Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Clarence Thomas - For decades, Thomas has had a deeply pessimistic view of the country, rooted in his reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the Supreme Court’s recent opinions, his dystopia is becoming our reality. - link

• How Shinzo Abe Sought to Rewrite Japanese History - Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister wanted a more assertive place for his country on the international stage—at the expense of atonement and historical accountability. - link

• How Boris Johnson’s Government Finally Collapsed - In twenty-four hours, more than three dozen ministers and aides deserted the Prime Minister. On July 7th, he announced his plan to resign. - link

• What Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next? - The Justice was once an outlier for his “outre” legal views. Now, Jeannie Suk Gersen says, he is the heart of a conservative bloc that is only getting started. - link

• Nick Kyrgios Does What He Wants. At Wimbledon, It Wasn’t Enough - The Australian tennis star played well, but still lost to Novak Djokovic in the final. Does he care? - link

From Vox

• The Trump presidency was a reality show. The January 6 hearings are the reunion special. -

  

  Testimony that Trump hurled a plate at a wall and stained it with ketchup stuck with viewers of the hearings for good reason.

  Remember when then-President Donald Trump hurled a plate at a White House wall, spattering it with ketchup? You didn’t see that moment. You didn’t even know about it when it happened. But when Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, told that story before the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, odds are pretty good you could picture it.

  The ketchup wall was just one of many damning details in Hutchinson’s testimony, delivered on June 28. She also testified that Trump seemed intent on allowing heavily armed people to march on the Capitol, that he reportedly attempted to seize control of a vehicle from a Secret Service agent who wouldn’t drive him up to the Capitol, and that he was obsessed with the size of the crowd listening to his speech on that day. (With Trump, some things never change.)

  Those were all big, shattering revelations. But in the moment, as Hutchinson was testifying, what seemed to garner the greatest buzz on social media platforms was the ketchup. It was so ridiculous, so overly dramatic, so campy. Even though Hutchinson says it really happened, it nevertheless had big reality TV vibes, a sense that what was real had been turned up a couple of notches. And that was what made the moment stand out.

  Sources close to Jared and Ivanka say that privately the couple opposed Donald Trump’s decision to throw ketchup at the wall.

  — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) June 28, 2022

Reality television made Trump, both literally (he built considerable fame atop The Apprentice) and figuratively (he seemed to subconsciously fashion himself as a reality TV character on the campaign trail). And even though Trump is no longer in office, reality TV remains a compelling way to understand him and his administration. With the hearings set to resume this week, the “narrative” surrounding them — at least among casual observers — increasingly has the feel of people discussing a reality show around the water cooler, too.

Now that his presidency is over, the January 6 hearings stand as a kind of last-minute reunion special, one where the former star has removed himself from the proceedings by refusing to testify. No less a former Trump luminary than former chief of staff Steve Bannon is set to testify this week.

Since Trump won’t be testifying, he misses a chance to set the narrative and define its “characters” going forward. He has lost control of the story, as it were. As such, we’re left with the stories we didn’t hear about in all those years of the Trump White House. And in the midst of that vacuum, of course we’re picking on the most ridiculous details.

Donald Trump has always been our reality-show president. These hearings prove he still is, even without his usual tricks.

Matthew Imaging/Getty Images

In the summer of 2015, as Trump began his rise to the top of the Republican presidential primary polls, many political observers wrote him off as a flash in the pan. But his TV presence was fascinating.

In the early Republican primary debates, he kept finding ways to make himself the story and to pull the camera’s focus back to him. His many years on the reality show The Apprentice had served him incredibly well. Trump had so internalized how to be on television that none of his opponents seemed to be anywhere near as comfortable. Being good on TV isn’t the primary skill that wins presidential races, but it helps considerably. And Trump was really good on TV. “The contents of Trump’s message are loathsome to many, including many Republicans, but the package Trump is selling them in is market-tested and ready to ship,” I wrote at the time.

The idea of understanding Trump as a scheming reality show contestant, willing to do whatever it took to win, only grew as he won the Republican nomination and the presidency. He quite willingly took on the role of “reality show villain,” which wasn’t really a negative. In reality TV, the “villain” is just the person who drives the story forward through their scheming, whom the cameras are always pinned to, who does and says the most outrageous things to garner attention. The archetypal example is likely Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor, who won the whole game by being as unscrupulous as possible. Whether Trump thought of himself this way is impossible to know, but he quite obviously understood what made good television.

“Donald Trump is starring in a TV show where he is the protagonist” turned out to be an incredibly useful way to understand Trump’s rise to power. (The New York Times’s James Poniewozik wrote an entire book about it.) It didn’t help blunt the occasionally catastrophic effects of his policies, but it did explain why he seemed so comfortable with complete and utter chaos. Indeed, he seemed most at home amid it.

Trump seemed comfortable playing a reality show villain, the guy whose behavior was so unbelievable that you had to keep tuning in to see what he did next. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and disrupted every aspect of American life, Trump’s desire to be at the center of his own TV show ran aground — but it wasn’t as though he lost the 2020 election in a blowout either. To plenty of people, the Trump show was one they wanted to keep watching.

The Trump who attempted to subvert the election on January 6 — especially the Trump portrayed in the testimony at the select committee hearings — is essentially a man who believed himself to be a TV protagonist who was so intent on remaining the protagonist (or, okay, the president) that he nearly destroyed American democracy in the process of asserting that fact. His efforts ultimately failed, but the reminder of just how self-aggrandizing and destructive Trump could be may be why Hutchinson’s testimony seemed to strike such a nerve.

The January 6 hearings are finally exposing Trump’s reality TV villain persona for the sham it’s always been

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

There are few formats more poorly suited to riveting television than congressional hearings. The January 6 committee has lots of compelling visual evidence, including some truly gut-wrenching videos, but the core of the hearings are individual testimonies. And just watching someone talk makes for really boring television.

As such, almost every time there are congressional hearings for anything, those inclined to believe those hearings should move the public opinion needle fret endlessly about whether they have “broken through.” If hearings are so boring on TV, why would anyone watch these hearings if they were not already inclined to agree with the idea that Trump’s actions require investigation? And if nobody watches them, will they matter?

A similar dynamic even struck the Watergate hearings, probably the most famous televised congressional hearings of all time. When looking back at reporting from the period, it’s not hard to find folks fretting over whether anyone really cares that Nixon did something bad. Eventually, enough people did, both within Washington and without, that Nixon stepped down. But it took longer than you’d expect. The gap between the beginning of those hearings and Richard Nixon’s resignation was well over a year, and even in terms of his approval rating, it took several months to reach a true nadir.

The temptation, then, is to say that the hearing where Hutchinson testified was only the sixth hearing of this particular committee, and therefore, there’s plenty of time for the hearings to reach a wider audience. But those typical congressional hearing dynamics are all scrambled in the face of Trump. He’s been playing the part of reality TV villain so long that if you’re someone who just wanted him voted off the show back when he was being a garden variety asshole in Republican primary debates and not, you know, possibly committing treason, then the last several years have built an ever more frustrated sense of urgency. Something — the Mueller report, the first impeachment, the second impeachment — has to take down Trump. And yet nothing has. If you’re that person, then Trump’s ability to never face accountability seems increasingly galling. Ah. Well. Nevertheless.

Yet perversely, I think that’s why “Trump threw a plate at a wall” broke through in a way some of the other January 6 committee revelations have not. Hutchinson’s story, dryly delivered though it was, played into a different type of reality TV villain — not the calculating mastermind willing to do anything to win but the unhinged person who makes everybody’s life hell. (Imagine the table flip moment from Real Housewives of New Jersey and I think you’ll see what I mean.)

This less-controlled reality TV villain can be very fun to watch on TV, but you’d rarely want them in your corner. They are, instead, cautionary tales of what happens when “I’m not here to make friends” boils over into something so antisocial that it burns up on reentering the atmosphere. You definitely wouldn’t want to hang out with this person.

Occasionally, that sort of villain simply removes themselves from the narrative altogether. Perhaps the most famous example of this happening in reality television occurred when Lisa Vanderpump abruptly stepped away from Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the show that made her a TV star, midway through filming its ninth season. (Her employee-centric spinoff, Vanderpump Rules, continues to run.) Her reasons for doing so were varied, but at base, they boiled down to (and I paraphrase) “everybody is persecuting me.” Her castmates were insufficiently nice to her. The editors weren’t making her look good. And so on.

If that sounds at all like the former president’s obsession with how he’s perceived, well, the former president was also a reality TV star. And reality TV is a uniquely deceptive beast because if you’re on it, the process of getting “a good edit” makes it sometimes seem as though you’re literally in control of reality, especially if you’ve got a lot of power over the creative direction of the show, as Trump did over The Apprentice. (There’s one more comparison point to be drawn here: Like Trump, Vanderpump didn’t fare particularly well on the Real Housewives reunion she skipped.)

When watching Hutchinson’s testimony in front of the January 6 committee, I couldn’t help but fantasize about the ways that the things she was saying might have been intercut with the footage of those things happening were this an actual reality TV reunion special, the live audience oohing and aahing at all the big moments from the season prior. I’ve been reading the Trump presidency through a reality TV lens for so long that I can’t stop, even when the events being described are horrifying and sobering.

I say none of this to downplay the seriousness of the charges Hutchinson made against Trump but, rather, to suggest why the January 6 hearings might finally be puncturing the televisual archetype that made Trump such a formidable political force. I am under no illusions that anything will happen to make Trump suffer actual consequences for what he did, but I do think the hearings have finally exposed him for who he is, just a little bit. He’s not a scheming Survivor. He’s a snippy, back-biting Real President of DC.

• The true physical and mental costs of pregnancy -

  

  Why being forced to carry a pregnancy to term is invasive and traumatic.

  Popular culture tends to focus on a few elements of pregnancy: morning sickness, the growing baby bump, and, of course, mood swings. But that ignores more dangerous, less well-known conditions associated with pregnancy. Up to 10 percent of pregnant US women are diagnosed with gestational diabetes and uncontrolled high blood sugar; untreated, this can result in a difficult delivery, and risks developing into type 2 diabetes years later. Meanwhile, 2-8 percent of women worldwide have symptoms of preeclampsia, a condition involving high blood pressure that can lead to fatal seizures if untreated, can damage the mother’s organs, and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life for the baby.

  But even a supposedly normal, healthy pregnancy with no complications can lead to a lot more than just morning nausea. And the ordeal isn’t over when the baby is born; pregnancy changes one’s body permanently, and labor is often traumatic. If it weren’t taken for granted as a natural part of life, pregnancy could easily be considered a chronic illness or disability. Women with pregnancy-related impairments are legally a protected class under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

  One way to quantify the full physical and psychological costs of pregnancy is to look at the compensation rates for surrogates, who carry a pregnancy on behalf of prospective parents who, often due to infertility or health conditions that make pregnancy unsafe, are unable to have children themselves. The bar to become a surrogate is high: Most agencies require that a potential surrogate have a child of their own who they are raising. As well as passing an extensive health screening by the agency and being at low risk of complications, these women are likely selected for having had relatively tolerable past pregnancies, such that they consider the compensation worth it, despite the risks.

  Yet the base compensation for surrogates generally starts at $30,000 or more, depending on the local state laws. (Medical expenses are paid in full by the parents of the child.) In California, experienced surrogates can earn as much as $75,000. This is before any additional payments to cover housekeeping, lost wages during the pregnancy or due to complications afterward, or other possible costs. Given the high cost of medical care in the US, the effective salary for going through the risk and inconvenience of a pregnancy is much higher.

  This puts a new light on the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade after almost 50 years, and particularly on Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s argument in the courtroom in December that the availability of adoption means that heavy restrictions on abortion access won’t necessarily affect women’s lives and futures. But even if “safe haven” laws mean that a person can surrender a child at birth and move on, the ability to relinquish a child for adoption does nothing to reduce the burden of pregnancy, nor does it ease the recovery afterward or lessen the resulting changes to a pregnant person’s body.

  The challenges of pregnancy may be more than worth it for hopeful mothers who take home an infant, and acceptable for surrogates who know exactly what they signed up for. However, the Dobbs decision will inevitably mean that many people will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, enduring all the hardships and potentially facing long-term medical consequences, but without having chosen that path, and without any reward or financial compensation.

  So what does a supposedly normal, healthy pregnancy look like?

  The internet provides a wealth of advice for pregnant people on what to expect when they’re expecting — and the list is long. Most physical symptoms are caused by either the wildly shifting hormones of pregnancy or the physical growth and pressure of the fetus and uterus.

  From the first trimester, in addition to nausea — which isn’t necessarily just in the morning — most pregnant people will feel unusually exhausted. The fatigue can be seriously disabling. “People say, ‘I can’t get out of bed, I can’t do my job,’” says Dr. Tamika Auguste, an OB-GYN in Washington, DC. Thanks to hormone swings, constipation is very common. “Sometimes women go from having a regular bowel movement daily to having one every three or four days, and so it’s very uncomfortable,” she adds.

  The physical symptoms are worsened by the isolation and uncertainty many pregnant people feel as they struggle to determine what discomfort is “normal” and what isn’t. Danika Severino Wynn, an advanced practice midwife with Planned Parenthood, reports that some of her patients find it uncomfortable to bring these symptoms up, even with their medical providers. “[The] changes in your bowel patterns, hemorrhoids, the nausea and vomiting — that’s neverending, but you might not want to deal with it when you’re in the workplace,” she says. “I’ve had many patients who have been lucky to have offices, for example, and say they closed their doors half the day because they have to vomit so often.”

  And the mood-related symptoms are anything but a joke. “I can speak from my own experience there,” Severino Wynn says. “The amount of depression that I dealt with during and after my pregnancies was crippling and was far more than I ever anticipated.” Postpartum depression is also a significant risk, affecting one in nine mothers.

  By the third trimester — starting at about 27 weeks — pregnant people are often in significant discomfort. Especially if they were slim before the pregnancy, rapid weight gain (a woman of average weight can expect to gain 25-35 pounds during pregnancy) puts intense strain on hip and knee joints, causing pain and limiting activity. With the uterus pressing on the bladder, frequent urination and even incontinence are common, leaving pregnant women at a higher risk of urinary tract infections. Sleeping becomes difficult, and the resulting sleep deprivation can make it more challenging to cope with other symptoms. Women may notice a chronically stuffy nose, sensitive and bleeding gums, itchy skin, carpal tunnel syndrome causing numb and tingling hands, and frequent painful muscle cramps and spasms.

  Many symptoms, even those that are considered “normal” and not medically dangerous, can still be alarming to experience. Heartburn and gastric reflux are common and can mimic the symptoms of a heart attack. Another symptom is round ligament pain, which can happen as hormones instruct the body’s ligaments to loosen in order to prepare the pelvis for giving birth. Women can experience unexpected and intense stabbing pains in their lower abdomen and groin, causing them to call their doctor in a panic.

  Morgan, a storyteller with Planned Parenthood who volunteers to share her own experiences to help other women, had some frightening experiences early in her second pregnancy with twins. (Storytellers can opt to go by their first name only or a pseudonym, which Planned Parenthood respects when connecting them to others.) “At 12 weeks, I had to go to the emergency room because I felt like I was having palpitations,” she says. “My heart rate was like 150.” She was diagnosed with an iron deficiency, a condition that affects as many as 30 percent of pregnant women in the US by the third trimester, and that when combined with dilating blood vessels and a body struggling to keep up with a growing fetus’s needs, can put strain on a woman’s heart and lead to dizziness and fainting.

  Later in the pregnancy, Morgan also developed hemorrhoids so severe that she later needed them surgically removed. “That is not something that people talk about,” she says. “And I even forgot about it, I just blocked it out. But that was a huge deal for me and it scared the hell out of me. The first time it was happening, I called my mom and she’s like, ‘Oh, honey, that’s hemorrhoids.’”

  As Severino Wynn puts it, “People think they have all sorts of different ailments because of some of what we call the ‘normal abnormal’ of pregnancy.”

  And this is all still only the lead-up to giving birth, which is often one of the most painful and traumatic experiences of a woman’s life, even when women are lucky enough to avoid the all-too-common mistreatment or outright abuse from medical staff. Feeling out of control during labor is a major risk factor for later developing PTSD, but that loss of control over one’s body starts long before the birth. “Pregnancy in and of itself is a very intrusive and invasive condition,” Severino Wynn says, “because you lose control of parts of your body that you wouldn’t expect to. Even in a normal pregnancy, the impacts on your body are incredibly significant.”

  The biology and consequences of a nine-month chronic illness

  In a different context, the list of symptoms that pregnant people experience as a matter of course would be the result of a scary diagnosis, and hopefully gather just as much sympathy. In fact, the common symptoms of pregnancy overlap significantly with those of advanced chronic kidney disease. Kidney patients also complain of pain and discomfort, severe fatigue, depression, and limited physical capabilities, along with nausea and vomiting, constipation, poor sleep quality, frequent urination and heightened risk of UTIs, itchy skin, and even altered taste and smell, a symptom pregnant women often notice.

  There are various theories of why human childbirth is so much more painful, not to mention dangerous, than what many other animals go through. Historically, each birth incurred a 1 percent risk of death for the mother, or higher. In the US in 2020, the maternal mortality rate was still 24 per 100,000 live births, triple the rate in other high-income countries like France and Canada.

  But even before birth, human mothers-to-be are at risk of health complications due to an evolutionary arms race between the mother and fetus over nutrients and resources, with the fetus invading the tissues of the uterus and pouring its own hormonal signals into the mother’s bloodstream, and the maternal body compensating for this. Preeclampsia, which even when treated can cause lasting damage to the mother’s organs and affect the long-term health prospects of the baby, is a disease essentially confined to humans. It’s not fully understood, but one theory is that it happens when the implantation process and development of the placenta go wrong.

  Unlike kidney disease, the chronic illness that is pregnancy will mostly end after nine months, and for parents carrying wanted pregnancies, joyfully welcoming a newborn at the end of it often more than makes up for the suffering. But for those who never wanted a pregnancy and don’t want to give birth, it’s a lot to ask.

  As with any major ongoing illness, the burden of symptoms during pregnancy is joined by the time and monetary cost of frequent medical visits. Auguste, the OB-GYN, estimates that most women will attend as many as 12 prenatal visits, even in a perfectly healthy pregnancy; the time includes not just the visit itself, but scans, bloodwork, time spent in the waiting room between these procedures, and, of course, the commute. Since clinics and doctor’s offices are often only open during the workday, appointments usually require taking time off work, presenting an additional challenge for women with employment insecurity or in financially precarious circumstances.

  The women who aren’t able to afford time off work, transportation, or the financial cost of prenatal appointments are often already at higher risk of health problems during pregnancy, and lack of prenatal care only adds to the burden. A 2020 report by March of Dimes found that 7 million US women of childbearing age live in maternity care “deserts” without ready access to the specialists they need; in some rural counties, hospitals without obstetricians on staff may even turn away women in labor.

  From Severino Wynn’s perspective, the medical system is failing these people. “Historically, hospitals and providers used this term of ‘noncompliance’ to describe people who don’t come in for prenatal care,” she says. “There’s been a movement afoot to just throw that term out the window because at the end of the day, we are not set up for people to be able to take care of themselves.” Missing prenatal care appointments can result in higher risk to the mother and baby.

  Morgan, whose second pregnancy was with twins and was classified as higher risk, estimates that she spent 10 hours a week at, or in transit to and from, medical appointments. She describes how, given her issues with heart palpitations and fainting, her doctor wrote a note stating that it was medically unsafe for her to be required to stand, and asking for her workplace to provide accommodations. Despite the fact that pregnant people are legally recognized as a protected class and entitled to reasonable accommodations under the ADA, her retail workplace refused. Illegal pregnancy discrimination affects thousands of workers every year.

  As with so many other health issues that primarily affect women, pregnancy can be neglected by the medical community — for example, when pregnant people are excluded from clinical trials, as they often are, drug safety for the fetus is left unclear, which can cause women to avoid necessary treatments out of fear. Pregnant people can also run into problems when doctors fail to take their concerns seriously, both during and after a pregnancy.

  Morgan, after her twins were born, continued to have health issues, but it wasn’t until five years later that she was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. She feels that doctors were often condescending toward her. “I appreciate they’d gone to medical school and they’ve gotten the requisite training to be able to diagnose and treat me properly,” she says. “But at the same time, I’ve lived in my own body for 38 years. I know when something doesn’t feel right, I know when things are outside the norm, and I should be given more of a say.”

  There are other policy changes that could help those in this situation: greater access to prenatal care, programs to support pregnant people in precarious life circumstances, and stronger enforcement of their existing legal rights and protections in the workplace. But ultimately, nothing will alter the fact that pregnancy is a serious medical ordeal with lasting effects, even when all goes according to plan, which is far from guaranteed. Women, who have the most context on their own lives, and judge that carrying a pregnancy to term would be damaging to their lives and future plans are often going to be right. The Dobbs verdict, in taking away the option of abortion, will inevitably end up condemning thousands to suffering through these consequences largely against their will.

• How to help your teen think critically in a confusing world -

  

  A new newsletter to help spark conversation with the teens and tweens in your life.

  Adolescents are navigating a lot. There’s all the normal tween stuff like puberty and figuring out who you are on so many levels — the stuff we all went through. There’s more, though: Our middle and high schoolers spent much of the last few years participating in school remotely, isolated behind their computer screens. Although returning to classrooms has been a huge leap forward, they are reckoning with learning loss, missed years of normal socialization, and now mixed messaging on how to handle the new Covid reality. Add in the relentless and scary news of school shootings, war in Ukraine, families dealing with inflation, and, well, it’s tough. This generation is coming of age in a polarized, confusing, and downright scary world.

  This moment in time is shaping our youth in ways seen and unseen. A recent series from the New York Times chronicled why all of the above has led this generation to be one of the most isolated in decades. The result is adolescents dealing with unprecedented mental health challenges — leading to alarming rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide.

  I’m Liz. I run the audio team here at Vox (shout out to our amazing podcasts) and I’m the mother of a just-turned-12-year-old son who, like most of his peers, is navigating these things, too. My son, like most of his friends, is at risk — of dire outcomes like depression, self-harm, and suicide, but also of outcomes that are more insidious: apathy, numbness, unkindness, and disconnection. It can be so hard to get a tween to open up when this is the very age they quite naturally start pulling away from parents and authority figures. And as a parent, it’s hard to know where typical pre-teen attitude ends and real concern over mental health should kick in.

  I’ve spent the last few years synthesizing knowledge from multiple sources to try to help him. And, more importantly, to connect with him — which can be hard at the best of times, but almost impossible when your kid is feeling the mental health effects of a world outside their control.

  Now, I’m going to take that synthesis and share it with you in a new weekly newsletter: Extra Curricula. Each Thursday, I’ll share a small curation of content — videos, podcasts, articles, documentaries, TV shows, books — to help you think about how to approach parenting and educating, and content you can share directly with your adolescent human(s). Sometimes there will be a theme or an interview. Other times, the content will be driven by the joy of knowledge. And now and then, we might ask you to share what inspired your kid or students lately or what’s been working for you to break through adolescent defenses and truly connect.

  What I’ve done with my kid is working, for now. Here’s how I began seeing a difference:

  We started digging into the wealth of videos available on Vox’s YouTube channel. Every night we watch one or two short videos about a range of topics: an explainer about cluster bombs in the Ukraine War (his choice), the history of the iconic Cesca chair (my choice). And something is happening. We actually talk about the world and how he’s starting to synthesize his outlook on life.

  The breakthrough here isn’t just that we had a much more informed way to talk about the war or design, or that he was getting a taste of critical thinking and finding joy in knowledge, but that we had something to talk about that my son was into discussing. I discovered that he’s figuring things out, but I’m also super glad that we’re talking so he can test-drive his forming worldview on me. He has a lot of thoughts and ideas that he just wasn’t going to offer when asked point-blank how he feels about a thing, along with a lot of questions this new connection has allowed us to explore together. What he was willing to do was consider well-produced, factual information and react to it in conversation.

  Anyhow, I hope you’ll subscribe and join us on this summer journey of discovery and connection.

  One disclaimer: I am not a psychologist or an educator. I’m a parent who is relying on decades of journalism training to make sense of how to successfully raise a human being. We’ll try this for the summer and see how it goes. If you have feedback or questions, you can reach me at liz@vox.com.

From The Hindu: Sports

• RWITC releases a ‘dream’ prospectus -

• BAI to conduct CWG camp in Hyderabad - Entire contingent to train together from July 18 to 25

• Saurav, Joshna bullish on India’s chances - Dipika Pallikal to feature only in doubles

• TAI makes online representation to GoM -

• Amreli, Salento, Capriati, The Sovereign Orb, Sadler’s Legacy and Clever Hans impress -

From The Hindu: National News

• Look out notice issued against Chinese national involved in loan app scam - Lakhs of lower middle class in need of small loans may have faced extortion, says top Odisha police official

• A.P. govt prays High Court for dismissal of contempt petitions on Amaravati - ‘Infrastructure works are going on continuously and milestones are being monitored regularly’

• Data, analytics firm Experian expands footprint -

• SCR on high alert, identifies more than 3,000 vulnerable sections -

• KSUM to hold workshop on digital fab machines from July 18 -

From BBC: Europe

• Ukraine claims arms depot attack in occupied Kherson with Himars rockets - Kyiv hails another strike by the Himars system, but it is not confirmed by Russian-backed officials.

• Champions League: Witnesses raise new questions about chaos of Paris final - A BBC probe into the issues at the Stade de France hears evidence that contradicts French authorities.

• French Fécamp ‘precious blood’ relics recovered after abbey theft - Catholics were shocked when an artefact said to contain drops of Jesus’s blood was stolen in France.

• Ukraine war: Germany fears Russia gas cut may become permanent - The crucial Nord Stream 1 pipeline is shutting down for 10 days of annual maintenance work.

• Ukraine war: Russian military equipment on show in Prague - The exhibition features a damaged Russian tank, a howitzer and defused rockets and shells.

From Ars Technica

• Brain size vs. body size and the roots of intelligence - In birds, brains that expand after birth appear to be linked to creative behavior. - link

• Russian “hacktivists” are causing trouble far beyond Ukraine - Pro-Russian group Killnet targeting countries supporting Ukraine, declaring “war.” - link

• The 7 best Prime Day deals on smartwatches and fitness trackers - Including a new low on the Apple Watch Series 7 and several sporty Garmin watches. - link

• Prime Day’s best headphone deals include pairs we like from Sony, Beats, and Bose - Our top picks for ANC headphones and true wireless earbuds are as cheap as we’ve seen. - link

• All the best Amazon Prime Day 2022 deals we can find - We’ve sorted through Amazon’s annual garage sale to find the stuff that’s worth your time. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A photon is going through airport security. The TSA agent asks if he has any luggage. -

  The photon says, “No, I’m traveling light.”

  submitted by /u/anikets242
  [link] [comments]

• Finally a smart blonde joke -

  A blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the Loan officer. She says she’s going to Europe on business for two weeks and Needs to borrow $5,000.

  The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blonde hands over the keys to a new Mercedes Benz SL 500.

  The car is parked on the street in front of the bank, she has the title and everything checks out. The bank agrees to accept the car collateral for the loan.

  The bank’s president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the blond for using a $110,000 Benz as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

  An employee of the bank then proceeds to drive the Benz into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the blonde returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.

  The loan officer says, "Miss, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire.

  What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"

  The blonde replies, “Where else in New York City can I park my Car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?”

  submitted by /u/Miguenzo
  [link] [comments]

• A dyslexic boy is on his way home from training with his mam….“Can we stop at McDonald’s mam? I’m starving” the boy asks. “If you can spell McDonald’s we will stop on the way home ofcourse son” The boy pauses, composes himself and begins “M” “C” He begins to struggle…. -

  “Ah fuck it mam let’s have a KCF”

  submitted by /u/DogTits
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• An old farmer ordered a high-tech milking machine. -

  It so happened that the equipment arrived when his wife was away. He decided to test it on himself first. He inserted his penis into the equipment, turned the switch on and voila, everything else was automatic! He really had a good time as the equipment provided him with much pleasure. When the fun was over, he found that he could not take the machine off. He read the manual, but could not find any useful information. He tried every button on the instrument, but some made the machine squeeze, shake, or suck harder or less, but still latched on to his penis. Panicking, the farmer called the supplier’s Customer Service Hot Line.

  The farmer: “Hello, I just bought a milking machine from your company. It worked fantastic, but how can I take it off from the cow’s udder?” Customer Service: “Don’t you worry, sir. The machine was programmed such that it will release automatically after collecting a gallon of milk.”

  submitted by /u/proychow1
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• A man is flying in a hot-air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man below. He lowers the balloon farther and shouts, “Excuse me! Can you tell me where I am?” -

  The man below says: “Yes, you’re in a hot-air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”

  “You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist “I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

  “Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s no use to anyone.”

  The man below says, “You must be in management.”

  “I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

  “Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault”

  submitted by /u/doomboyo44
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