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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>Large-scale web scraping for problem gambling research: a case study of COVID-19 lockdown effects in Germany</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to prevent its spread have had a negative impact on substance use behaviour and posed a special threat for individuals at risk. Problem gambling is a major public health concern, and it is likely that the lockdown and social distancing measures have altered gambling behaviour, for instance shifting from land-based to online gambling. In this study, we used large-scale web scraping to analyse posting behaviour on a major German online gambling forum, gathering a database of more than 200k posts. We examined the relative usage of different subforums, i.e. terrestrial, online gambling and problem gambling sections, posting frequency, and changes in posting behaviour related to the casino closures that were part of the nationwide restrictions in Germany in 2020. There was a marked increase in the number of newly registered users during the first lockdown compared to the weeks prior to the lockdown, which may reflect a shift from terrestrial to online gambling. Further, there was an increase in the number of posts in the online gambling subforum with a concurrent decrease in the number of posts in the terrestrial gambling subforum. An analysis of user types revealed that a substantial number of users who posted in both the online and terrestrial forum contributed at least once to the problem gambling subforum. This subforum contained the longest posts, which were on average twice as long as the average post. Modelling the relationship between reply frequency and latency between initial posts and replies showed that the number of short-latency replies (i.e. replies posted within seven hours after the initial post) was substantially higher during the first lockdown compared to the preceeding weeks.The increase during the first lockdown may reflect the general marked increase in screen time and/or usage of online platforms and media after the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses may help to identify lockdown-related effects on gambling behaviour. These potentially detrimental effects on mental health, including addiction and problem gambling, may require monitoring and special public health measures.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.27.22277642v1" target="_blank">Large-scale web scraping for problem gambling research: a case study of COVID-19 lockdown effects in Germany</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Monthly correlates of longitudinal child mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to children and caregivers</strong> -
<div>
Background. Multiple reviews identify the broad, pervasive initial impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children, who may be particularly vulnerable to long-term psychiatric sequelae of the ongoing pandemic. However, limited longitudinal research examines persistence of, or change in, children’s distress or psychiatric symptomatology. Methods. From June 2020 through December 2021, we enrolled two cohorts of families of children aged 8 to 13 from Southwestern Ontario into a staggered baseline, longitudinal design that leveraged multi-informant report (N=317 families). In each family, one child and one parent or guardian completed a baseline assessment, 6 monthly follow-up assessments, and one final follow-up assessment 9 months post-baseline. At each assessment, the child and parent or guardian completed the CoRonavIruS health Impact Survey and measures of child anxiety, depressive, irritability, and posttraumatic stress syndromes. Results. Results indicate a broad impact of the pandemic on children’s mental health, which fluctuated over the study period. Elevated local monthly COVID-19 prevalence, hospitalization, and death rates were associated with monthly elevations in children’s reported worry about contracting COVID-19 and stress related to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). In turn, both elevated monthly worry about contracting COVID-19 and NPI-related stress were associated with monthly elevations in child- and parent- or guardian-report of children’s psychological distress and psychiatric syndromes. Conclusions. This study illustrates the importance of, and informs the potential design of, longitudinal research to track the broad, sustained impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children, who may be particularly vulnerable during the ongoing global crisis.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/e38ta/" target="_blank">Monthly correlates of longitudinal child mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to children and caregivers</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>In harm’s way, but not stressed about it: On the antecedents and consequences of belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories</strong> -
<div>
Conspiracy theories proliferate during times of turmoil. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment in which virus-related conspiracy theories have thrived. The current study leverages prior research to shed light on the antecedents and consequences of conspiracy theory beliefs in the important, real-world context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we found that suffering greater negative economic consequences due to the pandemic predicted greater belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and this relation was strongest among those generally inclined to believe conspiracy theories. We then examined the consequences of coming to hold such beliefs. Greater endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories predicted less social distancing behavior, greater minimization of the threat of COVID-19, and lower levels of general stress. These findings replicate and extend prior research showing a link between conspiracy theory beliefs and rejection of scientific advice, but also offer evidence pointing to a psychological benefit of believing conspiracy theories.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/jubpg/" target="_blank">In harm’s way, but not stressed about it: On the antecedents and consequences of belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Effect of Yoga on the Stress, Anxiety, and Depression of COVID-19-Positive Patients. A Quasi-Randomized Controlled Study.</strong> -
<div>
The spread of COVID-19 has resulted in reports of an increase in stress, anxiety, and depression across society, especially in people who have tested positive for COVID-19, which affects their mental health and well-being. This article reports a quasi-randomized controlled study conducted in the COVID wards of a hospital to examine the efficacy of add-on yoga intervention in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression in COVID-affected patients under quarantine. The peripheral capillary oxygen saturation level and heart rate of the COVID-19-affected patients were also measured. A total of 62 COVID-19-positive patients participated in the study. The participants were randomized into a control group (n = 31), which received conventional medical treatment alone, and a yoga intervention group (n = 31), which received 50 minutes of yoga intervention along with the conventional medical treatment. Standardized Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7 Item, Patient Health Questionnaire–9, and Perceived Stress Scale were administered at the beginning and end of the quarantine period. A significant decrease in stress, anxiety, and depression was observed in the patients who undertook the add-on yoga intervention. There was also a significant decrease in anxiety in the control group, but the yoga intervention group had a larger decrease compared to the control group. Further significant improvements in oxygen saturation and heart rate levels were observed in the group of patients who were practicing yoga, but no significant improvement was observed in the control group. The findings of this study suggest that yoga intervention can be an effective add-on practice in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression levels in COVID-19 patients.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/2cswy/" target="_blank">Effect of Yoga on the Stress, Anxiety, and Depression of COVID-19-Positive Patients. A Quasi-Randomized Controlled Study.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>REDIRECTION: Generating drug repurposing hypotheses using link prediction with DISNET data</strong> -
<div>
In the recent years and due to COVID-19 pandemic, drug repurposing or repositioning has been placed in the spotlight. Giving new therapeutic uses to already existing drugs, this discipline allows to streamline the drug discovery process, reducing the costs and risks inherent to de novo development. Computational approaches have gained momentum, and emerging techniques from the machine learning domain have proved themselves as highly exploitable means for repurposing prediction. Against this backdrop, one can find that biomedical data can be represented in terms of graphs, which allow depicting in a very expressive manner the underlying structure of the information. Combining these graph data structures with deep learning models enhances the prediction of new links, such as potential disease-drug connections. In this paper, we present a new model named REDIRECTION, which aim is to predict new disease-drug links in the context of drug repurposing. It has been trained with a part of the DISNET biomedical graph, formed by diseases, symptoms, drugs, and their relationships. The reserved testing graph for the evaluation has yielded to an AUROC of 0.93 and an AUPRC of 0.90. We have performed a secondary validation of REDIRECTION using RepoDB data as the testing set, which has led to an AUROC of 0.87 and a AUPRC of 0.83. In the light of these results, we believe that REDIRECTION can be a meaningful and promising tool to generate drug repurposing hypotheses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.26.501105v1" target="_blank">REDIRECTION: Generating drug repurposing hypotheses using link prediction with DISNET data</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>“It’s still there, but it doesn’t have as big of an effect on me”: Qualitative findings on experiences of applying brief mindfulness in the context of COVID-19 anxiety</strong> -
<div>
Purpose Brief mindfulness-based interventions have received great research attention, including in the domain of anxiety. However, quantitative studies do not provide in-depth accounts of how brief mindfulness is experienced. In this qualitative study, we explored how non-meditator undergraduate students learn brief mindfulness and apply it to anxiety-provoking aspects of COVID-19. Methods We conducted five focus groups (16 participants). Participants identified an aspect of the pandemic that makes them feel anxious, and engaged in a moderated discussion. They learned a brief mindfulness technique, applied it to their aspect, and engaged in another discussion. Results We conducted thematic analysis, identifying five themes. Participants found learning mindfulness effortless. Brief mindfulness altered their relationship to their experiences, where they perceived anxiety-provoking aspects as transient. The metaphor of the waterfall facilitated this process, but participants experienced challenges such as mind-wandering. Participants reported calming effects of mindfulness, experiencing it within the collective setting of the study. Lastly, participants reported confidence in applying brief mindfulness in the future, particularly for short-term relief. Conclusions Our findings illustrate various features of the process of learning and applying brief mindfulness. Understanding these features is essential for developing effective brief techniques that target distressing daily life situations, including beyond the pandemic.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/r7myb/" target="_blank">“It’s still there, but it doesn’t have as big of an effect on me”: Qualitative findings on experiences of applying brief mindfulness in the context of COVID-19 anxiety</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of COVID-19 on prescribing of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy for people with unresectable pancreatic cancer in England. A cohort study using OpenSafely-TPP</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Cancer treatments were variably disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite UK national guidelines recommending pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy to all people with unresectable pancreatic cancer, observational studies demonstrate under-prescribing. Aim: To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prescribing of pancreatic enzyme replacement to people with unresectable pancreatic cancer. Methods: With the approval of NHS England, we conducted a cohort study using 24 million health records through the OpenSAFELY-TPP research platform. We modelled the effect of COVID-19 with multivariable linear regression. Results: We found no reduction in pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, since 2015, the rates of prescribing increased steadily over time by 1% every year. The national rates ranged from 41% in 2015 to 48% in 2022. There was substantial regional variation. The highest rates of 50% to 60% were in the West Midlands and lowest (20% to 30%) in London. Conclusions: In contrast to many other treatments, prescribing of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy was not affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although overall rates increased over time, substantial under-prescribing existed at the end of this study (March 2022). At just under 50% in 2022, the rates were still below the recommended 100% standard. Prior work evaluating quality of care in this area relied on manual audits which come at increased cost and reduced frequency of updates. With the methodological advantage of OpenSAFELY, we established an automated audit which allows for regular updates.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.08.22277317v2" target="_blank">The impact of COVID-19 on prescribing of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy for people with unresectable pancreatic cancer in England. A cohort study using OpenSafely-TPP</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Understanding the trouble spot: Does vaccination status identification fuel societal polarization?</strong> -
<div>
As COVID-19 vaccination campaigns failed to achieve sufficient immunization rates, public discord between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated has intensified globally. Theories of intergroup relations propose that identifying with one’s social group plays a key role in the perceptions and behaviors that fuel intergroup conflict. Here, we apply these insights to the context of COVID-19 vaccination, exploring the idea that identification with one’s vaccination status is what underlies the current societal polarization. The study draws on unique panel data from large samples of vaccinated (n = 3,267) and unvaccinated (n = 2,038) respondents in Germany and Austria that were collected in December 2021, February, March, and July 2022. The findings confirm that vaccination status identification (VSI) explains substantial variance in a range of polarizing attitudes and behaviors, indicating its importance for increasing conflicts between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. VSI was also found to be related to higher psychological reactance toward mandatory vaccination policies among the unvaccinated and to their intention to resist and evade such regulations. Similarly, higher levels of VSI reduced the gap between intended and actual counter-behaviors over time by the unvaccinated. The results highlight that identification processes may play a pivotal role in explaining and mitigating polarized situations. VSI also appears to be an important measure for more accurately predicting behavioral responses to vaccination policies. Additionally, the results suggest the need for identity-based interventions and de-escalating strategies to increase the acceptance and effectiveness of vaccination campaigns.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/mgqk5/" target="_blank">Understanding the trouble spot: Does vaccination status identification fuel societal polarization?</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Parenting in a Pandemic: A Qualitative Exploration of Parents’ Experiences of Supporting their Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
This qualitative study examined parents’ experiences of supporting their children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventeen parents of children aged 2-16 years from diverse backgrounds, living in the UK, were interviewed one-to-one about their experiences. Ten professionals working with children and families were also interviewed to gain a broader perspective of parents’ experiences. Using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, we identified four central themes: a) worries and uncertainties; b) mental exhaustion; c) resources available to cope with the challenges; and d) finding the positives. Findings revealed the worries and uncertainties that parents faced regarding how best to support their child and the long-term consequences of the pandemic, as well as feelings of mental exhaustion from juggling multiple responsibilities. The impact of Covid-19 on parents’ wellbeing was varied and parents identified several factors that determined their ability to support their children, such as space in the home environment, support networks and their personal mental health. Despite the challenges, some parents reported positive experiences, such as strengthened family bonds during the pandemic. Our study emphasizes the importance of flexible work arrangements and family-friendly employment policies, as well as support for parents to enable them to support their children and look after their own wellbeing.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/tnasg/" target="_blank">Parenting in a Pandemic: A Qualitative Exploration of Parents’ Experiences of Supporting their Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Early Impacts of College, Interrupted: Considering First-Year Students’ Narratives about COVID and Reports of Adjustment during College Shutdowns</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened lives and livelihoods, imperiled families and communities, and disrupted developmental milestones globally. Among the critical developmental disruptions experienced is the transition to college, which is common and foundational for personal and social exploration. During college shutdowns (Spring 2020), we recruited 633 first year, US students (M age = 18.83 years; 71.3% cisgender women) to provide narratives about the impacts of the pandemic. We tested the ways narrative features were associated with concurrent and longitudinal COVID stressors, psychosocial adjustment, and identity development. Narrative growth expressed in Spring 2020 was positively associated with psychosocial adjustment and global identity development and was negatively associated with mental health concerns. Associations were supported concurrently and at one-year follow-up. Growth partly explained associations between COVID stressors and students’ adjustment. Our findings reinforce the importance of growth for resilience and underscore the importance of connective reasoning as people navigate a chronic stress.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/hkzwx/" target="_blank">Early Impacts of College, Interrupted: Considering First-Year Students’ Narratives about COVID and Reports of Adjustment during College Shutdowns</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The COVID-19 Pandemic Attenuated Ongoing Declines in Drinking Trajectories in Emerging Adults: A Longitudinal Behavioral Economic Analysis</strong> -
<div>
Background: Longitudinal research on COVID-19 impacts on drinking is scarce and largely restricted to comparing drinking levels before and after the introduction of COVID mitigation measures. This brief snapshot of behavior ignores the extended pre-COVID drinking trajectory, which may be decreasing increasing, or remaining stable over time. Behavioral economics predicts that pandemic-related constraints on behavioral alternatives to alcohol and drug use, and decreased constraints on alcohol, may result in increases in drinking at later stages of the pandemic. Therefore, the current study characterized drinking trajectories among emerging adults before and during the pandemic and investigated time-invariant demographic predictors and time-varying behavioral economic predictors of trajectories of drinking and behavioral economic variables. Methods: A pandemic-focused survey was distributed between May 15 and June 29, 2020 to emerging adults participating in an ongoing longitudinal study involving pre-COVID data collection every four months. Participants with four pre-COVID assessments were included in the current study (N = 312, ages 21.5-24 years; 65.1% female). Results: Linear piecewise models best fit the drinking days and drinks per week data, suggesting a pandemic-related disruption of ongoing drinking trajectories. After controlling for all other time-invariant predictors, lower environmental reward was associated with greater increases in heavy drinking days and income loss was associated with lower drinking days, drinks, and heavy drinking days per week. In parallel LGCM models, increases in alcohol demand indices were generally associated with increases in drinking from the pre- to the post-COVID onset timepoint. Conclusions: The results suggest that the pandemic attenuated ongoing declines in drinking trajectories and highlight the value of examining trajectories to characterize COVID-19-related effects. Behavioral economic measures of environmental and alcohol reward may be useful predictors of changing alcohol use patterns, particularly in the context of emergent public health crises.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/4cd6y/" target="_blank">The COVID-19 Pandemic Attenuated Ongoing Declines in Drinking Trajectories in Emerging Adults: A Longitudinal Behavioral Economic Analysis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Environmental Stability of Enveloped Viruses is Impacted by the Initial Volume and Evaporation Kinetics of Droplets</strong> -
<div>
Efficient spread of respiratory viruses requires the virus to maintain infectivity in the environment. Environmental stability of viruses can be influenced by many factors, including temperature and humidity. Our study measured the impact of initial droplet volume (50, 5, and 1 {micro}L) and relative humidity (RH: 40%, 65%, and 85%) on the stability of influenza A virus, bacteriophage, Phi6, a common surrogate for enveloped viruses, and SARS-CoV-2 under a limited set of conditions. Our data suggest that the drying time required for the droplets to reach quasi-equilibrium (i.e. a plateau in mass) varied with RH and initial droplet volume. The macroscale physical characteristics of the droplets at quasi-equilibrium varied with RH but not with initial droplet volume. We observed more rapid virus decay when the droplets were still wet and undergoing evaporation, and slower decay after the droplets had dried. Initial droplet volume had a major effect on virus viability over the first few hours; whereby the decay rate of influenza virus was faster in smaller droplets. In general, influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 decayed similarly. Overall, this study suggests that virus decay in media is closely correlated with the extent of droplet evaporation, which is controlled by RH. Taken together, these data suggest that decay of different viruses is more similar at higher RH and in smaller droplets and is distinct at lower RH and in larger droplets. Importantly, accurate assessment of transmission risk requires use of physiologically relevant droplet volumes and careful consideration of the use of surrogates.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.26.501658v1" target="_blank">Environmental Stability of Enveloped Viruses is Impacted by the Initial Volume and Evaporation Kinetics of Droplets</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVID19-vaccination affects breath methane dynamics</strong> -
<div>
Methane (CH4) is well known as a component in the exhaled breath of humans. It has been assumed for a long time that formation of CH4 in humans occurs exclusively by anaerobic microbial activity (methanogenesis) in the gastrointestinal tract. A fraction of the produced CH4 is excreted via the lungs and can then be detected in the breath. However, recent studies challenge this view by showing that CH4 might also be produced endogenously in cells by oxidative-reductive stress reactions. Thus, an increased and fluctuating level of breath CH4 compared to the base level of an individual might also indicate enhanced oxidative stress levels. Thus, monitoring breath CH4 levels might have great potential for in vivo diagnostics. Generally, vaccines generate a strong immune response including the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. To evaluate the effect from current vaccines against COVID-19 on breath CH4 dynamics, breath CH4 was monitored from 12 subjects prior and after the injection of several COVID-vaccines. Prior to COVID-19 vaccination the concentration of breath CH4 was frequently measured by gas chromatograph flame ionization detection (GC-FID, with analytical precision better than 10 parts per billion, ppbv) to obtain the individual variation range of breath CH4 for each subject. Following vaccination, CH4 breath samples were collected at high frequency for a period of 14 days. All subjects monitored showed a strong response in breath CH4 release within 1 to 72 hours after vaccination including shifts and high fluctuations with maximum peaks showing a factor of up to +/-100 compared to base values. Thus, it is highly likely that the observed changes in breath CH4 are coupled to immune responses following Covid-19 vaccination. These preliminary results strongly support the hypothesis that non-microbial methane liberation and utilisation in the human body might be also linked to cellular processes and stress responses independent of classical microbial methanogenesis. Thus, CH4 might be used as a breath biomarker for specific immune responses and individual immune states.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.27.501717v1" target="_blank">COVID19-vaccination affects breath methane dynamics</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Honokiol inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication in cell culture</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 emerged in 2019 and since its global spread has caused the death of over 6 million people. There are currently few antiviral options for treatment of COVID-19. Repurposing of known drugs can be a fast route to obtain molecules that inhibit viral infection and/or modulate pathogenic host responses. Honokiol is a small molecule from Magnolia trees, for which several biological effects have been reported, including anticancer and anti-inflammatory activity. Honokiol has also been shown to inhibit several viruses in cell culture. In this study, we show that honokiol protected Vero E6 cells from SARS-CoV-2-mediated cytopathic effect with an EC50 of 7.8 {micro}M. In viral load reduction assays we observed that honokiol decreased viral RNA copies as well as viral infectious progeny titers. The compound also inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication in the more relevant A549 cells, expressing ACE2 and TMPRSS2. A time-of-addition assay showed that honokiol inhibited virus replication even when added post infection, suggesting it acts at a post-entry step of the replication cycle. Honokiol was also effective against more recent variants of SARS-CoV-2, including omicron and it inhibited other human coronaviruses as well. Our study suggests that honokiol is an interesting molecule to evaluate in animal studies and clinical trials to investigate its effect on virus replication and pathogenic (inflammatory) host responses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.26.501656v1" target="_blank">Honokiol inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication in cell culture</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>High Frequencies of Phenotypically and Functionally Senescent and Exhausted CD56+CD57+PD-1+ Natural Killer Cells, SARS-CoV-2-Specific Memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells Associated with Severe Disease in Unvaccinated COVID-19 Patients</strong> -
<div>
Unvaccinated COVID-19 patients display a large spectrum of symptoms, ranging from asymptomatic to severe symptoms, the latter even causing death. Distinct Natural killer (NK) and CD4+ and CD8+ T cells immune responses are generated in COVID-19 patients. However, the phenotype and functional characteristics of NK cells and T-cells associated with COVID-19 pathogenesis versus protection remain to be elucidated. In this study, we compared the phenotype and function of NK cells SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in unvaccinated symptomatic (SYMP) and unvaccinated asymptomatic (ASYMP) COVID-19 patients. The expression of senescent CD57 marker, CD45RA/CCR7differentiation status, exhaustion PD-1 marker, activation of HLA-DR, and CD38 markers were assessed on NK and T cells from SARS-CoV-2 positive SYMP patients, ASYMP patients, and Healthy Donors (HD) using multicolor flow cytometry. We detected significant increases in the expression levels of both exhaustion and senescence markers on NK and T cells from SYMP patients compared to ASYMP patients and HD controls. In SYMP COVID-19 patients, the T cell compartment displays several alterations involving naive, central memory, effector memory, and terminally differentiated T cells. The senescence CD57 marker was highly expressed on CD8+ TEM cells and CD8+ TEMRA cells. Moreover, we detected significant increases in the levels of pro-inflammatory TNF-a, IFN-g, IL-6, IL-8, and IL-17 cytokines from SYMP COVID-19 patients, compared to ASYMP COVID-19 patients and HD controls. The findings suggest exhaustion and senescence in both NK and T cell compartment is associated with severe disease in critically ill COVID-19 patients.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.26.501655v1" target="_blank">High Frequencies of Phenotypically and Functionally Senescent and Exhausted CD56+CD57+PD-1+ Natural Killer Cells, SARS-CoV-2-Specific Memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells Associated with Severe Disease in Unvaccinated COVID-19 Patients</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>Puerto Rico COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Study</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Educational intervention<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Puerto Rico;   National Institutes of Health (NIH);   National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)<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>Monitoring the Efficacy of a Probiotic Dietary Supplement SmartProbio C in Patients With Severe COVID-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Dietary Supplement: SmartProbio C;   Dietary Supplement: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Medi Pharma Vision;   Veterinary Research Institute;   Brno University Hospital<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>Bank of Human Leukocytes From COVID-19 Convalescent Donors With an Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Cellular Immunity</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Generation of a biobank allowing the cryopreservation of leucocytes from COVID19 convalescent donors<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Central Hospital, Nancy, France<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>Beta-glucans for Hospitalised Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MC 3x3;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Concentra Educacion e Investigación Biomédica;   Wohlstand Pharmaceutical<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 Learn About a New COVID-19 RNA Vaccine Candidate as a Booster Dose in COVID-19 Vaccine-Experienced Healthy Adults</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   SARS-CoV-2 Infection;   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: BNT162b5 Bivalent (WT/OMI BA.2);   Biological: BNT162b2 Bivalent (WT/OMI BA.1)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   BioNTech SE;   Pfizer<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Randomised, Multi-centre, Double-blind, Phase 3 Study to Observe the Effectiveness, Safety and Tolerability of Molnupiravir Compared to Placebo Administered Orally to High-risk Adult Outpatients With Mild COVID-19 Receiving Local Standard of Care in South Africa</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Molnupiravir 200 mg<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Witwatersrand, South Africa;   Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<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>An Observer-blind, Cohort Randomized, Exploratory Phase 3 Study to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of Recombinant Covid-19 Vaccine, mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine and Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Trimeric S-protein Subunit Vaccine as 4th Dose in Individuals Primed/ Boosted With Various Regimens</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AstraZeneca/Fiocruz;   Biological: Pfizer/Wyeth;   Biological: Clover SCB-2019<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   D’Or Institute for Research and Education;   Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;   University of Oxford<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 Recombinant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) as a Booster</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell);   Biological: COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma 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>Safety and Immunogenicity of Recombinant COVID-19 Variant Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) as a Booster</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 variant Vaccine (Sf9 Cell);   Biological: COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Moderna);   Biological: Viral Vector COVID-19 vaccine (AstraZeneca)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma 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>Rehabilitation for People With Post COVID-19 Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Multidimensional intervention;   Other: Control intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universidad de Granada<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>Xanthohumol as an Adjuvant Therapy in Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Respiratory Infection<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Xanthohumol - prenylated chalcone extracted from female inflorescences of hop cones (Humulus lupus). Hop-RXn™, BioActive-Tech Ltd, Lublin, Poland; http://xanthohumol.com.pl/<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Medical University of Lublin<br/><b>Suspended</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program on Post Hospitalization Severe COVID- 19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Combination Product: respiratory exercises - incentive spirometer - walking<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Fayoum University Hospital<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>Study to Evaluate Safety and Immunogenicity of COVID-19 Vaccine in Children 6 Months to &lt; 12 Years</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Biological/Vaccine: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Initial Vaccination Period);   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Open Label Crossover Vaccination period);   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant (Booster Vaccination);   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Novavax<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Trial of Immuno-bridging Between Different Manufacture Scales of Recombinant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Pneumonia<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma 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>Passive Antibodies Against COVID-19 With EVUSHELD in Vaccine Non-responsive CLL</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia;   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: EVUSHELD<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre;   AstraZeneca<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>Propofol directly binds to and inhibits TLR7</strong> - Sedatives/anesthetics are important medical tools to facilitate medical care and increase patients’ comfort. Increasingly, there is recognition that sedatives/anesthetics can modulate immune functions. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are major pattern recognition receptors involved in the recognition of microbial components. TLR7 recognizes single-strand RNA virus such as influenza and SARS-CoV2 viruses and initiates interferon (IFN) responses. IFN production triggered by TLR7 stimulation is 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>Equine Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Serum (ECIG) Binds to Mutated RBDs and N Proteins of Variants of Concern and Inhibits the Binding of RBDs to ACE-2 Receptor</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been around since November 2019. As of early June 2022, more than 527 million cases were diagnosed, with more than 6.0 million deaths due to this disease. Coronaviruses accumulate mutations and generate greater diversity through recombination when variants with different mutations infect the same host. Consequently, this virus is predisposed to constant and diverse mutations. The SARS-CoV-2 variants 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>Potent and Selective Covalent Inhibition of the Papain-like Protease from SARS-CoV-2</strong> - Direct-acting antivirals are needed to combat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The papain-like protease (PLpro) domain of Nsp3 from SARS-CoV-2 is essential for viral replication. In addition, PLpro dysregulates the host immune response by cleaving ubiquitin and interferon-stimulated gene 15 protein (ISG15) from host proteins. As a result, PLpro is a promising target for inhibition by small-molecule therapeutics….</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>Cellular and Molecular Mechanism of Pulmonary Fibrosis Post-COVID-19: Focus on Galectin-1, -3, -8, -9</strong> - Pulmonary fibrosis is a consequence of the pathological accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM), which finally leads to lung scarring. Although the pulmonary fibrogenesis is almost known, the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its post effects added new particularities which need to be explored. Many questions remain about how pulmonary fibrotic changes occur within the lungs of COVID-19 patients, and whether the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic proprietary Chinese medicine nasal spray designated as Allergic Rhinitis Nose Drops (ARND) with potential to prevent SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection by targeting RBD (Delta)- angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) binding</strong> - CONCLUSION: ARND could be considered as a safe anti-SARS-CoV-2 agent with potential to prevent SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection.</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>Protein Scaffold-Based Multimerization of Soluble ACE2 Efficiently Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Vitro and In Vivo</strong> - Soluble ACE2 (sACE2) decoys are promising agents to inhibit SARS-CoV-2, as their efficiency is unlikely to be affected by escape mutations. However, their success is limited by their relatively poor potency. To address this challenge, multimeric sACE2 consisting of SunTag or MoonTag systems is developed. These systems are extremely effective in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in pseudoviral systems and in clinical isolates, perform better than the dimeric or trimeric sACE2, and exhibit greater than…</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 ricin-based peptide BRIP from Hordeum vulgare inhibits M<sup>pro</sup> of SARS-CoV-2</strong> - COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 led to the research aiming to find the inhibitors of this virus. Towards this world problem, an attempt was made to identify SARS-CoV-2 main protease (M^(pro)) inhibitory peptides from ricin domains. The ricin-based peptide from barley (BRIP) was able to inhibit M^(pro) in vitro with an IC(50) of 0.52 nM. Its low and no cytotoxicity upto 50 µM suggested its therapeutic potential against SARS-CoV-2. The most favorable binding site on M^(pro) was identified…</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 nucleocapsid protein triggers hyperinflammation via protein-protein interaction-mediated intracellular Cl<sup>-</sup> accumulation in respiratory epithelium</strong> - SARS-CoV-2, the culprit pathogen of COVID-19, elicits prominent immune responses and cytokine storms. Intracellular Cl^(-) is a crucial regulator of host defense, whereas the role of Cl^(-) signaling pathway in modulating pulmonary inflammation associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection remains unclear. By using human respiratory epithelial cell lines, primary cultured human airway epithelial cells, and murine models of viral structural protein stimulation and SARS-CoV-2 direct challenge, we…</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>Differential neutralization and inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 variants by antibodies elicited by COVID-19 mRNA vaccines</strong> - The evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in the emergence of new variant lineages that have exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of those variants were designated as variants of concern/interest (VOC/VOI) by national or international authorities based on many factors including their potential impact on vaccine-mediated protection from disease. To ascertain and rank the risk of VOCs and VOIs, we analyze the ability of 14 variants (614G, Alpha,…</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 pulmonologist’s guide to perform and analyse cross-species single lung cell transcriptomics</strong> - Single-cell ribonucleic acid sequencing is becoming widely employed to study biological processes at a novel resolution depth. The ability to analyse transcriptomes of multiple heterogeneous cell types in parallel is especially valuable for cell-focused lung research where a variety of resident and recruited cells are essential for maintaining organ functionality. We compared the single-cell transcriptomes from publicly available and unpublished datasets of the lungs in six different species:…</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>Immunomodulation and endothelial barrier protection mediate the association between oral imatinib and mortality in hospitalised COVID-19 patients</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: The effect of imatinib on mortality in hospitalised COVID-19 patients is mediated through modulation of innate immune responses and reversal of endothelial dysfunction, and possibly moderated by biological subphenotypes.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy of Covexir® (Ferula foetida oleo-gum) treatment in symptomatic improvement of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial</strong> - The SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as an unprecedented emergency state in healthcare system and global challenge. In recent decade, the function of exogenous H(2) S in the treatment of respiratory diseases has been investigated using H(2) S-donor agents. Ferula foetida is a medicinal plant that is traditionally used in respiratory diseases including asthma and viral respiratory diseases. The oleo-gum of this plant is a rich source of several organic sulfides including thiophenes,…</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>Composition of naturally occurring compounds decreases activity of Omicron and SARS-CoV-2 RdRp complex</strong> - Naturally-occurring compounds are acknowledged for their broad antiviral efficacy. Little is however known about their mutual cooperation. Here, we evaluated in vitro efficacy of the defined mixture of agents against the RdRp complex of the original SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron variant. This composition of vitamin C, N-acetylcysteine, resveratrol, theaflavin, curcumin, quercetin, naringenin, baicalin, and broccoli extract showed to inhibit activity of RdRp/nsp7/nsp8 both these variants. In vitro…</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>Egyptian cobra (Naja haje haje) venom phospholipase A2: a promising antiviral agent with potent virucidal activity against simian rotavirus and bovine coronavirus</strong> - Viral infections are linked to a variety of human diseases. Despite the achievements made in drug and vaccine development, several viruses still lack preventive vaccines and efficient antiviral compounds. Thus, developing novel antiviral agents is of great concern, particularly the natural products that are promising candidates for such discoveries. In this study, we have purified an approximately 15 kDa basic phospholipase A2 (PLA2) enzyme from the Egyptian cobra Naja haje haje venom. The…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 infection threatening intestinal health: A review of potential mechanisms and treatment strategies</strong> - The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought great problems to mankind, including economic recession and poor health. COVID-19 patients are frequently reported with gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting in clinical diagnosis. Maintaining intestinal health is the key guarantee to maintain the normal function of multiple organs, otherwise it will be a disaster. Therefore, the purpose of this review was deeply understanded the potential mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection…</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 Aging Student Debtors of America</strong> - In an era of declining wages and rising debt, Americans are not aging out of their student loans—they are aging into them. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/the-aging-student-debtors-of-america">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will “Dereliction of Duty” Be What Finally Gets Donald Trump Indicted?</strong> - So far, the evidence of what Trump didn’t do on January 6th holds the strongest potential for making a successful criminal case against him. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/will-dereliction-of-duty-finally-be-what-gets-donald-trump-indicted">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Juror Explains Why a C.I.A. Hacker Was Convicted</strong> - In a retrial, prosecutors made a persuasive case that Joshua Schulte had leaked hacking tools as an act of petty revenge against agency colleagues. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-juror-explains-why-a-cia-hacker-was-convicted">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Congressional-Staffer Rebellion</strong> - With climate legislation in peril and time running out, a group of young aides broke from a tradition of deference and staged a sit-in at Chuck Schumer’s office, demanding action. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/climate-change-sit-in-congressional-staffers-schumer-office">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Myanmar After the Coup</strong> - Last year, a military junta seized power and imprisoned the country’s civilian leader. A popular resistance movement has been met with brutal force, including the recent execution of four democracy activists. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/myanmar-after-the-coup">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>What the strong dollar means for you</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A dollar bill is held against a table of conversions between the dollar and the euro." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/v6KaaoWG90Nrrpb5mKDpZkudTDo=/478x0:5427x3712/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71182330/1241856690.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
For the first time in about two decades, the euro’s value is about that of a US dollar. | Paul Zinken/picture alliance via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The soaring value of the US dollar has broad implications for American consumers and the global economy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gKC7jL">
The value of the US dollar against other major currencies has reached its highest level <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy">since the early 2000s</a>. Even as recession fears mount and the economy shows signs of slowing, the dollar continues to surge.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MH1neH">
The dollar, which has been on a steep upward climb for about a year now, equaled the value of the euro this month for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/business/euro-dollar-parity.html">first time in two decades</a>. The Japanese <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/currency/usdjpy">yen has also fallen sharply</a> against the dollar.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2XkLum">
A strong dollar can make products imported into America cheaper and make trips abroad less expensive for American travelers. Big companies that operate in multiple countries, such as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6d06181f-d0e0-4c5a-bcfd-8bda44cc31a2">Johnson &amp; Johnson</a>, have recently complained that the rising dollar could hurt their profits since foreign sales lose value when converted back into dollars and they become less competitive with local companies as their products become more expensive overseas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9WHlkq">
Economic policymakers and Biden administration officials have <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-07-18/bloomberg-markets-americas-full-show-07-18-2022-video?sref=qYiz2hd0">claimed the strong dollar could even help bring down inflation</a> in the United States, which has been running at its <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23206038/inflation-cpi-economy-prices">fastest pace in four decades</a>. Economists say the impact would be relatively small, but still positive, given that many households are struggling to afford essentials like food, rent, and gas.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aUOy3d">
A strong dollar also has broad implications for the global economy, devaluing currencies in other countries. The value of the dollar also matters a lot for emerging economies, since it puts those countries at a greater risk of defaulting on their debts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4TCrC9">
Here are answers to four key questions you might have about the strength of the dollar.
</p>
<h3 id="y4OTjA">
<ol type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Why is the dollar extremely strong right now?
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Om5hGk">
The basic explanation for the strong dollar boils down to this: While things might be weird in the US economy right now, a combination of factors has made the dollar a better bet for investors than most other currencies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2POEcg">
The dollar has been rising in large part because the Federal Reserve is on track to increase interest rates faster than other major countries, said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rUGmha">
The central bank started to lift interest rates in March after keeping them at near zero for much of the pandemic, and carried out another big rate increase on Wednesday, <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20220727a1.htm">raising rates three-quarters of a percentage point</a>. Higher interest rates make the dollar more attractive to investors, since it means they would get a bigger return.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fZLErI">
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also strained European economies and made <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/20/23270078/europe-russia-gas-nord-stream-ukraine-war">natural gas prices skyrocket</a>, making the US economy look healthier in comparison, Rogoff said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oPOJGp">
“Everyone’s talking about <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/7/23198724/united-states-recession-indicators-economists-forecasters">a recession</a>, but the US economy is doing better than a lot of other economies,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9v89KY">
The dollar is acting as a “safe haven,” said<strong> </strong>Vassili Serebriakov, a foreign exchange strategist at UBS, an investment bank. As the <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2022/07/26/world-economic-outlook-update-july-2022">growth outlook for the world economy worsens</a>, investors have grown more concerned and flocked to the dollar, putting their money into safer assets like US Treasury bonds, Serebriakov said. That in turn has pushed up the currency’s value.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kskHn5">
“More recently, it has less to do with the US and more to do with a global downturn,” Serebriakov said.
</p>
<h3 id="ub4v4u">
<ol start="2" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">What does this mean for Americans?
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jl138d">
Among other things, a stronger dollar helps curb inflation by making imports cheaper, said Marc Chandler, the chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex, a trading firm. Foreign sellers are more inclined to drop prices when the dollar becomes more valuable, translating to lower prices for imported products that Americans buy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KDBpiZ">
But with prices running as high as they are now, that may not provide much relief to consumers. Chandler said the strength of the dollar could shave off 0.2 or 0.3 percent off overall inflation, a small amount compared to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23206038/inflation-cpi-economy-prices">9.1 percent increase in consumer prices from a year ago</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gmGS60">
“Wages are not keeping pace with inflation,” Chandler said. “And so does a stronger dollar really do that much for it? Probably not.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aVvnu8">
There are other bright spots. It’s commonly known that a stronger dollar is good for American travelers, who can get more for their money in other countries. Americans are already finding it easier to fund European vacations and purchase <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-a-strong-dollar-american-tourists-are-spending-in-europe-11658136601">luxury goods and fine wines</a> in other countries. Some American buyers are even <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/cheap-homes-in-europe-americans-are-hunting-for-properties-in-france?utm_medium=social&amp;cmpid=socialflow-facebook-business&amp;utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=business&amp;fbclid=IwAR0R_iMBt74_01zVzEyIj5JK8FzMyAyskgi0r890K2qYmBDu6d7VaZRxWzQ&amp;sref=qYiz2hd0">househunting in countries like France</a>, since the weaker euro means it’s cheaper for them to buy real estate in Europe compared to a year ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MnQR7W">
Although a strong dollar is mostly favorable for American consumers, it can have more negative impacts on companies that operate businesses in other countries because revenue and profits earned in local currencies are worth less in dollar terms and their products become more expensive abroad, reducing demand.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0OLxke">
Exports also become more expensive abroad, which could hurt American companies that export goods or services. Workers in industries like agriculture or manufacturing could also be impacted if their jobs depend on exports.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="al4jVx">
Overall, though, many Americans might not notice the effects of a stronger dollar in their daily lives, said David Wessel, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. Compared to many European countries, the United States is more self-sufficient, producing much of what Americans consume, Wessel said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rTLbBM">
Wessel noted that a stronger dollar can make real estate in the United States more expensive for foreign buyers, making those investments less attractive to them. That could help relieve some price pressures in the housing market, a positive outcome for Americans trying to buy homes, he said. But generally, people in other countries are more likely to feel the impact of a stronger dollar than Americans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="621PX4">
“If you go to some other countries, people are fixated on the exchange rate,” Wessel said. “Whereas my guess is, most Americans don’t have any idea whether the dollar is strong or weak.”
</p>
<h3 id="YW87nu">
<ol start="3" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">What does this mean for other countries?
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L0zBZp">
For other countries, a strong dollar pushes import prices up, which can create inflation in those regions. The impact can also be brutal for emerging economies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CXjLdI">
When US interest rates are low, global investors tend to invest more in emerging markets, or the economies of nations that are transitioning into developed economies. But when rates start to rise in the United States and the dollar climbs, money starts to flow out of those countries, Wessel said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CqcotT">
Some developing nations are <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2021/04/05/how-rising-interest-rates-could-affect-emerging-markets/">better equipped to handle this</a>, since they have more reserves or their exports are priced in dollars and have been rising in value, but other countries could struggle. Sri Lanka’s economy, for example, is starting to crumble as it deals with <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/4/30/23050242/sri-lanka-50-billion-debt-protests-loan-default-china-india-imf">a mountain of debt</a> and not enough US dollars to pay for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/sri-lankas-debt-crisis-tests-chinas-role-as-financier-to-poor-countries-imf-bailout-11657735179?mod=article_inline">imports of essential goods</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K5v6uC">
Countries that borrow heavily in dollars could suffer because it becomes harder to make repayments as the dollar rises and their currencies depreciate, said Mark Sobel, the U.S. chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum and a former top Treasury Department official.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D39043">
“That means the amount of dollars they need to get their hands on to make repayments goes up,” Sobel said.
</p>
<h3 id="Wrhyjv">
<ol start="4" type="1">
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Where does the dollar go from here?
</li></ol></h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zST3rh">
Currency markets are <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/eclett/2008/el0806.pdf">extremely hard to predict</a>, so it’s difficult to say whether the dollar will continue to climb or fall in the coming months. Rogoff, the Harvard economics professor, said the dollar could drop if the war in Ukraine “miraculously” ceased, relieving pressure on European economies and pushing up their currencies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hFLskH">
The dollar could also fall if the US enters a recession and the Fed has to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy, which some <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/01/fed-could-cut-interest-rates-in-2023-analysts-say-after-rate-hikes-this-year.html">analysts predict could happen next year</a>. An economic downturn in the United States could also make investing in US assets and companies look less attractive, which could result in the dollar falling, Rogoff said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9GgqkY">
On the other hand, if inflation stays stubbornly high and the Fed has to keep raising interest rates more than expected, the dollar could keep rising. It could also climb if the European Central Bank, which <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2022/html/ecb.mp220721~53e5bdd317.en.html#:~:text=Key%20ECB%20interest%20rates,-The%20Governing%20Council&amp;text=Accordingly%2C%20the%20interest%20rate%20on,effect%20from%2027%20July%202022.">raised interest rates for the first time in more than a decade</a> last week, has to backpedal and cut rates, Rogoff said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T0tVcE">
“It’s a very uncertain environment, and the exchange rate probably is going to be hard to predict,” Rogoff said.
</p></li>
<li><strong>How the anti-aging industry turns you into a customer for life</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Little bottles of what looks like anti-aging serum." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-LdNOp3LhqsDuYK2xE_FD03L7QQ=/334x0:5667x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71182200/GettyImages_1337208162.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
There is no amount of money you can spend to age like JLo. | Iryna Veklich via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Anti-aging is the easiest sell in the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZNbrW1">
In late June, I sat in on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHiHv5ov2Lk">conversation</a> featuring three models, all over the age of 50, about aging and beauty. “We need representation of spring, summer, fall, and winter,” one of the panelists, Swedish model <a href="https://www.instagram.com/paulinaporizkov/?hl=en">Paulina Porizkova</a>, declared. Model <a href="https://www.instagram.com/officialyasminwarsame/?hl=en">Yasmin Warsame</a> spoke about how aging is treated as a sign of wisdom in her birth country of Somalia. The discussion’s moderator, Allure<em> </em>editor-in-chief <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jcruel/?hl=en">Jessica Cruel</a>, brought up the magazine’s <a href="https://www.allure.com/story/allure-magazine-phasing-out-the-word-anti-aging">much-publicized decision</a> five years ago to axe the term “anti-aging” from its pages. “How are you going to be anti-living?” she asked.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LbeMwS">
The takeaway of the panel, hosted by the Aspen Institute, was supposed to be that women should demand to be seen, regardless of how old they are, and that society needs to accept all versions of beauty, no matter someone’s birth date. But some mild discomfort with the premise was evident. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/christiebrinkley/?hl=en">Christie Brinkley</a> mentioned a specific wrinkle that bothers her multiple times and the steps she’s taken to minimize it. All of the panelists acknowledged at least the temptation to get some work done, and the conundrum that you’re “shamed if you do, shamed if you don’t,” as Porizkova put it. I left thinking it’s probably time to start looking into fillers.
</p>
<aside id="LsBznf">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iDSpE5">
We’ve learned to pretend to celebrate older women, but we haven’t learned to accept what happens naturally to their skin. We celebrate older women but not the un-intervened-upon face. This fuels a multibillion-dollar cosmetic and skin care industry dedicated to helping people — mainly women — stay young, or rather, try to look like it. According to data from Euromonitor International, the anti-aging market grew from $3.9 billion in 2016 to $4.9 billion in 2021 in the United States alone. The global anti-aging market went from $25 billion to nearly $37 billion during the same period.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D0hbmx">
“Anti-aging is probably the most popular and lasting promise of any sort of skin care brand or injectable,” said Jessica DeFino, a beauty writer and author of <a href="https://jessicadefino.substack.com/">The Unpublishable</a>, a newsletter focused on the darker sides of the beauty industry. “Youth is the ultimate goal, and obviously very convenient for the industry, because it’s an impossible goal.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kAZF9g">
Dermatologists say that <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/health/skin-care-products-scam-dermatologist-sunscreen-vaseline-20190625.html">a lot of this stuff is a scam anyway</a> and doesn’t work. Many companies <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2018/02/younger-games-ftc-challenges-anti-aging-claims-unsubstantiated">fail to</a><a href="https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products/wrinkle-treatments-and-other-anti-aging-products"> back up their claims</a> of reversing the forward march of time, and some products wind up irritating the skin and making it more vulnerable to the elements, not less. But even for the products that actually make a difference, whether it be a sunscreen to try to slow skin damage or <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/do-retinoids-really-reduce-wrinkles">retinol to try to reduce some wrinkles</a>, there’s really a limited amount they can accomplish. Marketers know some consumers will spend a lot of money hoping they’ll do anything, and they’ll do so for years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QN9l0j">
The minute women hit their 20s (and in some cases, even younger), they’re told they’re in a race against time they’re destined to lose. And still, they’re encouraged to spend thousands of dollars to try to win.
</p>
<h3 id="abtvVB">
Feel weird about getting older? You are not alone.
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XlYRnP">
The tone of the message around aging from advertisers has shifted over the years. Throughout much of the 20th century, it was delivered with a hammer, a warning — always to women — that the <a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/134157686711">man in your life won’t love you</a> as you age. <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adaccess/BH1920">God forbid your husband appear younger than you do</a>. In recent years, the message has come more in the form of an enthusiastic but ultimately empty hug. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/magazine/the-ever-changing-business-of-anti-aging.html">Amanda Hess outlined in the New York Times magazine in 2017</a>, it’s no longer so much packaged as hiding wrinkles but instead is cloaked in language about radiant, brighter, healthier-looking skin. It’s not about denying<em> </em>the passage of time but defying<em> </em>it. You’re supposed to feel empowered to look your best at any age.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rALvoe">
Whatever the tone, the goal remains the same: to remind consumers they’re not comfortable with aging and prompt them to spend money accordingly. Repackaging anti-aging in a wellness frame carries the same old price tag — and the same psychological weight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ynZ6WW">
There are a lot of individual differences in how people age and how susceptible they are to external influences such as ageism and age discrimination, Candace Konnert, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary who studies aging, told me. It depends on who they compare themselves to, how the issue is treated among their families and partners, what media they consume, and their mental health, among other factors. Still, the clear message across generations has been that the beauty ideal is “young, thin, and toned,” she said. “Where did boomer women learn about their bodies? They learned from their mothers, who were raised in the era of <em>Mad Men</em>.”
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="p3OoiY">
<q>“Once they sell you on the idea that you need to anti-age, they have a customer for life”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FWHC9q">
There is also a stigma around men aging — there’s a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/06/15/the-gift-your-dad-really-wants-this-fathers-day-anti-aging-cream/?sh=34d4bcb933ba">growing market</a> for men’s anti-aging skin care too — but it’s historically been to a more limited extent. The older a woman is, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/not-the-norm/202202/the-invisibility-war-older-women">the more invisible she becomes</a>, and the more <a href="https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/_Textual/KathyBayer_TheAntiAgingTrend-CapitalismCosmeticsAndMirroringTheSpectacle_2004_19pp/KathyBayer_TheAntiAgingTrend-CapitalismCosmeticsAndMirroringTheSpectacle_2004_19pp.pdf">our capitalistic society views her as less productive</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bonniemarcus/2019/01/17/the-double-whammy-for-women-over-50-in-the-workplace-today/">less valuable</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E2cDlK">
<a href="https://swnsdigital.com/us/2017/09/young-americans-are-already-worried-about-looking-old/">Polls show</a> women express concern about looking old when they are quite young, in their 20s and 30s, and begin to take action to combat it. In fact, <a href="https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/style-trends/info-2018/women-beauty-aging-survey.html">some surveys suggest</a> older women feel better about their bodies as they age than younger women. That young women start to worry so early helps companies to sell more.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y8HdBN">
“The target group for anti-aging products has gotten younger and younger,” said Kayla Villena, industry manager for beauty and personal care at market research firm Euromonitor. She noted that now, the target age for anti-aging products — which often aren’t called that anymore — starts at around 25. “That’s for more prevention.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tGLsyo">
“Once they sell you on the idea that you need to anti-age, they have a customer for life,” DeFino said. “You always need another product or syringe or surgery.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y2XOSg">
It is also worth hammering home that these products are often exorbitantly expensive. NuFace, a cream-and-contraption combination <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/jennifer-aniston-nuface-trinity-nordstrom-sale-164103658.html#:~:text=The%20NuFace%20Trinity%20Facial%20Toning,healthy%20glow%20to%20the%20skin.">endorsed</a> by multiple celebrities, costs hundreds of dollars just to get started. Even creams you can find in the pharmacy aisle are pricey — the relatively basic suite of skin care products sitting in my bathroom cabinet right now cost me more than $100 to acquire. <a href="https://swnsdigital.com/us/2017/06/women-spend-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-on-their-appearance-in-a-lifetime/">One survey found</a> that women will spend some $225,000 on their appearances across their lifetimes, a quarter of that going toward their faces.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FVxYXE">
It’s hard to blame anyone for using a cream, or anything really, to try to look younger and, more importantly, to make themselves feel better if it does. At the same time, as DeFino put it, you feel joy when you do that “because you felt like shit beforehand,” in part because society and marketers said you should. “Beauty culture makes you feel lesser than first, so that you feel better when you have a product.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LiaRo5">
There’s no denying <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pretty%20Privilege">pretty privilege</a> exists. That does not mean it is good. It sucks that people <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2021/06/10507185/zoom-boom-plastic-cosmetic-surgery-pandemic">looking at themselves so much on Zoom</a> during the pandemic led some to seek out plastic surgery, and that apps such as Facetune <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/facetune-selfies-surgeries-body-dysmorphia_n_60926a11e4b0b9042d989d48">have made younger generations</a> paranoid about how they look.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="42yjer">
Underlying the cosmetic anxiety is a much more fundamental and human fear of decay and, ultimately, of death. Selling youth is easy, in part, because its decline represents a much scarier prospect.
</p>
<h3 id="62hp0A">
Good for Jennifer Lopez that she looks young, but maybe not good for society or your wallet
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r4gbE7">
The skin care and cosmetics industry would very much like consumers to at least feel like we’ve moved on to a new, more progressive era, where beauty is celebrated at any age. It holds up examples of women such as Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Aniston as 50-something hotties, and Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, and Jane Fonda as aspirational septuagenarians and octogenarians. That’s all fine and good, except the thing that those women have in common about their age is that they don’t look it.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="VH1cI4">
<q>Most of how you age has nothing to do with what you put on your face</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GNMB9S">
“Part of the problem with the marketing is that the models don’t really match reality,” Konnert said. “The new message is: ‘It’s okay to age but not to have a wrinkled face.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zwbyaw">
Martha Stewart <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/style/martha-stewart-tiktok.html">has become something of a skin care influencer on TikTok</a>. Should that be celebrated? It’s hard to say. “That’s not better,” DeFino said. “You’re celebrating this 80-something-year-old woman, but you’re celebrating her because she doesn’t look like she’s 80-something. You’re positioning this as age positivity and it’s not.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FAuR2c">
The ways that these women have accomplished these age-defying appearances is not accessible to most people, as in expensive procedures, products, and airbrushing. Not to mention that most of how you age has nothing to do with what you put on your face — it’s about exposure to the elements, hydration, drinking, smoking, genes, etc., etc.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p6MhwZ">
“My view is that one product is not going to solve your aging,” Villena said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LR1OBK">
Companies know that, which is why they always have another thing to sell you.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aMNCG2">
<em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em><strong>The Big Squeeze</strong></em></a><em>.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NF25sR">
<a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</strong></em></a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fEmYHz">
<em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em><strong>emily.stewart@vox.com</strong></em></a>.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The hollowness of Tom Cruise</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/322FkvgcE0c98jNJtmRkJfuzqq4=/33x0:1870x1378/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71182115/GettyImages_180056165.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Tom Cruise at the premiere of <em>Vanilla Sky</em>, in Los Angeles in 2001. | Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
How Tom Cruise went from superstar to laughingstock and back again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xQ6SKe">
Tom Cruise has spent this year flying high, literally.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SOx67r">
At CinemaCon in April, when <em>Mission: Impossible 7</em> screened its first trailer for theater owners, Cruise sent along a video intro that he’d filmed <a href="https://movieweb.com/tom-cruise-reveals-mission-impossible-7-title-and-trailer-at-cinemacon/">while standing on top of a biplane</a> flying over a canyon in South Africa. It ended with him launching into a barrel roll. When he arrived at the premiere of <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> in San Diego in May, <a href="https://www.laineygossip.com/tom-cruise-flies-himself-to-top-gun-maverick-premiere-san-diego-tricked-out-helicopter/70907">he flew there in a helicopter he piloted himself</a>, emblazoned with his own name and the title of his film.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GjrxfX">
He’s also flying high on a metaphorical level. Cruise turned 60 on July 3, and he shows no signs of slowing down. <a href="https://www.vox.com/23141487/top-gun-maverick-us-military-hollywood"><em>Top Gun: Maverick</em></a> has made <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/top-gun-maverick-continues-crushing-at-the-box-office-and-tom-cruise-explains-why-it-took-so-long-to-get-a-second-movie-made">over $1 billion since it came out in May</a>, the first film of Cruise’s career to do so and just the second film to manage the feat since the pandemic began in 2020. (The first was <em>Spider-Man: No Way Home</em>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LgdpDh">
In the pandemic era, a lot of movies are making only the most cursory appearance in theaters before they hit streaming, if they make it to theaters at all. Not Tom Cruise movies. The idea of <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> premiering on streaming instead of in theaters? “Never going to happen,” <a href="https://twitter.com/RaminSetoodeh/status/1526935229356711936">Cruise said at Cannes in May</a>, even though the completed film languished for two years before seeing the light of day. When Paramount told Cruise that <em>Mission: Impossible 7</em> would play in theaters for only 45 days instead of the three months Cruise was used to, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/tom-cruise-mission-impossible-paramount-1235116830/">Cruise hired a lawyer</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UlDhI9">
For his efforts, Cruise is being hailed as the savior of the cinematic experience.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ig3tCQ">
“Can Tom Cruise save the old-fashioned blockbuster?” <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/can-tom-cruise-save-old-fashioned-blockbuster/">asked the Telegraph</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AniBlk">
<a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/how-tom-cruise-got-hollywood-moving-again-during-the-pandemic-world-exclusive/">Empire magazine described Cruise’s fight</a> as “the battle to save cinema,” with “the biggest movie star in the world” at the vanguard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Av6TDM">
“Cruise is here to remind us that the industry will not die on his watch. Not if he can help it,” <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-05-27/the-inexplicably-ageless-and-fearless-tom-cruise">said the LA Times</a>. “And honestly, who among us won’t be thrilled if Cruise triumphs in life as in the movies?”
</p>
<div class="c-float-left">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="In a white room, Cruise hangs upside down in midair, suspended by a harness, and types on a computer." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0imSgupafiCGabmy9a9bZg6CM-U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904290/GettyImages_130593392.jpg"/> <cite>Murray Close/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in a scene from the 1996 film <em>Mission: Impossible</em>.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IzBktl">
It seems clear that Cruise sincerely sees himself as the savior of the big screen, and all the jobs that depend on it. (Or at the very least, he sees himself as the savior of Tom Cruise movies appearing on the big screen.) During the pandemic, he told audiences at Cannes, <a href="https://movieweb.com/tom-cruise-seen-every-single-movie-released-theaters/">he called up theater owners to say</a>, “Please, I know what you’re going through. Just know we are making <em>Mission: Impossible</em>, and <em>Top Gun</em> is coming out.” In December 2020, leaked audio footage from the set of <em>Mission: Impossible 7</em> showed Cruise upbraiding crew members who violated Covid social distancing policies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tJmqJw">
“They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us,” <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/1977533/tom-cruise-covid-rant-mission-impossible-2/">Cruise can be heard to shout on the footage</a>. “Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherfuckers.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lL3qHA">
“That’s what I sleep with every night,” Cruise concluded: “the future of this fucking industry!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xItNMG">
By now we should know: Tom Cruise is the hero of a movie that never ends. It’s one where he always, always saves the day.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sfvS8e">
That wasn’t always the case. Cruise’s stock plummeted in the 2000s after <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/8/1/17631658/tom-cruise-oprah-couch-jump">Oprah’s couch</a> and <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/when-tom-cruise-shamed-brooke-shields-for-taking-antidepressants-she-said-stick-to-saving-the-world-from-aliens/story-NkslRKDc2nUAzkCevDCxSJ.html">Brooke Shields’ antidepressants</a>. Yet today, Cruise is once again considered a bankable and iconic star. He is no longer a publicity liability for a movie studio.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1Sk1AG">
There’s only one thing that Cruise might not be able to save. That’s the nagging, persistent sense that if the movie were ever to stop, when the lights came up, there would be nothing left of Tom Cruise at all.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PU5RGH">
“Cruise’s own laugh,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/tom-cruises-existential-need-for-speed">concluded Alex Pappademas</a> in the New Yorker this May, “is the best Tom Cruise impression you’ve ever heard.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BaVubG">
But who says the movie ever has to stop?
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BxKH3GF3kiE7T9EzglQxrZnVLx0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904220/GettyImages_1398173147.jpg"/> <cite>Dan Kitwood/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Tom Cruise escorts Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, up the stairs at the Royal Film Performance of <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> in London on May 19.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="NN8r13">
Tom Cruise saves chivalry
</h3>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VmwoB2">
“I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzA8wawl_M">Tom Cruise to Oprah Winfrey, 2005</a>.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U2EDOF">
Here’s an oddity in the latest spree of killer Tom Cruise publicity: For once, the press is really into the way he’s interacting with women.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tVgBTH">
Over the course of his <em>Top Gun</em> press tour, Tom Cruise has been handed one positive headline after another for his chivalrous habit of taking charge of all ladies present, from Kate Middleton to his co-stars. If there is a woman in the same space as he is, Cruise will escort her up and down stairs and through doorways, present her to the camera, and make sure she is taken care of. It makes for incredible press. In her coverage of Cannes, gossip maven Elaine Lui remarked on how carefully Cruise looked after <em>Top Gun</em> co-star Jennifer Connelly. “I’m told he was never not attentive,” <a href="https://www.laineygossip.com/tom-cruise-fist-pumped-for-fighter-jets-on-croisette-during-cannes-looking-most-tom-cruise-he-has-ever-looked/71003">Lui wrote</a>, “always focused on making sure she was looked after, never not ready with a hand to guide her from one place to another, never missing an opportunity to talk about how spectacular she looked, seemingly enthralled by her so that the cameras would pick up on his eyeline and transfer their focus to her.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SOxAnD">
This display of “chivalry,” Lui concluded, was “very Tom Cruise.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Cruise faces a laughing Connelly and holds her hands intimately in his own as photographers look on." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-h9J-Zkk-50gz0YJAX_3Yoo3Dck=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904228/GettyImages_1397987286.jpg"/> <cite>Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures</cite>
<figcaption>
Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise at a cast photo call for <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> during the Cannes film festival on May 18, 2022.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LpoWxT">
Chivalry is part of the old-fashioned action-hero masculinity Tom Cruise has long represented: the hero with the square jaw and faultless manners, kind and attentive to everyone around him. It’s also been central to Tom Cruise’s personal mythology for a long time, in both good ways and bad.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gRNzXw">
On the good side, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/05/19-unsettlingly-nice-tom-cruise-stories.html">Cruise used to be in the press on a regular basis</a> for rescuing regular people: saving a family from a burning sailboat; getting the victim of a hit-and-run to the hospital and then paying her medical bills. Every actor who’s ever worked with him seems to have a Tom Cruise story about him making them <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/05/19-unsettlingly-nice-tom-cruise-stories.html">some impossibly thoughtful gesture or gift</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LJ6p9N">
On the bad side, <a href="https://www.laineygossip.com/tom-cruise-fist-pumped-for-fighter-jets-on-croisette-during-cannes-looking-most-tom-cruise-he-has-ever-looked/71003">quoth Elaine Lui</a>, “Remember how he used to ‘present’ Katie Holmes?”
</p>
<div>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Cruise kisses Holmes’s cheek as she smiles out at the cameras." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AZq8RzQYzKtGNwWcLm18l2ndUn4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904233/GettyImages_184523579.jpg"/> <cite>Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic</cite>
<figcaption>
Katie Holmes and husband Tom Cruise during a 2007 gala honoring Cruise, at Twentieth Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SV8K6c">
Cruise’s 2005 marriage to Katie Holmes was marked by its public displays of affection. Cruise was constantly presenting Holmes to the camera, cuddling up to her in public, proclaiming his love for her in ever more enthusiastic ways. Even before he jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch and sent his career into a precipitous downslide, he told Oprah that he covered a hotel room in rose petals for Holmes, and that he took her on a motorcycle ride on the beach.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YOTeRB">
“I’m a romantic, okay?” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzA8wawl_M">Cruise said</a> at the time. “I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lcLztA">
Romantic or not, that marriage also represented a low point in Cruise’s professional life. In the wake of his couch moment with Oprah, Cruise’s popularity plummeted, his reputation took a hit, and he almost lost the <em>Mission: Impossible</em> franchise.
</p>
<div id="9rt9EF">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lYVGnU">
Then came the enormous and damaging wave of publicity in 2012, when Katie Holmes divorced Cruise. Stories rolled out by the day: that Holmes had <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/329154/katie-holmes-secret-divorce-plan">planned the divorce for two years</a> in order to make sure she would retain custody of the couple’s daughter, Suri; that she had to orchestrate the whole thing with <a href="https://pagesix.com/2012/07/04/katie-holmes-secretly-changed-cellphones-e-mail-addresses-assistants-before-split/">burner phones</a> and <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/katie-holmes-tom-cruise-divorce-scientology-court-345622/">secret laptops</a> and <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/news/katie-holmes-used-disposable-cell-phone-to-secretly-plan-divorce-from-tom-cruise--report.html">lawyers in multiple states</a>; that she had done it all — developed this whole two-year master plan — because that was how badly she <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/tom-cruise-katie-holmes-divorce-scientology-344687/">wanted full custody of Suri</a>. Specifically, the story went, Holmes wanted to save Suri from Scientology.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GKJIlH">
Cruise has since worked diligently to move past the so-called TomKat years. He’s been so effective that all his gentlemanly gestures on his current press tour tend to read as charming, not creepy. But there’s a clear and strong connection between Cruise’s love of chivalry then and his love of chivalry now. They are part and parcel of what appears to be a driving force behind Tom Cruise’s quest to be a hero, win the girl, and save the world: Scientology.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aVZSdBqcPX2VnLJBoDCCtba-m_A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904467/headshots_1658938525284.jpg"/> <cite>Left: Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images. Right: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images.</cite>
<figcaption>
Left: Cruise on the set of <em>Top Gun </em>in<em> </em>1985. Right: Cruise speaking at the inauguration of the Church of Scientology in Madrid in 2004.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="XKHaA4">
Tom Cruise saves mankind (from thetans)
</h3>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j38Sze">
“That’s what drives me: is that I know we have an opportunity to really help, for the first time, effectively change people’s lives. And I am dedicated to that. I am absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0">Tom Cruise, Scientology recruitment video, 2004</a>.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UDvJON">
The controversial Church of Scientology, founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, appeals to the sort of worldview Cruise embodies. The world is under attack from evil forces, Scientology teaches, and all that stops them is one good man who’s not going to let petty rules get in his way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l5boMn">
Scientology is also, despite the number of celebrities it boasts among its ranks, a publicity liability. It’s widely suspected of being a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/04/02/religion_is_a_pyramid_scheme_scientology_and_the_lasting_lesson_of_going_clear_partner/">pyramid scheme at best</a> and at worse alleged to be an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/us/07scientology.html">abusive</a> <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/scientology-children-second-generation-846732/">cult</a> profiting from <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/02/scientology-slave-labor-beatings-and-an-fbi-investigation/342337/">forced labor</a> and <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/clearwater/2022/04/28/3-former-scientology-workers-sue-saying-they-were-trafficked-as-children/">human trafficking</a>, according to lawsuits and reports from former members. Its central cosmology, which teaches that human beings are plagued by immortal alien souls called thetans brought to Earth by the galactic emperor Xenu billions of years ago, is ripe for mockery.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wS04qv">
The reporting that exists on Cruise’s connection to the church is both lengthy and damning. In September 2012, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/10/katie-holmes-divorce-scientology">Vanity Fair published an exposé</a> by Maureen Orth on the way Cruise outsourced management of his romantic life to the church. Tony Ortega, the closest thing there is to a beat reporter on Scientology, has a dedicated <a href="https://tonyortega.org/?s=tom+cruise&amp;submit.x=0&amp;submit.y=0">Tom Cruise tab</a> on his website. In 2013, celebrated New Yorker reporter Lawrence Wright expanded <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-apostate-lawrence-wright">his existing Scientology reporting</a> into the book <em>Going Clear</em>, which prominently delved into Cruise’s status in the church. In 2015, <em>Going Clear</em> was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO documentary by the director Alex Gibney, again featuring plenty of Cruise stories. The story they told is dramatic, and it plays heavily on Cruise’s apparent understanding of himself as a savior figure. (The Church of Scientology has <a href="https://www.freedommag.org/going-clear/">strongly denied</a> <a href="https://ew.com/article/2012/09/05/tom-cruise-vanity-fair-maureen-orth/">all</a> <a href="https://www.today.com/news/church-scientology-internationals-statement-concerning-lawrence-wrights-book-wbna50492721">these</a> <a href="https://www.standleague.org/hate-monitor/exposed/tony-ortega.html">accounts</a>, describing them as lies from disgruntled former members and journalists with grudges.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OlUju5">
Cruise joined the Church of Scientology during his first marriage to Scientologist Mimi Rogers, after <em>Top Gun</em> had already made him a star. According to now-defected former church officials, allegedly he began to drift away from active practice during the ’90s and his marriage to Nicole Kidman, only to drift back as that marriage foundered in the late ’90s. The clincher came, those former Scientologists say in <em>Going Clear</em>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/03/tom-cruise-nicole-kidman-scientology-wire-tap-going-clear">when Cruise said he wanted to tap Kidman’s phone</a>, and the Church of Scientology obliged.
</p>
<div class="c-float-left">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Cruise kisses Kidman’s cheek as she laughs and blushes." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/liZUW2wUY5xv-9EURqZ7dc3116s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904239/GettyImages_156178747.jpg"/> <cite>Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise attend a 1991 awards ceremony for the American Film Institute in Beverly Hills, California.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mAAu0q">
Keeping Cruise happy apparently became a priority for the Church of Scientology. When Cruise needed a new love interest, the church <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/10/katie-holmes-divorce-scientology">reportedly recruited a young member for the job</a>, gave her a makeover to Cruise’s specifications, and then broke up with her for him after he tired of her. When the woman told a friend what had happened to her, the church reportedly sentenced her to months of menial labor in punishment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9gbs8N">
Around the same time that Cruise was making his grand return to the church, he fired his longtime Hollywood publicist, <a href="https://www.laineygossip.com/looking-back-on-tom-cruise-maniacal-couch-jumping-on-oprah-fifteen-years-later/66337">allegedly because she told him to stop talking about Scientology</a> so much when he was on the publicity trail for <em>The Last Samurai</em>. He brought on his Scientologist sister to manage his image instead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X02gsi">
As Cruise was becoming more and more committed to the church, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiarosenbaum/downfall-of-the-paparazzi">the tabloid industry was beginning to go rabid</a>. By 2004, Us Weekly had gone from monthly trade magazine to weekly gossip rag, pitting itself against People magazine. In Touch Weekly, Life &amp; Style Weekly, and OK! had all emerged. These magazines thrived on an endless diet of outrageous celebrity soundbites, and as Tom Cruise made the publicity rounds for <em>The War of the Worlds</em>, he kept offering them up, one after another.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tmrLkR">
“Some people, well, if they don’t like Scientology, well, then, fuck you,” <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-passion-of-the-cruise-227251/">he told Rolling Stone</a>. “Really. Fuck you. Period.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kpifGW">
Citing Scientology’s distrust of psychiatry, Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, and then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFgF1JPNR5E">told Matt Lauer he was being “glib”</a> when Lauer suggested he might have overstepped his bounds.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2gOgYm">
Cruise’s public behavior became more and more erratic. On the same <em>War of the Worlds</em> publicity tour, Cruise infamously jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch, enthusiastically declaring his love for Katie Holmes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lc77z8">
Holmes seemed to be getting caught up in the Scientology swirl herself. <a href="https://www.wmagazine.com/story/katie-holmes">A W magazine profile of Holmes</a> saw her conduct an interview with a “Scientology chaperone,” who prompted Holmes with phrases about how much she adored Cruise when she seemed to fumble for words.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8luTQC">
The spree of outré quotes took their toll. In 2006, one report found that between the spring and summer of 2005, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060521205326/http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/eo/20051108/113151894008.html">Cruise fell from 11th most-liked celebrity in the US to 197th</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2QQYow">
Fox News predicted the end of Cruise’s career. “It will be all but impossible now for a new generation of film fans to see past his erratic public behavior, the Oprah couch shenanigans, the decrying of psychiatry and now the rejection of Catholicism for a religion invented by a science-fiction writer,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20081104093434/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,230597,00.html">they opined</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BvJeIh">
Cruise, seeing the writing on the wall, veered away from talking about his religion during his movie publicity tours. But for the next 10 years, Scientology would continue to haunt his public image.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ll4A6k">
In 2008, a video leaked to the press that was reportedly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0">a Scientology conversion effort, filmed in 2004</a>. It featured Cruise glassy-eyed and grinning in a black turtleneck, talking about all the ways Scientology has changed his life. “Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anybody else,” he explains. “You know you have to do something about it.”
</p>
<div id="vp42xj">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 75%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kitTwZ">
“Let me put it this way,” <a href="https://www.gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress">said Gawker, which broke the news of the video</a>: “if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VRl9jQ">
In 2012, the Cruise-Holmes divorce cracked open the door of Tom Cruise Scientology stories. A host more came pouring out — and not just in the tabloids, but in legacy print magazines and prestige cable shows: Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Village Voice, HBO.
</p>
<div class="c-float-left">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Headline: KATIE DUMPS TOM. And she wants Suri." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WdkoVqy-dNZwXX68iP1FG92Jqms=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904254/GettyImages_458806110.jpg"/> <cite>NY Daily News via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
The Daily News’ front page on June 30, 2012.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zICU1B">
According to former Scientology officials, the Church has continued to manage Cruise’s life. Reportedly, it’s granted him the full benefits of its more unsavory enterprises, <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/07/28/tom-cruise-worships-david-miscavige-like-a-god-a-scientology-insider-gives-first-full-length-interview-to-the-voice/">including</a> <a href="https://www.insider.com/scientology-lawsuits-allege-human-trafficking-forced-labor-child-abuse-2019-9">the Church’s alleged use of slave labor</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wH0j8A">
Former Scientologist John Brousseau says the church has <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/07/28/tom-cruise-worships-david-miscavige-like-a-god-a-scientology-insider-gives-first-full-length-interview-to-the-voice/">custom-built luxury vehicles and sound systems for Cruise</a> and provides the staff who manage his many homes. Because this labor is provided by the Church, it’s done through Sea Org, the Scientologist association that’s been accused of <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-scientologists-gawain-baxter-laura-baxter-valeska-paris-allege-child-trafficking-in-lawsuit">human trafficking and forced labor</a>. (<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8796965/scientology-sued-workers-child-trafficking-sea-org/">The Church has described these claims</a> as “both scurrilous and ridiculous.”) <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/07/28/tom-cruise-worships-david-miscavige-like-a-god-a-scientology-insider-gives-first-full-length-interview-to-the-voice/">According to Ortega</a>, Sea Org members who worked on Cruise’s property “were paid only about $50 a week by the church, even though their hours could reach 100 a week.” Cruise has <a href="https://www.gobankingrates.com/net-worth/celebrities/tom-cruise-net-worth/#:~:text=Tom%20Cruise%20Net%20Worth,in%20Hollywood%2C%20according%20to%20Forbes.">a net worth estimated at $600 million</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vL1wBR">
The picture painted of Cruise by former members of the church is not flattering. They tend to describe Cruise as a well-meaning man who, fundamentally, is not curious, and who is happy to have beautiful things handed to him without looking at their cost. Scientology is attractive to Cruise, in this account, because it makes his life easier while simultaneously flattering his ego with the belief that he is a hero.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8jNBzI">
But as damning as those stories are, they have largely faded out of public memory. In the 10 years since his divorce from Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise has been working hard to change the narrative.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A black-and-white-picture shows Tom Cruise, looking suave in sunglasses and a tuxedo, posing in front of a billboard for Top Gun: Maverick." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NXAEQFevx3u41doMGcvJYorQQxE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904268/GettyImages_1398226431.jpg"/> <cite>Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures</cite>
<figcaption>
Tom Cruise attends the UK premiere of <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> in London on May 19, 2022.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="H8WGar">
Can Tom Cruise save Tom Cruise?
</h3>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b0jx9S">
“People can create their own lives. … I decided that I’m going to create, for myself, who I am, not what other people say I should be. I’m entitled to that.” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110412060632/http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2006/edition_04-09-2006/Tom_Cruise_cover">Parade, 2006</a>.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IIHt0d">
Cruise is currently experiencing a late-career renaissance. <a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/05/19/tom-cruise-given-honorary-palme-dor-at-cannes-film-festival/">Cannes Film Festival feted him in May</a>, awarding him an honorary Palme d’Or and marking the occasion with a red carpet air show. The press loves him again. <em>Top Gun: Maverick</em> is a major success, and the next slew of <em>Mission: Impossible</em> films are bound to be as well.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i4eb7y">
He’s even rumored to have a new girlfriend. If, as the tabloids claim, Cruise actually is (or was) <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/05/hayley-atwell-has-dumped-tom-cruise-if-she-in-fact-ever-dated-him/">dating his <em>Mission: Impossible</em> co-star Hayley Atwell</a>, she would be his first public girlfriend since his divorce from Holmes 10 years ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AuwTi4">
So did he do it? How did Tom Cruise go from America’s 197th favorite celebrity to a bankable superstar once again?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w7FD2c">
The answer seems to be deceptively simple: He kept working, and he stopped talking — about Scientology, and about almost everything else too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MQOgK1">
Cruise’s PR nadir came during a period of oversharing. Since then, he’s become known for his intense desire for privacy. “When was the last time paparazzi captured Tom Cruise on the street or anywhere but a film set or premiere?” <a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/05/07/why-tom-cruise-now-keeps-a-low-public-profile-most-of-the-time/">wondered the New York Post in May 2022</a>. He heavily restricts the questions journalists are allowed to ask him before he agrees to an interview, and both his religion and his family life tend to be off-limits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3j1PXi">
Meanwhile, Cruise has kept making movies. <em>Tropic Thunder</em> in 2008 and <em>Rock of Ages</em> in 2012 together proved he had a sense of humor. <em>Edge of Tomorrow</em> in 2014, which saw Cruise ceding much of the spotlight to co-star Emily Blunt, proved he knew how to share the screen with another star. And the <em>Mission: Impossible</em> franchise has churned out hit after reliable hit. “I can attest that I am alarmed at the extent to which I suddenly love Tom Cruise,” <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/return-of-cool-tom-cruise">admitted GQ entertainment editor Ashley Fetters in 2015</a>, as Cruise publicized <em>Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Zd5ZJ">
Cruise has also benefited from the current cultural shame surrounding the tabloid culture of the 2000s. As the world agrees that <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22350286/2000s-pop-culture-misogyny-britney-spears-janet-jackson-whitney-houston-monica-lewinsky">tabloid targets</a> like Britney Spears were hard done by in the heady, tacky days of Y2K, everything from the era has been painted with the same shade of remorse. Vilifying Tom Cruise for jumping on Oprah’s couch can feel like the same toxic impulse that led to a decade of mocking Spears for having her mental breakdown in public, even though what Cruise has been accused of abetting within the Church of Scientology is far worse than anything Spears has ever been accused of.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UjWH1l">
In most ways, this strategy has been successful. The tabloid spectacle of Tom Cruise, Scientologist has been covered over by four decades of hard work from Tom Cruise, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/business/media/tom-cruise-top-gun-maverick.html">one of the last great movie stars</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RStFE8">
But it’s not clear that Cruise can ever again reach the heights of public adoration he enjoyed in 2003. There’s a persistent strangeness around Tom Cruise’s image that has never quite resolved itself, a sort of falseness that he’s never been entirely able to weed out. It’s a falseness that’s rooted not in his Scientology but in his movie star core. From the beginning, the world has refused to believe Tom Cruise when he breaks out his giant movie star smile. It especially refuses to believe him when he laughs.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Y_XIUGXXWxK7VH52HA2IuLvebdQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23904281/GettyImages_168588150.jpg"/> <cite>Warner Brothers/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Cruise smiles big in the climax to <em>Risky Business</em> (1983).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6aYD47">
In an early pan of 1983’s <em>Risky Business</em>, Cruise’s breakout film, New York magazine took aim at the young star’s mannerisms. “Cruise has a slight, undeveloped voice and a nervous smile, which he relies on whenever the script reveals one of its innumerable holes,” <a href="https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_JdgBAAAAMBAJ/page/n61/mode/2up">the review ran</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nt2XyD">
In HBO’s <em>Going Clear</em>, footage of Tom Cruise laughing in his Scientology recruitment video plays while one ex-Scientologist declares, “Scientologists are all full of shit.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g1FQSt">
A 2004 Rolling Stone profile devoted paragraph after paragraph to the oddness of “the famous Tom Cruise laugh.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HhqLnj">
“It comes on just fine, a regular laugh by any standards. You will be laughing too,” <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-passion-of-the-cruise-227251/">wrote Neil Strauss</a>. “But then, when the humor subsides, you will stop laughing. At this point, however, Cruise’s laugh will just be crescendoing. And he will be making eye contact with you.”
</p>
<p class="c-end-para" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DzttB1">
It’s as though there’s a hollowness at the center of Cruise’s image, some sort of vacancy that he is forever restlessly seeking to fill. As though if he can only save enough people, enough industries, enough worlds — maybe then, at last, he can finally be whole. But can anyone, even Tom Cruise, do that much saving?
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chennai Chess Olympiad live updates | Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives</strong> - A gala Opening Ceremony of the 44th Chess Olympiad is under way at the Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai.</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>Luis Suarez returns to Uruguayan club Nacional after 16 years in Europe</strong> - Luis Suarez, who left La Liga side Atletico Madrid, said he has reached a pre-contract agreement with Nacional, where he started his professional career in 2005</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Indian women’s hockey team seeks Tokyo Olympics inspiration to end Commonwealth Games medal drought</strong> - At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the Indian women’s hockey side is in Pool A alongside hosts England, Canada, Wales and Ghana, while Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Scotland and Kenya will compete in Pool 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>Moon’s Blessing, Monteverdi, Queen Of Sands and All Attraction please</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>Formula One | Sebastian Vettel announces retirement, says his goals have shifted</strong> - Sebastian Vettel made the announcement ahead of Hungarian Grand Prix, the 13th round of the season and last race before the August break.</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>IIT Madras launches centre to build open source AI for Indian languages</strong> - The IIT-M has commissioned the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat to advance Indian language technology with a grant of ₹36 crore from Nilekani Philanthropies</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>Vaccine efficacy, quality in question</strong> - The frequency of rabies deaths in vaccinated people have led health experts to seek scientific studies to find out the reasons behind the phenomenon</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>On the bitten track</strong> - Reports of rabies deaths and dog attacks have triggered concern among people, with questions posed on the unbridled community dog population. The ABC programme, the onus of which is on local bodies, has floundered at many places</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: Coir industry seeks helping hand from State, Central governments</strong> - Seven out of 14 industries have shut shop in North Andhra</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>Rains recede in Kodagu, six relief camps closed</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kherson: Ukraine stepping up counter offensive to retake city - sources</strong> - A bridge used by Russian troops is said to be completely impassable after Ukrainian rocket attacks.</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>Sebastian Vettel: Four-time world champion to retire from Formula 1 at end of 2022 season</strong> - Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel is to retire from Formula 1 at the end of the current season.</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>Russia-Ukraine crisis: Lavrov shows diplomatic clout in Africa</strong> - The red carpet was laid out for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his four-nation tour.</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>Gas prices jump as Russia cuts German supply</strong> - The Nord Stream 1 pipeline is now operating at just a fifth of its usual capacity.</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>Every woman’s body is beach ready, says Spanish government campaign</strong> - The government’s campaign urges women worried about their bodies to go to the beach.</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>You won’t be confused about electric vehicle charging after reading this</strong> - Charging an EV is not nearly as complicated as people think. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1869638">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Carbon offsets alone won’t make flying climate-friendly</strong> - Exhaust contains a host of polluting particles, from soot to nitrogen oxides. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1869699">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FDA’s top tobacco scientist takes job at Marlboro-maker Philip Morris</strong> - This is Philip Morris’ second FDA hire recently. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1869888">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study sheds light on how dogs recognize their favorite toys</strong> - Dogs construct “multisensory mental representations” by encoding different features. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1861192">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Zuckerberg: Apple, Meta are in “deep, philosophical competition”</strong> - Zuckerberg positioned Meta’s XR platform as the successor to Windows, Android. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1869788">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Joe wanted to buy a Harley motorcycle. He didn’t have much luck until one day, he came across a Harley with a ‘for sale’ sign on it</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The bike looked better than a new one, even though it was 10 years old. It was shiny and in great condition.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He buys it and asks the seller how he kept it in such great condition for 10 years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘Well, it’s quite simple,’ says the seller, ’whenever the bike is outside and it’s gonna rain, rub Vaseline on the chrome as it protects it from the rain, and he hands Joe a jar of Vaseline.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
That night, his girlfriend, Sandra, invites him over to meet her parents and naturally, they ride the bike there. Just before they enter the house, Sandra stops him and says, ‘I have to tell you something about my family.’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘When we eat dinner, we don’t talk. In fact, the FIRST person who says anything during dinner has to do the dishes.’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
‘No problem,’ He says, and in they go.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Joe is shocked.Right in the middle of the living room is a huge stack of dirty dishes. In the kitchen is another huge stack of dishes. Piled up on the stairs, in the corridor, everywhere he looks dirty dishes. They sit down to dinner, and sure enough, no one says a word.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As dinner progresses, Joe decides to take advantage of the situation. He leans over and kisses Sandra. No one says a word. He reaches over and fondles her breasts. Nobody says a word. So he stands up, grabs her, rips her clothes off, throws her on the table and screws her, right there in front of her parents. His girlfriend is a little flustered, her dad is obviously livid and her mom horrified when he sits back down, but no one says a word.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He looks at her mom. She’s got a great body too. Joe grabs mom, bends her over the table, pulls down her panties, and screws her every which way but loose right there on the dinner table. She has a big orgasm and Joe sits down. His girlfriend is furious, her dad is boiling and mom is beaming from ear to ear, but still … . Total silence.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
All of a sudden there is a loud clap of thunder and it starts to rain. Joe remembers his bike so he pulls the jar of Vaseline from his pocket, but as he stands up the father immediately shouts: ‘Ok, ok, I’ll go do the fuckin’ dishes!!’
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/nikan69"> /u/nikan69 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9n68s/joe_wanted_to_buy_a_harley_motorcycle_he_didnt/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9n68s/joe_wanted_to_buy_a_harley_motorcycle_he_didnt/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>How does every Mexican joke start?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
By looking over your shoulder.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/maestroenglish"> /u/maestroenglish </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wa54cq/how_does_every_mexican_joke_start/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wa54cq/how_does_every_mexican_joke_start/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>A naked man arrives at a party with a girl on his back.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I am a turtle” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Who is on your back?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“That’s Michelle”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/yacozaragoza"> /u/yacozaragoza </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9xcbk/a_naked_man_arrives_at_a_party_with_a_girl_on_his/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9xcbk/a_naked_man_arrives_at_a_party_with_a_girl_on_his/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>A suicide bomber went to heaven.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Angel at the front desk greeted him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Hi, welcome. There are 72 very horny virgins waiting for you!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I knew it! said the bomber.”Bring me the women!"
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Angel smiled.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Who mentioned women?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Edit: <em>Wow, this blew up.</em>
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ExtraSure"> /u/ExtraSure </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9n5nh/a_suicide_bomber_went_to_heaven/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w9n5nh/a_suicide_bomber_went_to_heaven/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>If you don’t know the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
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congratulations, you’re doing great!
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Far-Hat3075"> /u/Far-Hat3075 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wa6cnx/if_you_dont_know_the_difference_between_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/wa6cnx/if_you_dont_know_the_difference_between_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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