Corona Virus Update – Avery County

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Avery County Government would like to share that Avery County Emergency Management and the Health Department are working with local officials, Cannon Hospital, Avery County School System, 911 Communications, EMS Ambulance Services, and fire and rescue to ensure and protect the health and well-being of Avery County citizens.

For the latest updates click here for the NCDHHS state web site, for information.

Health officials continue to encourage good respiratory etiquette and hand hygiene. These are the best preventive measures for this virus. These include covering coughs and sneezes, washing hands frequently with soap and water, staying home when you feel sick or when you have a fever and cleaning surfaces with sanitizing cleaners.

The Avery Health department began vaccines on 1/12/2021 9993 first doses administered as of April 22,2022 9362 (53.0%) fully vaccinated Avery citizens as of of April 22,2022

The County of Avery's top priority is and always will be the safety and security of the county while providing the best service available. While it has been necessary to make some changes to the county's services please know that we will resume all regular services as soon as possible.Update 6/29/2021Declaration Of A Local State Of Emergency - This is an update of the original Emergency Ordinance

Update 5/14/2021Today, Governor Roy Cooper and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy K. Cohen, M.D. shared an update on the states COVID-19 progress. Following yesterdays guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that fully vaccinated individuals can safely do most activities without wearing a mask or the need to social distance from others, the state will remove its indoor mask mandate for most settings. Additionally, the state will lift all mass gathering limits and social distancing requirements. These changes are now in effect as of 1:30 PM today.Click Here for the FAQ Document

Update 5/14/2021 Avery County governmental offices are now open, except the senior center they will resume regular services soon.Senior Center Schedule

The Avery County Senior Center has opened for inside meal service on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.Seating and activity's will be limited numbers so please call ahead for details. We will continue offering Drive-Thru Meal Service at the Center on Mondays and Fridaysy.; Clients can drive to the side door of the dining area and pick up a hot meal. Clients must be registered to receive meal, and are asked to call and RSVP (not required) to help with headcount. Home delivered meals will continue as scheduled. For more information, call 828-733-8220

Filing For Unemployment Insurance Benefits Due To COVID-19

This is a link to an adobe document from the office of NC Senator Thom Tillis.Reboot Your Small Business During COVID-19Avery County Chamber Of Commerce Disaster Relief InformationNew website available from VISIT NC and others to assist in the re-opening of hospitality type business and industry for North Carolina. Please share with any and all. Spread the word!!https://countonmenc.org/ [countonmenc.org]NC COVID-19 Rapid Recovery for Small Business WebsiteNew Grant Program Accepting Applications to Help Businesses and Nonprofits Hurt by COVID-19

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Corona Virus Update - Avery County

Coronavirus – Delaware’s Coronavirus Official Website

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Coronavirus - Delaware's Coronavirus Official Website

COVID-19 vaccines for ages 6 months 5 years authorized. Learn more, including where to get your child vaccinated. More Info

95%

1,842,274

2,984

24.1 per 10,000 people

231

7-day Average

103

14.2%

7-day Average

View data by county: New Castle | Kent | Sussex

We know what it takes to keep from getting seriously ill or hospitalized from COVID-19. If you follow these proven strategies, you can stay one step ahead.

if you have symptoms or were exposed to someone with COVID-19.

Testing Locations

when cases are up, in crowded indoor places, or if you are at higher risk for illness.

Mask Details

95%

1,842,274

2,984

24.1 per 10,000 people

231

7-day Average

103

14.2%

7-day Average

View data by county: New Castle | Kent | Sussex

If you have recovered from COVID-19 but are still experiencing certain symptoms you could have post COVID-19 condition or "long COVID". Learn more about Long COVID through the CDC.

The COVID-19 Materials Hub

View the latest free COVID-19 resources and materials to help encourage safe practices in Delaware.

covidmaterialsde.com

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Coronavirus - Delaware's Coronavirus Official Website

COVID-19 mutations spreading in Austin-Travis County, reinfections may be more severe – KXAN.com

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AUSTIN (KXAN) COVID-19 metrics, including hospitalizations, are starting to trend upward again in Austin-Travis County. The local health authority attributed the uptick to the BA.4 and BA.5 offshoots of the omicron variant in a Travis County commissioners court meeting Tuesday.

Those mutations are starting to show up in both wastewater and in variant surveillance locally, according to the health authoritys report. They could be more severe than previous mutations.

With each mutation, it [COVID-19} is becoming adept at evading our immune systems defenses and that is why these two particular variants are starting to become more predominant. Dr. Desmar Walkes said.

As of Monday, Walkes reported there are nearly 100 people in area hospitals with COVID-19, 18 of those people are in intensive care units. Roughly half of the people hospitalized are there primarily for COVID-19.

More people that are requiring oxygen and starting to require life support, Walkes said, noting that research done on BA.4 and BA.5 shows the mutations may impact lung tissue more than previous mutations. She also said for people who had COVID-19 during the winter omicron surge, reinfection with BA.4 and BA.5 could be more severe.

With each subsequent infection, there is an increase in the impact, Walkes said. Reinfection is not benign.

Travis County is presently in the medium level of risk based on the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions risk tracker. Under that level, APH is recommending people at high risk, and people who live with someone who is high risk, wear a mask in public.

For people who had COVID-19 during the original omicron surge, immunity is likely waning. The UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium talked about that when case numbers started to trend upwards earlier this month.

Its been four or five months after the first omicron wave, where we had so many infections, and so we expect that there will be many people losing immunity at a rapid speed, said Anass Bouchnita, a postdoctoral fellow with the consortium.

People who previously had COVID-19 may also be at greater risk of getting seriously sick if they do catch COVID-19 again, Walkes explained. Staying up-to-date on vaccinations are still the best protection against the virus, she said.

We are still seeing good coverage and protection that is offered to people who are vaccinated from severe illness, hospitalization and death. We are still recommending vaccinations and boosters for those who are eligible, Walkes said.

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COVID-19 mutations spreading in Austin-Travis County, reinfections may be more severe - KXAN.com

Covid-19: What are the risks of catching the virus multiple times? – New Scientist

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A study suggests people who catch covid-19 at least twice have double the risk of dying from any cause and are three times as likely to be hospitalised in the next six months, compared with people who test positive just once

By Michael Le Page

A person waits at a drive-in covid-19 PCR test site in Miami, Florida, in May

Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

You have been vaccinated and recently had covid-19, so you dont have to worry about catching it again, right? Wrong. A large study suggests that every time a person is reinfected, they have additional health risks, both during their immediate illness and in the months afterwards.

Every reinfection is like rolling the dice again, says Ziyad Al-Aly at VA St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri. A second infection is still bad for you.

These findings

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Covid-19: What are the risks of catching the virus multiple times? - New Scientist

The Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have together become dominant in the U.S., the C.D.C. estimates. – The New York Times

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Continuing their rapid march across the United States, the Omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 have together become dominant among new coronavirus cases, according to new estimates on Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of the week ending Saturday, BA.4 made up 15.7 percent of new cases, and BA.5 was 36.6 percent, accounting for about 52 percent of new cases in the United States, numbers that experts said should rise in the weeks to come.

The statistics, released Tuesday morning, are based on modeling and can be revised as more data comes in, which happened in late December, when the agencys estimates missed the mark.

In the less than six months since BA.4 and BA.5 were first detected in South Africa, the two subvariants appeared in the United States to be overtaking two earlier Omicron subvariants, including BA.2, which was the prevailing version for a time earlier this spring. The other, BA.2.12.1, was dominant alone as of the week ending June 18, according to C.D.C. estimates. Over the winter, the form of Omicron that first emerged in the United States sent case counts soaring. Before that, the Delta variant had been dominant in the United States since early summer.

BA.4 and BA.5 exhibit the qualities of escape artists, able to elude some of the antibodies produced after coronavirus vaccinations and infections, including infections caused by some earlier versions of Omicron. That may explain why these subvariants have spread even faster than others in the Omicron family. But there is not yet much evidence that they cause more severe disease.

The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants have been detected throughout the world, and they fueled a surge of cases in South Africa in the spring, despite widespread pre-existing immunity to the virus. The wave was not as high as South Africas earlier waves, and deaths did not rise as sharply. Just last week, South Africa repealed its rules that required masks in indoor public spaces.

In recent weeks, more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported each day on average in the United States, according to a New York Times database, a figure that captures only a portion of the true number. Many infections go uncounted in official reports. Some scientists estimate that the current wave of cases is the second-largest of the pandemic.

As of Monday, hospitalizations in the United States were up 6 percent in the last two weeks, to an average of more than 31,000 each day, according to federal data. New deaths have stayed below 400 per day on average, data from state and local health agencies show. That is a fraction of the thousands seen daily during the winter Omicron peak.

But in my mind, 250 deaths a day is still too many, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said last week in Aspen, Colo. The deaths that were seeing are generally among people who are either elderly, frail, many comorbidities, whove had a lot of vaccine shots or people who are unvaccinated.

Many Americans with risk factors have said that they feel ignored and abandoned as their governments and neighbors have sought a return to normal.

As always, the spread of the virus is a regional affair. In the Northeast and Midwest, known cases have been declining for weeks, while in the South and West, cases are increasing.

Across the nation, public health rules continue to be lifted, including the ending on Saturday of an indoor mask mandate for Alameda County, the San Francisco Bay Areas second-most populous county. In New York City, Broadway theaters save for one are retiring their mask requirements beginning Friday. Even the longstanding requirement to test for the coronavirus before flying to the United States from abroad was dropped this month.

While the recent availability of vaccines for children ages 6 months to 5 years was a welcome development for many parents and day care centers, experts do not expect the availability of pediatric doses to change the overall trajectory of the pandemic in the United States.

The natural waning of vaccine protection against infection over time, along with the immune evasiveness of BA.4 and BA.5, might explain why these subvariants have been able to spread quickly. It has also lent urgency to the development of Omicron-targeted boosters. While vaccine manufacturers have raced to develop these, they are based on other versions of Omicron, and it was not yet clear how well they could protect against infection with BA.4 and BA.5.

Preliminary evidence from laboratory research suggests that unvaccinated people who were infected with the version of Omicron, known as BA.1, might be easily reinfected by BA.4 or BA.5. Vaccinated people are likely to fare somewhat better, the study suggests.

But as the virus evolves, no one can tell whether retooled vaccines could become outdated by the time they become available.

What we dont know is whats going to happen with a new vaccine in the fall, Dr. Walensky said while in Aspen. I do think were going to need more vaccines.

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The Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have together become dominant in the U.S., the C.D.C. estimates. - The New York Times

‘Better vaccines’ needed to cover COVID variants, infectious disease experts say – KSTP

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Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious disease physician at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the original vaccines against the COVID-19 virus did a terrific job keeping people out of the hospital and preventing death, but he said moving forward better vaccines need to be developed.

The current vaccines offer only mild benefit, in terms of infection, against those new variants, said Poland. So, the idea is, and both Moderna and Pfizer both plan no doing this, to devise vaccines that cover the Omicron variant.

Poland told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the goal is to possibly have an updated COVID vaccine by early fall by using part of the original vaccine and the vaccine that was used during the Omicron surge.

But, Poland said the ultimate goal is to develop a so-called Pan-Corona Vaccine which would offer better protection against all of the variants that have emerged with the virus.

The idea that we, and others are working on, is a Pan-Corona virus vaccine. Or, if you will, a universal Corona virus vaccine, said Poland. Thats still a ways off, but thats the goal.

Dr. Peter Bornstein, with St. Paul Infectious Disease Associates, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS he agrees with the push by the Food and Drug Administration to come up with a more effective vaccine.

We definitely need better vaccines. How much the virus itself will keep mutating, and have immunological escape from the vaccines, we just dont know yet, said Bornstein.

The FDA met Tuesday to discuss the future of new COVID vaccines, but did not yet offer any recommendations.

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'Better vaccines' needed to cover COVID variants, infectious disease experts say - KSTP

Coronavirus cases on the rise once again – KAMR – MyHighPlains.com

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AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) COVID-19 cases are rising across the Amarillo area, Texas, and the nation.

The city of Amarillo is seeing more than 800 more active cases than we had this time last month.

Dr. Rodney Young, Regional Chair of Family & Community Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center said what is causing the rise in new cases is a new subvariant.

It started with the Omicron, then with the BA.2 and now there is a subvariant of BA.2, said Dr. Young.

He said cases are likely to continue to rise as July 4th draws near and families gather.

When you have occasions to gather, that is the way it spreads very easily person to person, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young added as cases do continue to rise, an upside is that they have not seen a rise in hospitalization the way they did in the earlier stages of the pandemic.

He said patients with the subvariant are not presenting with severe COVID-19 symptoms, some are presenting with a little cough, runny nose, and watery eyes.

A number of the cases that we are diagnosing now that werent COVID a few weeks ago, tend to be folks they are feeling like they are having flares in allergy symptoms or cold type symptoms, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young said that those who are vaccinated and who get subvariant COVID illnesses are less likely to get less severe forms of the illness or experience long covid.

Dr. Young added the virus is here to stay and it will always be a part of the disease landscape to some extent and added what the medical community hopes to happen is that it moves from a pandemic to an endemic.

Some years or some times are worse than others, but hopefully there is enough immunity around and enough measures that we can take to help mitigate the spread within a community, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young said he doesnt have an exact answer to when that could happen, but he said its possible we could be seeing the early stages of that now.

Dr. Young reiterates that the best way to keep yourself protected from these rising cases is social distancing, good hygiene practices, and getting boosted if you havent done so already.

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The 5 Most Dangerous Spots You Can Catch Coronavirus Eat This Not That – Eat This, Not That

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The Omicron BA.2.12.1 subvariant is now the dominant COVID-19 variant in the US, responsible for 58% of recorded new coronavirus cases in the last week alone. "I'm in Connecticut, and it's like 80% of all sequences that we see right now," says Anne Hahn, PhD., postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Public Health. Here are the five most dangerous spots to catch COVID-19, according to experts. Read on to find out moreand to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss Already Had COVID? These Symptoms May "Never Go Away".

Indoor gatherings such as weddings and parties are still dangerous, warns the World Health Organization. "In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no 'zero risk' when it comes to any kind of gathering especially events that bring groups of people together," says the WHO. "Regardless of the size of the event, you are at risk from COVID-19 whenever you get together with people. The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily indoors, especially in poorly ventilated settings."

Planning a family cruise this summer? The CDC has lifted its warning on cruise ship travel, but virus experts are still recommending caution. "This means to prepare for the cruise, all four of you should be fully vaccinated and boosted," says Jessica Justman, infectious diseases specialist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who recommends travelers make sure their ship has opted into the CDC's Covid-19 Program for Cruise Ships. "I suggest completing all booster doses a few weeks, and at least one week, before the trip starts. I would also be interested in how many inpatient beds and medical personnel are on the cruise and compare that to the number of passengers. One might confirm that the cruise follows guidelines such as the cruise ship health care guidelines from the American College of Emergency Physicians."

Buffets are risky due to close contact with both customers and staff. "While common utensils theoretically could lead to transmission of COVID from hand to spoon to hand, we actually don't have any good examples in clusters of COVID illnesses that surfaces really matter as much as people all standing close to each other does," says Benjamin Chapman, Ph.D., professor and food safety specialist in the department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. "Managing social distancing and line-ups is really the hardest part. Or in situations where staff will serve patrons from a buffet, the staff and patron interaction is the riskiest part."

Indoor gyms are still highly problematic in terms of catching the virus, experts warn. "If you're not willing to get COVID don't go," says Dr. Michael Klompas, a hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "At a time like now, when there's a lot of COVID around, it is a high risk proposition."6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Social distancing is practically impossible in airports, with people standing next to each other in check in and security lines and sitting close together on planes. "Avoid common-touch surfaces, hand hygiene wherever possible, masks, distancing, controlled-boarding procedures, try to avoid face-to-face contact with other customers, try to avoid being unmasked in flight, for meal and drink services, apart from when really necessary," says David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association. "The greatest protection you can give yourself is to be vaccinated and boosted."

Follow the public health fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you liveget vaccinated or boosted ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don't travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don't go indoors with people you're not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.

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The 5 Most Dangerous Spots You Can Catch Coronavirus Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

Gravity Diagnostics closes COVID-19 testing sites as fewer in the Tri-State get tested – WCPO 9 Cincinnati

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COVINGTON, Ky.Just months ago, the parking lot at Gravity Diagnostics in Covington was filled as people waited hours to get tested for COVID-19. Now, the site is shutting down as fewer people look for in-person tests.

Kelly Theurer stopped by the site one day before closing to get tested and say goodbye.

"I'm terribly sad," Theurer said. "I've been coming here since they set up shop in this parking lot. I travel a lot for work ... and it's literally the only place in the Tri-State where I can come, drive-thru, get a quick test and get the results back really fast."

Jeff Wellens, director of field services for Gravity Diagnostics, said they are closing because their partnership with the city is ending and the number of people getting tested continues to decrease.

"Last January, we were hitting about 2,000 a day and that was sustained for a good number of weeks after the holiday and at the present time we are just under about 10% of that now about 200 tests a day between the site here and the Florence Mall," Wellens said.

Ashley Auciello with the Health Collaborative said the overall number of tests in the Tri-State has dropped. Dr. Stephen Feagins, medical director for Hamilton County Public Health, said that doesn't mean the positivity rate is lower than before.

"Right now, it feels like things are kind of normal, but yet the positive rate for Southwest Ohio was like 1.6% this week last year, and it's almost 12% this week this year," Feagins said.

Feagins said that number is partly because testing is less frequent, but noted COVID has not become endemic.

"Endemic really isn't that term because endemic really means that you can predict when the flu season is going to start, you know kinda what's it going to be like, you know when you need to vaccinate for the flu each year," Feagins said. "You're not sure about that with COVID yet."

Theurer said she isn't sure where she'll go to get tested in the future. Aucielle recommended visiting TestAndProtectCincy.com to find COVID testing locations.

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Gravity Diagnostics closes COVID-19 testing sites as fewer in the Tri-State get tested - WCPO 9 Cincinnati

The Nihilism of the Left – VDHs Blade of Perseus

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Victor Davis HansonAmerican Greatness

The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands. And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

For understandable reasons, socialists and leftists are usually kept out of the inner circles of the Democratic Party, and especially kept away from control of the country. A now resuscitated Bernie Sanders for most of his political career was an inert outlier. The brief flirtations with old-style hardcore liberals such as George McGovern in 1972 and Mike Dukakis in 1988 imploded the Democratic Party. Their crash-and-burn campaigns were followed by corrective nominees who actually won the presidency: Southern governors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Such was the nations innate distrust of the Left, and in particular the East Coast elite liberal. For nearly half a century between the elections of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, it was assumed that no Democratic presidential candidate could win the popular vote unless he had a reassuring Southern accent.

How did the extreme Left manage its rare takeover of the country between 2018 and 2020? Certainly, Obamas election helped accelerate the woke movement and energized identity politics. One could also argue over the political opportunities in 2020 following the devastation of COVID-19.

In the long term, the medicine of lockdowns and quarantines probably proved more calamitous than the disease, and this crisis mode made doable what had once been unimaginable. State governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and Andrew Cuomo did not let the pandemic crisis go to waste. It was a rare occasion to leverage agendas that otherwise had no public support in ordinary times.

In the chaos of 2020, both laws and customs were altered or scrappedchanging the very way we vote. Over 102 million ballots were either mailed in or cast during so-called early votingstrangely resulting in far lower rejection rates in most states than in past normal years of predominantly in-person voting on Election Day. Indeed, in just one year, Election Day went from an American institution to an afterthought.

The hatred of Donald Trump prompted an influx of hundreds of millions of dark dollars from Silicon Valley to supplant the responsibilities of registrars in key precincts with armies of paid activists. A non compos mentis, basement-bound Joe Biden was cynically given an Ol Joe from Scranton moderate veneer to pursue a calibrated hard-Left agenda.

So Americans ended up with a neo-socialist government. It is proving as disastrous as it is bitterly instructivereminding this generation of Americans what the Left does when it grasps power. As all restraints came off, the hard and now unbridled Left went to work to turn America into something like a looney, one-party California. A wide-open border followed. We may see 3 million illegal aliens cross at the southern border during the first 18 months of the Biden Administration. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allotted to reward those illegally entering America, who can expect free legal support from the U.S. government to ensure they are not subject to the laws of the United States.

In a sane world, Biden would have been impeached for deliberately destroying the very federal laws he swore to uphold. On the prompt of his hard Left controllers, he was eager to alter the electoral demography of the nation rather than ensure immigrants came in reasonable numbers, legally, with audit and background checks, and safely in a time of a pandemic. The former illegal arrivals were seen as needed constituents, the latter legal immigrants too politically unpredictable.

The Left in about a year has negated American gas and oil independence. Biden, who promised to end Americas use of fossil fuels on his watch, cast adrift millions of his fellow citizens to choose between driving and eating. Much of what the Left had traditionally demonized and wanted gone from American lifefrom gasoline to beefsteak to new pickup trucksbecame so inflated in price as to be nearly unattainable.

The electrician now pays five times more for his wire, the carpenter eight times more for his plywood, the plumber six times more for his pipeas all three have to pay off-the-books cash for rare workers who prefer to get checks from the Biden Administration. The Biden printing press has destroyed both the idea that all citizens will work if there are just good-paying jobs, and that affordable necessities for lifefood, fuel, and shelterform the basis for a middle-class life.

If the Left did all that in 14 months, imagine what it can still do before losing the Congress in 2022.

The Biden Administrations profligate multitrillion-dollar budget, inflation of the currency, de facto zero interest rates, destructive subsidies that undermined labor participation, and incompetence at addressing the supply-chain and clogged port crises will all by midyear likely achieve a 10 percent annualized inflation rate. Carter-era stagflation is on the near horizon.

When an American president predicts a food shortage in what used to be the breadbasket of the world, then we see the wages of socialism in all their unapologetic cruelty. When the Left can scarcely hide its glee that diesel fuel hit $7 a gallon in California, the public is finally seeing that the Bidens, Newsoms, and AOCs of the world care nothing for the real-life consequences of their elite utopian green fantasies. How did America ever stoop to begging communist Venezuela, theocratic Iran, and dictatorial Russia to pump oil for us that we have in abundance but will not produce? Which insane person thought up the idea of using Vladimir Putins Russia as our mediator to restart the Iran Deal?

The now unfettered woke revolution seeks to Trotskyize American history and its heroes. A disastrous foreign policy of appeasement has ended U.S. deterrence. After the worst military humiliation in 50 years in Afghanistan, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea all seek to capitalize on a rare American Phaethon moment. The worlds superpower has turned over the reins of its deterrence chariot to a ninny and his gurus. And before crashing the country, they aimlessly rebound from one self-created crisis to the next self-induced disaster.

Aside from the dismal left-wing political record, the public has also witnessed an unapologetically leftwing federal bureaucracy now completely unbound. Our top echelon of the administrative state is defiant in its weaponized assumption of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

We are learning that the likes of Anthony Fauci have all but destroyed the reputation of once time-honored federal health agencies. In their contradictions, about-faces, and deceit, they focused mostly on controlling their multibillion-dollar public fiefdoms, hounding critics, rewarding sycophants, politicizing science, hiding culpability about routing money to lunatic gain-of-function research in China, and marginalizing outspoken voices of audit.

The military apparat after Afghanistandefined as woke Pentagon functionaries, revolving door and politically weaponized corporate generals, and outspoken politicosmanaged the impossible: a once revered military now cannot even win a 50 percent vote of confidence from the American public.

The intelligence agencies are worse. Former kingpins such as John Brennan and James Clapper, both pundits for hire on leftwing cable networks, lied under oath before Congress without consequences. When 50 retired intelligence officials during the Biden 2020 campaign claimed publicly that Hunters laptop was likely a Russian plot, what then is left of any semblance of nonpartisan professionalism and integrity?

James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Christopher Wray have all eroded the reputation of the FBI by fueling the Russian collusion hoax, the Alfa Bank hoax, and the Hunter laptop disinformation hoax. Since when does the FBI go after journalists in their underwear or moms and dads at school board meetings, as if it is now an extension of the teacher union or DNC?

Along with Robert Muellerwho claimed no knowledge of either the Steele dossier or Fusion GPSthe Washington FBI hierarchy did to the agency what Lois Lerner infamously did to the IRS. Just as Lerner became an extension of the Obama 2012 reelection effort and corrupted tax law, so the FBI descended into becoming the wayward Biden familys retrieval serviceeager to keep quiet Hunters incriminating laptop and to rescue Ashley Bidens lurid diary.

When the evidence becomes overwhelming that the collusionary media lied about the laptop or the origins of COVID-19, there is never a retraction, only a Soviet-style silence about past untruth. And then it is on to the next false narrative.

Add in the conduct of FBI luminaries such as the forger Kevin Clinesmith, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, who preferred to investigate conservatives rather than enemies of the nation. What characterizes, then, our once revered intelligence agencies is not just institutionalized mediocracy. Rather it is a dangerous zeal to enact by fiat politicized agendas that cannototherwise be ratified by a legislative voteall with the expectation that these sanctified agents of political change are above the law and will be rewarded accordingly.

Americans had tuned out many of our major institutions that are now openly hostile to American exceptionalism. In their nihilism, leftists seek to destroy the very organizations they absorbed.

Professional sports? Multimillionaire basketball players are more likely to refuse to salute their own flag than to say a word of dissent to their autocratic and often ethnocentric Chinese paymasters.

Higher education? A Yale law school dean contextualizes the loud disruption of free speech by leftist law students at a conference. Only that way can she ensure that rules about open expression remain theoretical, and not real for the woke.

Entertainment? Hiring, promotions, and awards are now based as much on race, gender, and sexual identity as on merit.

Forty years ago, face slapper Will Smith would likely have been removed from the Oscar ceremonies for rudely shouting and interrupting the worldwide show. Twenty years ago, he might still have been rebuked for profanity and yelling the F-word in a live televised event. Now he is neither arrested nor even removed for physically assaulting comedian Chris Rock. His belated contrition is belied by his refusal to leave the ceremony and to go dancing and partying into the post-assault wee hours. Will there be open brawling on stage next year?

The Left got what it wanted and now controls academia, the media, the internet, K-12 education, corporate boardrooms, the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Hollywood. And they more or less have turned each of these into versions of Pravda. The sermons, arrogance, and narcissism of these woke cultural imperialists now explain why they are disliked as much abroad as they are at home.

In sum, we are watching a rare laboratory experiment in which the traditional American fringe is now in control of the government. In pursuit of its utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it. The result is an unmitigated disaster that not only has tarred the Democratic Party, corrupted once-revered agencies, and alienated half the country from our cultural institutions, but now endangers the very health and security of the United States.

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The Nihilism of the Left - VDHs Blade of Perseus

Understanding what drives addiction – The Shillong Times

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Editor

I watched a little bit of your YouTube presentation on the drug menace in Meghalaya. Your persistent question on what actually causes addiction was great. But the answers, I thought, were typically modern too scientific and external, more about brain and body in short, covering everything but the soul of the addict especially his loss of inwardness and faith in his powers of self-control. If science alone could explain addiction, then addiction would have been endemic to human nature and visible in all generations. But that is not the case, right? We are not our bodies, and certainly not our brains alone. Consciousness and the soul cannot be explained in terms of the brain alone.So what makes an individual transition from mere desire, to addiction? I have a different explanation. I think it is the terrible nihilism of our times and its chief consequences which are, loss of inwardness, lack of meaning in life, loss of faith in our powers of self-control, etc. Succumbing to the appetites, without boundaries imposed by self-control, leads to a devastating loss of self a self-prone to self-destructiveness.We all have desires. But we do not become addicts. Many young people have a lot of pain in their hearts. Loss of faith and genuine belief in a higher being, makes them deal with pain through addictive forms of self-destruction. Human nature, unless redeemed by self-control, is self-destructive.So maybe we need more than just sympathy. Here in Northwest Indiana I see this regime of sympathy (nothing else) as really devastating to the recovery process. Recovering addicts, I am sure, have more faith in therapy than in themselves. This is a tragedy of modernity unruly passions leading to addiction, whether to substances or to therapy.As you can see, I feel strongly about this topic. Although untrained in therapy, I wish I were there in person, to speak directly to young addicts. Medication helps, but only to some extent. It cannot tame the passions or bring about dispassion. It cannot give self-control. At best, it controls the physical effects of the devastating mental state of the addict.Thank you for doing this important work,

Yours etc.,

Deepa Majumdar

Via email

Editor,

The daily load shedding of two hours by Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) is pushing us to the dark ages. When there is a power failure, mobile internet gets halted. It brings a lot of inconvenience to people, particularly the ones who are working from home for private companies. When there is darkness, one can buy candles or even have a solar light. However, when there is no connectivity, the only solution will be to get an inverter that not all can afford. We hope that the Power Department will empathise with what the citizens are going through and resolve the issue at the earliest.

Yours etc.,

Genia Dohling,

Shillong 3

Editor,

It is with great distaste and disgust that I am writing this letter, to let the public know of the prevailing covid scare in NEHU, Shillong. We are all aware of the VC testing Covid positive post Yoga Day events after which many students from the same Yoga Day celebrations have developed symptoms and have been asked to get tested. My niece too had been feeling unwell and we, hailing from Silchar, Assam have been at our wits end on how to offer our support given the recent deluge in the Barak Valley. Her parents, my brother, in particular has not even been told of the prevailing situation in NEHU due to his hypertension. What compels me to write this letter is, how can a university in the 21st century and with the reputation of being North Easts highest seat of learning have a leader with utmost disregard for Covid protocols and social distancing? If he was symptomatic and had been feeling unwell, with what state of mind did he attend the Yoga Day observance by putting at risk the lives of hundreds of students and indirectly making their families suffer too during the already tense times of flooding and property losses? It appears that a photo-ops is more important for the VC instead of making sure that his students who have no access to humongous reimbursements and hospital care which Central Government officials are used to, are not exposed to the risk of Covid.This is a total administrative failure on the part of NEHU to deal with the pandemic which is far from over. When students are asked to return negative RT-PCR results when returning to hostels, why cant the Vice-Chancellor not be asked for the same given his country-trotting escapades as reported in different media? I think the entire system of Covid handling, especially of NEHU and the State Government needs a relook given this disastrously cataclysmic approach of a VIP Centric Covid culture.

Yours etc.,

A Deka

Silchar, Assam.

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Understanding what drives addiction - The Shillong Times

Crashing Confidence: The Dallas Fed Reveals All – The Epoch Times

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News analysis

July Fourth is always a bittersweet holiday, a time to reflect on the grand ideals of the founding of American independence. But this year it will once again be impossible to believe that those ideals are still with us as a governing principle, at least not consistently, not even predominantly, certainly not right now.

To summarize the current problem, the nation decided to turn against those ideas of freedom and rights in the name of virus control (a model mysteriously copied from the praxis of the Chinese Communist Party) and thereby unleashed at home the very tyrannies that our ancestors fought so hard to establish as a permanent feature of American life.

And we are paying the price in the worst way now. They shut down nearly the whole of the American economyas if that would be possible without causing egregious damageand closed churches and schools. They tried to make up the difference by spending and then printing trillions of dollars, believing somehow that this would not create an eventual calamity.

That calamity is here now, and it is showing up not only in raging inflation but also worker demoralization, cultural nihilism, radical political discontent, and economic dislocation. The most pressing problem right now is satisfying American energy needs but the Biden administration offers no more than wind and airliterally recommending those two means of powering our lives rather than tapping abundant fossil fuel resources.

The incompetence on display daily is truly mind-boggling. As a result, not even our usual July Fourth celebrations can be observed without pressing reminders of how prosperity is being drained away. The typical celebratory parties this year, according to Wells Fargo, are up fully 11 percent over last year. Thats also the real-time rate at which food and beverages are going up in price.

Farm Bureau, according to The Epoch Times, fully expects a 17 percent increase:

The authors of the study assessed many of Americans favorite cookout foods. They found that the price for two pounds of ground beef surged 36 percent to $11.12, two pounds of boneless and skinless chicken breasts jumped 33 percent to $8.99, three pounds of center cut pork chops climbed 31 percent to $15.26, and 32 ounces of pork and beans rose 33 percent to $2.53.

Such a level of inflation has been unknown in the United States for forty years, and it is worse this time because of its longevity. There is no one at the Fed right now with the courage to do what needs to be done, and no one in any policy position within the reigning party will push economic growth over control, enterprise over diktat, or freedom over compliance. For these people in office, command and control is all they know.

We will soon be watching those firecrackers in the sky to celebrate freedom as a principle but it was little over a year ago when many ruling-class voices were dismissing the whole idea and even calling it freedumb. That was surely a turning point in American cultural life, when the people who imagined living out this countrys main ideals were put down as enemies and suspected as possible insurrectionists.

Regardless, the resistance to this unrelenting attack on American ideals is growing and appearing in highly unusual places. One that struck me most recently was the printing of actual truth on the pages of a site run by the Federal Reserve itself.

Some background.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 with branch banks around the country to give it the appearance of decentralization even though its not true. Those branches survived to this day. Each specializes in a few tasks to give them some reason for existence. Each one has a different character. The Dallas Fed has always had a more conservative bent, leaning more toward tighter money and freer markets.

The Dallas Feds latest survey of manufacturing output sentiment has done the world a service by actually printing comments from businesspeople who answered the survey. Here are some of the choice answers. Its remarkable to me that such sentiments have been printed in this venue.

These comments are not only obviously true. That they appear on a Fed site is stunning and indicative of real revolt happening at all levels of society.

Lets return briefly to the problem listed above, namely that none of this can be fixed anytime soon. We are in for two-and-a-half years of continuing hell. It seems incredible to contemplate. And remember we are talking about responses from Texas, a state that opened earlier than others and has a lower tax burden than most states. Its a state to which people have moved in order to escape the despotism. And yet even here, there is no escape.

After years of this, what will be left of American industry, culture, the labor pool, and optimism generally is hard to know. The tragedy of it all is that the Biden administration really did have a chance to do some good, to bring calm and normalcy to American life. They instead chose some kind of mythical revolutionary path inspired by untested woke ideology hatched in university settings that has nothing to do with real-world longings for liberty and a happy life.

Its best not to let this July Fourth pass without deep reflection on the meaning of the holiday. The ideals of this holiday are not just for the 18th century. They are for the 21st century too. The sooner we see this and act on it, the sooner America can get back to being a light unto the world.

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Crashing Confidence: The Dallas Fed Reveals All - The Epoch Times

Lupe Fiasco’s "DRILL MUSIC IN ZION" is a discourse on capitalism and nihilism – EARMILK – EARMILK

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After gifting us the thought-provoking and playful "AUTOBOTO" featuring singer Nayirah, Lupe Fiasco continues the salvo with yet another mind-blowing single titled "DRILL MUSIC IN ZION". The title track from his forthcoming album, however, doesn't share the same soundscape as the genre included in the title. Instead, it's made up of cinematic jazz textures provided by his in-house producer Soundtrakk. Atop airy, somber horns, moody strings, and punchy boombap-style drums, Lupe weaves intricate rhyme patterns threaded by his bird's eye view account of how rotten the modern world is. The first verse deals directly with consumerism and the lack of principle over profit in this day and age where money is worshipped. This can also be summarized by the following lines

"Somebody's daughter is contemplating the conventBut a man with a dollar is slobbering for her haunches"

The second verse follows the story of a wrongful execution while the real killer goes scot-free basking in the euphoria of a failed justice system. Lupe again watches from afar like the eponymous Watcher (from the Marvel universe), contemplating and hoping that justice gets served. He closes the song with the third verse which is just 4 bars long where he reminds us that we are mere mortals whose choices have domino effects.

"DRILL MUSIC IN ZION" is the title track from Lupe's next album, also titledDRILL MUSIC IN ZION. The product of a burst of thoughtful spontaneity,Lupecreated the new album over a short period, diving into a folder of beats sent bySoundtrakkand emerging with a fully-realized album in just three days

Buy/Stream "DRILL MUSIC IN ZION"

Pre-orderDRILL MUSIC IN ZION

Check out full details about "LFT" at Henka.io

Connect with Lupe Fiasco:Twitter|Instagram|Facebook|Spotify

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Lupe Fiasco's "DRILL MUSIC IN ZION" is a discourse on capitalism and nihilism - EARMILK - EARMILK

Why are these summer books indebted to an Austrian author of nihilistic rants? – Los Angeles Times

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On the Shelf

Hot Thomas Bernhard Summer

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

The name Thomas Bernhard appears in the jacket copy and pre-publication reviews of three novels out this summer, and its not a coincidence. Within the Bernhardian universe, one jacket opines; narrated by the love child of Thomas Bernhard and Lydia Davis, reads another. An early review of the third calls it a straight-up approximation of the style associated with the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard.

Its an odd selling point, only more so in our attention-deficit era. Bernhard was a monologist fueled by energetic misanthropy, disgust and vitriol. Sentences go on for pages. The narrators of his novels usually describe the plight of a close friend who, after laboring on an artistic endeavor for years, has recently ended it all. Bernhard, who was disgusted by his native countrys hypocrisy and its complicity in the Holocaust, died in 1989 at age 58; his will forbade stagings of his plays or publication of his work in Austria.

Despite his difficulty in text and in life, we find ourselves in the summer of Bernhard. Jordan Castros debut novel, The Novelist, published two weeks ago, not only mentions Bernhard on its jacket but also references one of his books in the text. Mark Habers second novel, Saint Sebastians Abyss, out last month, is the closest to a straightforward homage. Emily Halls debut, The Longcut, also published in May, follows an artist who wonders what my work was on a meandering walk to visit a gallerist.

Each of the three books could be described as a Bernhardian rant, or in some cases a diatribe, centered on the creation and purpose of art. Marked by lengthy monologues, emphatic hatefulness and a disgust with modern life, they pay implicit tribute to a writer whose influence seems only to grow with the decades.

Bernhard himself would have hated an investigation into his effect on contemporary fiction. Thanks to several Twitter accounts that post Bernhard quotations daily, I am reminded that he wrote: I hated literary theories more than anything in my life, but most of all I hated so-called theories about the novel.

His closest modern-day adherents share some of that aversion to the bland and condescending formulas taught in many writing graduate programs. I had come out of an MFA program, and it felt very much like this is what you have to do, Hall told me from her home in Queens, New York.

So Hall cast about for other ideas. I was bored out of my mind, she recalls. I was in Three Lives bookstore in New York, and I picked Bernhards Concrete off a table. Right, I thought, the guy with no paragraph breaks. But when I read it, I realized all the things I thought were my flaws the digressing, the self-contradiction in Bernhard that was the writing. I got very excited.

The Bernhard vogue likely traces back to the early 2000s, when Viking reissued a number of his books, sparking interest among Anglophone readers especially in his later novel The Loser. Though all 13 of his novels have now been released in English, there is still plenty of untranslated material among his countless plays, novellas, stories and memoirs. In October, Seagull Press will publish The Rest Is Slander, a collection of five previously untranslated stories.

Years later, Hall is so inspired by his work that she has been trying to learn German. I wonder what is lost in translation, she said.

Her admiration has drawn her into a cohort of like-minded writers. Hall has spoken about the influence of Jen Craig, who is frequently compared to Bernhard. Reached by video in Australia, Craig said that following Bernhard means learning to break the rules.

He gives you the plot on the first page, Craig said. Once thats out of the way, you can write everything else, everything that cant be described by plot. Craig is the author of Since the Accident and Panthers and the Museum of Fire. Since the Accident is out of print, and Panthers was published by a small press, so Craigs work is shamefully under the radar. I discovered Panthers at my local bookstore on the shelf of staff recommendations. The little note under the book read, for fans of Thomas Bernhard.

At first, I was a bit self-conscious at there being a link between me and this obscure, possibly misogynist, excessive writer, Craig said, of the frequent comparisons to Bernhard. But now I dont care. Im glad. For me, Bernhard is all about realism. I dont think many think of him as a realist, but coming out of graduate school, so much of the idea of writing was about theme and plot and content. That stuff is so bogus. The ranting ... thats reality to me.

Because Bernhards style is so uniquely his, I wondered whether being associated with him was anxiety-inducing to these writers.

One of the things Im interested in is dispelling the myth of spontaneous creation, Castro said. We learn through imitation, and we have this myth of the self-made artist. Im always wearing my influences on the proverbial sleeve. Theres a part in my book when the narrator says you learn guitar by playing other peoples songs.

Castros book is about a novelist who sits down to write and does anything but. Finally, veering off into a rant about a frenemy propels him to write: I suddenly felt an exhilarating burst of energy ... I could write a novel where I just talked s about Eric; I could write my own version of [Bernhards] Woodcutters.

Castros novel is the only one of this summers Bernhardian books that mentions the author explicitly, but all bear his stamp even as they vary widely in subject and tone. Habers Saint Sebastians Abyss, is narrated by a man on his way to visit friend and colleague Schmidt on his deathbed; the two have made their careers obsessing over a single work by a fictional Syphilitic painter, Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

The style, the myopic sentences: I realized I could use those to tell the stories I wanted to tell, said Haber, speaking from Houstons Brazos Bookstore, where he is the operations manager. His ghost is ever present, but I dont think Ill ever get to the quality of his sentences. I like to think that my books are sillier; I dont think Bernhard would write a holy donkey.

Many other writers have been compared to Bernhard or spoken about his influence on their work, including Mauro Javier Crdenas, Claudia Pieiro and the late Rafael Chirbes. But Bernhards influence, though wide-ranging, is still a bit of a secret. For fun, I entered Bernhards The Loser into the generator website, What Should I Read Next? The answer was more Bernhard.

Perhaps its a good thing we havent yet made too much of the Bernhard boom. The prospect of his style being too widely (and inevitably poorly) imitated is grotesque. How far and how bad does this go? Hall asked. Does Bernhards style become an MFA staple?

This summers writers have learned from Bernhards ruthless approach to plot and to what the novel can be without losing their own voices in the process; thats a much better legacy than a flotilla of junky imitators. Influences are a series of permissions, Craig said.

I felt relief when I realized Bernhard was always writing about the same thing, Hall said. Theres always this idea that you have to do something different with each book, reinvent the wheel. Craig said something analogous: Popular novels now are more about something: a historical period or figure: Today, as a novelist you have to become an expert rather than a writer.

All four writers were thrilled to get a chance to talk not only about their work but also Bernhards; our conversations felt like the tail end of an Irish wake. Haber and I reveled in the abundant contradictions within even a single Bernhard sentence. His novel pays tribute to this in the letter Schmidt sends to his friend, reading all nine pages of his relatively terse email.

Castro and I laughed over the episode of Schopenhauers dog in Concrete, a passage so funny we had to interrupt our partners bedtime routines to read it to them. Theres such a glee there, Castro said. Its not being straightforwardly pessimistic.

This appears to be the key to understanding Bernhard: Not his depressiveness but his joy. He wrote, Everything is ridiculous when one thinks of death, Hall said. If you start there, everything is funny. The warmth in annihilation isnt lost on Haber, either. To write, you have to have some sense of hope, otherwise why would you write? There are dark ideas in Bernhard, but his writing is energetic and life-affirming. It comes from a place of deep affection.

Above all, this distinctive crop of summer reads is Bernhardian in its focus on the struggle to create art, which is for the artist an existential question. I thought I would choke on the error of believing that literature was my hope, Bernhard writes in My Prizes: An Accounting. That choking is prolific. But the heart of that statement is what makes his work, for all its nihilism, continually galvanizing in itself and in its acolytes.

Ferris most recent book is Silent Cities: New York.

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Why are these summer books indebted to an Austrian author of nihilistic rants? - Los Angeles Times

‘Roe v. Wade’ is still overturned, and other news too! – The Pillar

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Hey everybody,

Roe v. Wade is still overturned, and this is the Tuesday Pillar Post.

Many of you have heard for your entire lives that Roe v. Wade would be eventually overturned. If youre anything like me, you didnt believe it there were too many things that seemed to work against a monumental shift in the American approach to the deeply contentious issue of abortion.

Even in the weeks after a draft decision was leaked, the prospect that Roe would really be struck down seemed just incredible. The odds were too great.

And yet, here we are.

The decision is a long-awaited milestone for the pro-life movement, after decades of effort to legally prohibit the barbarism of abortion.

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Its no overstatement: Dobbs v. Jackson has begun a new chapter in American political life.

What comes next, politically and culturally? I dont know. Neither do you. Dobbs does not make abortion illegal across the United States; it localizes the issue to state legislatures and eventually, to state judiciaries.

Twenty states are unlikely to prohibit or strictly regulate abortion, and almost as many with strict bans set to go in place. That leaves a handful of states where there will be fierce fights over the issue. And, eventually, state laws on abortion - for or against - will face challenges in state courts, with advocates looking to see how judges might interpret state constitutions.

Meanwhile, abortion advocates are becoming less reserved about being just that not pro-choice, but calling themselves explicitly pro-abortion.

At the same time, the political coalitions that brought the U.S. most of the way to this moment have seemed already to be in their last gasps, and there is really no clear picture of what will emerge from a lot of disagreement as the future of American political conservatism, or how that will impact state-by-state pro-life lawmaking.

And, of course, there is a tension in America between the phenomenons of polarized partisanship, on the one hand, and widespread institutional disaffiliation, one the other. And our runaway inflation heightens awareness of economic disparities in America, to say nothing of the vexing problem of access to affordable healthcare, etc etc etc.

It also seems likely that in the next few weeks - as churches and crisis pregnancy centers have already been burned since the Dobbs decision - some incident in some city will become a flashpoint for ugly conflict over abortion.

In the long term, it will be fascinating to watch as state supreme courts take up state laws prohibiting abortion SCOTUS didnt only send abortion to state legislatures, it implicitly sent state laws to the review of state courts, such that we could be gearing up for state-constitution based Roe v. Wade cases in many of the states prohibiting or restricting abortion with all the politicking that goes into planning the judicial review of highly contentions issues. The lawyers will have their work cut out for them.

The Church has a role to play in all of that. Catholics will no doubt disagree among ourselves about our role in public and political life going forward. There is a lot to watch, and discuss, and analyze, going forward.

But with all of that said, it seems to me that for the moment, it suffices - and is just - for Catholic Americans to take a moment to offer to the Lord the Te deum, a hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

Last weeks decision will save the actual lives of human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, our creator. Thats worth praising God for, even as the next few weeks and months in America portend real difficulty.

You are God: we praise you;You are God: we acclaim you;You are the eternal Father:All creation worships you.To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,Cherubim and Seraphim, sing in endless praise:Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might,Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

And if youre going to sing the Te deum, it really ought to be Mozarts composition. Its delightful.

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Most of the news weve published in the past few days has been about the Supreme Courts decision, of course, and here it is:

On Friday, soon after Dobbs v. Jackson was released, we published an interview with Notre Dame law professor Carter Snead about what the decision means, and what it doesnt. If you havent read it yet, start here - Snead has a lot to say worth thinking about.

There was concern as the decision was released that it might lead to acts of vandalism or desecration of Catholic churches and other pro-life spaces across the country. In fact, not much of that has happened. But there have been some: A historic church in West Virginia burned to the ground under apparent arson, there was an attempted arson at a parish in Virginia, a crisis pregnancy center in Colorado went up in flames, another in Virginia was vandalized.

Still - when Dobbs was issued, parishes and churches wanted to be prepared for what might be coming.

We talked with diocesan officials and cathedral rectors in several cities about the kinds of security precautions they put in place as Roe v. Wade was overturned.

And if you want a round-up of what your bishop, and others, had to say about the historic decision, you can find our selection of episcopal statements and reactions right here.

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Heres a report I dont want you to miss:

When the Supreme Court on Friday overturned 50 years of federal abortion protections, demonstrators for and against chanted and waved signs in the streets outside the Court building.

When Dobbs v. Jackson was announced, some people took to prayer, perhaps. Others had more prosaic responses: Talking heads on cable news began pontificating almost immediately, while pro and anti abortion lobbying groups blasted fundraising emails to their supporters

But more than 1,600 miles from Washington, D.C., on a dead-end street in north Denver, Clifton Powell and Floyd Jenkins stood patient and quiet, at the end of a driveway leading into the Planned Parenthood Park Hill Health Center, one of the largest abortion clinics in America.

Its where Floyd and Clifton always stand on Friday mornings.

Floyd and Clifton are sidewalk counselors, who stand outside Planned Parenthood, sometimes in prayer, holding a sign that urges women to change their minds about prospective abortions and, miraculously, they say women often change their minds.

They live in a state with the most permissive set of abortion laws in the country abortion is legal in Colorado, where I live, up until the moment of birth. So Clifton and Floyd said they still be at the clinic five days a week, Dobbs or no Dobbs.

I talked with them, and with pro-life activists, about the significance of sidewalk counselors like them to the pro-life movement.

Give it a read.

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You might have read in recent months about ongoing persecution of Catholics in Nicaragua, where the regime of President Daniel Ortega has no love for the Catholic Church.

One of the countrys most prominent bishops has a uniquely Catholic response to the persecution hes fasting.

The bishop emphasizes that hes not on a hunger strike for political purposes, but on a fast, for spiritual ones.

Edgar Beltrn, a correspondent for The Pillar in Latin America, reports on the Churchs spiritual response to serious persecution in Nicaragua.

Give it a read.

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We told you last week that adding journalist Luke Coppen to The Pillars roster would mean some excellent journalistic coverage of the life of the Church in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Luke started Monday, and has jumped out of the gate with some excellent coverage.

Read here about the English Catholic paradox how it happened that a county with 4 million baptized Catholics has three cardinals three times as many as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where around 35 million Catholics live.

Luke talked with a lot of interesting English Catholics, to ask whether English Catholicism is enjoying a moment of revival, or whether the preponderance of red-hatted Englishmen are just a quirk of history and personalities.

Guys, read this.

Meanwhile, the German bishops conference announced this week that nearly 400,000 Germans formally disaffiliated themselves from Catholicism in 2021 a huge increase from roughly 220,000 who did the same in 2020.

At the same time, the number of Mass-goers in Germany dropped below 1 million, for the first time in as long as anyone can remember.

With an assist on crunching the numbers from Brendan Hodge, Luke took a very interesting look at the declining numbers, their context, and what they might portend for Germanys ongoing Synodal Path.

Take a look.

Also, you might have missed it on Friday what with other big news happening but we were very proud and very excited to announce that longtime British Catholic journalist Luke Coppen has joined The Pillars team as our senior correspondent.

Weve tasked Luke with providing serious, insightful, and important deep-dive coverage into the life of the Church in Europe with some attention to how the European Church impacts things in Rome, and things on the U.S. side of the Atlantic.

Hell also have some other cool projects in the works.

Very few people do the kind of careful, serious, engaging journalism Luke does if you read his initial filings with us, Im sure youll agree.

But we also explained on Friday that hiring Luke is a wager for us.

Growth, we mention a lot, is fueled by subscriptions. And weve had subscription growth in recent weeks - but this year has been slower than last year, and were a few hundred paying subscriptions below where we projected wed be at this time of the year.

Still - weve heard from a lot of you that youd like to see serious, smart, Pillar-style coverage of the UK, of Germany, of Eastern Europe, and beyond. Luke ticks those boxes.

So when he became available, we decided to bring him on board, in faith that the Lord would provide through you.

If youre one of those people urging The Pillar to grow our team well, now were urging you to help us pay for it. Subscribe.

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(Ill stop bugging you about this for a while, I promise.)

Finally, 50 migrants were found dead yesterday in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas. The dead were migrants, being transported to the U.S. in a smuggling operation. There were also fewer than 20 survivors found in the truck, surrounded by the bodies of people who died in the trucks extreme heat - some of the survivors were teenagers.

Pray for the survivors, for the dead, for their families, and for justice.

Heres Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio:

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I went last night to the Bans off our Bodies pro-abortion rally at Colorados state capitol Im calling it pro-abortion because speakers emphasized repeatedly that their movement should own that moniker, and move away from the euphemism of choice.

I live-tweeted my time there, and you can view the entire tweet thread here if you want to:

Heres some impressions

First, Colorado is only one state, and one where abortion is emphatically enshrined in state law, so I dont know how that might impact turnout. The crowd, which seemed to me to be a few thousand, was certainly smaller than the annual state March for Life, held in the same location each January.

There were, of course, some inane remarks I couldnt quite fathom like the speaker who told the crowd that Ours is a life-affirming movement.

And there was the speaker who said that the pro-abortion movement is not going away: We will survive like the viruses that wont quit. We are going to become the dominant variant, she said to cheers from the crowd, without any apparent sense of irony about comparing her movement to a pandemic.

There were also some deeply sad moments, most especially the midwife who told the crowd that she had conducted the pharmaceutical abortion of her own child, and taught other midwives who usually bring life into the world how to facilitate abortions.

Most striking, at least at first, was this installation piece:

Yes, youre seeing that right. Those are, in effigy, the heads of five Supreme Court justices on pikes, on the lawn of Colorados state capitol.

Gruesome? Yes. Foreboding? Maybe. But I must admit, the intended effect of the piece was dampened for me when people posed for selfies with the styrofoam heads, and when the artist urged me to tag her instagram handle if I posted pictures online.

The whole display seemed a bit more like juvenile cosplay than like some serious attempt at intimidation or threat-making.

Justice Neil Gorsuch is the center head, with a poster below him listing an address in Boulder, Colorado where Gorsuch is said to live. The sign even helpfully offers an approximate drive time for those inspired by the head-on-a-pike, and keen to trek up to Boulder.

The only problem? Well, it didnt take very much googling to learn that Gorsuch sold that house in 2017. Pity the person who lives there now.

Of course, the problem with juvenile cosplay about the decapitation of political leaders is that some nut will be inspired to act upon it and there were, milling about, the sort of nuts who seemed like possible candidates.

So this is the kind of unserious thing that must be taken seriously.

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Heres the takeaway from what I saw:

Sure, the protest featured the skewered heads and goofy things like the woman in alb and stole, carrying a sign with a detailed drawing of female anatomy and walking a small dog.

But while I was there, I tried to listen for some kind of common ground with these demonstrators. They care enough about abortion to go to a protest, I figured, and Ive been to many abortion-related protests, so I should at least listen.

I was struck by the crowds distrust for institutions, parties, and the political process. I heard countless people insist they were progressive, but not Democrats, just as I often hear young conservatives say increasingly theyre conservative, but not committed to the Republican party.

Ive also heard many pro-life young people make it a point to insist theyre pro-life, but not Republicans in recent years all hallmarks of the institutional disaffiliation that defines their generation.

On Monday night, few speakers urged the crowd to vote most expressed nihilism, or ambivalence, about the prospects of the political process. When a speaker called democracy a preposterous delusion I thought of the post-liberal energies running now in some Catholic intellectual circles.

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More broadly, the speakers, and the crowd, emphasized their sense of isolation and atomization of lacking cohesive or meaningful human communities.

It frequently seemed to me that speakers were mourning the loss of culture itself lamenting American communities with no cohesive sense of identity, no customs, no continuity, and - as Matthew Crawford would put it - no cultural jigs, by which contours of meaningful and satisfying life are easily understood or attained.

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'Roe v. Wade' is still overturned, and other news too! - The Pillar

Do we need a new theory of evolution? – The Guardian

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Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection.

You may recall the gist from school biology lessons. If a creature with poor eyesight happens to produce offspring with slightly better eyesight, thanks to random mutations, then that tiny bit more vision gives them more chance of survival. The longer they survive, the more chance they have to reproduce and pass on the genes that equipped them with slightly better eyesight. Some of their offspring might, in turn, have better eyesight than their parents, making it likelier that they, too, will reproduce. And so on. Generation by generation, over unfathomably long periods of time, tiny advantages add up. Eventually, after a few hundred million years, you have creatures who can see as well as humans, or cats, or owls.

This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading.

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For one thing, it starts midway through the story, taking for granted the existence of light-sensitive cells, lenses and irises, without explaining where they came from in the first place. Nor does it adequately explain how such delicate and easily disrupted components meshed together to form a single organ. And it isnt just eyes that the traditional theory struggles with. The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology, says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.

There are certain core evolutionary principles that no scientist seriously questions. Everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance. But how exactly these processes interact and whether other forces might also be at work has become the subject of bitter dispute. If we cannot explain things with the tools we have right now, the Yale University biologist Gnter Wagner told me, we must find new ways of explaining.

In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Their answer was: Yes, urgently. Each of the authors came from cutting-edge scientific subfields, from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection think of beavers building dams to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) but their proposals were, to many fellow scientists, incendiary.

In 2015, the Royal Society in London agreed to host New Trends in Evolution, a conference at which some of the articles authors would speak alongside a distinguished lineup of scientists. The aim was to discuss new interpretations, new questions, a whole new causal structure for biology, one of the organisers told me. But when the conference was announced, 23 fellows of the Royal Society, Britains oldest and most prestigious scientific organisation, wrote a letter of protest to its then president, the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. The fact that the society would hold a meeting that gave the public the idea that this stuff is mainstream is disgraceful, one of the signatories told me. Nurse was surprised by the reaction. They thought I was giving it too much credibility, he told me. But, he said: Theres no harm in discussing things.

Traditional evolutionary theorists were invited, but few showed up. Nick Barton, recipient of the 2008 Darwin-Wallace medal, evolutionary biologys highest honour, told me he decided not to go because it would add more fuel to the strange enterprise. The influential biologists Brian and Deborah Charlesworth of the University of Edinburgh told me they didnt attend because they found the premise irritating. The evolutionary theorist Jerry Coyne later wrote that the scientists behind the EES were playing revolutionaries to advance their own careers. One 2017 paper even suggested some of the theorists behind the EES were part of an increasing post-truth tendency within science. The personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were shocking and ugly, said one scientist, who is nonetheless sceptical of the EES.

What accounts for the ferocity of this backlash? For one thing, this is a battle of ideas over the fate of one of the grand theories that shaped the modern age. But it is also a struggle for professional recognition and status, about who gets to decide what is core and what is peripheral to the discipline. The issue at stake, says Arlin Stoltzfus, an evolutionary theorist at the IBBR research institute in Maryland, is who is going to write the grand narrative of biology. And underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.

Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. In the early 20th century, many biologists longed for a unifying theory that would enable their field to join physics and chemistry in the club of austere, mechanistic sciences that stripped the universe down to a set of elemental rules. Without such a theory, they feared that biology would remain a bundle of fractious sub-fields, from zoology to biochemistry, in which answering any question might require input and argument from scores of warring specialists.

From todays vantage point, it seems obvious that Darwins theory of evolution a simple, elegant theory that explains how one force, natural selection, came to shape the entire development of life on Earth would play the role of the great unifier. But at the turn of the 20th century, four decades after the publication of On the Origin of Species and two after his death, Darwins ideas were in decline. Scientific collections at the time carried titles such as The Death-bed of Darwinism. Scientists had not lost interest in evolution, but many found Darwins account of it unsatisfying. One major problem was that it lacked an explanation of heredity. Darwin had observed that, over time, living things seemed to change to better fit their environment. But he did not understand how these minute changes were passed from one generation to the next.

At the start of the 20th century, the rediscovery of the work of the 19th-century friar and father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, started to provide the answers. Scientists working in the new field of genetics discovered rules that governed the quirks of heredity. But rather than confirm Darwins theory, they complicated it. Reproduction appeared to remix genes the mysterious units that programme the physical traits we end up seeing in surprising ways. Think of the way a grandfathers red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?

Even more ominous for Darwinists was the emergence of the mutationists in the 1910s, a school of geneticists whose star exponent, Thomas Hunt Morgan, showed that by breeding millions of fruit flies and sometimes spiking their food with the radioactive element radium he could produce mutated traits, such as new eye colours or additional limbs. These were not the tiny random variations on which Darwins theory was built, but sudden, dramatic changes. And these mutations, it turned out, were heritable. The mutationists believed that they had identified lifes true creative force. Sure, natural selection helped to remove unsuitable changes, but it was simply a humdrum editor for the flamboyant poetry of mutation. Natura non facit saltum, Darwin had once written: Nature does not make jumps. The mutationists begged to differ.

These disputes over evolution had the weight of a theological schism. At stake were the forces governing all creation. For Darwinists especially, their theory was all-or-nothing. If another force, apart from natural selection, could also explain the differences we see between living things, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, his whole theory of life would utterly break down. If the mutationists were right, instead of a single force governing all biological change, scientists would have to dig deep into the logic of mutation. Did it work differently on legs and lungs? Did mutations in frogs work differently to mutations in owls or elephants?

In 1920, the philosopher Joseph Henry Woodger wrote that biology suffered from fragmentation and cleavages that would be unknown in such a well-unified science as, for example, chemistry. The divergent groups often feuded, he noted, and it seemed to be getting worse. It began to seem inevitable that the life sciences would grow more and more fractured, and the possibility of a common language would slip away.

Just as it seemed that Darwinism might be buried, a curious collection of statisticians and animal breeders came along to revitalise it. In the 1920s and 30s, working separately but in loose correspondence, thinkers such as the British father of scientific statistics, Ronald Fisher, and the American livestock breeder Sewall Wright, proposed a revised theory of evolution that accounted for scientific advances since Darwins death but still promised to explain all of lifes mysteries with a few simple rules. In 1942, the English biologist Julian Huxley coined the name for this theory: the modern synthesis. Eighty years on, it still provides the basic framework for evolutionary biology as it is taught to millions of schoolchildren and undergraduates every year. Insofar as a biologist works in the tradition of the modern synthesis, they are considered mainstream; insofar as they reject it, they are considered marginal.

Despite the name, it was not actually a synthesis of two fields, but a vindication of one in light of the other. By building statistical models of animal populations that accounted for the laws of genetics and mutation, the modern synthesists showed that, over long periods of time, natural selection still functioned much as Darwin had predicted. It was still the boss. In the fullness of time, mutations were too rare to matter, and the rules of heredity didnt affect the overall power of natural selection. Through a gradual process, genes with advantages were preserved over time, while others that didnt confer advantages disappeared.

Rather than getting stuck into the messy world of individual organisms and their specific environments, proponents of the modern synthesis observed from the lofty perspective of population genetics. To them, the story of life was ultimately just the story of clusters of genes surviving or dying out over the grand sweep of evolutionary time.

The modern synthesis arrived at just the right time. Beyond its explanatory power, there were two further reasons more historical, or even sociological, than scientific why it took off. First, the mathematical rigour of the synthesis was impressive, and not seen before in biology. As the historian Betty Smocovitis points out, it brought the field closer to examplar sciences such as physics. At the same time, writes Smocovitis, it promised to unify the life sciences at a moment when the enlightenment project of scientific unification was all the rage. In 1946, the biologists Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson started the Society for the Study of Evolution, a professional organisation with its own journal, which Simpson said would bring together the sub-fields of biology on the common ground of evolutionary studies. This was all possible, he later reflected, because we seem at last to have a unified theory [] capable of facing all the classic problems of the history of life and of providing a causalistic solution of each.

This was a time when biology was ascending to its status as a major science. University departments were forming, funding was flowing in, and thousands of newly accredited scientists were making thrilling discoveries. In 1944, the Canadian-American biologist Oswald Avery and his colleagues had proved that DNA was the physical substance of genes and heredity, and in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick leaning heavily on work from Rosalind Franklin and the American chemist Linus Pauling mapped its double-helical structure.

While information piled up at a rate that no scientist could fully digest, the steady thrum of the modern synthesis ran through it all. The theory dictated that, ultimately, genes built everything, and natural selection scrutinised every bit of life for advantage. Whether you were looking at algae blooming in a pond or peacock mating rituals, it could all be understood as natural selection doing its work on genes. The world of life could seem suddenly simple again.

By 1959, when the University of Chicago held a conference celebrating the centennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the modern synthesists were triumphant. The venues were packed and national newspaper reporters followed the proceedings. (Queen Elizabeth was invited, but sent her apologies.) Huxley crowed that this is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution.

Yet soon enough, the modern synthesis would come under assault from scientists within the very departments that the theory had helped build.

From the start, there had always been dissenters. In 1959, the developmental biologist CH Waddington lamented that the modern synthesis had sidelined valuable theories in favour of drastic simplifications which are liable to lead us to a false picture of how the evolutionary process works. Privately, he complained that anyone working outside the new evolutionary party line that is, anyone who didnt embrace the modern synthesis was ostracised.

Then came a devastating series of new findings that called into question the theorys foundations. These discoveries, which began in the late 60s, came from molecular biologists. While the modern synthesists looked at life as if through a telescope, studying the development of huge populations over immense chunks of time, the molecular biologists looked through a microscope, focusing on individual molecules. And when they looked, they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be.

They found that the molecules in our cells and thus the sequences of the genes behind them were mutating at a very high rate. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a threat to mainstream evolutionary theory. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isnt what was happening. The genes were changing that is, evolving but natural selection wasnt playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

Evolutionary biologists were stunned. In 1973, David Attenborough presented a BBC documentary that included an interview with one of the leading modern synthesists, Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was visibly distraught at the non-Darwinian evolution that some scientists were now proposing. If this were so, evolution would have hardly any meaning, and would not be going anywhere in particular, he said. This is not simply a quibble among specialists. To a man looking for the meaning of his existence, evolution by natural selection makes sense. Where once Christians had complained that Darwins theory made life meaningless, now Darwinists levelled the same complaint at scientists who contradicted Darwin.

Other assaults on evolutionary orthodoxy followed. The influential palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge argued that the fossil record showed evolution often happened in short, concentrated bursts; it didnt have to be slow and gradual. Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point. It didnt help answer questions such as how life emerged from the seas, or how complex organs, such as the placenta, developed. Using the lens of the modern synthesis to explain the latter, says the Yale developmental biologist Gnter Wagner, would be like using thermodynamics to explain how the brain works. (The laws of thermodynamics, which explain how energy is transferred, do apply to the brain, but they arent much help if you want to know how memories are formed or why we experience emotion.)

Just as feared, the field split. In the 70s, molecular biologists in many universities peeled off from biology departments to form their own separate departments and journals. Some in other sub-fields, such as palaeontology and developmental biology, drifted away as well. Yet the biggest field of all, mainstream evolutionary biology, continued much as before. The way the champions of the modern synthesis who by this point dominated university biology departments dealt with potentially destabilising new findings was by acknowledging that such processes happen sometimes (subtext: rarely), are useful to some specialists (subtext: obscure ones), but do not fundamentally alter the basic understanding of biology that descends from the modern synthesis (subtext: dont worry about it, we can continue as before). In short, new discoveries were often dismissed as little more than mildly diverting curiosities.

Today, the modern synthesis remains, mutatis mutandis, the core of modern evolutionary biology wrote the evolutionary theorist Douglas Futuyma in a 2017 paper defending the mainstream view. The current version of the theory allows some room for mutation and random chance, but still views evolution as the story of genes surviving in vast populations. Perhaps the biggest change from the theorys mid-century glory days is that its most ambitious claims that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth have been dropped, or now come weighted with caveats and exceptions. This shift has occurred with little fanfare. The theorys ideas are still deeply embedded in the field, yet no formal reckoning with its failures or schisms has occurred. To its critics, the modern synthesis occupies a position akin to a president reneging on a campaign promise it failed to satisfy its entire coalition, but remains in office, hands on the levers of power, despite its diminished offer.

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth are considered by many to be high priests of the tradition that descends from the modern synthesis. They are eminent thinkers, who have written extensively on the place of new theories in evolutionary biology, and they dont believe any radical revision is needed. Some argue that they are too conservative, but they insist they are simply careful cautious about dismantling a tried-and-tested framework in favour of theories that lack evidence. They are interested in fundamental truths about evolution, not explaining every diverse result of the process.

Were not here to explain the elephants trunk, or the camels hump. If such explanations could even be possible, Brian Charlesworth told me. Instead, he said, evolutionary theory should be universal, focusing on the small number of factors that apply to how every living thing develops. Its easy to get hung up on you havent explained why a particular system works the way it does. But we dont need to know, Deborah told me. Its not that the exceptions are uninteresting; its just that they arent all that important.

Kevin Laland, the scientist who organised the contentious Royal Society conference, believes it is time for proponents of neglected evolutionary sub-fields to band together. Laland and his fellow proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution one that starts not by seeking the simplest explanation, or the universal one, but what combination of approaches offers the best explanation to biologys major questions. Ultimately, they want their sub-fields plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.

There are some firebrands among this group. The geneticist Eva Jablonka has proclaimed herself a neo-Lamarckist, after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century populariser of pre-Darwinian ideas of inheritance, who has often been seen as a punchline in the history of science. Meanwhile, the physiologist Denis Noble has called for a revolution against traditional evolutionary theory. But Laland, a lead author on many of the movements papers, insists that they simply want to expand the current definition of evolution. They are reformers, not revolutionaries.

The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world and these things should be given space in biologys core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity, which has shown that some organisms have the potential to adapt more rapidly and more radically than was once thought. Descriptions of plasticity are startling, bringing to mind the kinds of wild transformations you might expect to find in comic books and science fiction movies.

Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are much more content living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land, Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir is adapting to land in a single generation. He sounded almost proud of the fish.

Moczeks own area of expertise is dung beetles, another remarkably plastic species. In a cold environment, dung beetles will grow larger wings to range further for food; in a warm one, a rounder body and stomach to gorge locally. The crucial thing about these observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The speciess genes arent being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations.

We believe this is ubiquitous across species, says David Pfennig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works on spadefoot toads, amphibians the size of a Matchbox car. Spadefoots are normally omnivorous, but spadefoot tadpoles raised solely on meat grow larger teeth, more powerful jaws, and a hardy, more complex gut. Suddenly, they resemble a powerful carnivore, feeding on hardy crustaceans, and even other tadpoles.

Plasticity doesnt invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait, says Pfennig.

Plasticity is well accepted in developmental biology, and the pioneering theorist Mary Jane West-Eberhard began making the case that it was a core evolutionary force in the early 00s. And yet, to biologists in many other fields, it is virtually unknown. Undergraduates beginning their education are unlikely to hear anything about it, and it has still to make much mark in popular science writing.

Biology is full of theories like this. Other interests of the EES include extra-genetic inheritance, known as epigenetics. This is the idea that something say a psychological injury, or a disease experienced by a parent attaches small chemical molecules to their DNA that are repeated in their children. This has been shown to happen in some animals across multiple generations, and caused controversy when it was suggested as an explanation for intergenerational trauma in humans. Other EES proponents track the inheritance of things like culture as when groups of dolphins develop and then teach each other new hunting techniques or the communities of helpful microbes in animal guts or plant roots, which are tended to and passed on through generations like a tool. In both cases, researchers contend that these factors might impact evolution enough to warrant a more central role. Some of these ideas have become briefly fashionable, but remain disputed. Others have sat around for decades, offering their insights to a small audience of specialists and no one else. Just like at the turn of the 20th century, the field is split into hundreds of sub-fields, each barely aware of the rest.

To the EES group, this is a problem that urgently needs to be solved and the only solution is a more capacious unifying theory. These scientists are keen to expand their research and gather the data to disprove their doubters. But they are also aware that logging results in the literature may not be enough. Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships, says Gerd B Mller, head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the university of Vienna and a major backer of the EES. Its a whole industry.

The modern synthesis was such a seismic event that even its flatly wrong ideas took up to half a century to correct. The mutationists were so thoroughly buried that even after decades of proof that mutation was, in fact, a key part of evolution, their ideas were still regarded with suspicion. As recently as 1990, one of the most influential university evolution textbooks could claim that the role of new mutations is not of immediate significance something that very few scientists then, or now, actually believe. Wars of ideas are not won with ideas alone.

To release biology from the legacy of the modern synthesis, explains Massimo Pigliucci, a former professor of evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, you need a range of tactics to spark a reckoning: Persuasion, students taking up these ideas, funding, professorial positions. You need hearts as well as minds. During a Q&A with Pigliucci at a conference in 2017, one audience member commented that the disagreement between EES proponents and more conservative biologists sometimes looked more like a culture war than a scientific disagreement. According to one attender, Pigliucci basically said: Sure, its a culture war, and were going to win it, and half the room burst out cheering.

To some scientists, though, the battle between traditionalists and extended synthesists is futile. Not only is it impossible to make sense of modern biology, they say, it is unnecessary. Over the past decade the influential biochemist Ford Doolittle has published essays rubbishing the idea that the life sciences need codification. We dont need no friggin new synthesis. We didnt even really need the old synthesis, he told me.

What Doolittle and like-minded scientists want is more radical: the death of grand theories entirely. They see such unifying projects as a mid-century even modernist conceit, that have no place in the postmodern era of science. The idea that there could be a coherent theory of evolution is an artefact of how biology developed in the 20th century, probably useful at the time, says Doolittle. But not now. Doing right by Darwin isnt about venerating all his ideas, he says, but building on his insight that we can explain how present life forms came from past ones in radical new ways.

Doolittle and his allies, such as the computational biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, are descendants of the scientists who challenged the modern synthesis from the late 60s onwards by emphasising the importance of randomness and mutation. The current superstar of this view, known as neutral evolution, is Michael Lynch, a geneticist at the University of Arizona. Lynch is soft-spoken in conversation, but unusually pugnacious in what scientists call the literature. His books rail against scientists who accept the status quo and fail to appreciate the rigorous mathematics that undergirds his work. For the vast majority of biologists, evolution is nothing more than natural selection, he wrote in 2007. This blind acceptance [] has led to a lot of sloppy thinking, and is probably the primary reason why evolution is viewed as a soft science by much of society. (Lynch is also not a fan of the EES. If it were up to him, biology would be even more reductive than the modern synthesists imagined.)

What Lynch has shown, over the past two decades, is that many of the complex ways DNA is organised in our cells probably happened at random. Natural selection has shaped the living world, he argues, but so too has a sort of formless cosmic drifting that can, from time to time, assemble order from chaos. When I spoke to Lynch, he said he would continue to extend his work to as many fields of biology as possible looking at cells, organs, even whole organisms to prove that these random processes were universal.

As with so many of the arguments that divide evolutionary biologists today, this comes down to a matter of emphasis. More conservative biologists do not deny that random processes occur, but believe theyre much less important than Doolittle or Lynch think.

The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. In my view there is no can be no single theory of evolution, he told me. There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.

This is true. Physicists agree that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to very tiny particles, and Einsteins theory of general relativity applies to larger ones. Yet the two theories appear incompatible. Late in life, Einstein hoped to find a way to unify them. He died unsuccessful. In the next few decades, other physicists took up the same task, but progress stalled, and many came to believe it might be impossible. If you ask a physicist today about whether we need a unifying theory, they would probably look at you with puzzlement. Whats the point, they might ask. The field works, the work continues.

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Do we need a new theory of evolution? - The Guardian

Evolution goes live in West Virginia with Live Casino offering – PR Newswire

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Evolution today announced that it has gone live with its wide-ranging online live casino offering for operators in West Virginia

STOCKHOLM, June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Operators have access to Evolution's wide range of online live casino games for this market, with the first live dealer games for West Virginia's online players including Live Roulette, Lightning Roulette, Blackjack, Infinite Blackjack, Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold'em. All of these Evolution games are streamed live from Evolution's state-of-the-art studio in Pennsylvania.

Evolution opened its first US live casino studio, in New Jersey, in August 2018, and followed this with studios in Pennsylvania, Michigan and soon to launch in Connecticut. West Virginia becomes the fourth US state in which Evolution is operating Live Casino in, while it has been operating its slots portfolio in this market since September 2020.

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Explore Vintage Culture’s new single with Solardo, the evolution of his sound, and more [Q+A] – Dancing Astronaut

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by: Alex LambeauJun 24, 2022

In the last year, Vintage Culture has seemingly released music on every record label in sight. The Brazilian DJ is consistently one of the most supported artists in dance music, as his sound weaves genres together in artful fashion, resulting in a consistent stream of festival-ready hits.

Next up for Vintage Culture is a single with the UK based duo, Solardo. Released on June 24, Vintage Culture and Solardo come together for melodic-house single, Adidas & Pearls. As a current wave within house music looks to shift towards melodic and deep sounds, Vintage Culture continues to be at the forefront in the latest movement in trends. Dancing Astronaut connected with Vintage Culture for a chat about his ongoing sonic evolution, the labels helping him push his creative vision, and his new single with Solardo.

How has your sound evolved from your early production years of mostly Brazilian bass?

Vintage Culture: When I started as a teenager my world was smaller. My first ambition was to be playing atpopular clubs and festivals in Brazil. Maybe in my quiet moments I dreamed of touring the world, or headlining international festivals, but I didnt say that out loud.The immediate goal was to make music for myself and the audience around me. This style which is now called Brazilian bass really appealed to the fans.

I combined this stylewith international influences that I grew up listening tobands like Depeche Mode, New Order, [and] Radiohead. These artists have a great sense of melody and focus on the quality of the song itself. This has stayed with me. I think the fans can hear this on my new track, Adidas & Pearls with Solardo and Lowes.

Now, touring the world, Im exposed to influences from all over.This seeps into my productions without [me] even being conscious of it. So there was a natural evolution to the music.

How much fun have the latest So Track Boa parties been? The last one at the Belo Horizonte football stadium looked wild.

Vintage Culture: So Track Boa in 2022 was like being reunited with family and friends again.I could feel the spirit of the crowd and the positive energy of 40,000 friends as soon as I entered the venue. There is no greater feeling in the world. Being on that stage with those fans is the most comfortable place on the planet for me. This year So Track Boa, which is Portuguese for only good tracks, sold out very fast and was our biggest event yet.Im already thinking about next year.Iwill be personally selecting the artists from around the world for the festival.

Id like to take a moment to thank everyone who supported the festival and my shows around the world. I appreciate the fans so much and want them to know this.Thank you guys!

Many of your recent releases have been on some highly recognizable labels including Insomniac Records, Spinnin Records, Cercle Records, and more. How do you go about determining labels to partner with?

Vintage Culture: Just like producers, record labels seem to specialize in specific genres, or they have a particular sound and vibe. This is about the musical tastes of their A&R teams.If you listen to the tracks from Defected, you can definitely hear a similar vibe running through them.

With experience and time getting to know the people who work at each label, you realize which productions would work for each label and their A&R teams.

With such a busy touring schedule through 2022, how do you manage consistent quality in your output with such a chaotic schedule?

Vintage Culture: My mastering engineer is working around the clockshout out to Pimpo Gama in Brazil. Keep in mind I spent most of the lock-down in the recording studio. I missed playing live very much, but in another way this was a very creative time for me. I spent lock down writing, producing and recording almost every day.There is a backlog of great songs waiting to be released. Combined with my new tracks, I probably have enough music for the next two years.

The new track with Solardo is an interesting one, how did you find a balance of styles in the studio?

Vintage Culture: We have a high respect for each others work and we [each] have an appreciation of great songs.Lowes are very talented writers, so our goal was to combine our production skills to bring out the best of the song. We wanted to emphasizethe vocal melody and lyrics without stepping on the performance. Im very proud of Adidas & Pearls and together with Solardo and Lowes, we created a great track.

Featured image: @vintageculture/ Instagram

Tags: house, melodic house, Q&A, Solardo, Vintage Culture

Categories: Features, Music

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Explore Vintage Culture's new single with Solardo, the evolution of his sound, and more [Q+A] - Dancing Astronaut

Beyonc, Drake, and the Evolution of House Music – theSkimm

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From the trailer for Hocus Pocus 2 giving us major nostalgia to the backlash surrounding the chart topping Elvis biopic, theres a lot going on in pop culture this week. So were breaking down the top five moments we cant stop talking about and revisiting a few others.

Find out the latest in the Brittney Griner case and what happened at the BET Awards without Lil Nas X.

Then, last weeks Verzuz between Omarion and Mario brought up old drama with the Post to Be singer and his former B2K group members.

But the thing that were stuck on is Beyonces summer anthem "Break My Soul." The new dance ballad along with Drakes recent album Honestly, Nevermind has fans asking if house music is making a comeback. The answer: It never went away.

Today, we explore the history and evolution of the house sound with a music and culture journalist and historian. Well give you a playlist that youll want to dance to all summer long.

Youll hear from:

Skimm'd by Senior Producer and Host Bridget Armstrong. Produced by Alaisha Key. Engineered by Andrew Callaway and Elie McAfee-Hahn. TheSkimms senior director of audio is Graelyn Brashear. Additional production help from Blake Lew-Merwin.

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Beyonc, Drake, and the Evolution of House Music - theSkimm

Inflation & Battery Costs Could Hobble The EVolution – CleanTechnica

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In a recent piece at The Wall Street Journal, we learn that the prices of electric vehicles, like all vehicles, are skyrocketing:

Overall, the average price paid for an electric vehicle in the U.S. in May was up 22% from a year earlier, at about $54,000, according to J.D. Power. By comparison, the average paid for an internal-combustion vehicle increased 14% in that period, to about $44,400.

EV manufacturers blame the $10,000 price disparity over gas vehicles on the rising costs of battery materials, especially rare earth minerals. Ford says that its whole profit margin for the Mustang Mach-E has been wiped out, and other manufacturers are seeing similar struggles.

Weve always known that the cost of battery packs is the reason EVs cost more than ICE cars, despite having much simpler powertrains and better design flexibility, but just two years ago prices were on the way down, with some experts predicting that the price of EVs would drop to that of gas-powered cars by 2024. Even worse, they predicted that EVs would only cost $2,000 more than gas cars by this year, which obviously didnt happen.

Rosy predictions that EVs would be as affordable as gas cars led to many jurisdictions placing their regulatory bets on EVs. Countries and US states, one after another, announced future ICE vehicle bans that would prohibit the registration of new fossil-fueled vehicles after a certain date, most often between 2030 and 2040. But, some of them have outs for future price changes, and all of them could be modified or repealed if EVs arent affordable enough to mandate without overburdening people.

So, these price increases should concern us all because if price parity or near-parity cant be achieved, much of the work toward getting EVs into mass adoptions, not to mention the mandates, is all put in danger. Battery material and refining industries need to expand greatly if theyre going to lead to competitive pricing, but we need to take a hard look at all other factors driving prices up and getting those addressed, too.

In the short term, our economic problems have one small silver lining for EVs: high gas prices. Automakers arent struggling to get people to buy EVs right now, largely because the cost of operating their gas-powered vehicle is as high as its ever been. Facing large monthly gasoline or diesel costs, the higher price for an EV just doesnt look as painful. This is no comfort to people who cant afford an EV, though.

Price parity isnt the whole story. The overall price of new and used cars can also threaten the near and long-term future of EVs, especially in places where wages are low.

Some recent vehicle shopping I did illustrates this pretty well. Its no secret that Im not happy with my Nissan LEAF. Id like to get a better EV with liquid cooling and better charging rates for regional driving, and having some more room wouldnt hurt, either. But, until recently, I was upside down in the car because I got fooled by a dealer into paying too much for the car. Recent price spikes for used cars has my cars value a little higher than what I owe, now, so I figured it might be a good time to jump ship.

But, when I started looking for a used EV, the reality sunk in. Used Teslas are all over $40,000. New EVs tend to mostly be over $50,000 (assuming you can find one). The cheapest used EV I could find that wasnt a compliance car was going for $30,000 and I couldnt get the dealer to budge more than $400. Some better deals could be found on sites like Carvana, but every single electric vehicle is marked sale in process, so that was a dead end.

The only thing that might be an option would be a new Bolt EV or Bolt EUV, oddly enough. Thats only because Chevrolet is offering big factory incentives on them, which would put the price in the range Id like to pay for one. But, Im having a hell of a time finding a dealer whos willing to sell them for MSRP minus the incentives (which would still turn the dealer a decent profit).

Instead, theyre counting on the high demand for EVs to enable them to basically steal the factory incentive. By concealing that GM is offering discounts, many dealers are selling the vehicles for MSRP and putting as much as $6300 in their own pockets. Are they in any hurry to sell it to me for whats basically MSRP? Not at all.

If I was trying to get rid of a gas-burner and trade it for an EV, Id probably be in worse shape. Im fortunate that our family has another gas vehicle we occasionally use on road trips, so I can get the cheapest EV on the market and still be OK if I need to take a road trip. But, if I only had one car, I couldnt realistically consider trading it for a Bolt of any kind (EV or EUV), as its 50 kW max charging rate wouldnt be realistic for longer trips in most cases.

Now, I know that with enough inflation for long enough, employers are going to have to start upping pay to keep families from shopping around for other employment options, but its pretty clear that the price of everything from food to gasoline to cars is vastly outpacing any gains people are making in pay right now.

If these prices, relative to incomes, for new and used EVs are here to stay, I think it could. Its going to hurt people, especially in poor states and regions. If someone toward the bottom of the economic totem pole cant afford anything but a used compliance car, EVs wont be a realistic option for them. Frugal people at all income levels certainly wouldnt waste time entertaining expensive EVs.

If this is a temporary situation, and prices start going back toward not only parity, but affordability, then its possible that EVs still have the bright future we want and need them to have.

Featured image provided by GM.

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Inflation & Battery Costs Could Hobble The EVolution - CleanTechnica