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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>Temporal trends in primary care-recorded self-harm during and beyond the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: time series analysis of electronic healthcare records for 2.8 million patients in the Greater Manchester Care Record</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Surveillance of clinically treated self-harm episode frequency is an important component of suicide prevention in the dynamic context of COVID-19. Studies published to date have investigated the initial months following the onset of the pandemic, despite national and regional restrictions persisting to Summer 2021. Methods: We conducted a descriptive time series analysis utilising data from the Greater Manchester Care Record, which contains de-identified, primary care health records of 2.8 million patients. Counts of incident and all episodes of self-harm recorded between 1st January 2019 and 31st May 2021 were made for all patients, with stratification by sex, age group, ethnicity, and index of multiple deprivation (IMD) quintile and examination of overall differences by national and regional restriction phases. Findings: Between 1st January 2019 and 31st May 2021, 33,444 episodes of self-harm by 13,148 individuals were recorded. Frequency ratios of incident and all episodes of self-harm were 0.59 (95% CI 0.51 to 0.69) and 0.69 (CI 0.63 to 0.75) respectively in April 2020 compared to February 2020. Between August 2020 and May 2021 frequency ratios were 0.92 (CI 0.88 to 0.96) for incident episodes and 0.86 (CI 0.84 to 0.88) for all episodes compared to the same months in 2019. Reductions were largest among men and people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods. An increase in all-episode self-harm (frequency ratio 1.09, CI 1.03 to 1.16) was observed for adolescents aged 10-17 between August 2020 and May 2021. Interpretation: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a sustained impact on help seeking for self-harm. Reductions in primary care recorded self-harm have implications for clinicians9 ability to assess the needs and risks of individuals. Some patients may be experiencing prolonged untreated deterioration in their mental health while other groups are presenting in higher numbers. Our findings have important implications for primary care and mental health services in manging ongoing demand.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.23.21259400v1" target="_blank">Temporal trends in primary care-recorded self-harm during and beyond the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: time series analysis of electronic healthcare records for 2.8 million patients in the Greater Manchester Care Record</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Thrombocytopenia and splenic platelet directed immune responses after intravenous ChAdOx1 nCov-19 administration</strong> -
<div>
Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are based on a range of novel vaccine platforms, with adenovirus-based approaches (like ChAdOx1 nCov-19) being one of them. Recently a rare and novel complication of SARS-CoV-2 targeted adenovirus vaccines has emerged: thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). TTS is characterized by low platelet counts, clot formation at unusual anatomic sites and platelet-activating PF4-polyanion antibodies reminiscent of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. Here, we employ in vitro and in vivo models to characterize the possible mechanisms of this platelet-targeted autoimmunity. We show that intravenous but not intramuscular injection of ChAdOx1 nCov-19 triggers platelet-adenovirus aggregate formation and platelet activation. After intravenous injection, these aggregates are phagocytosed by macrophages in the spleen and platelet remnants are found in the marginal zone and follicles. This is followed by a pronounced B-cell response with the emergence of circulating antibodies binding to platelets. Our work contributes to the understanding of TTS and highlights accidental intravenous injection as potential mechanism for post-vaccination TTS. Hence, safe intramuscular injection, with aspiration prior to injection, could be a potential preventive measure when administering adenovirus-based vaccines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.450356v1" target="_blank">Thrombocytopenia and splenic platelet directed immune responses after intravenous ChAdOx1 nCov-19 administration</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Genetic diversity and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Belgium during the first wave outbreak</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19 was first detected in Belgium on 3rd February 2020, albeit the first epidemiological wave started in March and ended in June 2020. One year after the first epidemiological wave hit the country data analyses reveled the temporal and variant distribution of SARS-CoV-2 and its implication with Belgian epidemiological measures. In this study, 766 complete SARS-CoV-2 genomes of samples originating from the first epidemiological were sequenced to characterize the temporal and geographic distribution of the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium through phylogenetic and variant analysis. Our analysis reveals the presence of the major circulating SARS-CoV-2 clades (G, GH and GR) and lineages circulating in Belgium at that time. Moreover, it contextualizes the density of SARS-CoV-2 cases over time with non-intervention measures taken to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Belgium, specific international case imports and the functional implications of the most representative non-synonymous mutations present in Belgium between February to June 2020.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.450330v1" target="_blank">Genetic diversity and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Belgium during the first wave outbreak</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Systematic genome-scale identification of host factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection across models yields a core single gene dependency; ACE2</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2, depends on host cell components for replication, therefore the identification of virus-host dependencies offers an effective way to elucidate mechanisms involved in viral infection. Such host factors may be necessary for infection and replication of SARS CoV-2 and, if druggable, presents an attractive strategy for anti-viral therapy. We performed genome wide CRISPR knockout screens in Vero E6 cells and 4 human cell lines including Calu-3, Caco-2, Hek293 and Huh7 to identify genetic regulators of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our findings identified only ACE2, the cognate SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor, as a common host dependency factor across all cell lines, while all other host genes identified were cell line specific including known factors TMPRSS2 and CTSL. Several of the discovered host-dependency factors converged on pathways involved in cell signalling, lipid metabolism, immune pathways and chromatin modulation. Notably, chromatin modulator genes KMT2C and KDM6A in Calu-3 cells had the strongest impact in preventing SARS CoV-2 infection when perturbed. Overall, the network of host factors that have been identified will be broadly applicable to understanding the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on human cells and facilitate the development of host directed therapies.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450244v1" target="_blank">Systematic genome-scale identification of host factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection across models yields a core single gene dependency; ACE2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Natural isolate and recombinant SARS-CoV-2 rapidly evolve in vitro to higher infectivity through more efficient binding to heparan sulfate and reduced S1/S2 cleavage</strong> -
<div>
One of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virulence factors is the ability to interact with high affinity to the ACE2 receptor, which mediates viral entry into cells. The results of our study demonstrate that within a few passages in cell culture, both the natural isolate of SARS-CoV-2 and the recombinant, cDNA-derived variant acquire an additional ability to bind to heparan sulfate (HS). This promotes a primary attachment of viral particles to cells before their further interactions with the ACE2. Interaction with HS is acquired through multiple mechanisms. These include i) accumulation of point mutations in the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the S protein, which increase the positive charge of the surface of this domain, ii) insertions into NTD of heterologous peptides, containing positively charged amino acids, and iii) mutation of the first amino acid downstream of the furin cleavage site. This last mutation affects S protein processing, transforms the unprocessed furin cleavage site into the heparin-binding peptide and makes viruses less capable of syncytia formation. These viral adaptations result in higher affinity of viral particles to heparin sepharose, dramatic increase in plaque sizes, more efficient viral spread, higher infectious titers and two orders of magnitude lower GE:PFU ratios. The detected adaptations also suggest an active role of NTD in virus attachment and entry. As in the case of other RNA+ viruses, evolution to HS binding may result in virus attenuation in vivo.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.28.450274v1" target="_blank">Natural isolate and recombinant SARS-CoV-2 rapidly evolve in vitro to higher infectivity through more efficient binding to heparan sulfate and reduced S1/S2 cleavage</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Absolute quantitation of individual SARS-CoV-2 RNA molecules: a new paradigm for infection dynamics and variant differences</strong> -
<div>
Despite an unprecedented global research effort on SARS-CoV-2, early replication events remain poorly understood. Given the clinical importance of emergent viral variants with increased transmission, there is an urgent need to understand the early stages of viral replication and transcription. We used single molecule fluorescence in situ hybridisation (smFISH) to quantify positive sense RNA genomes with 95% detection efficiency, while simultaneously visualising negative sense genomes, sub-genomic RNAs and viral proteins. Our absolute quantification of viral RNAs and replication factories revealed that SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA is long-lived after entry, suggesting that it avoids degradation by cellular nucleases. Moreover, we observed that SARS-CoV-2 replication is highly variable between cells, with only a small cell population displaying high burden of viral RNA. Unexpectedly, the Alpha variant, first identified in the UK, exhibits significantly slower replication kinetics than the Victoria strain, suggesting a novel mechanism contributing to its higher transmissibility with important clinical implications.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.450133v1" target="_blank">Absolute quantitation of individual SARS-CoV-2 RNA molecules: a new paradigm for infection dynamics and variant differences</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Neutralizing antibody 5-7 defines a distinct site of vulnerability in SARS-CoV-2 spike N-terminal domain</strong> -
<div>
Antibodies that potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 target mainly the receptor-binding domain or the N-terminal domain (NTD). Over a dozen potently neutralizing NTD- directed antibodies have been studied structurally, and all target a single antigenic supersite in NTD (site 1). Here we report the 3.7 [A] resolution cryo-EM structure of a potent NTD-directed neutralizing antibody 5-7, which recognizes a site distinct from other potently neutralizing antibodies, inserting a binding loop into an exposed hydrophobic pocket between the two sheets of the NTD {beta}-sandwich. Interestingly, this pocket has been previously identified as the binding site for hydrophobic molecules including heme metabolites, but we observe their presence to not substantially impede 5-7 recognition. Mirroring its distinctive binding, antibody 5-7 retains a distinctive neutralization potency with variants of concern (VOC). Overall, we reveal a hydrophobic pocket in NTD proposed for immune evasion can actually be used by the immune system for recognition.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.450397v1" target="_blank">Neutralizing antibody 5-7 defines a distinct site of vulnerability in SARS-CoV-2 spike N-terminal domain</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Rapid determination of the wide dynamic range of SARS-CoV-2 Spike T cell responses in whole blood of vaccinated and naturally infected</strong> -
<div>
Background: Antibodies and T cells cooperate to control virus infections. The definition of the correlates of protection necessary to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, require both immune parameters but the complexity of traditional tests limits virus-specific T cell measurements. Methods: We test the sensitivity and performance of a simple and rapid SARS-CoV-2 Spike-specific T cell test based on stimulation of whole blood with peptides covering the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein followed by cytokine (IFN-{gamma}, IL-2) measurement in different cohorts including BNT162b2 vaccinated (n=112; 201 samples), convalescent asymptomatic (n=62; 62 samples) and symptomatic (n=68; 115 samples) COVID-19 patients and SARS-CoV-1 convalescent individuals (n=12; 12 samples). Results: The sensitivity of the rapid cytokine whole blood test equates traditional methods of T cell analysis (ELISPOT, Activation Induced Markers). Utilizing this test we observed that Spike-specific T cells in vaccinated preferentially target the S2 region of Spike and that their mean magnitude is similar between them and SARS-CoV-2 convalescents at 3 months after vaccine or virus priming respectively. However, a wide heterogeneity of Spike-specific T cell magnitude characterizes the individual responses irrespective of the time of analysis. No correlation between neutralizing antibody levels and Spike-specific T cell magnitude were found. Conclusions: Rapid measurement of cytokine production in whole blood after peptide activation revealed a wide dynamic range of Spike-specific T cell response after vaccination that cannot be predicted from neutralizing antibody quantities. Both Spike-specific humoral and cellular immunity should be tested after vaccination to define the correlates of protection necessary to evaluate current vaccine strategies.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.29.450293v1" target="_blank">Rapid determination of the wide dynamic range of SARS-CoV-2 Spike T cell responses in whole blood of vaccinated and naturally infected</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Emerging novel Coronavirus: a review of three potential candidates that probably debilitate the proliferation of the virus</strong> -
<div>
The paper presents the works carried out by different researchers for identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus structure, and its background with the present medication being addressed to the COVID-19 patients. The paper discusses three candidates for possible defense and cure of humans against the virus along with the regular medication. The first is the resonant frequency therapy, which has proven its efficacy for treating different types of viral infection and cancer cells as the capsid of Rubella measles virus, Satellite Tobacco necrosis Virus, Cancer cells and many more are neutralized on the application of frequency equal to the resonance frequency of the protein shell of the virus. It is expected that there must be a resonance frequency corresponding to the capsid of the SARS-CoV-2, on the application of which might result in the disintegration of the protein shell. As treating a huge number of people in hospitals is becoming increasingly difficult and large number of population is under quarantine, a resonance audio frequency of this sort embedded in a soothing music can be melodius, and the same if played in public spaces and homes might help a great deal. The frequencies (approximate values) are 171.160 Hz, 174.989 Hz, 1185.131 Hz the complete details regarding administration and calculation of the frequencies are discussed in this manuscript. This treatment along with the presently administered treatment to COVID-19 patients might aid in their quick recovery from illness. Further the audio frequency/ resonance frequency therapy, and the strategy discussed in this manuscript might be useful in future from any kind of Virus attacks/ Biological warfares either intentionally or naturally. Also, the medicinal properties of ethnomedical plants such as Piper nigrum, and Ocimum tenuiflorum L and essential oils such as Eucalyptus oil are discussed. The last one being the antiviral activities of copper in the form of copper oxide nanoparticles in medicine which has proven its efficacy for viral prevention, replication, and RNA degradation are also discussed.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/gp9ns/" target="_blank">Emerging novel Coronavirus: a review of three potential candidates that probably debilitate the proliferation of the virus</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Ivermectin and the odds of hospitalization due to COVID-19: evidence from a quasi-experimental analysis based on a public intervention in Mexico City</strong> -
<div>
Objective To measure the effect of Mexico City’s population-level intervention –an ivermectin-based Medical Kit – – in hospitalizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A quasi-experimental research design with a Coarsened Exact Matching method using administrative data from hospitals and phone-call monitoring. We estimated logistic-regression models with matched observations adjusting by age, sex, COVID severity, and comorbidities. For robustness checks separated the effect of the kit from phone medical monitoring; changed the comparison period; and subsetted the sample by hospitalization occupancy, Results We found a significant reduction in hospitalizations among patients who received the ivermectin-based medical kit; the range of the effect is 52%- 76% depending on model specification. Conclusions The study supports ivermectin-based interventions to assuage the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health system.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r93g4/" target="_blank">Ivermectin and the odds of hospitalization due to COVID-19: evidence from a quasi-experimental analysis based on a public intervention in Mexico City</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Virtual mindfulness interventions to promote well-being in young adults: A mixed-methods systematic review</strong> -
<div>
BACKGROUND With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, students have experienced drastic changes in their academic and social lives with ensuing consequences towards their physical and mental well-being. The purpose of this systematic review is to identify virtual mindfulness-based interventions for the well-being of young adults aged 15 to 40 years in developed countries and examine the efficacy of these techniques/exercises. METHODS This mixed-methods systematic review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines with a registered PROSPERO protocol. With a convergent integrated synthesis approach, IEEE Xplore, PsychInfo, Web of Science and OVID were searched with a predetermined criteria and search strategy employing booleans and filters for peer-reviewed and grey literature. Data screening and extraction were independently performed by two authors, with a third author settling disagreements after reconciliation. Study quality of selected articles was assessed with two independent authors using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Studies were analyzed qualitatively (precluding meta and statistical analysis) due to the heterogeneous study results from diverse study designs in present literature. RESULTS Common mindfulness-based interventions used in the appraised studies included practicing basic mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy programs (MBCT) and the Learning 2 BREATHE (L2B) program. CONCLUSION Studies implementing mindfulness interventions demonstrated an overall improvement in well-being. Modified versions of these interventions can be implemented in a virtual context, so young adults can improve their well-being through an accessible format.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/mspb4/" target="_blank">Virtual mindfulness interventions to promote well-being in young adults: A mixed-methods systematic review</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Egyptian Traditional Herbal Medicine Candidate Adiantum Capillus-Veneris Linn. as a Symptomatic Treatment for COVID-19: A Review of its Mechanisms, Pros and Cons.</strong> -
<div>
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered strain of Corona viruses (SARS-CoV-2). The disease causes mild to severe symptoms, mainly respiratory. Some patients can develop pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death. Any patient can develop mild to severe illness, but old age and severe underlying medical conditions like chronic lung diseases, diabetes, obesity, etc. seem to be higher risk factors for developing more serious complications from COVID-19. There is no specific treatment for COVID-19. However, many of the symptoms can be treated according to the patient’s clinical condition. Adiantum capillus-veneris (Maidenhair fern) is a medicinal herb of the family Pteridaceae. The plant extract showed a potential efficacy as ancient physicians used it for curing different diseases. In modern medicine, the plant was proven to possess a pharmacological efficacy to treat many symptoms similar to that caused by COVID-19 and its underlying medical conditions. Herbal agents extracted from Adiantum capillus veneris is widely used for the treatment of COVID-19 in Egypt, but Unfortunately, specific preclinical and clinical trials to evaluate the effects of the herbal immunoregulators in COVID19 patients have not been conducted. However, certain natural compounds are proven here to be possibly effective for the treatment of COVID-19 symptoms based on general concepts from previous experiments. Meanwhile, people believe that consuming herbal immunomodulators can prevent or even cure COVID-19, this review is done to discuss the pros and cons of utilising the extract of Adiantum capillus veneris during COVID-19 pandemic, draw conclusions, and make recommendations of modern therapeutic application of an extract-based drug to treat symptoms of patients with COVID-19.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/npsh6/" target="_blank">Egyptian Traditional Herbal Medicine Candidate Adiantum Capillus-Veneris Linn. as a Symptomatic Treatment for COVID-19: A Review of its Mechanisms, Pros and Cons.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Spatial attention impairments are characterized by specific electro-encephalographic correlates and partially mediate the association between early life stress and anxiety</strong> -
<div>
Although impaired attention is a diagnostic feature of anxiety disorders, we lack an understanding of which aspects of attention are impaired, the neurobiological basis of these impairments and the contribution of stressors. To address these gaps in knowledge, we developed and tested behavioral tasks designed to parse which subdomains of attention are more impaired with higher self-reported anxiety symptoms and used electro-encephalographic (EEG) recordings to probe the neural basis of attentional performance. Participants were n=57 individuals aged 18-35 with mild-to-moderate mood and anxiety symptoms. We took account of the COVID-19 pandemic as a naturalistic probe for prolonged stress occurring at a similar point in time for each participant. In these same participants, we assessed stressful events in early life prior to age 18 within discrete age brackets that may have a prolonged impact on neural functioning. Severity of anxiety was found to be specifically associated with impairments in spatial attention but not feature-based attention. Impairments in spatial selective attention were associated with decreased posterior alpha oscillations in EEG recordings, while spatial divided attention impairments were associated with a different profile of decreased fronto-central theta oscillations. These impairments in spatial attention also partially mediated the association between early life stressors and anxiety symptoms and were found to worsen as a function of prolonged current stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results provide a thorough characterization of attention impairments associated with anxiety, their electro-encephalographic correlates and the impact of stressors both in early life and in adulthood.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/ge4wb/" target="_blank">Spatial attention impairments are characterized by specific electro-encephalographic correlates and partially mediate the association between early life stress and anxiety</a>
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<li><strong>Prevalence and Comparisons of Alcohol, Candy, Energy Drink, Snack, Soda, and Restaurant Brand and Product Marketing on Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube Gaming</strong> -
<div>
Objective: To compare and evaluate the prevalence of food and beverage marketing on the livestreaming platforms Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube Gaming, as well as examine growth of food and beverage marketing on these platforms over a 17-month period of data collection. Design: Cross-sectional data was analyzed across three livestreaming platforms and six food and beverage categories: alcohol, candy, energy drinks, snacks, sodas, and restaurants. Setting: Stream titles of livestreamed events as well as corresponding hours watched on Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube Gaming. Participants: None Results: There were significant differences between food and beverage brand mentions across all three studied platforms (p&lt;0.05), as well as hours watched (p&lt;0.05). Energy drinks dominated food and beverage brand mentions across platforms, followed by restaurants, soda, and snacks. All platforms demonstrated growth over the 17-month data collection period. Post-hoc analyses revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted both immediate and sustained growth across all platforms, with the greatest impact observed on the Twitch platform. Conclusions: Food and beverage marketing as measured through stream titles is widely prevalent across the three most popular livestreaming platforms, particularly for energy drinks. Food marketing on these platforms experienced growth over the past 17-months which was accelerated substantially by the COVID-19 pandemic. Future work should assess the sustained impact this growth may have on marketing practices and eating behavior.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/gbc4f/" target="_blank">Prevalence and Comparisons of Alcohol, Candy, Energy Drink, Snack, Soda, and Restaurant Brand and Product Marketing on Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube Gaming</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Influence of the COVID-19 lockdown on remote workers’ physical and psychosocial wellbeing and work productivity</strong> -
<div>
Introduction: Imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the living and working habits of millions, with potentially important implications for physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Objectives: The primary objective was to investigate the impact of the pandemic on remote workers not directly affected by the virus. Methods: This was a correlational cross-sectional study (with an additional qualitative component) of 184 remote workers surveyed during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. Standard measures of mental health (Kessler-6), productivity (IAPT) and physical activity (IPAQ) were used, with respondents further surveyed on changes to their dietary, exercise, smoking, drinking and socialisation habits to produce a ‘well-being change index’. Results: Results revealed associations between sedentary behaviour and poorer mental health (τb=.14) and between poorer mental health and low work productivity (τb=-.39). However, both positive and negative lifestyle changes were reported; a self-reported increase in wellbeing (with respect to diet, exercise, smoking, alcohol consumption, and socialisation) since the start of the pandemic was associated with both better mental health (τb=-.14) and better work productivity (τb=.14). Of note, we observed rates of moderate (55%) and severe (12%) psychological distress markedly higher than those reported in large pre-pandemic studies, and 70% of our respondents reported more sedentary behaviour, 41% increased their alcohol consumption and 39% their overall food intake. However, 46%, 45% and 52% reported spending more time walking, engaging in more moderate and vigorous exercise, respectively. Qualitative analysis revealed many positive adaptations to lockdowns (e.g., decreased commuting expenses, flexibility) but also a number of structural obstacles to remote working (e.g., lack of support and high expectations from employers, childcare duties). Conclusion: These findings may be of practical importance for policy makers and employers in a world of work involving long-term remote or hybrid employment arrangements; strategies to promote more sustainable remote working are discussed.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/dnuk3/" target="_blank">Influence of the COVID-19 lockdown on remote workers’ physical and psychosocial wellbeing and work productivity</a>
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</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>Cognitive and Psychological Disorders After Severe COVID-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID 19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Diagnostic Test: Cognitive assessment;   Diagnostic Test: Imaging;   Diagnostic Test: Routine care;   Other: Psychiatric evaluation<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Central Hospital, Nancy, France;   Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Besancon;   University Hospital, Strasbourg, France;   Centre Hospitalier Régional Metz-Thionville;   Centre hospitalier Epinal;   Hopitaux Civils de Colmar<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>Phase 1 Study to Assess Safety, Tolerability, PD, PK, Immunogenicity of IV NTR-441 Solution in Healthy Volunteers and COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: NTR-441;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Neutrolis<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>MP1032 Treatment in Patients With Moderate to Severe COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MP1032;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   MetrioPharm AG;   Syneos Health, LLC<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy and Safety of XAV-19 for the Treatment of Moderate-to-severe COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: XAV-19;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Xenothera SAS<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>Study of Codivir in Patients With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Covidir injections;   Diagnostic Test: One Step Test;   Diagnostic Test: IgM and IgG dosage;   Diagnostic Test: RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2;   Diagnostic Test: Screening blood test;   Diagnostic Test: ECG;   Diagnostic Test: Medical evaluation;   Diagnostic Test: NEWS-2 score;   Diagnostic Test: WHO score<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Code Pharma<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study to Evaluate the Safety and Concentrations of Monoclonal Antibody Against Virus That Causes COVID-19 Disease.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Virus Disease<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: MAD0004J08;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Toscana Life Sciences Sviluppo s.r.l.;   Cross Research S.A.<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Trial With N-acetylcysteine and Bromhexine for COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Vitamin C;   Drug: N-acetylcysteine (NAC);   Drug: NAC + Bromhexine (BMX)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universidade Federal do Ceara;   Paulista School of Medicine-EPM, UNIFESP;   Health Surveillance Secretariat - SVS;   Central Laboratory of Public Health of Ceara - LACEN-CE;   Leonardo da Vinci Hospital - HLV;   São José Hospital for Infectious Diseases - HSJ;   Ceará Health Secretariat - SESA;   Municipal Health Secretary - SMS-Fortaleza<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>Augmentation of Immune Response to COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination Through OMT With Lymphatic Pumps</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Western University of Health Sciences;   American College of Osteopathic Physicians;   American Osteopathic Foundation;   Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons of California;   Xavier-Nichols Foundation<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 LNP-nCOV saRNA-02 Vaccine Against SARS-CoV-2, the Causative Agent of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: LNP-nCOV saRNA-02 Vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy of Inhaled Therapies in the Treatment of Acute Symptoms Associated With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: inhaled beclametasone;   Drug: Inahaled beclomethasone / formoterol / glycopyrronium<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   UPECLIN HC FM Botucatu Unesp;   Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A.<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>Dapsone Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Trial (DAP-CORONA) COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Dapsone 85 mg PO BID;   Drug: Placebo 85 mg PO BID<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   McGill University Health Centre/Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre;   Pulmonem Inc.<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>Clinical Investigation for 2019-nCoV Antigen Saliva Rapid Test Kit and V-CHEK SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Detection Kit to Detect COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: V-CHECK SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Detection Kit and 2019-nCoV Antigen Saliva Rapid Test Kit<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Medical College of Wisconsin;   Reliable, LLC.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ivermectin Versus Standard Treatment in Mild COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Ivermectin Tablets<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Assiut University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tolerability,Safety of JS016 in SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Combination Product: JS016 (anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Peking Union Medical College Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SCALE-UP Utah: Community-Academic Partnership to Address COVID-19 Testing Among Utah Community Health Centers</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Text-Messaging (TM);   Behavioral: Patient Navigation (PN)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of Utah;   Association for Utah Community Health;   Utah Department of Health;   National Institutes of Health (NIH)<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The interaction of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 spike protein with drug-inhibited angiotensin converting enzyme 2 studied by molecular dynamics simulation</strong> - CONCLUSION: We conclude that using ACE2 inhibitors can increase the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and worsen COVID-19 disease outcome. We also found that the SARS-CoV-2 can abrogate the function of ACE2 inhibitors and rescue the enzymatic activity of ACE2. Therefore, ACE2 inhibition is not a useful treatment against COVID-19 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>SARS-CoV-2 infection and ACE2 inhibition</strong> - No abstract</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>Tocilizumab for the treatment of non-critical COVID-19 pneumonia: an overview of the rationale and clinical evidence to date</strong> - Introduction: Tocilizumab is one of the main repurposed therapies investigated for COVID-19 pneumonia since the start of the pandemic, but there has been conflicting evidence for its use.Areas covered: This review covers the physiology of interleukin-6 and its role in the pathophysiology of COVID-19. We discuss the use of tocilizumab in other diseases and the rationale for its use in COVID-19. We summarize the design, contrasting results and implications of the clinical trials of tocilizumab in…</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>Using body temperature and variables commonly available in the EHR to predict acute infection: a proof-of-concept study showing improved pretest probability estimates for acute COVID-19 infection among discharged emergency department patients</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: By incorporating covariates known to affect body temperature, we demonstrated improved pretest probability estimates of acute COVID-19 infection. Future work should be undertaken to further develop and validate our model in a larger, multi-institutional sample.</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>Innate immunity, inflammation activation and heat-shock protein in COVID-19 pathogenesis</strong> - SARS-CoV-2-induced COVID-19 is a serious pandemic of the 21st century, which has caused a devastating loss of lives and a global economic catastrophe. A successful vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 has suffered a delay due to lack of substantial knowledge about its mechanisms of action. Understanding the innate immune system against SARS-CoV-2 and the role of heat shock proteins’ (HSP) inhibiting and resolution of inflammatory pathways may provide information to the low SARS-CoV-2 mortality rates in…</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 robust SARS-CoV-2 replication model in primary human epithelial cells at the air liquid interface to assess antiviral agents</strong> - There are, besides remdesivir, no approved antivirals for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infections. To aid in the search for antivirals against this virus, we explored the use of human tracheal airway epithelial cells (HtAEC) and human small airway epithelial cells (HsAEC) grown at the air/liquid interface (ALI). These cultures were infected at the apical side with one of two different SARS-CoV-2 isolates. Each virus was shown to replicate to high titers for extended periods of time (at least 8…</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>Restriction of SARS-CoV-2 replication by targeting programmed -1 ribosomal frameshifting</strong> - Translation of open reading frame 1b (ORF1b) in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) requires a programmed -1 ribosomal frameshift (-1 PRF) promoted by an RNA pseudoknot. The extent to which SARS-CoV-2 replication may be sensitive to changes in -1 PRF efficiency is currently unknown. Through an unbiased, reporter-based high-throughput compound screen, we identified merafloxacin, a fluoroquinolone antibacterial, as a -1 PRF inhibitor for SARS-CoV-2. Frameshift inhibition…</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>Colchicine use might be associated with lower mortality in COVID-19 patients: A meta-analysis</strong> - We read with great interest the recently published meta-analysis by Aimo et al. in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation.¹ The analysis encompassing over 5000 patients’ data revealed a significant reduction in adverse cardiovascular events in patients with chronic coronary syndrome receiving colchicine vs. control. These results are promising and suggest a potential role for colchicine in treating thrombogenic conditions. Colchicine is an ancient anti-inflammatory agent with an…</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>In Silico Comparison of Separate or Combinatorial Effects of Potential Inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 Binding Site of ACE2</strong> - CONCLUSION: The results propose greatest compounds and their combinatory anti-SARS-CoV-2 effects in order to decrease the time and expenses required for further experimental designs.</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 inhibition of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 by photosensitizers compounds</strong> - The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) posed a major challenge to the public health. Currently, no proven antiviral treatment for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is available. Here we report compounds pentalysine β-carbonylphthalocyanine zinc (ZnPc5K) and chlorin e6 (ce6) potently inhibited the viral infection and replication in vitro with EC(50) values at nanomolar level. These compounds were first identified by screening a panel 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>Inhibition of drug-metabolizing enzymes by Jingyin granules: implications of herb-drug interactions in antiviral therapy</strong> - Jingyin granules, a marketed antiviral herbal medicine, have been recommended for treating H1N1 influenza A virus infection and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China. To fight viral diseases in a more efficient way, Jingyin granules are frequently co-administered in clinical settings with a variety of therapeutic agents, including antiviral drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and other Western medicines. However, it is unclear whether Jingyin granules modulate the pharmacokinetics of Western…</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>Structural characterisation of inhibitory and non-inhibitory MMP-9-TIMP-1 complexes and implications for regulatory mechanisms of MMP-9</strong> - MMP-9 plays a number of important physiological functions but is also responsible for many pathological processes, including cancer invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis. It is, therefore, crucial to understand its enzymatic activity, including activation and inhibition mechanisms. This enzyme may also be partially involved in the “cytokine storm” that is characteristic of COVID-19 disease (SARS-CoV-2), as well as in the molecular mechanisms responsible for lung fibrosis. Due to the variety 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>Drug delivery systems as Immunomodulators for therapy of infectious disease: relevance to COVID-19</strong> - The emergence of SARS-CoV-2, and the ensuing global pandemic, has resulted in an unprecedented response to identify therapies that can limit uncontrolled inflammation observed in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. The immune pathology behind COVID-19 is complex and involves the activation and interaction of multiple systems including, but not limited to, complement, inflammasomes, endothelial as well as innate and adaptive immune cells to bring about a convoluted profile of inflammation,…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The endogenous cellular protease inhibitor SPINT2 controls SARS-CoV-2 viral infection and is associated to disease severity</strong> - COVID-19 outbreak is the biggest threat to human health in recent history. Currently, there are over 1.5 million related deaths and 75 million people infected around the world (as of 22/12/2020). The identification of virulence factors which determine disease susceptibility and severity in different cell types remains an essential challenge. The serine protease TMPRSS2 has been shown to be important for S protein priming and viral entry, however, little is known about its regulation. SPINT2 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>Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) decreases the benefit of anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade in tumor immunotherapy</strong> - Immunotherapy using checkpoint blockade (ICB) with antibodies such as anti-PD-1 has revolutionised the treatment of many cancers. Despite its use to treat COVID-19 patients and autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis, the effect of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on cancer immunotherapy has not been examined. In this study, remarkably, we find that HCQ alone, or in combination with azithromycin (AZ), at doses used to treat patients, decreased the therapeutic…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 anti-viral therapeutic</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU327160071">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A POLYHERBAL ALCOHOL FREE FORMULATION FOR ORAL CAVITY</strong> - The present invention generally relates to a herbal composition. Specifically, the present invention relates to a polyherbal alcohol free composition comprising of Glycyrrhiza glabra root extract, Ocimum sanctum leaf extract, Elettaria cardamomum fruit extract, Mentha spicata (Spearmint) oil and Tween 80 and method of preparation thereof. The polyherbal alcohol free composition of the present invention possesses excellent antimicrobial properties and useful for oral cavity. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=IN325690740">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MEDIDOR DE SATURACION</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=ES325874099">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>폐마스크 밀봉 회수기</strong> - 본 발명은 마스크 착용 후 버려지는 일회용 폐마스크를 비닐봉지에 넣은 후 밀봉하여 배출함으로써, 2차 감염을 예방하고 일반 생활폐기물과 선별 분리 배출하여 환경오염을 방지하는 데 그 목적이 있다. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=KR325788342">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>백신 냉각 및 해동 기능을 갖는 백신 보관장치</strong> - 본 발명은 백신 냉각 및 해동 기능을 갖는 백신 보관장치에 관한 것으로, 상, 하부하우징의 제1상, 하부누출방지공간에 냉각물질이 충입된 냉각파이프를 설치하되, 제2상, 하부누출방지공간에 가열물질이 충입된 가열파이프를 설치하여, 구획판부에 의해 구획된 백신냉각공간 및 백신해동공간 각각을 냉각 및 가열하고, 보조도어를 통해 백신냉각공간 내에 수용된 백신을 구획판부의 백신출구도어를 통해 백신해동공간으로 이동시켜, 백신해동공간 내에서 백신을 해동함으로써, 즉시 사용이 가능한 백신을 인출도어를 통해 인출할 수 있다. 본 발명에 따르면, 냉각파이프에 저장된 냉매에 의해 백신냉각공간 내의 온도가 극저온 상태로 변화되고, 극저온 상태를 유지하는 백신냉각공간 내에 백신을 저장하여, 안전하게 보관 할 수 있으며, 백신냉각공간 내의 백신을 백신해동공간 내로 이동시켜, 백신해동공간 내에서 백신을 해동할 수 있고, 이 해동된 백신을 인출도어를 통해 인출한 후 즉시 사용할 수 있어 백신을 해동하는 시간이 단축되며, 보조도어를 통해 백신냉각공간 내의 백신을 백신해동공간으로 이동시켜, 백신이 외기에 노출될 우려가 없으며, 백신냉각공간 내의 백신을 백신해동공간으로 이동시키거나 또는 인출도어를 통해 백신 인출시 정렬장치가 백신을 보조도어 및 인출도어 직하방에 자동 위치시킨다. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=KR327274025">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>백신 인출용 보조도어를 갖는 백신 저온 보관장치</strong> - 본 발명은 백신정렬 기능을 갖는 백신 저온 보관장치에 관한 것으로, 상, 하부하우징의 이중 격벽 안에 냉매가 충입된 냉매파이프를 설치하여, 이 냉매파이프에 의해 상, 하부하우징의 백신 보관 공간이 극저온 상태를 유지하도록 하고, 하부하우징의 가이드벽 사이에 수용된 백신을 정렬장치로 가압하여, 상부하우징의 보조도어 직하방에 백신이 위치되도록 하되, 이때, 보조도어를 개방하여 하부하우징 내에 수용된 백신을 인출하면, 정렬장치가 가이드벽 사이에 수용된 백신을 보조도어 방향으로 밀어내어, 보조도어 직하방에 백신이 순차적으로 자동 위치된다. 본 발명에 따르면, 상, 하부하우징의 이중 격벽 내에 냉매 파이프가 설치되어, 이 냉매 파이프에 저장된 냉매에 의해 백신 보관공간 내의 온도가 극저온 상태로 변화되고, 이 극저온 상태를 유지하는 백신 보관공간 내에 백신을 저장하여, 안전하게 보관 할 수 있으며, 수분이나 외부 공기 유입이 차단되어 백신을 안전하게 보관되고, 온도계와 압력계를 이용하여 백신 보관공간과 냉매 압력을 실시간으로 감지할 수 있고, 보조도어를 통해 백신 보관공간 내의 백신을 독립적으로 인출할 수 있으며, 보조도어를 통해 백신 인출시 정렬장치가 백신을 보조도어 방향으로 밀어내어, 보조도어 직하방에 백신이 자동 위치되고, 외기 유입 방지로 백신 보관공간 내의 온도가 극저온 상태로 유지된다. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=KR327274024">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SAFE TOUCH ANTI VIRAL LUGGAGE TROLLEY HANDLE</strong> - The invention is directed to a safe-touch, anti-viral luggage trolley handle, comprising PVC plastic with the addition of a silver-based antimicrobial additive. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU324956574">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mampara plegable portatil</strong> - Mampara Plegable Portátil (MPP) diseñada para acoplarse/fijarse al borde de una mesa caracterizada por estar formado por dos mordazas o piezas de sujeción al borde de una mesa donde se ensambla la estructura que porta la pantalla o lámina protectora transparente auto enrollable por mecanismo automático. - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=ES325744081">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>METHOD OF IDENTIFYING SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME CORONA VIRUS 2 (SARS-COV-2) RIBONUCLEIC ACID (RNA)</strong> - - <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=AU323956811">link</a></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Erweiterbare Desinfektionsvorrichtung</strong> -
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
</p><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">Erweiterbare Desinfektionsvorrichtung, umfassend: einen Hauptkörper, der eine umgekehrt U-förmige Basisplatte aufweist, wobei die umgekehrt U-förmige Basisplatte mit einer Öffnung versehen ist und jeweils eine Seitenplatte sich von zwei Seiten der umgekehrt U-förmigen Basisplatte nach außen erstreckt; und mindestens eine Desinfektionslampe, die in den auf zwei Seiten des Hauptkörpers befindlichen Seitenplatten angeordnet ist und eine Lichtemissionseinheit, eine Erfassungseinheit, eine Steuereinheit und eine Stromversorgungseinheit umfasst.</p></li>
</ul>
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<li><a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=DE326402480">link</a></li>
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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 Supreme Court’s Surprising Term</strong> - During a time when the country has been starkly divided on matters ranging from the pandemic to the Presidency, the Court has largely avoided partisanship. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/05/the-supreme-courts-surprising-term">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lina Hidalgo’s Political Rise</strong> - The thirty-year-old Houston chief executive is creating a model for how progressives can govern effectively. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/lina-hidalgos-political-rise">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Unexplained Phenomena of the U.F.O. Report</strong> - A new intelligence document examines a hundred and forty-three sightings that might have been caused by errant balloons, foreign drones, or “Other”—a reserved way of saying aliens. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-unexplained-phenomena-of-the-ufo-report">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The People We’re Leaving Behind in Afghanistan</strong> - Young Afghans defied the Taliban and signed on to reconstruction efforts, only to learn that U.S. and NATO forces would be abruptly withdrawn. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-people-were-leaving-behind-in-afghanistan">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Collapse of American Identity</strong> - In a new book, the journalist George Packer argues that the country is divided into four warring factions. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-collapse-of-american-identity">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>A sci-fi writer got meta about gender. The internet responded by ruining her life.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a helicopter burning with a man carrying a rocket launcher in the foreground." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ak2hJiRaABvFCugmOcvoZ2PWAPg=/708x0:4949x3181/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69487310/GettyImages_840299164.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Getty Images/iStockphoto
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. This is what happened next.
</p>
<div class="c-float-left">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hHunkK">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0ZEeJw">
“In a war zone, it is not safe to be unknown. Unknown travelers are shot on sight,” says Isabel Fall. “The fact that Isabel Fall was an unknown led to her death.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BovaFz">
Isabel Fall isn’t dead. There is a person who wrote under that name alive on the planet right now, someone who published a critically acclaimed, award-nominated short story. If she wanted to publish again, she surely could.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rz9FYm">
Isabel Fall is a ghost nonetheless.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YmKzdc">
In January 2020, not long after her short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” was published in the online science fiction magazine Clarkesworld, Fall asked her editor to take the story down, and then checked into a psychiatric ward for thoughts of self-harm and suicide.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zdqMRg">
The story — and especially its title, which co-opts a transphobic meme — had provoked days of contentious debate online within the science fiction community, the trans community, and the community of people who worry that cancel culture has run amok. Because there was little biographical information available about its author, the debate hinged on one question: Who was Isabel Fall? And that question ate her alive. When she emerged from the hospital a few weeks later, the world had moved on, but she was still scarred by what had happened. She decided on something drastic: She would no longer be Isabel Fall.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dfCgGx">
As a trans woman early in transition, Fall had the option of retreating to the relative safety of her legal, masculine identity. That’s what she did, staying out of the limelight and growing ever more frustrated by what had happened to her. She bristles when I ask her in an email if she’s stopped transitioning, but it’s the only phrase I can think of to describe how the situation appears.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yBfHk9">
Isabel Fall was on a path to becoming herself, and then she wasn’t — and all because she published a short story. And then her life fell apart.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUr8he">
In the 18 months since, what happened to her has become a case study for various people who want to talk about the Way We Live Today. It has been held up as an example of progressives eating their own, of the dangers of online anonymity, of the need for sensitivity readers or content warnings. But what this story really symbolizes is the fact that as we’ve grown more adept at using the internet, we’ve also grown more adept at destroying people’s lives, but from a distance, in an abstracted way.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OObSXp">
Sometimes, the path to your personal hell is paved with other people’s best intentions.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="MBIoZY"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l9TlO3">
Like most internet outrage cycles, the fracas over “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” was enormous news within the bubble of people who cared about it and made barely a blip outside of that bubble. The full tale is amorphous and weird, and recounting its ins and outs is nearly impossible to do here. Just trying to explain the motivations of all involved is a task in and of itself, and at any rate, <a href="http://file770.com/clarkesworld-removes-isabel-falls-story/">that story has been told many times</a>, quoting others extensively. Fall has never spoken publicly about the situation until now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pqyRgN">
Clarkesworld published Fall’s story on January 1, 2020. For a while, people seemed to like it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wYQEil">
“I was in awe of it on a sentence level. I thought it was beautiful and devastating and incredibly subversive and surprising. It did all this work in a very short amount of space, which I found completely breathtaking. It had been a long time since I had read a short story that I had enjoyed and that also had rewired my brain a little bit,” said author Carmen Maria Machado, who read the story before controversy had broken out.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NVzaxI">
In the first 10 days after “Attack Helicopter” was published, what muted criticism existed was largely confined to the story’s comments section on Clarkesworld. The tweets that still exist from that period were largely positive responses to the story, often from trans people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HpptXD">
But first in Clarkesworld’s comments and then on Twitter, the combination of the story’s title and the relative lack of information about Fall began to fuel a growing paranoia around the story and its author. The presence of trolls who seemed to take the story’s title at face value only added to that paranoia. And when read through the lens of “Isabel Fall is trolling everybody,” “Attack Helicopter” started to seem menacing to plenty of readers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B44uBU">
“Attack Helicopter” was a slippery, knotty piece of fiction that captured a particular trans feminine uncertainty better than almost anything I have ever read. Set in a nightmarish future in which the US military has co-opted gender to the degree that it turns recruits into literal weapons, it told the story of Barb, a pilot whose gender is “helicopter.” Together with Axis — Barb’s gunner, who was also assigned helicopter — Barb carried out various missions against assorted opposition forces who live within what is at present the United States.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K6kVeP">
Then, because its title was also a transphobic meme and because “Isabel Fall” had absolutely no online presence beyond the Clarkesworld story, many people began to worry that Fall was somehow a front for right-wing, anti-trans reactionaries. They expressed those fears in the comments of the story, in various science fiction discussion groups, and all over Twitter. Fans of the story pushed back, saying it was a bold and striking piece of writing from an exciting new voice. While the debate was initially among trans people for the most part, it eventually spilled over to cis sci-fi fans who boosted the concerns of trans people who were worried about the story.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xmOb45">
Neil Clarke, Clarkesworld’s editor, pulled the story on Fall’s behalf on January 15, replacing it <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fall_01_20/">with an editorial note</a> that read, in part, “The recent barrage of attacks on Isabel have taken a toll and I ask that even if you disagree with the decision, that you respect it. This is not censorship. She needed this to be done for her own personal safety and health.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="akzBuI">
Fall, reeling, checked into the hospital. She has since retitled her story “Helicopter Story,” and under that title, it was nominated for a 2021 Hugo Award, one of the most prestigious honors in science fiction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IpCflV">
“How do I feel about the nomination? I don’t know,” Fall says by email. “It’s a nice validation to know that some people liked the story enough to nominate it. But it’s also dreadful to know that this will just mean reopening the conversation, which will lead to a lot of people being hurt.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2ZKcZM">
I started emailing with Fall in February, just over a year after “Attack Helicopter” blew up. I had been working on a completely different piece about the short story and wanted to invite her to share her version of events, which thus far have been defined by voices that are not her own. Clarke put me in touch with Fall, and she agreed to speak with me on the condition that we only correspond over email. I am the first journalist she has talked to about what happened. I do not know her legal identity, but I have confirmed that she is the person who wrote “Attack Helicopter” from looking at earlier drafts of the story that Isabel shared with me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ekwqlz">
When Fall published “Attack Helicopter,” she was not yet ready to be publicly out as a trans woman, but hoped that writing it for a niche publication in a community that is frequently friendly to queer writers would be a good way to get her feet wet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YNcbkf">
She had at least some reason to expect that the complete vacuum of personal information about her — the short author bio attached to the story said only that she was born in 1988 — wouldn’t be questioned. Trans spaces, both online and in real life, have a long history of allowing an anonymity that paradoxically hides within one’s true identity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eN7pcO">
If you want to attend a support group meeting and say your name is Isabel and you use she/her pronouns, you will be treated as such, no matter how you look or what name is on your driver’s license. Gatekeeping in a trans space usually involves loosely enforced rules that focus on giving those who exist within them a safe place to explore their identity. Those rules almost never attempt to determine that someone is “trans enough.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3Lhbtl">
But anonymity isn’t always welcome on the internet, where an anonymous identity can be weaponized for the worst. That gap — between the good-faith anonymity assumed in trans spaces and the bad-faith anonymity increasingly assumed online — was the one Fall wandered into.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="reyVDf"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1kI48A">
“I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” is a “copypasta” (a snippet of text that is copied and pasted across the internet, sometimes with alterations, sometimes word-for-word) that dates to 2014. It most likely originated on the forums for the game <em>Team Fortress 2</em> before making its way to Reddit and 4chan, where it became a meme used to mock and demean trans people who spoke earnestly about their experiences and identities. The meme is transphobic on its face, because it suggests that one’s gender can be decided on a whim.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xKQ4yd">
Fall’s story tries to take the meme seriously. What would it be like if your gender was actually “helicopter”?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9qmo5C">
As a story, “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” explores three separate but interconnected ideas: gender as an innate part of the self, gender as a performance for society, and gender as a (literal) weapon of the state. The story’s complicated exploration of gender identity doesn’t work for everyone, but it hits others with almost laser-targeted precision.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gayWUg">
At its core, “Attack Helicopter” is about the intersection of gender and American hegemony. On that level, it has plenty to say even to cisgender people. After all, if all gender is on some level a performance (and it is), then it can be co-opted and perverted by the state. But if it’s also innate on some level (and it is), then we are powerless against whatever it is that enough people decide gender performance should look like. We are constantly trapped by gender, even when we know we are trapped by it. You can’t truly escape something so all-pervasive; you can only negotiate your own terms with it, and everybody’s terms are different.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a2ZUdn">
The conversation around gender “is dominated by those who can tolerate and thrive in it. It is conducted by the voices of those who are able to survive speech and its consequences,” Fall says. “But it is a conversation that is, by necessity, reductive. We need teams and groups and identities, not just to belong to, but as mental objects to manipulate and wield. If we tried to hold 10 million unique experiences of gender in our mind they would sift through our fingers and roll away.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q5vx5r">
Such a conversation around gender is not particularly conducive to those who are figuring out their gender in public, as all trans people must do eventually. It’s especially not conducive to artists who are exploring their gender in their art, under even greater degrees of public scrutiny. Which is to say: That conversation is not conducive to people like Fall.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="grFdDQ">
“We make boxes that seem to enclose a satisfying number of human experiences, and then we put labels on those and argue about them instead,” she says. “The boxes change over time, according to a process which is governed by, as far as I can tell, cycles of human suffering: We realize that forcing people into the last set of boxes was painful and wrong, we wring our hands, we fold up some new boxes and assure ourselves that this time we got it right, or at least right enough for now. Because we need the boxes to argue over. I do not want to be in a box. I want to sift through your fingers, to vanish, to be unseen.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h1fhnA">
The question many people asked when “Attack Helicopter” was published was: What were Fall’s intentions in borrowing a transphobic meme for her title?<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nhCDaA">
When I came out in 2018, the “attack helicopter” meme had already mostly been ironically reclaimed by trans people, who had undercut its sting by, in essence, shouting, “Get better material!” at transphobes. (<a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDSXBOwXoAIJDcu.jpg">To wit</a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="etgapS">
Fall was channeling that ironic reclamation, but readers were quick to jump to their own conclusions. Many only read as far as the title before assuming Fall was either transphobic herself or a trans person intentionally using the meme to make a point.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pNwOTd">
All they had to go on was one biographical detail: “Isabel Fall was born in 1988.” There was no Isabel Fall Twitter profile. She had never published fiction before. She was a blank space, upon which anyone could project their worst fears or biggest hopes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jpIUdJ">
“When the story was first published, we knew nothing about Isabel Fall’s identity, and there was a smattering of strange behavior around the comments and who was linking to it, that led people to suspect right-wing trolls were involved in this,” says science fiction author Neon Yang. They were publicly critical of the story on Twitter. “In hindsight, they were probably just drawn by the provocative title and possibly did not even read the story. And yes, it seems like an overreaction on the part of the trans people who responded this way, but being trans in this world is having to constantly justify your right to existence at all, and when you’re forced to be on the defensive all the time, everything starts to look like an attack.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z5NKlD">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21432987/trans-twitter-reddit-online-anonymity">But a lot of trans women adopt an online pseudonym</a> before coming out publicly, <a href="http://twitter.com/SandalwoodEmily">including me</a>. To come out as a trans woman in a transphobic patriarchal society that views our existence as a curiosity at best is rarely something done all at once. It requires baby steps, like becoming used to a new name that starts to feel like home.
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Absent any context, “This writer is a secret troll” seems like a huge, unjustified leap to make. Within the science fiction community specifically, it’s still a huge leap, but not necessarily an unjustified one. In recent years, a neoreactionary movement known as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/4/26/8495415/hugos-sad-puppies-controversy">the “Sad Puppies”</a> has advocated for politically and artistically conservative science fiction and gamed the Hugo Award nominations, drawing ire from genre writers old and new. The Sad Puppies’ position is, more or less, that great sci-fi is traditional, usually focused on straight white guys in militaristic settings, with straightforward prose. It’s a pushback against the diversification of science fiction and fantasy writing, and though the Puppies’ influence has waned, the lasting effects of their efforts have only stirred up fear and uncertainty within the community. Thus, paranoia was the prevailing mood under which many first read “Attack Helicopter.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kgve5f">
A few people insisted to me that the controversy began with honest but negative readings of the story by people who felt Fall had missed the mark, before mutating into something worse. One unstated assumption made here is that only trans people should write about trans experiences, and therefore, Fall should have identified herself as a trans woman directly in the bio attached to the story. This notion is admirable on the surface but fails to account for the many ways in which trans artists both explore and experience their gender in what they create. Sometimes you can only figure out you’re trans by writing about being trans.
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“[In criticism], you can say, ‘This struck me as somewhat clumsy and born from inexperience.’ That’s a fair thing to say about art,” says Gretchen Felker-Martin, an author and critic who says she loved “Attack Helicopter.” “What isn’t fair to say is, ‘The person who wrote this is definitely straight, and they’ve never met a trans person.’ There’s some room for error there, when it comes to whether the person whose work you’re critiquing is some sort of famous cultural icon or something. But Isabel was not that. She’s a woman writing under a pseudonym.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SXS4iT">
Fall remembers the sequence of events differently, and so far as I have been able to figure out, her sequence of events is the correct one: Suspicion of her motives in writing “Attack Helicopter” spurred an almost immediate attempt to figure out her real identity, which fueled suspicion that she was trying to hide something. She was accused of being an alt-right troll or a Nazi. Only when things had gone too far did the good-faith criticism start to roll in. Fall says she found some of that criticism useful, particularly with regard to the story’s treatment of Barb’s race. (Barb is Korean.) But in her telling, the good-faith criticism came after the attempts to prove she was a bad actor. By then, the damage was done.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="92XKo6">
“Framing matters. After the frame around the story was in place, it could not be shaken, and everything that happened afterwards was influenced by it,” Fall says. “I have also heard people say, ‘We deserve to know if Isabel Fall is someone with a history of writing things that divide queer communities.’ Is it now a crime to divide a queer community? Why shouldn’t queer people be divided on one issue or another?”
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The mess very quickly turned nasty and personal, and it was happening where Fall could see all of it.
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“I sought out and read everything written about the story. I couldn’t stop,” Fall says. “It was like that old nightmare-fantasy. What if someone gave you a ledger of everything anyone’s ever said about you, anywhere? Who wouldn’t read it? I would read it; I would go straight to the worst things.”
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One criticism above all got to her: that Fall must be a cis man, because no woman would ever write in the way she did. And because this criticism was so often leveled by cis women, Fall felt her gender dysphoria (the gap between her gender and her gender assigned at birth) increasing. In Fall’s story, Barb and Axis destroy the lives of people they cannot even see. Now, in a bitterly ironic twist, the same was happening to her.
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“In this story I think that the helicopter is a closet. … Where do you feel dysphoria the hardest? In the closet. Or so I have to hope; I have not been anywhere outside it, except for [in publishing ‘Attack Helicopter’], which convinced me it was safer inside,” Fall says. “Most of all, I wanted people to say, ‘This story was written by a woman who understands being a woman.’ I obviously failed horribly.”
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That was when she asked Clarke to take down the story. That was when she checked herself into a psych ward, so she wouldn’t kill herself in the midst of her dysphoric spiral.
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“It ended the way it did because I thought I would die,” she says.
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Twitter is really good at making otherwise unimportant things seem like important news.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HiSSUu">
It’s incredibly hard to imagine “Attack Helicopter” receiving the degree of blowback it did in a world where Twitter didn’t exist. There were discussions of the story on forums and in comment threads all over the internet, but it is the nature of Twitter that all but ensured this particular argument would rage out of control. Isabel Fall’s story has been held up as an example of “cancel culture run amok,” but like almost all examples of cancel culture run amok, it’s mostly an example of Twitter run amok.
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“It’s very easy to do a paranoid reading on Twitter,” says Lee Mandelo, a PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky and an author and critic who writes for Tor.com. They were among the earliest advocates of “Attack Helicopter,” and they wrote a lengthy Twitter thread (collected as <a href="https://leemandelo.com/f/that-twitter-thread-on-criticism">a blog post here</a>) about paranoid versus reparative readings of art, in response to Clarkesworld pulling the story.
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The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art <em>for someone who isn’t the reader</em>.
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This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings.
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“[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad. That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”
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Kat Lo, a researcher whose work tracks how information and misinformation spread across social networks, explained to me that Twitter itself is as big a part of Isabel Fall’s story as a faceless mob of the site’s users. The sheer assault of information on Twitter makes it difficult to parse, and unlike other social networks, it doesn’t really have elements that preserve any semblance of context (whereas an individual subreddit is built around a particular subject, and a Facebook feed or group is limited to posts by one’s friends or organized around one topic, at least in theory). Twitter ends up organized around what Lo calls “influencer hubs.”
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For instance, if you’re a science fiction fan, you might follow a big-name author or critic in the field, and since they’re likely a bigger expert on the topic than you are, you’ll probably regard them as such. But Twitter is a platform that rewards divisive opinions, which are more likely to drive engagement (hearts, retweets, and the like). So, many influencers with the biggest reach on Twitter are also people whose core identity is expressing divisive opinions.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="39lx63">
Where this becomes an issue is when influencers from different worlds start to cross-pollinate, which is precisely what happened with “Attack Helicopter.” Though much of the early discussion of the story was among trans sci-fi fans, and though much of that discussion was pretty evenly split between paranoid and reparative readings, the takes that were amplified by bigger and bigger names in the sci-fi world were almost always the paranoid ones, because those were the most divisive and most clickable. And the people elevating those paranoid takes were almost all cis.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vYHUEx">
“Attack Helicopter” ended up stuck in a feedback loop, as cis people circulated takes skewed toward bad-faith readings of Fall’s story, in the name of supporting trans people. “Attack Helicopter” went from a story that people were debating, to a story that was perceived as one trans people had a few qualms with, to one that was perceived as actively harming trans people, almost entirely because of how Twitter functions.
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Once a Twitter conversation takes off like this, it becomes very difficult to stop, which leads to stranger and stranger levels of binary thinking and gatekeeping. I found two tweets posted within hours of each other where one insisted Fall <em>must</em> be a cis man and the other insisted she <em>must</em> be a cis woman. Both were sure she was mocking trans people.
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Once a Twitter controversy has reached that critical mass is usually when you might start reading about it in the media.
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“What’s on Twitter extends far beyond Twitter, because people make Twitter relevant to the rest of the world. So in a sense, they’re reproducing the chaos and social structures of Twitter, by bringing them into the rest of the world,” Lo says. “It ends up having outsize influence, because the people who are on Twitter perceive Twitter as being bigger and more representative [of the world] than it really is.”
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By the time it was pulled, “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” had been read by tens of thousands of people, according to Clarke, though its ultimate audience is impossible to total, because archived versions of the story and pirated PDFs reached countless others. (Fall also issued a limited-edition ebook of the story under the title “Helicopter Story” last fall, to qualify for an award — not the Hugo. The ebook was not nominated.)
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LG7srb">
In the two weeks that the story was online, discussion around it attracted interest, and the story amassed a wide number of fans, beyond the normal sphere of science fiction short-story aficionados. Many people who read it did so because it was controversial, but it only became controversial because it was so widely read.
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Even more people came to know “Attack Helicopter” as an exemplar of the left eating its own. Most of the people I talked to for this story, regardless of whether they initially criticized or praised “Attack Helicopter,” cited articles by <a href="https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-deepy-depressing-unpublishing">established pundits</a>, including one in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/sexually-identify-attack-helicopter/605170/">the Atlantic</a>, as supercharging the discussion. Those articles launched the discourse beyond the twin niches of online trans communities and online SFF communities and sent it swirling out into the larger internet of people vaguely interested in free speech absolutism. With every new article, a new audience of people outside of the science fiction community learned about Isabel Fall, and a new wave of anger fell on everybody involved, regardless of their position, including Fall.
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“There were several reporters that reached out to me right after the story came down. I remember having a conversation with one of them and saying, ‘Is [writing about] this really what you want to do? I’m not going to participate. I think that this is just going to make it worse,’” Clarke says. “And they ran with it. It brought in the whole cancel culture thing. Isabel needed that story down for her, not for them, and not for anybody else. But for her. And that’s why it came down. I tried to make that clear [in the editor’s note on the story’s removal]. But people still wanted that cancel narrative.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H5l5Se">
“Attack Helicopter” was nominated for a Hugo Award (a prize for science fiction and fantasy works that is voted on by SFF fans) in April, under the title “Helicopter Story.” The nomination prompted a new round of criticism, this time mostly centered on Clarke and how he didn’t do enough to preemptively shield Fall before the story was published. Clarke says he’s happy to take the responsibility, but both he and Fall insist he did everything right. Clarkesworld hired a sensitivity reader. The story spent far longer in the editing process than most other stories published in the magazine. And so on.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QznXjj">
What happened in the wake of “Attack Helicopter” being pulled is that Isabel Fall stopped being someone who acts and became someone who is acted upon. The prevailing narratives about the story erased her agency almost entirely. Fall wanted the story to be titled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” and when she eventually retitled it “Helicopter Story” as a vague gesture of goodwill, many people assumed she had been pressured into doing so. Fall wanted the story taken off the internet, and when it was, many assumed she had been “canceled.” Both narratives framed Fall as an unwitting puppet of forces beyond her control.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="csVd4p">
So what does Isabel Fall think? She takes great issue with the way cancel culture has been positioned within the larger culture, while also allowing that certain elements of what happened to her seem to fit within that framework.
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“The powerful want to say that we are entering a dangerous new era where ‘people disliking things en masse’ has coalesced into some kind of crowdsourced [weapon], firing on arbitrary targets from orbit and vaporizing their reputations,” she wrote to me in an email. “The use of mass social sanction gives the less powerful a weapon against the more powerful, so long as they can mobilize loudly and persistently. <em>This is not new. </em>Shame and laughter are vital tools for freedom.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UQ6SJa">
She cautions, however, that “like all weapons, it will do the most damage when aimed at the least defended, the isolated, those with no one to stand up for them, publicly or privately. And we must be careful with the temptation to use it inside our own houses to destroy shapes we think are intruders.”
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If anybody canceled Isabel Fall, it was Isabel Fall. She remains the subject of her own sentences.
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“The story was withdrawn to avoid my death,” she says. “It was not withdrawn as a concession that it was transphobic or secretly fascist or too problematic for publication. When people approve of its withdrawal they are approving, even if unwittingly, of the use of gender dysphoria to silence writers.”
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If Twitter makes it very easy for unimportant things to seem like important news, it also creates an environment where one of our deepest, most human impulses becomes almost calcified. When we hurt someone, we want, so badly, for everyone to see our good intentions and not our actions. It’s a natural human impulse. I do it. You do it. Everybody involved in this story did it, too, including Isabel Fall.
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But the structure of Twitter and the way it rewards a constant escalation of emotion makes it exceedingly difficult to just back down, to say, “I thought I was doing the right thing, but I hurt somebody very badly in the process.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jnczri">
Many of those who criticized “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” on the grounds that it was harmful operated with the absolute best of intentions. I have talked to many of them at great length. I believe them when they say that they earnestly thought the story was a false front for bad actors, because being trans on the internet turns your alarm sensors all the way up. (It’s not like the internet isn’t teeming with awful people hiding in plain sight. Why give anyone the benefit of the doubt?)
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I believe the story’s detractors were hurt by the title, or some of the content, or the very idea of the story. I believe they truly feel that trans stories should be only written by trans people and that Fall should have had to out herself before publishing. I believe they believe — still — that they did the right thing.
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They still destroyed a woman’s life.
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After she checked out of the hospital, Isabel Fall ceased to be Isabel Fall. “I had a few other stories in the works on similar themes, and I withdrew them; that is the most concrete thing I can say that I stopped doing,” Fall says. “More abstractly, more emotionally, I have stopped trying to believe I am a woman or to work towards womanness. If other people want to put markings on my gender-sphere and decide what I am, fine, let them. It’s not worth fighting.”
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Isabel Fall was on a path to living as an out trans woman with a career writing science fiction, and now, she says, there will be no more Isabel Fall stories. She is done writing under that name, and she now considers “Isabel Fall” an impossible goal to achieve, a person she will never be.
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“I don’t know what I meant to do as Isabel,” she says. “I know [that publishing “Attack Helicopter”] was an important test for myself, sort of a peer review of my own womannness. I think I tried to open a door and it was closed from the other side because I did not look the right shape to pass through it.”
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Trans people — trans women, especially — can find their first few steps as themselves in public particularly stressful. That stress is why it’s so often important for us to have safe ways to explore who we are, under whatever veil of anonymity we can concoct for ourselves. When we’re behind that veil, we can divorce ourselves from the identities we were assigned at birth, at least a little bit. To have that veil punctured is a great violence, and Isabel Fall had her veil punctured.
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Every day, the person who might have been Isabel Fall sees friends who tore down her story and speculated on her true motivations and identity go on with their lives. They are not stuck in the events of January 2020, like she is. These friends don’t know who she is. Probably. She doesn’t know how to talk to them about it, and to confront anyone about their role in the chaos would require outing herself. She says only one person has reached out to apologize, via Clarke.
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“It ends up with groups of people I thought of as friends all assuring each other they did nothing wrong … and I do not even know if they know it was me,” Fall says. “Or they make vague statements about how they are thinking of everyone harmed by the mess around the story, including the author, as if that mess were an inevitable result of publishing a flawed and problematic story: as if the solution was simply to employ even more<em> </em>sensitivity readers, sensitivity readers who agreed with them and could change the story into something they wanted to read.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AgrPQa">
So what’s the worst that might have happened if, somehow, the “Attack Helicopter” detractors were right and the story was a secret reactionary text?
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As far as I can tell, the worst that would have happened is that another piece of transphobic literature would have existed. To be clear, transphobic literature is worth protesting. I would rather have less of it. But there’s a large gap between speaking out against a work of art you find objectionable and trying desperately to sniff out an author’s true identity, with ever more horrific accusations.
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It is easy for me to say this with hindsight, of course. I know Isabel Fall just wanted to write a good story. I’ve seen earlier drafts of that story. I know how hard she worked to make it exactly what she wanted it to be. I suppose that simply by talking with Fall as much as I have, I have subtly put myself on “her side.” Maybe you shouldn’t trust my good intentions either.
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But in any internet maelstrom that gets held up as a microcosm of the Way We Live Today, one simple factor often gets washed away: These things happened to someone. And the asymmetrical nature of the harm done to that person is hard to grasp until you’ve been that person. A single critical tweet about the matter was not experienced by Isabel Fall as just one tweet. She experienced it as part of a tsunami that nearly took her life. And that tsunami might have been abated if people had simply asked themselves, “What’s the worst that could happen if I’m right? And what’s the worst that could happen if I’m wrong?”
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Everybody I talked to in the course of reporting this story said some variation on “I hope Isabel is okay.” And she is. Sort of. In the months I’ve spent emailing Isabel Fall, she’s revealed herself to be witty and thoughtful and sardonic and wounded and angry and maybe a little paranoid. But who wouldn’t be all of those things? Yet I’m emailing with a ghost who exists only in this one email chain. The person who might have been Isabel has given up on actually building a life and career as Isabel Fall. And that is a kind of death.
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“Isabel was somebody I often wanted to be, but not someone I succeeded at being,” she says. “I think the reaction to the story proves that I can’t be her, or shouldn’t be her, or at least won’t ever be her. Everyone knew I was a fraud, right away.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o3ydwA">
<a href="https://twitter.com/tvoti"><em><strong>Emily VanDerWerff</strong></em></a><em> is Vox’s critic at large. Read other essays by the author </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/3/18647615/coming-out-transgender-handmaids-tale-emily-todd-vanderwerff"><em><strong>here</strong></em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/2/12/21075683/trans-coming-out-cost-of-womanhood-pink-tax"><em><strong>here</strong></em></a><em>.</em>
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<li><strong>How big business exploits small business</strong> -
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<img alt="Stickers on a restaurant window for various delivery options. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6bqOQboOKc3i5KKVpEYXkhpu8Uo=/267x0:5131x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69523050/1254633442t.0.jpg"/>
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Uber Eats and Postmates stickers side by side on a restaurant window in 2020. Uber Eats has since acquired Postmates further solidifying its position in the restaurant delivery space. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Companies like Facebook and Uber say they’re supporting small businesses while squashing them.
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Major corporations really want you to know how much they care about small businesses — as long as those small businesses don’t compete with them or cause them too much trouble.
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During the pandemic, big companies were sure to draw attention to the ways they were supporting the little guy. Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business/news/our-continued-support-for-businesses-through-the-coronavirus-outbreak">highlighted</a> all sorts of ways it says it helps small business and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-restricting-facebook-ad-targeting-hurts-small-businesses-2020-7">warned that regulations for the social media giant</a> would actually come at a cost to the little guy. Uber, likewise, <a href="https://www.lisc.org/covid-19/small-business-assistance/small-business-relief-grants/uber/">emphasized its help</a> to restaurants. And now that the economy is rebounding, powerful business interests say they’re still looking out for the up-and-comers on issues such as wages, unemployment, and regulation, a common talking point being that <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/how-regulations-every-level-hold-back-small-business">any changes might put smaller operations at a competitive disadvantage</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWBcvs">
What can get lost in this is that small businesses already are at a competitive disadvantage, often because of the bigger players that purport to support them. Large corporations are happy to invoke small business when convenient, especially when it helps them keep power. It’s essentially reputational laundering. But what can be less obvious is that these same entities are constantly finding new ways to stunt small-business growth to keep new entrants and potential competitors at bay. They also create roadblocks and find ways to extract money and power from small businesses in order to maintain their positions and increase profits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="etYDEZ">
“They use their power as gatekeeper to reach customers as a way to extract fees and unfair terms on small businesses, yet they will still use and create PR and claim that any regulation of them would hurt small businesses because they are this platform that has enabled all these small businesses to exist,” said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly think tank, who focuses on Big Tech.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fdUziE">
Anyone who wants to pay to reach customers online is at the mercy of Facebook and Google, which <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/texas-accuses-google-facebook-illegal-conspiracy/">essentially are a cartel</a> that controls the internet ad market. <a href="https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/food-delivery-services-grubhub-uber-eats-doordash-postmates/">Just four companies</a> — Uber Eats, GrubHub, Postmates, and DoorDash — control the majority of the restaurant food delivery market; restaurants have little choice but to pay whatever fees and commissions they charge. Banks are constantly telling us how they love to work with up-and-comers and help get entrepreneurs on their feet. But as we saw with pandemic-related small-business loans, many were <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/21209584/paycheck-protection-program-banks-access">much more eager</a> to help out larger operations and businesses they already had relationships with.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8s-xHkpTm1EUGXstiOypVJNLbSk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22689678/GettyImages_1142552332t.jpg"/> <cite>Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Workers buy food from an Uber Eats truck in front of the New York Stock Exchange on May 10, 2019, in New York City.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q3SCC8">
Some companies have been able to go unchecked by the federal government for so long that, in many ways, they’re now monopolies that run pseudo-private governments of their own. They set their own rules and regulations for who gets to use their products and services and how; they set their own tolls and taxes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XuWLox">
The mantra isn’t so much “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc.#History">move fast and break things</a>.” It’s “grow as fast and as big as you can so that you can then act as a gatekeeper and make others bend to your will.” But do it with a smile, and pretend you’re being a pal.
</p>
<h3 id="N8Kke0">
Everybody loves to love small business. Which makes small business programs good marketing.
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lHrDT0">
America has a romanticized idea of small business that makes the concept very easy to latch onto, whatever your political stripes or financial status. Donald Trump called small business the “<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/president-trump-proclaims-small-business-week-april-29---may-5-300638605.html">heart of our nation</a>”; Joe Biden, a “<a href="https://joebiden.com/smallbusiness/">core part of the American community</a>.” It’s a part of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, entrepreneurial vision of the fleeting American dream. Consumers say they’d rather <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226176">pay more</a> to a small business than a big one. According to Gallup, Americans have <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">more institutional confidence</a> in small business than they do in the medical system, public schools, church, and even the military.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6x2cqN">
That’s part of what makes small business such a powerful political and economic tool, whatever the interests of the group that’s wielding it: Of course<em> </em>everybody wants the best for the local bookstore or pharmacy or deli. Saying you’re helping small business or entrepreneurs is just good marketing, whether you’re <a href="https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8532386/type/dlg/sid/vox/https://www.verizon.com/about/news/biggest-names-helping" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Verizon</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&amp;node=21429425011">Amazon</a> or <a href="https://news.airbnb.com/how-hosts-on-airbnb-help-support-small-businesses/">Airbnb</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/21320361/small-business-closing-covid-coronavirus-ppp-entrepreneur-economy-stimulus-loans">the federal government</a>. There’s a reason you don’t know <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/25/21147280/illusion-of-choice-monopolies-brands-sarah-miller">a ton of consumer brands are owned by the same handful of corporations</a> — you might feel differently about them if you did. Even when you think you’re shopping from a small operation, you might not be: Ben &amp; Jerry’s is owned by Unilever (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/business/how-ben-jerrys-social-mission-survived-being-gobbled-up.html">though Ben and Jerry say they still run the place</a>).
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="g2gieD">
<q>America has a romanticized idea of small business that makes the concept very easy to latch onto, whatever your political stripes or financial status</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pZUgQV">
Business interests consistently fight against new rules and regulations and insist that even a whiff of new paperwork will make business owners’ lives a living hell. When the Business Roundtable, which is composed of the CEOs of the biggest companies in America, <a href="https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/540252-top-ceo-group-calls-on-minimum-wage-increase-to-be-excluded-from-covid-19?rl=1">came out in opposition</a> to a $15 federal minimum wage hike, it said it was in part standing up for small businesses (which are not among its members). The <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/10/2/16370014/us-chamber-commerce-explainer">US Chamber of Commerce</a> is one of the loudest voices calling for <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/6/3/22465160/states-ending-unemployment-labor-shortage-texas">expanded unemployment insurance to be cut off early</a>, saying the extra benefits keep small businesses from being able to hire. The argument against limiting payday lending? <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/299347-new-cfpb-rules-will-destroy-small-businesses-and-harm">It hurts small business</a>. The same for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/14/has-dodd-frank-eliminated-the-dangers-in-the-banking-system/dodd-frank-is-hurting-community-banks">regulating banks</a> and enacting <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/series/long-arm-the-epa/how-epa-smothering-5-small-businesses">environmental protections</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B5zVIi">
The typical case lobbyists and corporations make is that more rules or bureaucracy will wind up disproportionately hurting places with smaller staffs and budgets. They won’t be able to navigate the system as easily as larger corporations with huge budgets and teams of lawyers and accountants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YP4Fc7">
Hubbard said there’s a truth to that — sometimes, the bureaucratic obstacles are harder to get over for a five-person company compared to a 5,000-person one. And small businesses often <a href="https://www.nfib.com/content/analysis/economy/nfib-opposes-dramatic-minimum-wage-hike/#:~:text=NFIB%20strongly%20opposes%20new%20federal,Street%20and%20its%20job%20opportunities.">speak up for themselves</a>. But that’s not all that’s happening, especially when it’s the big players talking. “It’s also a talking point used to fight legislation that aims to level the playing field,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U3uxer">
She pointed to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17199754/what-is-gdpr-europe-data-privacy-facebook">the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR</a>, a European digital privacy law that went into effect in 2018, which attempts to put all sorts of limits around data collection, access, and transparency. Industry lobbyists have framed the law as overly burdensome, and big companies have <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-data-protection-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-facebook-google/">found ways around it</a> or just given up on complying with it altogether. “If companies actually did comply with the GDPR, it would create much more opportunity for smaller companies, because the source of their dominance is their data acquisition and their data surveillance network that nobody else has,” she said. “To the extent you get at their extensive and ubiquitous surveillance practices, you’re also getting at their monopoly power.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xqXiVR">
To put it plainly, Facebook’s core issue with data privacy laws isn’t that it’s going to hurt whatever business is paying it to target ads. Its core issue is that it won’t be able to collect that data to sell ads to those businesses.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Eg9mT">
In a statement to Vox, a Facebook spokesperson said the company “levels the playing field by empowering businesses with the same tools, training, and opportunities that large businesses have” and noted that it has put over $100 million in grants toward small businesses during the pandemic. The company pointed to a <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/lets-talk-about-why-personalized-ads-matter/">blog post</a> about why personalized ads matter to small business to help them reach target and potential customers and said that most businesses use its products for free.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Vw0Iz6">
Despite America’s purported love for small business, the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/driving_decline_firm_formation_rate_hathaway_litan.pdf">rate of business formation has slowed</a> in recent decades in many places, and <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/01/startup-firms.html">fewer startup jobs have been created</a>. According to an <a href="https://www.investmentbank.barclays.com/content/dam/barclaysmicrosites/ibpublic/documents/our-insights/MarketPower/Barclays-ImpactSeries5-MarketPower_final_2.4MB.pdf">analysis from Barclays</a>, market concentration has increased in three-quarters of nonfinancial sectors since 2000 and is up by about 60 percent.<strong> </strong>The pandemic <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/in-2020-big-businesses-got-bigger-small-businesses-died-2020-12">killed off many small enterprises</a> that just couldn’t stay afloat during the shutdowns, though new entrepreneurial ventures <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/pandemic-entrepreneurs.html">have begun to pop up as well</a>.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="nWyMis">
<q>“If you’re a growth-oriented business right now, the pathway seems to be that you either become a monopoly or you get acquired by one”</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R8ZaB6">
There are a <a href="https://www.inc.com/magazine/201505/leigh-buchanan/the-vanishing-startups-in-decline.html#:~:text=Established%20businesses%20have%20always%20held,startup%20rate%2C%E2%80%9D%20says%20Litan.">host of reasons</a> that could contribute to fewer new business startups, from investment trends to cultural changes to student debt. Running a company is hard, and it’s easy to fail. About <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588&amp;xs=1&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lendingtree.com%2Fbusiness%2Fsmall%2Ffailure-rate%2F%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DAccording%2520to%2520data%2520from%2520the%2Cfailure%2520rates%2520are%2520fairly%2520consistent.&amp;referrer=vox.com&amp;sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fthe-goods%2F22550608%2Fhow-big-business-exploits-small-business" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">one in five small businesses</a> in the US fail in the first year, and half fail within five. But part of the issue is also corporate concentration and consolidation; the bigger players make it harder and harder for smaller operations to stick around.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aveJXG">
“If you’re a growth-oriented business right now, the pathway seems to be that you either become a monopoly or you get acquired by one,” said Nidhi Hegde, director of strategy and programs at the American Economic Liberties Project.
</p>
<h3 id="zP2vSG">
Big corporations become gatekeepers and set their own rules of the road
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ldlNyX">
Some consolidation within industries is a <a href="https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve">natural part of maturing</a>, but the process has sped up in recent years. An increasing number of industries — from airlines to beer to hospitals — are controlled by just a handful of players. We often focus on what this means for consumers, and antitrust law generally looks at what consolidation or monopolization means for prices. But what sometimes gets lost in the conversation is what it means for the other companies trying to get a foot in the door or survive.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LL6lqW3e2UulrFjdM_WOPCdFheo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22689700/GettyImages_1210300395t.jpg"/> <cite>Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A woman walks by the closed storefront in Dupont Circle, a neighborhood in Northwest Washington DC on Friday, April 17, 2020.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fAroSL">
“All entrepreneurs and businesses should have access to markets to launch and grow new businesses, but today — and the way markets are structured — dominant corporations are a major barrier,” Hegde said. “And that is one of the reasons we’re seeing entrepreneurship and small business growth declining.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xjVec3">
Hegde is one of the people behind <a href="https://accesstomarkets.org/">Access to Markets</a>, a new initiative out of Economic Liberties that seeks to examine the effects of what they call the “rise of private gatekeepers.” They outlined the tactics used to undermine small businesses and keep away competitors in a recent <a href="https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/access-to-markets-the-other-red-tape-market-concentration-and-the-rise-of-private-gatekeepers/">report</a>. “It’s not just the big corporations and Big Tech. We see this across the economy,” Hegde said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aesUxR">
To be sure, companies trying to protect their positions is not new — famed investor Warren Buffett has long talked about the importance of firms creating an “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicmoat.asp#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways-,An%20economic%20moat%20is%20a%20distinct%20advantage%20a%20company%20has,against%20competition%20from%20other%20firms.">economic moat</a>” around themselves as a way to stave off competition. But many of the tricks and strategies companies employ to get there are quite ugly and unfair and really tip the playing field.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FnUY8Q">
Take the example of copycatting, which is exactly what it sounds like: A dominant company sees something a rival is doing and copies it. Amazon has repeatedly been accused of this practice, including by the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, which last year <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-uses-seller-data-copy-products-alleges-house-antitrust-report-2020-10">said it had evidence that the e-commerce giant</a> was using data from third-party sellers to identify popular items, copy them, and then offer its own versions. (Amazon has denied this practice.) After Facebook <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/11/13/facebook-wouldve-bought-snapchat-for-3-billion-in-cash-heres-why/">tried and failed</a> to buy Snapchat, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-times-facebook-copied-snapchat-2017-5">it just started to copy it instead</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vw0pMR">
Apple has come under heavy scrutiny over its practices with its App Store, the bridge between software developers and iPhone users, over which it has strict control. Any app that wants to be offered on an Apple device has to comply with whatever rules Apple sets, including using its payment system. The company is currently <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22412725/apple-fortnite-epic-antitrust-court-case">locked in a battle with Epic Games</a>, the maker of Fortnite, over its practices.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="32ZlVo">
Last year, Epic <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/13/21366340/fortnite-epic-apple-app-store-ios-antitrust">tried to sell virtual currency</a> on its game without going through Apple, which requires developers to share up to 30 percent of sales. Apple responded by kicking it out of the store, and Epic sued. Apple’s App Store <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/technology/apple-antitrust-eu-app-store.html">practices have also garnered</a> antitrust scrutiny in Europe, where regulators are looking specifically at how it makes other music platforms, such as Spotify, use its payment system and therefore give Apple a cut of subscription fees. Apple <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/998910662/tim-cook-defends-apples-app-store-rules-calls-maker-of-fortnite-malicious">has pushed back against suggestions</a> that it’s out of line with its App Store and says what it charges is just the industry standard.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hzoXtu">
The Apple saga exemplifies the way many dominant players have been able to establish themselves as middlemen, and all of the advantages that can entail for them. In Apple’s case, it has been able to basically enact a tax on app makers if they want to access its millions of iPhone and iPad users. It can argue it’s giving developers and creators opportunities — but those opportunities are coming at a cost.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mWzM2t">
We see this in myriad places. Delivery apps enact high fees on restaurants that use their services — last year, a post went viral from a Chicago food truck owner showing how GrubHub cut into hundreds of dollars in orders. But because so many consumers order through apps, restaurants that want to reach them aren’t really left with a choice but to comply with the terms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m3cRpq">
A GrubHub spokesperson said in an email that the company supports restaurants so they can be “more successful” and offers a “range of options for restaurants to build and maintain their own loyal base of diners” through various channels. The company added that the GrubHub receipt pictured below, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pizza-trucks-grubhub-earnings-statement-causes-twitter-outrage-2020-5">which went viral last year</a>, is an “extreme outlier” because the restaurant offered too many promotions.
</p>
<div id="2PvQgd">
<div class="iframely-embed">
<div class="iframely-responsive" style="padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/goodgiuseppe/posts/2990762630989325"></a>
</div>
</div></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XXVqif">
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-surpasses-10-of-u-s-digital-ad-market-share-11617703200">Google and Facebook</a> (and increasingly Amazon)<strong> </strong>control so much of the ad market that small businesses looking to reach customers online don’t have many good options of other places to go. They’re subject to the whims of algorithms, and if the algorithm turns against them and suddenly their reach falls, then they are compelled to buy more ads. The middleman position in an increasing number of cases is a monopolistic one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EhYjAm">
“Then they use this as an idea that we help small businesses, so anything you do to curb our monopoly power will harm small businesses, which is just not true,” Hubbard, who recently published <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Monopolies-Suck/Sally-Hubbard/9781982149703"><em>Monopolies Suck</em></a>, said. “The more options for middlemen these companies have, the better bargaining power they can have with these middlemen.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CxpR09JLGIO2GApfCydMKZAft8A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22689741/GettyImages_929403726t.jpg"/> <cite>Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A view of a Google advertisement in Time Square, New York City on March 7, 2018.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PxPn8s">
Agricultural monopolies <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/big-ag-monopolies-have-stifled-small-farmers-2020-democrats-want-to-break-them-up">have crowded out</a> small farmers, with the agricultural giant Monsanto going so far as to sue smaller operations to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/monsanto-has-been-suing-small-famers-to-protect-its-seed-patents-2013-2">protect patent rights</a> on its seeds. Gore-Tex, which makes breathable fabric, has repeatedly been accused of using unfair business practices, including <a href="https://www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/brands/ftc-closes-gore-tex-investigation-eu-commission-inquiry-continues/">refusing to work with</a> companies that also worked with competing fabric technologies. Live Nation Entertainment, which was created when Live Nation and TicketMaster merged more than a decade ago, has a stranglehold over basically the entire live music industry. Venues and artists have little option but to comply with whatever guidelines it sets.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5tGdrg">
To be sure, the romanticized vision of small business can conceal the fact that smaller is not always better. A small-business boss does not always mean a good business boss, and indeed, small businesses are the ones complaining loudest about higher wages and unemployment. Big companies <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/learning-to-love-big-business/554096/">aren’t always the villains they’re made out to be</a> — they have big budgets that can allow them to really invest in research and development and innovate, and the jobs they create can be a lot more stable than jobs at startups with high rates of failure. The problem isn’t that big corporations exist; it’s that they are often keeping everyone else down.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oMBiRW">
“These companies are the ones deciding who are the winners and losers in these marketplaces, so you’re not really seeing the best ideas and products and services because they are determining that for you,” Hegde said.
</p>
<h3 id="isJ5UR">
Want to support small business? Call your senator.
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AArOij">
It’s good to support your local businesses. If you can call the restaurant instead of ordering through GrubHub, try it. If you can buy from your local bookstore instead of ordering from Amazon online, sure. But there’s only so much individual consumers can do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oLp3Jh">
Unraveling the way dominant corporations use their power, often in order to stunt competition and small business, is much more a question of policy and enforcement question than of individual decision.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="biY27i">
<q>The problem isn’t that big corporations exist; it’s that they are often keeping everyone else down</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gE4gJv">
Anti-monopoly experts and advocates argue that much of the issue is just enforcing the laws that are on the books. Antitrust enforcement has become quite lax since the 1980s, and it’s hard not to wonder whether many mergers should have been allowed to go through. (Though that’s not just a matter of the FTC or Justice Department but also a question of the courts.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GSWnSf">
“There’s a whole suite of things that can be done, and I think one good place to start is reinvigorating our antitrust laws. We have laws against unfair methods of competition and monopolization, and they have not been enforced. We need to enforce them,” Hegde said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wPNOYD">
There’s no single solution, but as attention grows on just how big some businesses are getting, there are multiple efforts underway for lawmakers and regulators to at least try to try.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p5ayc2">
Lina Khan, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/15/22398320/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-chair-big-tech-antitrust-competition-law-amazon">new chair of the FTC</a>, is a longtime Big Tech critic, and her appointment is a signal that tougher enforcement may be on the way. House lawmakers also <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22529779/antitrust-bills-house-big-tech">just introduced a set of bills</a> aimed at curbing technology companies’ power. Antitrust probes are underway at the state and federal level against some tech giants. In New York, legislation <a href="https://legiscan.com/NY/sponsors/S00933/2021">has been introduced</a> in the state legislature that aims to put in place an “abuse of dominance” standard to examine business practices. It’s <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/1392073/ny-senate-advances-antitrust-reform-bill">passed the state Senate</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cvmZDn">
“It’s not just antitrust, it’s not just breaking them up, but it’s rules like nondiscrimination and neutrality rules,” Hubbard said. Basically, whatever the size of Amazon, it shouldn’t be able to copy someone’s products and then put that copy at the top of the search results list.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0ckh0w">
Big versus small is a persistent dynamic in the American economy. And, again, while big isn’t always bad and small isn’t always good, it’s important to look under the hood once in a while to see what’s actually going on. It’s lovely of Facebook to help small businesses get set up online during the pandemic, but Facebook is doing it to make money, not out of kindness. And if one of those small businesses starts to pose a threat, the tech giant will squash it like a bug.
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</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>New York City releases preliminary ranked choice vote count — and then pulls it</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ti2RFDqWyqPpXjcHzdqWGB05drg=/468x0:4215x2810/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69521227/GettyImages_1233587271.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
New York City mayoral candidates Kathryn Garcia, right, and Andrew Yang attend a campaign event on the eve of the city’s primary election on June 21 in Queens. | Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
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</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The board of elections accidentally included about 135,000 “test” ballots in their tally.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KWooGf">
New York City’s great experiment with <a href="https://www.vox.com/22443775/ranked-choice-voting-explained-new-york-strategy">ranked-choice voting</a> continued Tuesday as the city’s board of elections reallocated ballots from <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/6/22/22544407/nyc-mayor-yang-adams-garcia-ranked-choice">last week’s Democratic mayoral primary</a> for the first time — and screwed up the count so badly they had to take it down and apologize hours later.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I6PTlc">
In a statement, the <a href="https://twitter.com/BOENYC/status/1410061665471811591">board explained</a> that in addition to more than 700,000 real ballots, they had accidentally included about 135,000 “test” ballots in the count that weren’t from actual voters. And obviously that would… throw things off a bit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AEA0Iw">
This was never supposed to be the final count, since over 100,000 absentee ballots weren’t included in this preliminary tally. But it was supposed to give the first real glimpse into what reallocation could end up looking like, and the impact ranked-choice voting has had on the race.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wHgWcq">
The real, though incomplete, first-round results tallied on election night showed Eric Adams in first place, Maya Wiley in second, Kathryn Garcia in third, and Andrew Yang in fourth. But in a ranked choice count, what happens next is reallocation. The lowest-ranking candidates are eliminated, one by one. Then, ballots for eliminated candidates are reallocated to whoever those voters ranked next, if anyone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MSOHCe">
The incorrect preliminary tally released by the board showed things getting surprisingly close after reallocation. But since they included so many bogus ballots in their count, it can’t be relied on. So we’re still basically in the dark about where things are.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oZ1jbK">
The whole situation is an embarrassment for the city’s board of elections, which has long had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-election-board.html">a reputation for incompetence</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ddGNyp">
<em>This story originally analyzed the incorrect tally released by New York City’s board of elections. References to that tally have been removed.</em>
</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>ICC set to award standard points for each match won during second World Test Championship cycle</strong> - Instead of each series being worth the same number of points, 120, irrespective of whether the series is played over two Tests or five Tests, the next cycle will see each match being worth the same number of points - a maximum of 12 per match</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BCCI to recommend Mithali, Ashwin for Khel Ratna</strong> - For the Arjuna Award, the Board will send the names of senior batsman Shikhar Dhawan, who was ignored last year, KL Rahul and pacer Jasprit Bumrah</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>Srihari Natraj qualifies for Tokyo Olympics after FINA approves QT</strong> - The Tokyo Olympics will mark the first time when two Indian swimmers will take part in the Summer Games after achieving a direct qualification.</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>U.K. Athletics looking into athlete comments about ‘faked’ COVID test</strong> - In a now-deleted episode of The Sunday Plodcast, Butchart said there was a delay in getting his PCR test result before his flight and he had changed the date on an old test as he prepared for check-in, The Times reported.</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>Rohan Bopanna, Divij Sharan miss cut for men’s doubles event at Tokyo Games</strong> - It was expected that with a low combined ranking of 113, Bopanna (38) and left-handed Sharan’s (75) entry would depend only on large scale withdrawals</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>COVID-19: Centre stresses on graded lifting of curbs, continued focus on containment</strong> - Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan shared a list of targeted actions that need to be implemented by the States and Union Territories</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>Raksha Ramaiah to head Youth Congress in Karnataka till December-end</strong> - After that, he will make way for Mohammed Haris Nalapad</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>IRCTC announces six-day air package tour to Kashmir</strong> - The Indian Railway Tourism and Catering Corporation (IRCTC) has announced six-day air package tour to Kashmir entitled ‘Kashmir – Heaven on Earth’, fr</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>Delimitation Commission to visit J&amp;K from July 6 to meet politicians, officials</strong> - We expect stakeholders will cooperate and provide valuable suggestions to complete task in time, it says</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>Coronavirus | Odisha begins unlocking 20 out of 30 districts</strong> - Extended partial lockdown in the remaining 10 districts continues till July 16</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>HMS Defender: Russia’s Putin accuses UK and US of military provocation</strong> - Russia’s president says last week’s naval incident off Crimea was co-ordinated to assess Moscow’s response.</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>Paris threatens e-scooter ban after woman’s death</strong> - Electric scooter providers in the French capital could lose licences if safety issues are not tackled.</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>Settled status: EU citizens urged to apply to stay in UK now or lose rights</strong> - Labour is calling for the deadline to be extended amid fears that thousands could lose UK residency.</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>Spanish school students stuck in hotel quarantine in Majorca</strong> - An outbreak linked to end-of-year trips to Majorca prompts authorities to isolate the teenagers.</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>German press mourn ‘bitter’ end to Euros campaign</strong> - German newspapers see defeat to England as the end of an era for the national team.</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>Hackers exploited 0-day, not 2018 bug, to mass-wipe My Book Live devices [Updated]</strong> - Western Digital removed code that would have prevented the wiping of petabytes of data. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1776939">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Quantum-computing startup Rigetti to offer modular processors</strong> - Rigetti will build its machines from smaller parts instead of a monolithic chip. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1777136">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Lexus LS500 is beautifully crafted, but some tech shows its age</strong> - Lexus shook up the luxury car world in 1989, but how does it stack up in 2021? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1777110">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Netflix once again introduces new features for Android, but not iOS (yet)</strong> - It’s not the first time Netflix changes hit Android first, iOS later. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1777051">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Microsoft digitally signs malicious rootkit driver</strong> - Company still hasn’t revealed the cause of this serious security lapse. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1777105">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Johnny caught his dad masturbating</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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“What are you doing Dad?” - asked Johnny
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His Dad smiled: “Don’t worry son, you’ll do the same thing soon!”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“But why?” - asked Johnny
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“Because my hands are getting tired.” - said Dad
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<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ThePhoenix0404"> /u/ThePhoenix0404 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oauh5c/johnny_caught_his_dad_masturbating/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oauh5c/johnny_caught_his_dad_masturbating/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>Why are there pyramids in Egypt?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
They were too heavy to steal and put in a British museum.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Mahote"> /u/Mahote </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oas6zh/why_are_there_pyramids_in_egypt/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oas6zh/why_are_there_pyramids_in_egypt/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>I took my 8-year old girl to the office with me on, “Take Your Kid to Work Day.” As we were walking around the office, she starting crying and getting very cranky, so I asked what was wrong with her. As my coworkers gathered round, she sobbed loudly…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Daddy, where are all the clowns that you said that you worked with?!”
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</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/808gecko808"> /u/808gecko808 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oaufft/i_took_my_8year_old_girl_to_the_office_with_me_on/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oaufft/i_took_my_8year_old_girl_to_the_office_with_me_on/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>How can you tell if a Redditor isn’t a native English speaker?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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They’ll inform you after three paragraphs of professional English.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/InsertANameHeree"> /u/InsertANameHeree </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oab9dt/how_can_you_tell_if_a_redditor_isnt_a_native/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oab9dt/how_can_you_tell_if_a_redditor_isnt_a_native/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>KFC has asked scientists to edit the chicken genome.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
They want something CRISPR.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/PallakGrewal"> /u/PallakGrewal </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oaojth/kfc_has_asked_scientists_to_edit_the_chicken/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/oaojth/kfc_has_asked_scientists_to_edit_the_chicken/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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