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

• Treating the Unvaccinated - In Utah, and across the U.S., doctors are facing a wave of preventable COVID deaths—and trying to convince the hesitant that “it doesn’t have to be this way.” - link

• The Assassination of Haiti’s President - Jovenel Moïse’s family deserves justice for his horrific killing. So do all of the Haitian families who suffered during his rule. - link

• “You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran - Inside the extraordinary final-days conflict between the former President and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs. - link

• Mo Brooks Seems to Think That Valley Forge Justifies January 6th—It Doesn’t - But there are lessons to be learned from it. - link

• What the “Creator Economy” Promises—and What It Actually Does - A lattice of new platforms and tools purports to empower online creators. In reality, it’s turning digital content into gig work. - link

From Vox

• The harrowing new reality for Alzheimer’s patients -

  

  Alzheimer’s patients and families live in a cloud of uncertainty. It’s about to get worse.

  Alzheimer’s disease is, among all the ailments that afflict humanity, perhaps the most terrifying: a disease that robs a person of their identity and disintegrates their relationships; for which there is no proven treatment or cure; and that can last for years, requiring enormous sums of money to ensure that many patients have specialized or round-the-clock care.

  And it all leads toward an inevitable destination: death. Because this is also a disease with a 100 percent fatality rate.

  That is the reality that millions of Americans and their families are currently confronting, and that millions have before them. They are the people at the center of the fight over the FDA’s controversial approval of Aduhelm, the first new Alzheimer’s drug in decades.

  The FDA approved Aduhelm over the objections of its own scientific advisers, who said the mixed evidence of its benefits did not outweigh the known risks. The agency has now called for an independent investigator to probe the approval process. Medicare has begun a months-long process to decide whether it should cover Aduhelm and for whom, and several private health insurers have said they won’t cover the drug, given the limited evidence of its effectiveness. Last week, the Cleveland Clinic and Mount Sinai, two of the best-known hospital systems in the US, said they wouldn’t administer it for the same reason.

  This isn’t an unprecedented situation — the FDA has approved treatments with shaky evidence for some cancers and for muscular dystrophy — but this time is especially fraught.

  One reason is the nature of the disease itself; how it erodes a person’s autonomy. People are desperate for any way to slow it down.

  “‘I can’t read a book.’ ‘I can’t make a meal for my friends.’ I think that’s what’s uniquely devastating about the disease,” said Jason Karlawish, a practicing physician and researcher who published The Problem of Alzheimer’s earlier this year. “You meet someone who has the disease and they are not the same. Is what’s coming out of them still their mind or is it the disease talking?”

  The other is the breadth of the population affected: the 6 million Americans who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and their families, and a much broader group who have reason to fear that they might someday have it, too. As many as 47 million Americans could be living with preclinical iterations of the disease, according to one estimate from researchers at UCLA, although not all of them will end up experiencing the dementia that is its hallmark.

  Emily Largent, a medical professor who works at the Penn Memory Center and has conducted interviews with people who discover they may be at higher risk of the disease, remembers vividly how one of her subjects described the distinctive horror of Alzheimer’s.

  “A colonoscopy isn’t going to change who I am,” the person said. “But this is my brain.”

  Alzheimer’s disease throws patients and families into a unique cloud of uncertainty. The disease itself is not well understood and can be confused for other conditions. They can’t know how quickly it will progress or how many more lucid moments the patient will have. They have to rethink the rest of their lives.

  Now they face only more uncertainty surrounding a new FDA-approved drug coming to market that may not actually be effective.

  The many anxieties of Alzheimer’s disease

  Five years ago, Sarah Gilbert started noticing something was off with her mom.

  At first, it was little things, like forgetting her car keys. But then one day, Gilbert went to pick up her mom for their lunch date and she didn’t show; she finally found her mom wandering aimlessly around her home in central Oregon. The episode launched a five-year odyssey of doctor appointments, misdiagnoses, and ineffective medications that finally concluded this summer with a verdict: Her mom, now 72, likely has Alzheimer’s disease.

  “The first couple days, I felt like a shell of my own self. Why us? Why me? It’s not fair,” she told me. “It felt like it came out of the blue.”

  Her family had to figure out what to do, but there was so much they didn’t know and couldn’t know yet. Her parents had planned well financially for their retirement, but they hadn’t planned for this. Gilbert fears that her dad “is going to work himself into the ground worrying about the financial stuff.”

  Gilbert is also a nurse, and as much as she wanted answers, she already knew Alzheimer’s disease defies them. Science has made strides in identifying the biological markers in the brain that would indicate a person is at higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, but there is still a long way to go.

  “I need to know why this is happening … But they just don’t know. There’s just so much gray,” Gilbert said. “[The doctor] has not been able to tell me, ‘She’s going to live 10 years,’ or, ‘She’s going to be at this cognitive level for three years.’”

  A 2021 report from the Alzheimer’s Association ticks through a dozen risk factors for the disease, ranging from age (the most important one) and family history (important, but not definitive) to cardiovascular health and diet. Even education and social engagement might contribute.

  But each risk factor comes with uncertainty, and many people do not know pertinent information about their own risk. Gilbert said her mother didn’t have a relationship with her own biological father, and although they do not know his diagnosis, the family recently learned that he died in a memory care unit, the last stop for many Alzheimer’s patients.

  The disease also progresses differently for every person. The symptoms can be wide-ranging and personality changes can be unpredictable. Even a newly diagnosed patient who previously cared for a loved one with the disease, intimately familiar with its horrors — a fairly common occurrence, according to people who work with those patients — may not have the same experience their family member did.

  For all these reasons, learning you may be at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease can feel even more traumatic than learning about your risk of other conditions.

  “People say this is different than other medical tests. They feel like it has unique implications for their sense of identity,” Largent said. ”If you have diabetes, you can take insulin. But when it gets to Alzheimer’s disease, there’s not a lot that can be done. People are very aware of that.”

  They worry about stigma, from employers and strangers, even from their families. That stigma has been reinforced by the perception that Alzheimer’s disease is a mystery. Until recently, a doctor couldn’t even be sure their patient had the disease until the person died and their brain could be examined.

  “I know you have a disease in your brain, but I can’t tell you for sure until you’re dead,” Karlawish said. “It was kind of a gothic horror story.”

  Patients also worry at the same time about becoming a burden on the family and about the costs, financial and emotional, their family will have to bear in caring for them.

  According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the average annual out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s or other dementia add up to more than $11,500 a year. If a patient requires care at a long-term care facility, Medicare doesn’t cover it, and Medicaid won’t either until the person spends all of their assets so they will qualify for that means-tested program.

  Those are the financial burdens. The emotional toll is unquantifiable.

  “It’s torturous to many caregivers,” Alison Lynn, who works with and counsels caregivers at the Penn Memory Center, told me. She described what’s known in the field as “ambiguous loss,” a term initially created to describe the confusing kind of grief families would feel if a loved one died overseas in war and their body was never returned.

  Now it is often applied to the families of Alzheimer’s patients, who have to endure the inverse of that wartime trauma.

  “We have people here in body. A lot of them look totally normal,” Lynn said. “But their spirit is gone.”

  Early in her mom’s disease, before they even knew it was Alzheimer’s, Sarah Gilbert asked her mom to knit her a quilt. Her mom was an artist; it was the kind of thing she’d always loved to do, and Gilbert thought it would bring some relief from the memory lapses she was experiencing.

  But her mother quickly grew frustrated as she struggled with basic tasks like picking out fabrics.

  “It got to the point where she was almost angry with me,” Gilbert said. “I think she was dealing with her own denial. She couldn’t accept the fact that she was declining.”

  Aduhelm might add even more stress

  This unique unknowability of Alzheimer’s disease also laid the groundwork for the controversial approval of Aduhelm last month, something that experts worry will only add to the anxieties of patients and families.

  The science upon which the Biogen drug is based is known as the amyloid hypothesis. It holds that plaque in the brain found in Alzheimer’s patients is at least in part responsible for the disease and that therefore removing the plaque could help relieve patients’ symptoms. As recently as two years ago, when Biogen halted its clinical trials for Aduhelm because of the poor initial evidence, scientists were questioning whether the amyloid hypothesis was actually wrong, given how much time had passed without a treatment being found.

  The company later concluded, through questionable methodology, that a certain subset of patients had seen a benefit from taking the drug and pushed ahead for approval, which was granted in June.

  But any relief for patients or families that might have been provided by the Aduhelm approval was quickly undercut by the controversy.

  Scott Eisen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

  Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Medicare announced last week it would take the unusual step of undergoing a “national coverage determination,” a nine-month process to decide whether to cover Aduhelm and for which patients. Some experts I’ve spoken to think Medicare, which faces billions of dollars in costs because of the drug’s $56,000 price tag, shouldn’t cover it at all. Even advocates for Alzheimer’s patients who supported the drug’s approval worry some patients will need to spend as much as $10,000 of their own money to access it.

This morass has left patients and families struggling to make sense of the news. For her part, Gilbert said after reading more about the drug, she decided it wasn’t the right move for her mom. A conversation with their neurologist confirmed her decision. But it was still a bit of emotional whiplash.

“It was like having the rug pulled out from under you because you want some hope,” she told me. “But then you get down to the nitty-gritty and you’re back to square one.”

Lynn described to me a recent caregiver support group she led where family members appeared bitterly divided over what to do about Aduhelm. About half of them, she said, were enthusiastic, even after reading the negative news coverage and seeing the concerns about the drug’s unproven effectiveness.

“Their hope and the adrenaline of that hope outweighs all of their reason and they are clamoring for the drug,” Lynn said. “But there was an equal number of people who are angry as hell about this.”

Those people felt Biogen was preying on people’s desperation. Some of them were also caring for patients who would never benefit from Biogen’s drug, even if it did prove to be effective, because the disease has already progressed too far. But they still have the same problems in caring for their loved one and covering the cost of care that they did before.

This is how Lynn characterized their attitude: “Why is this $50,000 being thrown at this thing that’s not evidence-based when we have all these other needs?”

Karlawish told me he believed the FDA should not have approved the drug. When his patients ask him about it, he walks through the circuitous path to approval and he is frank about the uncertain benefits and the risks. He said that, ideally, no one would take the drug without an informed consent form, as part of a clinical trial.

But he also said that if, having heard all the information he has to provide, the patient decides they want to try it, he will be a reluctant prescriber. The disease is already robbing the person of their agency. He won’t do the same.

“I’m gonna have to respect that,” Karlawish said, “out of respect of their autonomy.”

So the struggle is far from over for Alzheimer’s patients, their families, and their doctors. Gilbert is trying to hold onto the small moments of clarity her mom still enjoys, knowing they are fleeting. The other weekend, their family gathered together to process the news of her mother’s diagnosis and to enjoy each other’s company, to have what they hoped would be one more good day.

She had teased her mom earlier in the day about a funky pair of sunglasses she was wearing and was heartened when, later that night, her mom texted her a picture with 10 pairs of “ridiculous” sunglasses she had pulled out of the closet. “Are any of these gonna work for you?” her mom quipped.

“That connection is still there,” Gilbert said. “It might be fleeting, but she’s still here.”

Yet the fear and pain are ever present — “a chronic dull ache,” as she put it.

For people who spend a lot of time around Alzheimer’s patients, every encounter is a reminder that, unless our understanding and treatment of the disease improve dramatically over the coming years, what they are seeing may be a window into their own future.

“It would be hard to not feel that way,” Lynn said. “Whenever we get a former social worker, I have this feeling of, ‘That could be you in 30 or 40 years.’”

• Gen Z doesn’t know a world without fast fashion -

  

  Why do we expect teenagers to out-thrift major retailers?

  Millions of Americans, specifically those born around or after the year 2000, have never inhabited a world without fast fashion. They became shoppers at the height of its boom: Retailers like ASOS drop at least 5,000 new styles a week, and Shein offers 700 to 1,000 new styles daily. And while these young shoppers are increasingly wary of the evils of fast fashion, they have little room to protest. They buy what’s available, and what’s available is generally fast.

  This pace is a relatively modern innovation. Garment production has quietly accelerated to breakneck speeds over the past three decades, easing young and old consumers into thinking of their clothes as disposable. It began in the 1990s, so the story goes, when the founder of Zara spun the fast fashion wheel into motion. Zara abandoned the concept of fashion seasons for the thrill of constant novelty.

  A confluence of factors prompted Western designers and retailers — H&M, Forever 21, Gap, to name a few — to follow Zara’s lead in the next decade. Retailers migrated their manufacturing process overseas, where labor was cheaper. Cheaper was better, of course, from a business perspective. It was a period of excess for both consumers and retailers. Profits soared, and the number of garments produced from 2000 to 2014 doubled to 100 billion a year. The dream of “instant fashion” pioneered by Zara became a reality, and things were only about to get faster.

  Towards the tail-end of the 2010s, “ultra-fast” fashion brands emerged as viable competitors to the dominant fashion empires of the previous decade. They have names like Boohoo, Fashion Nova, Shein, and Princess Polly, and reached millions of young shoppers through social media, whereas fast fashion’s old guard resided in brick-and-mortar stores.

  These retailers have now turned their attention towards Generation Z — the new kids on the block who’ve recently come of spending age. According to Pew Research, members of this demographic were born between the years 1997 and 2010, and grew up under the looming threat of climate change. Gen Z can’t imagine a world without fast fashion because they were born into its heyday. From 2000 to 2014, the average price of clothing declined in spite of inflation. Young people are conditioned to accept low prices as the norm; some even rely on these depressed costs to access trendy clothes. Why pay more when you can buy a brand new T-shirt for $5, a dress for $20, or a pair of jeans for $30?

  Yet, marketing research and surveys have found that most young consumers care about sustainability. They are avid thrift store-goers and secondhand shoppers. Gen Z wants similar commitments from the companies they buy from and aren’t afraid to demand it. This has fueled an oft-repeated narrative that Gen Z’s green habits have “killed” or significantly slowed down fast fashion’s global expansion. While fast fashion is a relatively young phenomenon, it’s part of a centuries- old industry that has adjusted to its current pace of growth.

  Major retailers are investing in sustainable technologies to bulk up their business portfolios. They’ve pledged to be more sustainable and resourceful in public campaigns. They haven’t, however, pledged to make less. Even if the materials and labor used to produce fashion are marginally better, it does little to offset the clothing consumption cycle Gen Z was born into. In reality, the corporate vice-grip of fast fashion is hard to escape, even for a generation made keenly aware of its environmental implications.

  Gen Z certainly isn’t the only group buying from these companies or responsible for their continued success (“Most people in the Global North have worn fast fashion in some capacity in the last two decades,” said Aja Barber, a sustainable fashion writer and critic). They are, however, the first to do so during adolescence as a matter of course. They have to navigate a world in which trends are more accessible than ever. And these questions they face of personal responsibility and overconsumption have remained unanswered and unsolved by older generations.

  ---

  Sixteen-year-old Maddie Bialek does her best to avoid fast fashion, but she can’t remember a time without plentiful, cheaply-produced clothes. When Bialek was born in 2005, the likes of Zara, Forever 21, and H&M were annually raking in billions of dollars in sales, and proliferating in malls across America and the world. The ultra-fast fashion brands most shoppers Bialek’s age would recognize either were in their infant days or had yet to exist at all. But the speedy groundwork for their later success was firmly established in the aughts.

  Bialek is, in many ways, not your typical teenage shopper. She doesn’t buy from resale sites like Depop or Poshmark, and instead mends and crafts her own clothes, usually from secondhand fabrics sourced from local thrift stores. She comes from a family of artists, who instilled within her a do-it-yourself attitude that ultimately led her to reject the premise of fast fashion — that clothes are inherently disposable. “Ever since I’ve started to make and sell my own clothes, I’ve started looking at prices more critically,” Bialek told me. “If I see a new dress for $16, that makes me think someone along that supply chain who made it or transported it might not be paid well or treated fairly.”

  Maddie Bialek

She added that she “isn’t always perfect,” and could make improvements in other aspects of her life, such as reducing plastic waste. But as a high- schooler, it requires a conscious effort on Bialek’s part to resist buying what everyone else is wearing. Social media might be a democratizing force for fashion, but it’s also an accelerator. Teenagers are a prime consumer market for brands, who are able to target age demographics in social media ads. Plus, the integration of “social commerce” onto platforms like Instagram and TikTok further blurs the lines between scrolling and shopping: Users don’t have to head to a retail site to intentionally browse. Their social media feeds are frequently encouraging them to buy through direct advertisements, influencers, or even their peers.

That’s how Shein, the Chinese ultra-fast fashion retailer, became one of the most recognizable retailers for young female shoppers. The US is the brand’s largest consumer market, due to a successful blend of Instagram and TikTok marketing, low prices, and a trend-forward approach. “Most of my friends buy from Shein,” said Chelsea, a 17-year-old from California, who asked to withhold her last name for privacy reasons. “It’s not my favorite place to shop, but their selection is very trendy and affordable, so if I ever need an outfit for a special event, I tend to look for it there.”

Shein’s advertising strategy is notoriously persistent and ubiquitous across all social platforms. There was a brief period when Chelsea would encounter Shein content wherever she went online. It became impossible to avoid the company. On TikTok, the hashtags #Shein and #SheinHaul boast billions of views, with buyers regularly showing off hundreds of dollars worth of clothes in try-on hauls, essentially serving as free marketing for the brand.

Chelsea occasionally shops secondhand, but she turns to fast fashion sites when she needs a specific item of clothing, like a graduation dress or a halter top. “When you go to a thrift store, you don’t always know what you’re going to find, which can be fun,” she said. “It’s a lot harder to find a specific style you want in a thrift store, especially during the pandemic.”

Resale apps like Depop and Poshmark have popularized secondhand or vintage buying and selling. Yet, their existence isn’t enough to curtail Gen Z’s enthusiasm towards well- known brands — even those with sustainable shortcomings. According to a survey of 7,000 teenagers by the investment firm Piper Sandler, Amazon is one of the most popular online shopping sites teens turn to for clothes and other miscellaneous items. A few ultra-fast fashion retailers like Shein and Princess Polly were also labeled as Gen Z favorites on the survey, competing with established brands like Nike, American Eagle, and Lululemon.

Like many ideas on the internet, the phrase, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism,” has been boiled into a pithy punchline, stripped of its original anti- capitalist meaning. “People are justifying why they spent hundreds of dollars on new clothes with this phrase they really don’t understand,” explained Shreya Karnik, the 16-year-old cofounder of the publication Voices of Gen Z. “Well, yes, ethical consumption is hard, but that doesn’t mean you should just drop $500 on fast fashion.” For Karnik and her cofounder Saanvi Shetty, the goal is to shop more intentionally, although they’re aware their personal styles might evolve as they grow older.

While the statement’s meaning has been defanged by TikTok teens, it’s rooted in a general truth, especially when it comes to fashion. Fast fashion is, to put it bluntly, the product of a system that prizes profit over workers’ rights and environmental effects. To be clear, most luxury and mall brand companies are no better than fast fashion when it comes to this. (During the onset of the pandemic last spring, retailers like American Eagle and Urban Outfitters cancelled garment orders last-minute and refused to pay workers for their completed labor.)

To be a consumer requires some level of mental separation from the clothing production process. Executives know that sustainability doesn’t scale, at least not quickly enough or to achieve a billion-dollar business model. As a result, clothing supply chains have become so opaque to allow retailers to maximize profit, and it has been decades since a majority of American-designed clothes were actually made in America. Ethical consumption simply isn’t a facet of the modern fashion ecosystem.

Last May, two researchers from Denmark, Nikolas Ronholt and Malthe Overgaard, published a study titled “The Fast Fashion Paradox.” The pair surveyed consumers between the ages of 22 and 25, and completed one-on-one interviews with respondents to understand why the participants kept purchasing fast fashion, despite their own desires to be more sustainable.

“What intrigued us was how the consumers said they cared about sustainability, but that care did not translate into their actual purchasing behavior,” Overgaard told me. “There was a major gap there. It’s become trendy to label yourself as a sustainable consumer, but it’s another thing to see it reflected in your behavior.”

This paradox is particularly evident in the comments section of clothing hauls on TikTok, where a few commentators would urge haulers to shop more sustainably, only for others to defend the purchase. In one Shein haul video with 500,000 likes, a user commented that they were bothered by how Shein packages each item in individual plastic bags. The creator of the video responded in agreement saying, “It is such a waste, I wish they wouldn’t :(“ The response set off a series of comments asking why she bought from Shein if she cared about packaging waste.

Ronholt and Overgaard’s research gets at the heart of this responsibility paradox. Who is to blame in this transaction: the lone shopper who purchased hundreds of dollars worth of clothes, or the billion-dollar retailer? Should social media platforms also be held liable? A majority of consumers surveyed expect the retailers to take more sustainable steps, but history has proven that, unless pushed to do so by shoppers, brands are usually slow to act.

Plus, most corporate brands tend to greenwash their efforts with buzzy branding words like “conscious” or “ethical,” while failing to be specific about their goals. In 2018, for example, H&M was criticized by the Norwegian Consumer Authority for “misleading” marketing of its Conscious Collection; the retailer wasn’t specific about what types of “sustainable” materials its clothes were sourced from or what its clear goals were.

“The current situation looks like a deadlock,” said Ronholt. “There’s this duality in response from consumers who felt they could do better, but still wanted more transparency from retailers. Some even suggested political intervention to solve this, like a tax on things that aren’t sustainably produced.”

But even with sustainability hanging in the back of people’s minds, Ronholt added that young consumers have developed a, “I like it, I buy it,” mentality that does little to offset how often they shop. This, of course, is exacerbated by social media’s effects on trend cycles and clothing seasonality: Fast fashion and major retailers no longer rely on the traditional fashion calendar, and instead operate on the premise of “faster is better” to drive sales based on novelty.

Karnik, the co-founder of Voices of Gen Z, admits she likes to browse Shein, even if she’s not planning to buy, in order to stay up-to-date on trends. As a teenager, Karnik’s clothing purchases are usually made under financial constraints. Price, as well as sizing availability, is a major fast fashion appeal for shoppers with budgets or other limitations.

“I’m guilty of looking, and I have like 98 items saved in my cart, although I haven’t bought anything in the past year,” she told me. “I’ve become aware that fast fashion is all about trends, though, so I’m trying to look for staple pieces that will stick with me for a couple of years.”

The most sustainable thing consumers can do, according to fashion critic Barber, is to buy less overall. Her proposed solution doesn’t require everyone to be perfect; it depends on individual efforts to resist novelty and trend cycles, ideally at a large scale.

“There’s a significant correlation between fast fashion, the way we consume clothing, and the rise of social media,” Barber told me. “You have teens saying they don’t want to wear the same outfit twice on social media, and to be honest, that makes me a bit sad.”

The challenge for sustainability advocates is, in Barber’s opinion, education. The number of people working in apparel manufacturing in the US has steadily declined since the 1980s, and less people know firsthand workers that craft their clothes. As a result, it’s become easy to turn a blind eye as to how clothes are constructed and to accept the unsustainable status quo. “In general, we’re losing tradespeople in our society,” Barber said. “If more people knew how much time went into sewing a pin cushion, they could recognize exploitation in a $3 shirt and become better, more informed consumers.”

The core of Barber’s work is deconstructing corporate-driven sustainability and the bevy of products that are marketed to middle- and upper-class people, items that theoretically make them feel better about buying. Most young shoppers can’t afford, for example, handmade clothes. Some proclaim that a sustainable lifestyle feels out of reach because the products are too expensive or don’t come in their sizes.

But according to Barber, sustainability isn’t a product, but a mindset that’s often established out of scarcity and championed by marginalized people, like her mother, who reused almost every plastic container she came across. Low-income people aren’t the consumers keeping fashion corporations afloat. “The most sustainable thing you can do is wear what’s in your closet,” Barber said. “And keep wearing it. When you need to replace something, do so with options that are secondhand.”

As the youngest demographic of consumers, there is an expectation foisted upon Gen Z to reform their shopping habits, sometimes by their peers. And, as Shetty of Voices of Gen Z pointed out, the sustainability movement feels very gendered. Young people’s consumerist tendencies, it seems, are still malleable, and their politics largely progressive. Yet, the task of undoing decades of marketing strategy and environmental degradation shouldn’t solely fall on a generation born within these circumstances. Significant change requires action from a cohort of policymakers, marketers, and retailers — in addition to shoppers, especially those with disposable income.

• The US steps up efforts to save Afghan allies amid Taliban offensive -

  

As the US withdrawal deadline nears, “Operation Allies Refuge” will evacuate Afghans who helped American forces.

The Biden administration will begin evacuating thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government later this month, ahead of an August 31 deadline for the end of US military operations in Afghanistan.

Current and former Afghan translators, interpreters, and others who have worked with the US government in Afghanistan are facing deadly danger as the US drawdown continues and the Taliban reclaims territory once controlled by Afghan and coalition forces.

As Task & Purpose reported this month, “an estimated 70,000 Afghans who have worked for the United States — and their family members — are at risk of being killed as the Taliban push for a final victory.”

Because of that danger, according to a senior administration official, flights for “interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their families who have supported the United States and our partners in Afghanistan and are in the [Special Immigrant Visa] application pipeline” will begin in the last week of July as part of Operation Allies Refuge.

The Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, program allows Afghans who work or worked “by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan,” as well as family members, to qualify for visas and lawful permanent resident status in the US.

“Our message to those women and men is clear,” President Joe Biden said in a speech about Afghanistan earlier this month. “There is a home for you in the United States if you so choose, and we will stand with you just as you stood with us.”

On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that some 20,000 Afghans have applied for SIVs so far, though the number eligible is likely far larger — potentially as many as 100,000 people, according to Deutsche Welle.

The news comes after sustained bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers, including Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who said last month that he “[wanted] the White House’s hair on fire” over the issue — and a rapid Taliban offensive in Afghanistan has only heightened concerns.

“It’s not only a moral issue, it’s a national security issue,” King told reporters in a telephone briefing, according to Military.com. “This can’t just be business as usual at the State Department. … History judges you for how you go into a war, but also how you leave it.”

Currently, however, only about 2,500 of those evacuees in the SIV program will be allowed to travel directly to the US, according to NBC News. Many others — about 10,000 people whose background checks for a visa are still pending — will instead likely be flown to third countries or to overseas US military bases. Details are still unclear, but Guam, a US territory, is reportedly under consideration as an interim location.

Congress wants to do more for the US’s Afghan allies

Congress has welcomed the Biden administration’s announcement — but lawmakers are still urging the White House to do more to protect the US’s Afghan allies and ease their entry into the US, as well as pushing for legislative solutions.

One such bill, the proposed HOPE for Afghan SIVs Act, would postpone the SIV medical exam requirement until applicants arrive in the US, eliminating a major hurdle for many Afghans.

As things stand, limited access to clinics in Afghanistan that can conduct the exam has created a chokepoint in the process. According to Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), one of the bill’s cosponsors and a former US Army Ranger who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, “there is currently only one facility in Kabul that conducts all immigrant visa examinations for the entire country, forcing applicants from the outer provinces to travel to Kabul in often dangerous circumstances.”

Andrew Quilty/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The measure passed the House late last month by a bipartisan vote of 366 to 46 and has bipartisan backing in the Senate.

“Approximately 20,000 Afghans are currently stuck in the backlog,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) said in a statement with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “This bill is a commonsense solution that will help pave a more expeditious path to safety for these Afghans and their families.”

In many cases, the Taliban marks interpreters for death specifically for their cooperation with the US. Some have already been killed, or their family members have been targeted — according to the advocacy group No One Left Behind, more than 300 interpreters and their family members have been killed since 2014.

“I gave everything I had to the Americans, but once they are gone, I will be killed,” one former Afghan interpreter for US forces, Abdul Rashid Shirzad, told the Washington Post. “They keep track of us, and they don’t shoot us like they do Afghan soldiers. If they catch me, they will behead me.”

Currently, Shirzad’s SIV application is pending, according to the Post. In 2016, he was denied a visa for reasons that remain unclear.

Separate from the the HOPE for Afghan SIVs Act, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) is also pushing for Congress to raise the cap on SIVs to 46,500 visas — a potential increase of 20,000 from current levels.

There are currently several permutations of the SIV program, according to the State Department. Special immigrant visas are also available to Iraqis who worked with the US, and specifically for Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters who worked with the US military.

Leahy’s proposed cap increase is part of a potential $3.7 billion security supplemental, which Leahy introduced last week to increase funding for Capitol security in the wake of the January 6 attack.

The package would also make a number of other changes to the SIV program. According to Roll Call’s Caroline Simon, the Leahy plan would “reduce the employment requirement for eligibility from two years to one year, postpone the required medical exam until the applicant reaches the United States, overhaul the appeal process for denials and provide SIV status for family members of murdered applicants, among other changes.”

And it would include $100 million in “emergency aid” for an expected surge in Afghan refugees as the Taliban continue to claw back territory in Afghanistan.

Many of those same provisions are also included in the standalone Afghan Allies Protection Act, a bipartisan bill cosponsored by King, Leahy, and 15 other senators. A version of the bill also has bipartisan support in the House.

However, the Leahy plan for the Afghan SIV program doesn’t have universal support: Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the ranking member opposite Leahy on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has instead proposed a much narrower supplemental package that would only fund Capitol security and does not include money for the Afghan SIV program.

“We made a promise to the Afghans who risked their own lives to support and protect our troops and our country,” Leahy said in a statement on the security supplemental. “As a country, our word is our bond, and we all agree, Republicans and Democrats, that bond will not be broken on our watch. If we do not address this now, then when?”

The US deadline to get out of Afghanistan is approaching quickly

As Leahy’s statement suggests, time is running out for Afghans who have worked with the US — and for the US to find a solution for its allies that meets the moment. In the same July speech where Biden announced the US evacuation effort for Afghan visa recipients, he also set a new withdrawal date for US forces: August 31.

That’s about a week and a half earlier than the previously announced date, September 11, and already, most US troops — more than 90 percent of all forces, according to US Central Command — have withdrawn from the country.

Earlier this month, the US pulled out of Bagram Air Base, the largest US airfield in the country. According to the AP, US soldiers made a quiet overnight departure, shutting off power to the base and leaving without alerting the incoming Afghan base commander.

Bagram has long been the hub for US operations in Afghanistan, and it carries additional symbolic importance as “a gateway to and from a war that cut across constant changes on the battlefield and in presidential administrations,” writes New York Times reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff.

Last week, Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller officially stepped down from his post as the top US commander in the country, marking the effective conclusion of the US presence in Afghanistan. Only about 600 US troops are still in the country, according to the Washington Post — primarily to protect the US Embassy and international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Our job now is just not to forget,” Miller said ahead of his departure from Kabul Monday. “With the families that have lost people across this conflict, it will be important to know that someone remembers, that someone cares, and that we’re able to talk about it in the future.”

Previously, the Trump administration had set May 1 of this year as the deadline to end the US troop presence in Afghanistan; under Biden, May 1 became the start date for a final US withdrawal.

The withdrawal has generated substantial pushback: Former President George W. Bush criticized it as a “mistake” last week in an interview with Deutsche Welle, and former top US Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus told CNN Sunday that “I fear we will look back and regret the decision to withdraw.”

“I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm,” Bush, who launched the US war in Afghanistan in 2001, said. “They’re just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.”

Biden has said the US will continue to support the Afghanistan government and provide humanitarian assistance, but he stood by his decision to withdraw US troops in remarks this month.

“Nearly 20 years of experience has shown us that the current security situation only confirms that ‘just one more year’ of fighting in Afghanistan is not a solution but a recipe for being there indefinitely,” he said.

The Taliban offensive doesn’t bode well for Afghanistan’s government

As the US drawdown continues, a major Taliban offensive against the Afghan army has succeeded in reclaiming large swaths of territory, raising fears that Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, could fall in short order after the US mission there concludes.

Since the US withdrawal began in May, the Taliban have steadily expanded their reach in Afghanistan, and are now believed to control “more than a third of Afghanistan’s 421 districts and district centers,” according to the AP.

Casualties are also mounting: The Taliban murdered at least 22 Afghan commandos last month as they tried to surrender, and Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was shot and killed in Kandahar on Friday.

Some Afghan troops have also fled the country in the face of the Taliban offensive, crossing the border into neighboring Tajikistan in the north.

Those stories reflect what the Washington Post reported last month is “the new consensus” of US intelligence officials: That the Kabul-based Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani, could fall to the Taliban over the next six months to a year.

The rapid Taliban advance reportedly led the US to consider delaying its withdrawal from Bagram, but officials ultimately opted against it.

Even if the Afghan government remains intact, however, the Taliban offensive is a bad sign. In June, Miller, the former US commander in Afghanistan, warned that Afghanistan could slide into a civil war as the US presence there dwindles.

Whatever happens afterward, however, the US timetable is clear: After two decades of war, US military operations will wind down on August 31.

And with most troops already out of the country, there’s more urgency than ever in the fight to save America’s Afghan allies.

“This is a massive step in the right direction,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps veteran, said of the newly announced Operation Allies Refuge. “Now, we just need to keep pressure on the White House to ensure they see this through until all our Afghan allies are evacuated to safety.”

From The Hindu: Sports

• Top Olympics sponsor Toyota pulls Games-related TV ads - The extraordinary decision by the country’s top automaker underlines how polarizing the Games have become in Japan as COVID-19 infections rise ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony

• Czech Republic’s Ondrej Perusic 3rd athlete to be COVID positive at Olympic Village - A woman gymnast training in Chiba prefecture also got infected on Monday

• Big boost for Lahiri ahead of Olympics, finishes T-3 at Barbasol Championship - It was a welcome return to form for Lahiri, who had struggled with COVID-19 in April

• Prithvi, Ishan finished the game in first 15 overs only, says Dhawan - India mauled the hosts by seven wickets with plenty of overs to spare to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.

• Verstappen accuses Hamilton of ‘disrespectful and unsportsmanlike behaviour’ - Lewis Hamilton won the race while Verstappen was taken to hospital.

From The Hindu: National News

• Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi appointed Deputy Leader of House in Rajya Sabha - The BJP on Monday appointed Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi Deputy Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha. Leader of the House

• Existing unaided courses in aided colleges not to be affected - Minister says govt. only stated its policy before Supreme Court

• On day 1, multiple adjournments mar Rajya Sabha proceedings - Protests by Opposition prevent PM from introducing his new Ministers

• Assam bans Id gathering, prayers - State issues fresh COVID-19 guidelines, curbs on religious, social meetings

• Have informed discussions on pandemic to better prepare for possible third wave: Venkaiah Naidu to MPs - “I appeal to all sections of the House to ensure a meaningful monsoon session that got underway today,” says Mr. Naidu

From BBC: Europe

• Covid vaccination centres vandalised in France - The incidents came on a weekend of mass protests against the French government’s new Covid rules.

• Pegasus: Spyware sold to governments ‘targets activists’ - Israeli tech firm NSO denies media reports that its software has been sold to authoritarian regimes.

• Europe floods: Merkel shocked by ‘surreal’ devastation - The chancellor vows to fast-track aid after visiting some of the worst-hit areas in western Germany.

• Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist behind Muhammad cartoon, dies at 86 - His 2005 drawing of the Prophet Muhammad sparked protests across the Muslim world.

• Coronavirus: Ireland eases international travel restrictions - People who have “valid proof” of full vaccination no longer have to self-isolate on arrival.

From Ars Technica

• Google details its protein-folding software, academics offer an alternative - Once computationally impossible, AIs now translate protein sequence to structure. - link

• Hackers got past Windows Hello by tricking a webcam - Researchers used infrared photos and third-party hardware to best facial-recognition tech. - link

• Collectors are as confused as you are about that $1.56M Super Mario 64 sale - Old-school collectors meet “new money” as sealed prices inflate 10x in two years. - link

• Twitch streamers rake in millions with a shady crypto gambling boom - Company “closely monitor[s] gambling content,” but experts say some promos may be illegal. - link

• The weekend’s best tech deals: Mass Effect, Jabra wireless earbuds, and more - Dealmaster also has deals on Xbox gamepads, Amazon tablets, and USB-C chargers. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A husband notices his wife’s hearing is deteriorating and decides to visit her doctor for advice. -

  “I can’t speak to my wife directly as she might find it offensive, given our old age” he says to the doc.

  “There’s a simple trick you can try to determine her hearing” explains the doctor. “Simply ask her a question at a distance and if she doesn’t hear you, move slightly closer and ask again until she does”.

  That night, the husband arrives home and sees his wife in the kitchen cooking. He thinks to himself, “what a perfect opportunity to test her hearing”.

  He stands in the doorway of the kitchen and promptly asks;

  “What’s for dinner honey?”

  No answer. He moves closer.

  “What’s for dinner honey?”

  Still no answer. He moves even closer.

  “What’s for dinner honey?”

  Still his wife doesn’t answer. He now sees how serious her hearing problem is. At this point, he is stood right next to his wife.

  “What’s for dinner honey?”

  “FOR THE FOURTH FUCKING TIME WE’RE HAVING CHICKEN”

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

• A professor, a CEO, and a janitor are in a forest when they discover a magic fairy -

  The fairy says “I will give you what you most desire if you do someone else’s job for a day.”

  The professor says “I’ll be an elementary school teacher. What can be so hard about teaching a bunch of 6-year-olds how to read?” so he is teleported into a classroom. After a few minutes, all the kids’ screaming gets to his nerves, so he throws all his supplies and gives up.

  The C.E.O says “I’ll be a waiter. All you do is carry food back and forth. This’ll be a breeze” so he is teleported to a restaurant. After about an hour, all the annoying customers drive him insane, so he smashes his plates on the ground and gives up.

  The janitor says “I’ll be an artist” so he is transported to an art facility. He glues all the classroom supplies and shattered plates to a canvas, then sells it for a billion dollars. The fairy asks the janitor how he was so clever.

  The janitor says “I got a masters degree in art.”

  submitted by /u/PM-ME-WILD-FANTASIES
  [link] [comments]

• I asked my girlfriend to dress up as my favourite Star Wars character for some sexy roleplaying fun. -

  I walked into the bedroom that night and I was shocked,

  “Love, Jabba the Hut is not my favourite Star Wars character” I exclaimed,

  “Fuck off” She shouted “I haven’t got dressed yet”

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

• A man wanted to try 69 with his girlfriend -

  Right in the middle the man realizes he has a dentist appointment. So he pops up and heads to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth 3 times. He uses mouth wash twice and flosses once for good measure.

  He gets to the dentist office just in time and his dentist calls him in. Dentist says open wide. Feeling confident he opens his mouth wide. The dentist gets close and says “have you been 69’ing?” The man shocked quickly ask, “why does my breath smell like pussy?”

  “No”, the dentist replies, “your forehead smells like shit.”

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

• What do french people call Marijuana? -

  Oui’d

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