligent life elsewhere in the affectable universe, and there might never be. If this is true, then our actions are of cosmic significance.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZuJRbr">
With great rarity comes great responsibility. For thirteen billion years, the known universe was devoid of consciousness … Now and in the coming centuries, we face threats that could kill us all. And if we mess this up, we mess it up forever. The universe’s self-understanding might be permanently lost … the brief and slender flame of consciousness that flickered for a while would be extinguished forever.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gdsAOC">
There are a few eyebrow-raising anthropocentric ideas here. How confident are we that the universe was or would be barren of highly intelligent life without humanity? “Highly intelligent” by whose lights — humanity’s? And are we so sure there is some intrinsic value we’re providing to the universe by furnishing it with human-style “self-understanding”?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rp9TZC">
But the argument actually gets weirder than that. It’s one thing to say that we should do whatever it takes to avoid extinction. It’s another thing to argue we should do whatever it takes not just to avoid extinction, but to make future human civilization as big and utopian as possible. Yet that is the position you come to if you take the total view all the way to its logical conclusion, which is why MacAskill ends up writing:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yTibpf">
If future civilization will be good enough, then we should not merely try to avoid near-term extinction. We should also hope that future civilization will be <em>big</em>. If future people will be sufficiently well-off, then a civilization that is twice as long or twice as large is twice as good. The practical upshot of this is a moral case for space settlement.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YKpzBe">
MacAskill’s colleague, the philosopher Nick Bostrom, notes that humans settling the stars is actually just the beginning. He has <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.pdf">argued</a> that the “colonization of the universe” would give us the area and resources with which to run gargantuan numbers of digital simulations of humans living happy lives. The more space, the more happy (digital) humans!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i7qU0g">
This idea that humanity should settle the stars — not just can, but should, because we have a moral responsibility to expand our civilization across the cosmos — carries a whiff of Manifest Destiny. And, like the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, it’s worrying because it frames the stakes as being so sky-high that it could be used to justify almost anything.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sKlvOr">
As the philosopher Isaiah Berlin once <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/07/arts/isaiah-berlin-philosopher-and-pluralist-is-dead-at-88.html">wrote</a> in his critique of all utopian projects: “To make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious forever — what could be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelet, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken — that was the fate of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tg4aO8">
Longtermists who are dead-set on getting humanity to the supposed multiplanetary utopia are likely<strong> </strong>the types of people who are going to be willing to take gigantic risks. They might invest in working toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), because, even though they view that as a top existential risk, they believe we can’t afford <em>not</em> to build it given its potential to catapult humanity out of its precarious earthbound adolescence and into a flourishing interstellar adulthood. They might invest in<strong> </strong>trying to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/23/elon-musk-aiming-for-mars-so-humanity-is-not-a-single-planet-species.html">make Mars livable as soon as possible</a>, à la Musk.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x5HEO5">
To be clear, MacAskill disavows this conclusion. He told me he imagines that a certain type of Silicon Valley tech bro, thinking there’s a 5 percent chance of dying from some AGI catastrophe and a 10 percent chance AGI ushers in a blissful utopia, would be willing to take those odds and rush ahead with building AGI (that is, AI that has human-level problem-solving abilities).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iGoMeD">
“That’s not the sort of person I want building AGI, because they are not responsive to the moral issues,” MacAskill told me. “Maybe that means we have to delay the singularity in order to make it safer. Maybe that means it doesn’t come in my lifetime.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wuy3Bn">
MacAskill’s point is that you can believe getting to a certain future is important, without believing it’s so important that it trumps absolutely every other moral constraint.<strong> </strong>I asked him, however, if he thought this distinction was too subtle by half — if it was unrealistic to expect it would be grasped by certain excitable tech bros and other non-philosophers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bBBaj6">
“Yeah,” he said, “too subtle by half … maybe that’s accurate.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VhmujKHtUmfGzdwJWh1a3EE9W-8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23968424/platform04.jpg"/> <cite>Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="xv2bwx">
A different approach: “Worldview diversification,” or embracing multiple sources of value
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Hm0BH">
A half-dozen years ago, the researcher Ajeya Cotra found herself in a sticky situation. She’d been part of the EA community since college. She’d gotten into the game because she cared about helping people — real people who are suffering from real problems like global poverty in the real world today. But as EA gave rise to longtermism, she bumped up against the argument that maybe she should be more focused on protecting future people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dI1UDN">
“It was a powerful argument that I felt some attraction to, felt some repulsion from, felt a little bit bullied by or held hostage by,” Cotra told me. She was intellectually open enough to consider it seriously. “It was sort of the push I needed to consider weird, out-there causes.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JlqkEy">
One of those causes was mitigating AI risk. That has become her main research focus — but, funnily enough, not for longtermist reasons. Her research led her to believe that AI risk presents a non-trivial risk of extinction, and that AGI<strong> </strong>could arrive <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AfH2oPHCApdKicM4m/two-year-update-on-my-personal-ai-timelines">as soon as 2040</a>. That’s hardly a “long-term” concern.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h4vsSE">
“I basically ended up in a convenient world where you don’t need to be an extremely intense longtermist to buy into AI risk,” she said, laughing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0uc2LD">
But just because she’d lucked into this convenient resolution didn’t mean the underlying philosophical puzzle — should we embrace weak longtermism, strong longtermism, or something else entirely? — was resolved.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5QijpC">
And this wasn’t just a problem for her personally. The organization she works for, Open Philanthropy, had hundreds of millions of dollars to give out to charities, and needed a system for figuring out how to divvy it up between different causes. Cotra was assigned to think through this on Open Philanthropy’s behalf.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ArgUpR">
The result was <a href="https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/worldview-diversification/">“worldview diversification.”</a> The first step is to accept that there are different worldviews. So, one split might be between near-termism and longtermism. Then, within near-termism itself, there’s another split: One view says we should care mostly about humans, and another view says we should care about both humans and animals. Right there you’ve got three containers in which you think moral value might lie.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WYPiYG">
Theoretically, when trying to decide how to divvy up money between them, you can treat the beneficiaries in each container as if they each count for one point, and just go with whichever container has the most points (or the highest expected value). But that’s going to get you into trouble when one container presents itself as having way more beneficiaries: Longtermism will always win out, because future beings outnumber present beings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GkuGCm">
Alternatively, you can embrace a sort of value pluralism: acknowledge that there are different containers of moral value, they’re incommensurable, and that’s okay. Instead of trying to do an apples-to-apples comparison across the different containers, you treat the containers like they each might have something useful to offer, and divvy up your budget between them based on your credence — how plausible you find each one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1xs2AT">
“There’s some intuitive notion of, some proposals about how value should be distributed are less plausible than others,” Cotra explained. “So if you have a proposal that’s like, ‘Everyone wearing a green hat should count for 10 times more,’ then you’d be like, ‘Well, I’m not giving that view much!’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0uQDJF">
After you figure out your basic credences, Cotra says it might make sense to give a “bonus” to areas where there are unusually effective opportunities to do good at that moment, and to a view that claims to represent many more beneficiaries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i3EIDu">
“So what we in practice recommended to our funders [at Open Philanthropy] was to start with credence, then reallocate based on unusual opportunities, and then give a bonus to the view — which in this case is longtermism — that says there’s a lot more at stake,” Cotra said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R53Peq">
This approach has certain advantages over an approach that’s based only on expected value. But it would be a mistake to stop here. Because now we have to ask: Who gets to decide which worldviews are let in the door to begin with? Who gets to decide which credences to attach to each worldview? This is necessarily going to involve some amount of subjectivity — or, to put it more bluntly, politics.
</p>
<h3 id="97YvXe">
Whoever has the power gets to define longtermism. That’s the problem.
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="szsuVp">
On an individual level, each of us can inspect longtermism’s “train tracks” or core ideas — expected value, say, or the total view of population ethics — and decide for ourselves where we get off the train. But this is not just something that concerns us as individuals. By definition, longtermism concerns all of humanity. So we also need to ask who will choose where humanity disembarks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jNz6mS">
Typically, whoever’s got the power gets to choose.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kq3Q1F">
That worries Carla Cremer, an Oxford<strong> </strong>scholar who co-wrote a paper titled <a href="https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=447071097117024120001122116124086122033040063036031057022081082090120122018083118029045114020060007100109066012110007080064125122078037060059118022096085020026085107036079030006116086083126020114098083020118101092090067085014067116088094071005015125115&amp;EXT=pdf&amp;INDEX=TRUE">“Democratising Risk.”</a> The paper critiques the core ideas of longtermist philosophy, but more than that, it critiques the nascent field on a structural level.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xOkG2J">
“Tying the study of a topic that fundamentally affects the whole of humanity to a niche belief system championed mainly by an unrepresentative, powerful minority of the world is undemocratic and philosophically tenuous,” the paper argues.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MYx2zN">
To address this, Cremer <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gx7BEkoRbctjkyTme/democratising-risk-or-how-ea-deals-with-critics-1">says</a> the field needs structural changes. For one thing, it should allow for bottom-up control over how funding is distributed and actively fund critical work. Otherwise, critics of orthodox longtermist views may not speak up for fear that they’ll offend longtermism’s thought leaders, who may then withhold research funding or job opportunities.
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It’s an understandable concern. Bankman-Fried’s Future Fund is doling out millions to people with ideas about how to improve the far future, and MacAskill is not just an ivory-tower philosopher — he’s helping decide where the funding goes. (Disclosure: Future Perfect, which is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/7/21020439/support-future-perfect">partly supported through philanthropic giving</a>, received a project grant from Building a Stronger Future, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic arm.)
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But to their credit, they are trying to decentralize funding: In February, the Future Fund launched a <a href="https://ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-our-regranting-program/">regranting program</a>. It gives vetted individuals a budget (typically between $250,000 and a few million dollars), which those individuals then regrant to people whose projects seem promising. This program has already <a href="https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-regrants/">given out more than $130 million</a>.
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And truth be told, there’s such a glut of money in EA right now — it’s got <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/samuel-bankmanfried/">roughly</a> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/dustin-a-moskovitz/">$26.6 billion</a> behind it — that financial scarcity isn’t the biggest concern: There’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/24/23318033/effective-altruism-longtermism-givewell-will-macaskill">enough to go around</a> for both near-termist and longtermist projects.
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<q>Because effective altruists are dealing with questions about how to distribute resources, their project is inherently political; they can’t math their way out of that.</q>
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The bigger concern is arguably about whose ideas get incorporated into longtermism — and whose ideas get left out. Intellectual insularity is bad for any movement, but it’s especially egregious for one that purports to represent the interests of all humans now and for all eternity. This is why Cremer argues that the field needs to cultivate greater diversity and democratize how its ideas get evaluated.
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Cultivating diversity is important from a justice perspective: All people who are going to be affected<strong> </strong>by decisions should get some say. But it’s also crucial from an epistemic perspective. Many minds coming at a question from many backgrounds will yield a richer set of answers than a small group of elites.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wh46cu">
So Cremer would like to see longtermists use more deliberative styles of decision-making. For inspiration, they could turn to <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2020/09/17/citizens-assemblies-are-increasingly-popular">citizens’ assemblies</a>, where a group of randomly selected citizens is presented with facts, then debates the best course of action and arrives at a decision together. We’ve already seen such assemblies in the context of <a href="https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-climate-assembly-research-report-process-impact-assembly-member-experience/#:~:text=The%20Climate%20Change%20(Emissions%20Reduction,independently%20from%20the%20Scottish%20Government.">climate</a> <a href="https://www.climateassembly.uk/">policy</a> and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/05/a-jury-of-peers/">abortion policy</a>; we could be similarly democratic when it comes to determining what the future should look like.
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“I think EA has figured out how to have impact. They are still blind to the fact that whether or not that impact is positive or negative over the long term depends on politics,” Cremer told me. Because effective altruists are dealing with questions about how to distribute resources — across both space and time — their project is inherently political; they can’t math their way out of that. “I don’t think they realize that in fact they are a political movement.”
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EA is a young movement. Longtermism is even younger. One of its greatest growing pains lies in facing up to the fact that it’s trying to engage in politics on a global, maybe even galactic scale. Its adherents are still struggling to figure out how to do that without aggravating the very risks they seek to reduce. Yet their ideas are already influencing governments and redirecting many millions of dollars.
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The train has very much left the station, even as the tracks are still being reexamined and some arguably need to be replaced. We’d better hope they get laid down right.
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<ul>
<li><strong>How to nourish yourself in a difficult time</strong> -
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<img alt="Cartoon of a tired woman carrying loaded grocery bags." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-1SGwbAZHhRBTFAbUZVXoRT7sEU=/119x0:2004x1414/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71325514/GettyImages_1345696811.0.jpg"/>
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Denis Novikov/Getty Images
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When things are hard, feeding yourself and those you care about can be the first thing to go.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="42ayS9">
When times are <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22902543/covid-omicron-pandemic-tired-burnout">hard</a> — as they have been with alarming frequency lately for <a href="https://www.vox.com/23140987/evictions-housing-rent-assistance-erap-tenant">many</a> Americans — the first thing to go can be the desire to feed yourself. After two years of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/24/23275962/ba-5-covid-variant-strain-public-health-response">pandemic</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/5/24/23140552/robb-elementary-school-shooting-uvalde-texas">increased threats of gun violence</a>, attacks on the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/5/3/23055125/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights-supreme-court-dobbs-v-jackson">fundamental right to control our own bodies</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/7/23197430/jayland-walker-police-shooting-akron-ohio-footage">the ceaseless march of injustice</a> for anyone who isn’t <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/12/23205239/josh-hawley-abortion-rights-khiara-bridges">straight</a> or white, it can feel inconceivable to get out of your own head, open up the fridge, and nourish yourself well.
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So what can we do? How do we pull back from the pain to a place of perspective, where we’re capable of taking care of our bodies and brains even when the rest of the world refuses to?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NaucQX">
My career as <a href="https://www.leannebrown.com/">a cookbook author,</a> writer, and speaker has been wide-ranging. With my first book, <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/good-and-cheap-eat-well-on-4-day/9780761184997"><em>Good and Cheap</em></a><em>,</em> I focused on the barriers of cost and access to food, and now my new book, <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/good-enough-a-cookbook-embracing-the-joys-of-imperfection-in-and-out-of-the-kitchen/9781523509676"><em>Good Enough</em></a><em>, </em>places the focus on mental health and our internal world. I create recipes but also frameworks for thinking about how we feed ourselves and how that expresses our beliefs about ourselves.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A929MR">
Fundamentally, learning how to cook and feed your specific body in your specific life is a transformative healing experience, one I have witnessed in myself and many others. Whether you don’t know where to start nourishing yourself, feel unskilled doing so, or are grappling with something more serious like a disordered relationship to eating, it is essential at all parts of a healing journey to meet ourselves exactly where we are.
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Taking good care of ourselves requires many tools, including community care, professional help, and self-care. Self-care, which has become something of a meaningless buzzword but is in fact an incredibly powerful and stabilizing force, can feel particularly hard in this current moment with all the concurrent crises. Central to self-care is nourishment, whatever that means in your and your family’s life, and here I’ll provide strategies for simple ways to feed yourself that build capacity for self-compassion and self-love.
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It’s not your fault it’s hard; it’s how we’re wired and conditioned
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It can come as something of a shock how feelings like stress, anxiety, and grief can manifest in our bodies. Connecting to yourself when you feel big feelings is the first and hardest step, by far — much like the moment after you accidentally cut yourself, clenching the wound closed to delay the pain before finally letting go to see the damage. But it’s essential to receive all the information about what we are going through so we can understand ourselves and what we need. When we ignore and numb our bodies instead of listening to them, we get stuck.
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A healthy nervous system is meant to cycle in and out of two states: the parasympathetic system, where we rest and digest, and the sympathetic system, which governs stress and creates cortisol to help us respond to the cause of the stress. When we are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec3AUMDjtKQ">chronically stressed</a>, it can be hard for our body to fully switch into the parasympathetic state where we digest and regenerate ourselves.
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This can be felt as a loss of appetite as the gut churns, or a feeling of deep tiredness while the mind races and won’t allow us to sleep. Sometimes we may want to eat a lot when we are feeling bad, but we may just as easily have a loss of appetite as our bodies <a href="https://integratedlistening.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/kolacz-kovacic-and-porges-2019-traumatic-stress-and-the-autonomic-brain-gut-connection-in-development.pdf">get stuck in the sympathetic state</a>, trying to solve problems that are ceaseless and ongoing.
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Next we need to examine our beliefs. Are we gaslighting ourselves by downplaying how hard it can be? If you are struggling to feed yourself, there are likely many valid reasons for it. Our culture <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/112693/112693">downplays acts of caring and domestic labor</a>, but feeding ourselves — <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvdjrr2c">let alone others</a> — is hard work. It’s hard work that requires <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122419859007">resources and a set of skills</a> that many of us are not taught or able to access. Feeding ourselves requires money, ability to acquire food, and a safe place to live and store and assemble the food, among many, many other basics. You need time and physical and mental ability, and even if you are resourced and safe, there may be times when what is going on inside is too much, and the work to feed ourselves as we might wish becomes overwhelming.
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Complicating matters further is the reality that approximately <a href="https://anad.org/eating-disorders-statistics/">one in 10 people will be diagnosed with an eating disorder</a> in their lives. BIPOC people are less likely to be diagnosed but more likely to be at risk of eating disorders, so the total numbers are likely higher. If this is you, <a href="https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/help-support/contact-helpline">please seek help outside yourself</a>; you cannot reframe your way out of an eating disorder.
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When we validate ourselves for all these realities we can make room for self compassion to arise — and that can give us the energy we need to make moves. Many of us have a tremendous fear that any difficult feeling is going to last forever; sure, thinking goes, you got through today eating nothing but mashed potatoes, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? It can be easy to find yourself in a spiral, imagining your whole life stretching out before you with every day as hard as today, but that is not the case.
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Start where you are
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Here’s an exercise: Imagine someone you love struggling in the way you are today or in a particularly challenging moment in the past. How would you respond to their needs? Allow these imagined feelings and ideas to move through you and take the step for yourself that you might take with this imagined other.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="52wJcZ">
Next, take just one step toward feeding yourself. If even the first step is overwhelming, take a few deep breaths and think how you can make it easier. Could you get someone else to pick up groceries for you? Could you simply eat the peanut butter and tortillas in your pantry and call it done? Let it be enough. Start where you are and know that feeding yourself — whether it is a bowl of pasta or a handful of nuts shoved into your mouth — is something to be proud of. <a href="https://self-compassion.org/">Just as you would be proud of yourself</a> for showing up for a friend or your child, you can be proud of yourself when you show up for yourself in the same way.
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Allow your body to take over. What can you keep down? What feels doable? What is the first thing you think of? That is the place to start. Raw fruit, hummus and crackers, bread and butter, a granola bar? Assembling something out of a few raw or prepared ingredients is a great place to step back to when meal preparation feels overwhelming. Banish the idea of how a meal “should” look. Great job! You did it. Give yourself exactly what you need today.
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It can help to find a go-to food that you can rely on without having to engage your mind, where all the worry lives. For me, so long as my stomach is not too unsettled (in which case fresh fruit and nuts are my go-tos) I make a cheese sandwich, or egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich. They are palatable, simple, and settling for me. It’s helpful to have at least one go-to because when you are distressed, making decisions becomes harder.
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Let yourself be grateful for what you have done. Take a moment with the snack or meal you made and thank yourself for your efforts even if you want to laugh at them.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="88aVH8">
When we take steps to care for ourselves in the way we might for a loved one, it can feel wrong at first. It might feel like too much work when you have so little energy. You might feel resentful toward yourself for having needs. Until one day, suddenly, you go to put a squeeze of lemon in your water, not for any reason but just because you love yourself, and those voices and feelings that made it so heavy are no longer there. Or they may be there but they are muted somehow, smaller and sort of pitiable as they cry at you from behind a locked door. That is what you have to look forward to.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PQdRwF">
Feeding yourself with love and care is an act of faith in yourself and your innate goodness. You may not see it, you may not feel it, you may roll your eyes and scoff, but some deep-down, powerful part of you knows you’re worth trying for.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2hJrHQ">
<em>Leanne Brown is an award-winning cookbook author, writer, teacher, and parent who lives in Brooklyn.</em>
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</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>Amendment, Kay Star, Golden Streak, Storm Breaker, God’s Wish and Storm Flag excel</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>Nadal hints at extended break after U.S. Open loss to Frances Tiafoe</strong> - American Frances Tiafoe stunned second seed Rafael Nadal in the fourth round of the U.S. Open, prompting the 36-year-old Spaniard to hint that he could take a break from tennis</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>Kolkata, Ahmedabad to host Mushtaq Ali, Hazare knockouts; BCCI confirms two Irani Cup ties</strong> - Lucknow, Indore, Rajkot, Punjab and Jaipur will host the league stage of Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy while Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Ranchi will stage the Vijay Hazare league fixture</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>Tamil Nadu government announces Chief Minister’s State Sports Awards</strong> - Tamil Nadu government announced the Chief Minister's Award to eight outstanding sportspersons and coaches for the years 2018-19 and 2019-20</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>Badminton Association of India to award cash incentive to CWG, World Championship medalists</strong> - The Indian shuttlers came with the best ever showing in the CWG winning three gold, one silver and two bronze</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>India, Bangladesh ink first water sharing pact in 25 years; PM Hasina flags Teesta</strong> - PM Modi said there were 54 rivers that pass through the Indo-Bangladesh border, and have been linked to the livelihood of the people of the two countries for centuries</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>National exhibition at SB College</strong> - In connection with its centenary year</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>Woman found dead at husband’s house in Kannur</strong> - Relatives allege torture by spouse and mother-in-law</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>Andhra Pradesh: Aiming to sell 30% of aqua produce within the State, increase per capita consumption under Fish Andhra scheme, says Minister</strong> - Paytm to provide payment support to 100 aqua hubs and 2,000 retail outlets</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>Assembly to sit for two more days on Sept. 12, 13</strong> - First day of monsoon session of Telangana Assembly ends in about six minutes</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: North Korea supplying Russia with weapons, say US reports</strong> - Pyongyang is said to be selling Moscow rockets and shells, as Russia targets two cities in Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine: Ben Stiller and Sean Penn latest Americans banned from Russia</strong> - Moscow’s “stop list” includes more than 1,000 names, including celebrities who have backed Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Italy elections: Who’s who and how the vote works</strong> - Italy’s next leader could come from the far right, so here is what you need to know about the election.</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>Duke and Duchess of Sussex: Harry and Meghan in Germany for Invictus event</strong> - The couple are in Dusseldorf for an event marking one year until the Invictus Games is held there.</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>Afghanistan: Russian embassy staff killed in Kabul bombing</strong> - A suicide bomber was shot dead by guards as he approached the embassy gates, officials say.</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>How sustainable are fake meats?</strong> - Checking whether plant-based burgers may have lighter environmental footprints. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1878018">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Examining the game industry’s hidden impacts on climate change</strong> - Researcher Ben Abraham lays out how the game industry can lessen its carbon footprint. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1870754">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Years after shuttle, NASA rediscovers the perils of liquid hydrogen</strong> - “Every time we saw a leak, it pretty quickly exceeded our flammability limits.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1878188">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>All the best Labor Day tech deals we can find this weekend</strong> - Dealmaster includes MacBook Pros, OLED TVs, AirPods Max, video games freebies, and more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1878008">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>NASA scrubs second attempt to launch Artemis I after hydrogen leak [Updated]</strong> - Hydrogen—it leaks. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1877890">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<li><strong>A couple of counterfeiters made a mistake one time and ended up with a batch of $15 bills</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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One of them says “We gotta get rid of these things. We’ll go to Florida. I know a little town there. They’re so dumb they won’t know a thing.”
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So off they go. Soon they arrive at a gas station and buy some gas. The guy at the counter looks a little simpleminded.
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“Hey can you break a 15 dollar bill for me,” one of them says.
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“Oh, sure, no problem,” the cashier says. The counterfeiters grin at each other.
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“I told you,” the one whispers to the other, and they fist bump.
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Then the cashier says to them, “so, do you want an 8 and a 7, or two 3’s and a 9?”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/brother_p"> /u/brother_p </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6ypvb/a_couple_of_counterfeiters_made_a_mistake_one/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6ypvb/a_couple_of_counterfeiters_made_a_mistake_one/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>How to help your local politician qualify for a mental asylum</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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A politician is visiting the local mental asylum, and asks “How do you decide whether someone should be admitted here?”
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“Well,” says the director, “We fill up a bath with water, then give the patient a teaspoon, a mug, and a bucket, and ask them to empty the bath as quickly as possible.”
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“I see,” says the politician, “and if he’s got any sense he’ll choose the bucket.”
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“No,” says the director, “If he’s got any sense he’ll pull the plug out. Would you like a room with a view?”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/EndersGame_Reviewer"> /u/EndersGame_Reviewer </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6h757/how_to_help_your_local_politician_qualify_for_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6h757/how_to_help_your_local_politician_qualify_for_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>What do you call a snail without a shell?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Less Cargo.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AutumnalAristocrat"> /u/AutumnalAristocrat </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6vdig/what_do_you_call_a_snail_without_a_shell/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6vdig/what_do_you_call_a_snail_without_a_shell/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Chuck Norris actually died four years ago</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Death just hasn’t worked up the courage to tell him yet.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Gashnaw"> /u/Gashnaw </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6ngzl/chuck_norris_actually_died_four_years_ago/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x6ngzl/chuck_norris_actually_died_four_years_ago/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>How Long Is A Chinese Name</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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No, really, it is.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/come_sing_with_me"> /u/come_sing_with_me </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x70972/how_long_is_a_chinese_name/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/x70972/how_long_is_a_chinese_name/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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