American Women Suck

I asked her the other day, “Are you happy, or are you just staying for the sake of your children?” It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t anger. Just one of those quiet questions that sit in your chest for months, waiting for the courage to be spoken aloud. Because the truth is — we all know someone living like that. Waking up every day, going through the motions, holding a home together not out of joy, but out of duty. Smiling at the kids, laughing when needed, but carrying a silence in the eyes. Maybe you’ve been there too. Staying because leaving feels like breaking the family apart. Because society whispers that “good parents stay.” Because you fear being the villain in your children’s story. But here’s the thing: children know. They might not have the words, but they can feel it. They feel the heavy air in the house. They sense when love has turned into obligation. They notice when two people share a roof but not a life. So I asked. Not to push her away, not to trap her, but to give her space to choose herself. Happiness isn’t selfish — it’s survival. And children don’t just need parents who stay. They need parents who live. Because love, real love, should never feel like a prison sentence served for the sake of others. It should be a choice, made freely, every single day. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Desiray Green on Unsplash The post Are You Happy? appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Beijing has denounced the passage of the vessels, calling it a provocation The Chinese military has condemned the passage of Canadian and Australian warships through the Taiwan Strait, calling it a provocation. China considers Taiwan – self-ruled since 1949 when nationalist forces retreated after losing the Chinese Civil War – as part of its territory under the One-China principle. It also claims the strait as its own. While neither Canada nor Australia formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, many, including the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Australia, view the strait as an international channel and conduct regular transits. The Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec and the Australian destroyer HMAS Brisbane entered the strait early Saturday, a day after Beijing accused both nations of stoking tensions with military drills in the South China Sea. China said its forces tracked and warned the vessels, describing the operation as “trouble-making and provocation.” “The actions of the Canadians and Australians send the wrong signals and increase security risks,” the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command said on Sunday. An Australian Defense Department spokesperson said Brisbane made a “routine transit” with the Canadian ship from September 6 to 7. “Australian vessels and aircraft will continue to exercise freedom of navigation and uphold international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” the spokesperson added. Canadian Joint Operations Command declined to comment on the transit, saying the Ville de Quebec was deployed on Operation Horizon, Canada’s Indo-Pacific mission aimed at promoting “peace and stability.” Earlier this week, the frigate also joined what Canada and its partners described as freedom-of-navigation drills off the Philippines with Australia, the US, and local forces. Beijing rejected this, denouncing the exercise and accusing Manila of colluding with Western powers to undermine regional stability. The Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, remains a vital corridor for global trade and a flashpoint between China and Western navies. Earlier this year, another Canadian frigate, HMCS Montreal, also transited the strait in what Ottawa called a routine passage. The Chinese military at the time vowed to “resolutely take countermeasures against any threats or provocations.” View the full article

By Beata Mostafavi Children with sickle cell disease are more likely to have dental problems — but fewer than half of those covered by Michigan Medicaid got dental care in 2022, according to a study. The findings, led by Michigan Medicine and non-profit RAND Corporation, appear in JAMA Network Open. “Sickle cell disease is known to increase the risk of dental complications in children, which underscores the importance of preventive dental care for this population,” said senior author Sarah Reeves, Ph.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the U-M Medical School and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center. “Our findings show that we need to take steps to make sure kids with this condition get the dental care they need — by helping dentists feel more prepared to treat them and making sure doctors know how important dental health is for these children.” Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder that affects roughly 2,000 newborns a year in the United States. It affects red blood cells, causing them to become misshapen and block blood flow, which can lead to pain, strokes, and other serious health problems. Dental health is particularly important for children with the condition because of its reciprocal relationship with the disease, Reeves says. Infections cause inflammation and stress in the body, which can lead to the sickling of red blood cells. “Oral infections are especially dangerous for people with sickle cell disease because they can trigger or worsen symptoms and serious complications,” Reeves said. “Preventative dental care helps reduce the risk of pain crises and hospitalizations.” Researchers analyzed use of dental care for 1,096 children with both sickle cell disease and Michigan Medicaid, and 1.18 million children with Michigan Medicaid. Given increased risk of oral health problems among patients with sickle cell disease we need focused efforts to expand access to dental services for them. -Sarah Reeves, Ph.D., M.P.H. More than 40% of children in both groups were aged 6-14 years. Children with sickle cell disease in Michigan have comparable rates of dental service utilization to the general pediatric Medicaid population. Overall, less than half of children with or without out sickle cell disease and Medicaid received any type of dental care, including preventive services and treatment. Reeves said several factors limit access to dental care for children with sickle cell disease, including a shortage of dentists who accept Medicaid and a lack of clear guidelines for treating these patients. The study highlights the need for targeted solutions, she says, such as better provider training and stronger communication between medical and dental professionals to ensure children with the condition get the care they need. “Given increased risk of oral health problems among patients with sickle cell disease we need focused efforts to expand access to dental services for them,” she said. “There are many reasons why dental care rates are low in this group. Future research should look at what those barriers are and how we can overcome them to improve care for this vulnerable population.” Additional authors: Ashley Kranz, B.A., Ph.D.; Hannah Peng, M.P.H., Allison King, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.; Sarah Clark, B.A., M.P.H. and Melissa Plegue, B.S., M.A. Paper cited: “Sickle cell disease and dental care for children with Medicaid,” JAMA Network Open. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.29849 — Previously Published on michiganmedicine.org with Creative Commons License *** – The world is changing fast. We help you keep up. We’ll send you 1 post, 3x per week. Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: unsplash The post Kids With Sickle Cell Disease Face Higher Risk of Dental Issues, Yet Many Don’t Receive Needed Care appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Confidence is nothing more than a mindset, yet it is the foundation of every achievement. Imagine you are playing a game of cricket. Before a batsman can hit a shot, he must focus. He has already decided in his mind whether he will play a cover drive, defend, or attack. Every detail — angle, rotation, force, timing — must be clear in his head before the ball even reaches him. Without that mindset, the shot cannot be executed. The same is true for goals in life. Before you achieve anything, you must set your mind: I can do this. If you lack confidence and tell yourself, “I cannot,” then you’ve already lost. History’s greatest athletes and record breakers first believed they could achieve the impossible. They set their minds, worked hard, and then turned that belief into reality. Look at examples around us. Google started as a small setup in a garage. But with growth in vision, thinking, and persistence, it became the world’s most trusted search engine. People prefer it not just for results but because of the mindset that built it into the best. Similarly, Amazon grew into a giant because of that same principle. Consider Elon Musk , the richest man in the world. He wasn’t born wealthy. At one point, he had almost nothing. But he set his mind, took risks, and believed he could create something extraordinary. Risk-taking scares most people because they fear failure. But Musk embraced failure as part of growth. Confidence is not the absence of fear — it’s the decision to move forward despite it. The truth is, humans are the best creation. Machines and inventions improve over time because humans upgrade them. But humans themselves were created complete, with 100% potential. What limits us is not ability — it is mindset. If you want to achieve a goal, start by telling yourself: I can do this, and I will. Create a roadmap, take the first step, and keep moving. You may fall, fail, and struggle. But each time you rise, you grow stronger. Success is nothing but trying again and again until your effort finally turns into achievement. In the end, it is all in your mind. Your body, your actions, your results — they all follow the command of your mindset. Believe first, act next, and success will follow. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Towfiqu Barbhuiya on Unsplash The post Confidence and the Power of Mindset appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Stephen Przybylinski, Michigan State University Homelessness is on the rise in the United States, and in some places, it is becoming more common for the police to arrest someone for sleeping or living in a public space. In June 2024, the Supreme Court issued a ruling, Grants Pass v. Johnson, that determined it is constitutional to issue citations to or arrest homeless people, even when there is no available shelter. The ruling reversed earlier federal appeals court rulings from 2019 and 2022 that determined cities cannot enforce anti-camping laws against homeless people if there are not enough shelter beds available for them. The Supreme Court’s ruling also determined that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments does not protect homeless people from laws criminalizing resting in public places. As someone who has spent more than a decade researching homelessness and speaking with unhoused communities, I have seen firsthand how enforcement of such laws imposes unavoidable hardships on homeless people and makes it harder for them to find a stable home. A rise in punitive action against homelessness In 2024, there were an estimated 771,480 people in the U.S. who experienced homelessness on a single night, the highest number ever recorded. Since June 2024, almost 220 local measures have passed that restrict or ban acts like sleeping, sitting or panhandling in public in cities that include Phoenix; Gainesville, Florida, and Reno, Nevada. The rate of unsheltered homelessness, meaning homeless people who are sleeping in places that are not meant for humans to rest in, like parks or cars, is the highest in California. After the Supreme Court’s decision, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in July 2024 that directs state agencies and departments to adopt new policies that remove homeless encampments. Those are temporary outdoor living spaces used by homeless people, often on public or private property. Following this executive order, more than two dozen California cities and towns adopted or considered adopting sweeping bans on homeless encampments. Not every leader has embraced this approach of what some observers call criminalizing homelessness. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for example, rejected criminalizing homelessness as “backwards” in June 2024. Nevertheless, many cities are enforcing existing and new bans on homeless encampments more aggressively than before the Supreme Court decision – despite evidence that such enforcement is not effective in dealing with the problem of homelessness. The impacts of aggressive enforcement Research shows that arresting someone without a home for sitting, resting or sleeping in a public place does not reduce homelessness. Instead, encampment sweeps and camping bans typically displace people from one area to another, while discarding or destroying their personal belongings in the process, such as identification cards, medications and sleeping gear. This approach also wastes public resources by paying groups to throw away people’s belongings instead of investing that money into actual housing solutions, like creating more affordable housing options. Homeless encampment sweeps by police or other government officials are also shown to make people living in camps sicker, leading to increases in hospitalizations and even deaths among those dependent on drugs or alcohol. A punitive shift in San Francisco San Francisco is an example of an American city with a relatively large homeless population that has taken a more aggressive approach to enforcing bans on homeless encampments over the past year. A few weeks after the Supreme Court decision, then-San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised to be “very aggressive” in removing homeless encampments. She also said that “building more housing” would not solve the homelessness crisis. City data shows that in the 12 months since the Supreme Court ruling, San Francisco police had arrested more than 1,000 homeless people for living in a public space – a scale of enforcement rarely seen in the city’s past. In the year leading up to the ruling, 111 people were arrested for illegal lodging San Francisco identified approximately 8,300 homeless city residents in 2024. In June 2025, I conducted a survey of 150 homeless people in San Francisco. About 10% of those people who gave a reason for a recent arrest reported being jailed for lodging without permission. Another 6% said they were arrested for trespassing. In the same survey, which is part of an ongoing project, 54% of homeless San Francisco residents reported being forced to move from a public space at least once. Another 8% reported being cited for another reason related to trespassing. A less aggressive path in Portland Other western American cities with large homeless populations have taken slightly different approaches to removing homelessness encampments since June 2024. Portland, Oregon, for example, began enforcing a new daytime camping ban in July 2024. But Portland police have only made 11 arrests of homeless people for camping-related violations over the past year. Other homeless people in Portland have received police citations for other offenses, like trespassing. As part of my June 2025 study, I surveyed 150 homeless Portland residents. About 49% of respondents reported having been arrested at some point in their lives. Though no respondents were arrested for camping in a prohibited place, 68% of people I spoke with reported that police or other government officers forced them to leave a public space at some point over the past year. And 13% of those who gave a reason for being cited by police said it was for camping in a prohibited place. Another 11% of homeless people were cited for some other reason related to living without shelter. As part of the study, I also interviewed residents who had been arrested while living on the street. One Portland resident I interviewed – who asked not to be named to preserve their anonymity – told me they lost the chance to rent an apartment because they were arrested in 2023 on a preexisting, unrelated warrant after a police officer checked their ID – just days before they were supposed to pick up their keys. “Many unhoused people have warrants simply for failing to appear after being cited for sitting or resting in public space,” they said. “I was supposed to go get the keys and, bam, I got picked up. I was arrested and went to court. Just me being in jail for five, six or five days screwed it all. I didn’t show up to get the keys, and then (the landlord) couldn’t get ahold of me, and they had no idea what was going on.” The weeklong jail stay not only pushed this person back onto the street, but it also put them back onto a waiting list for housing – where they remain in 2025. Looking ahead The Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling did not mandate that cities criminalize homelessness. But it effectively gave cities the green light to do so without fear of violating people’s constitutional protections. The effects of this ruling will be further felt with President Donald Trump’s July 24, 2025, executive order that ended federal support for approaches like Housing First, a policy that prioritizes providing homeless people with housing, before any other needed help. The order also calls for involuntarily committing homeless people with mental illness to mental health institutions. As more cities consider tougher encampment ordinances, I think it is worth considering if more punitive measures really address homelessness. Decades of evidence suggest they won’t. Instead, arresting homeless people often deepens their poverty, increases displacement and diverts public funding away from the real solution – stable, affordable housing. Stephen Przybylinski, Assistant Professor of Geography, Michigan State University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. — Previously Published on theconversation.com with Creative Commons License *** Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: unsplash The post San Francisco and Other Cities, Following a Supreme Court Ruling, Are Arresting More Homeless People for Living on the Streets appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Matt Gottsman recently wrote, “ Your obsessions aren’t distractions — they’re signposts to the work only you can do.” That line struck a chord so deep, it echoed. It reminded me that what pulls at us repeatedly isn’t random-it’s a calling. His Substack is called The Niche Is You, and honestly, I’m a little bit in love with that. The name itself feels like a mirror and a map. And it made me reflect on one obsession that’s quietly shaped my world: heirloom gardening. Until 2020, I thought heirlooms meant jewellery, sarees, and family artifacts passed down through generations-things with history, but rarely daily use. Then I met heirloom tomatoes. Colour me obsessed. There’s an entire world of tomatoes out there: Some are striped, others speckled. All have stories. And those stories pulled me down a rabbit hole I have not yet wanted to climb out of. It started with tomatoes. Then came the beets, carrots, radishes, beans, eggplants, peppers, and peas. I began saving seeds, buying rare varieties, researching plant histories like family trees. Now? An entire refrigerator for my seed collection. And a heart full of joy every time something sprouts. Friends have noticed. “You light up when you talk about your garden,” they say. “You should do more of this.” They’re right. The most unexpected joy? Passing this love on to my three-year-old nephew. He has claimed ownership of the garden. I am merely the “guardian.” He proudly gives garden tours with the kind of confidence only ownership can bring. He gently shakes each tomato flower and whispers, “Become a tomato.” He saved seeds from a bitter gourd and insisted on planting them. They all germinated. One is already flowering. He’s not just a green thumb. He’s a green-hearted soul. And I get to witness it. Gardening taught me that heirlooms aren’t limited to articles from the past. They’re also the passions, knowledge, and joy we pass on intentionally. They root us to something real. Something alive. What started as my quiet obsession became something much more: A bond. A ritual. An inheritance in bloom. Do you have an “obsession” that fills you with quiet joy? Something you could pass on to someone you love? Maybe it’s time to follow that breadcrumb trail. It may just lead you home. Originally published at https://pratibhascuriousity.substack.com. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Loren King On Unsplash The post The Heirloom Obsession That Grew a Garden — And a Gardener appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Whether it’s drugs, booze, cigarettes, or aggravated jaywalking, there is a peculiar little phrase we trot out to justify our more flamboyant acts of self-ruin: “I’m only hurting myself.” It’s meant to sound noble, even considerate, as though the mere absence of collateral damage somehow elevates the act to a private art form. Theoretically, even if all our destructive habits operated in a vacuum, free from splash damage to friends, lovers, and unsuspecting passersby, the more pressing question remains: How did only hurting myself ever graduate from personal tragedy to conversational shrug? In truth, this line might be the most accurate diagnostic tool for detecting human self-loathing ever uttered. It’s a kind of emotional Swiss Army knife, useful for defending everything from a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit to re-dating our perpetual ex because “hey, it’s my funeral.” The statement only makes sense in a mind that has long accepted the premise that harming oneself is not merely permissible, but perhaps even overdue. Self-loathing, after all, rarely arrives as a dramatic villain in a cape, twirling its mustache and announcing its presence. More often, it seeps in quietly, like carbon monoxide, becoming a hazy emotional climate. People can carry it for decades without noticing, until it finally speaks up in a moment of faux clarity: “Relax, I’m only hurting myself.” Translation: “I have long since normalized my own mistreatment, and now I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t interrupt.” The origins of this posture are almost boring in their predictability. Nobody is born disliking themselves. It is a learned skill, acquired in the company of caregivers whose job it was to plant seeds of worth but who, instead, accidentally sowed weeds of inadequacy. The child, unable to imagine that their protectors might be flawed or cruel, redirects the indictment inward: What did I do wrong to deserve this? From there, life becomes a vehicle facilitating the project of confirming this original misdiagnosis by working too hard, apologizing too often, or, paradoxically, discarding all fortunes to make sure reality remains faithful to dark expectations. This is how “I’m only hurting myself” becomes not a cry for help, but a badge of warped honor. You might hear it from the gambler betting their rent money on a horse named “Sure Regret.” Or from the woman who has decided to reconcile with a partner who once “accidentally” sold her car. Or from the man who keeps a pack of cigarettes in the freezer “just in case” and then smokes them all during a stressful phone call with his mother. The tragedy is that self-directed harm feels familiar. Much safer than risking the volcanic rage of realizing that those we depended on may not have been entirely kind to us. Anger at others feels too dangerous; anger at ourselves feels like home. The problem is, hurting yourself never actually only hurts yourself. It ricochets through the friends who watch us burn down another opportunity, the partners who stand by helplessly as you grind our potential into dust, and the strangers who will one day inherit the messes we leave behind. Even in isolation, self-harm robs the world of the version of you who could have existed if we’d been on your own side. And yet, the antidote is not moralizing or shaming. It’s inconveniently gentler than that. It starts with the awkward practice of noticing when we’re playing the villain in our own life story, noticing the reflex to sabotage joy because it feels suspicious, and noticing how quickly we disqualify ourselves from love, peace, or success. And then, in those moments, trying however clumsily to imagine what it would be like to treat ourselves with the tenderness we once wished for from others. The day “I’m only hurting myself” is replaced with “I don’t actually want to hurt myself at all” will not come with fireworks or a brass band. It might come quietly, on a Tuesday, in the form of skipping the cigarette, ignoring the late-night text from that human equivalent of a diaper rash, or finally making the dentist appointment. It might come from the deliberate choice to buckle a seat belt, not because the law requires it, but because we are transporting valuable cargo in the driver’s seat. It will come when we realize that our lives are not a private demolition derby for recreational damage, but something worth protecting, even from ourselves. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Roger Starnes Sr On Unsplash The post How ‘I’m Only Hurting Myself’ Becomes a Mantra appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Jane Halpern | Elvira Forte | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT News Caroline Uhler is an Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Engineering at MIT; a professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Institute for Data, Science, and Society (IDSS); and director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is also a core institute and scientific leadership team member. Uhler is interested in all the methods by which scientists can uncover causality in biological systems, ranging from causal discovery on observed variables to causal feature learning and representation learning. In this interview, she discusses machine learning in biology, areas that are ripe for problem-solving, and cutting-edge research coming out of the Schmidt Center. Q: The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center has four distinct areas of focus structured around four natural levels of biological organization: proteins, cells, tissues, and organisms. What, within the current landscape of machine learning, makes now the right time to work on these specific problem classes? A: Biology and medicine are currently undergoing a “data revolution.” The availability of large-scale, diverse datasets — ranging from genomics and multi-omics to high-resolution imaging and electronic health records — makes this an opportune time. Inexpensive and accurate DNA sequencing is a reality, advanced molecular imaging has become routine, and single cell genomics is allowing the profiling of millions of cells. These innovations — and the massive datasets they produce — have brought us to the threshold of a new era in biology, one where we will be able to move beyond characterizing the units of life (such as all proteins, genes, and cell types) to understanding the `programs of life’, such as the logic of gene circuits and cell-cell communication that underlies tissue patterning and the molecular mechanisms that underlie the genotype-phenotype map. At the same time, in the past decade, machine learning has seen remarkable progress with models like BERT, GPT-3, and ChatGPT demonstrating advanced capabilities in text understanding and generation, while vision transformers and multimodal models like CLIP have achieved human-level performance in image-related tasks. These breakthroughs provide powerful architectural blueprints and training strategies that can be adapted to biological data. For instance, transformers can model genomic sequences similar to language, and vision models can analyze medical and microscopy images. Importantly, biology is poised to be not just a beneficiary of machine learning, but also a significant source of inspiration for new ML research. Much like agriculture and breeding spurred modern statistics, biology has the potential to inspire new and perhaps even more profound avenues of ML research. Unlike fields such as recommender systems and internet advertising, where there are no natural laws to discover and predictive accuracy is the ultimate measure of value, in biology, phenomena are physically interpretable, and causal mechanisms are the ultimate goal. Additionally, biology boasts genetic and chemical tools that enable perturbational screens on an unparalleled scale compared to other fields. These combined features make biology uniquely suited to both benefit greatly from ML and serve as a profound wellspring of inspiration for it. Q: Taking a somewhat different tack, what problems in biology are still really resistant to our current tool set? Are there areas, perhaps specific challenges in disease or in wellness, which you feel are ripe for problem-solving? A: Machine learning has demonstrated remarkable success in predictive tasks across domains such as image classification, natural language processing, and clinical risk modeling. However, in the biological sciences, predictive accuracy is often insufficient. The fundamental questions in these fields are inherently causal: How does a perturbation to a specific gene or pathway affect downstream cellular processes? What is the mechanism by which an intervention leads to a phenotypic change? Traditional machine learning models, which are primarily optimized for capturing statistical associations in observational data, often fail to answer such interventional queries.There is a strong need for biology and medicine to also inspire new foundational developments in machine learning. The field is now equipped with high-throughput perturbation technologies — such as pooled CRISPR screens, single-cell transcriptomics, and spatial profiling — that generate rich datasets under systematic interventions. These data modalities naturally call for the development of models that go beyond pattern recognition to support causal inference, active experimental design, and representation learning in settings with complex, structured latent variables. From a mathematical perspective, this requires tackling core questions of identifiability, sample efficiency, and the integration of combinatorial, geometric, and probabilistic tools. I believe that addressing these challenges will not only unlock new insights into the mechanisms of cellular systems, but also push the theoretical boundaries of machine learning. With respect to foundation models, a consensus in the field is that we are still far from creating a holistic foundation model for biology across scales, similar to what ChatGPT represents in the language domain — a sort of digital organism capable of simulating all biological phenomena. While new foundation models emerge almost weekly, these models have thus far been specialized for a specific scale and question, and focus on one or a few modalities. Significant progress has been made in predicting protein structures from their sequences. This success has highlighted the importance of iterative machine learning challenges, such as CASP (critical assessment of structure prediction), which have been instrumental in benchmarking state-of-the-art algorithms for protein structure prediction and driving their improvement. The Schmidt Center is organizing challenges to increase awareness in the ML field and make progress in the development of methods to solve causal prediction problems that are so critical for the biomedical sciences. With the increasing availability of single-gene perturbation data at the single-cell level, I believe predicting the effect of single or combinatorial perturbations, and which perturbations could drive a desired phenotype, are solvable problems. With our Cell Perturbation Prediction Challenge (CPPC), we aim to provide the means to objectively test and benchmark algorithms for predicting the effect of new perturbations. Another area where the field has made remarkable strides is disease diagnostic and patient triage. Machine learning algorithms can integrate different sources of patient information (data modalities), generate missing modalities, identify patterns that may be difficult for us to detect, and help stratify patients based on their disease risk. While we must remain cautious about potential biases in model predictions, the danger of models learning shortcuts instead of true correlations, and the risk of automation bias in clinical decision-making, I believe this is an area where machine learning is already having a significant impact. Q: Let’s talk about some of the headlines coming out of the Schmidt Center recently. What current research do you think people should be particularly excited about, and why? A: In collaboration with Dr. Fei Chen at the Broad Institute, we have recently developed a method for the prediction of unseen proteins’ subcellular location, called PUPS. Many existing methods can only make predictions based on the specific protein and cell data on which they were trained. PUPS, however, combines a protein language model with an image in-painting model to utilize both protein sequences and cellular images. We demonstrate that the protein sequence input enables generalization to unseen proteins, and the cellular image input captures single-cell variability, enabling cell-type-specific predictions. The model learns how relevant each amino acid residue is for the predicted sub-cellular localization, and it can predict changes in localization due to mutations in the protein sequences. Since proteins’ function is strictly related to their subcellular localization, our predictions could provide insights into potential mechanisms of disease. In the future, we aim to extend this method to predict the localization of multiple proteins in a cell and possibly understand protein-protein interactions. Together with Professor G.V. Shivashankar, a long-time collaborator at ETH Zürich, we have previously shown how simple images of cells stained with fluorescent DNA-intercalating dyes to label the chromatin can yield a lot of information about the state and fate of a cell in health and disease, when combined with machine learning algorithms. Recently, we have furthered this observation and proved the deep link between chromatin organization and gene regulation by developing Image2Reg, a method that enables the prediction of unseen genetically or chemically perturbed genes from chromatin images. Image2Reg utilizes convolutional neural networks to learn an informative representation of the chromatin images of perturbed cells. It also employs a graph convolutional network to create a gene embedding that captures the regulatory effects of genes based on protein-protein interaction data, integrated with cell-type-specific transcriptomic data. Finally, it learns a map between the resulting physical and biochemical representation of cells, allowing us to predict the perturbed gene modules based on chromatin images. Furthermore, we recently finalized the development of a method for predicting the outcomes of unseen combinatorial gene perturbations and identifying the types of interactions occurring between the perturbed genes. MORPH can guide the design of the most informative perturbations for lab-in-a-loop experiments. Furthermore, the attention-based framework provably enables our method to identify causal relations among the genes, providing insights into the underlying gene regulatory programs. Finally, thanks to its modular structure, we can apply MORPH to perturbation data measured in various modalities, including not only transcriptomics, but also imaging. We are very excited about the potential of this method to enable the efficient exploration of the perturbation space to advance our understanding of cellular programs by bridging causal theory to important applications, with implications for both basic research and therapeutic applications. — Reprinted with permission of MIT News *** Does dating ever feel challenging, awkward or frustrating? Turn Your Dating Life into a WOW! with our new classes and live coaching. Click here for more info or to buy with special launch pricing! *** On Substack? Follow us there for more great dating and relationships content. — Photo credit: unsplash The post 3 Questions: On Biology and Medicine’s “Data Revolution” appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Jamie Ducharme After losing 50 pounds on the injectable weight loss medication Zepbound, Kyra Wensley received a surprising letter from her pharmacy benefit manager in April. Her request for coverage had been denied, the letter said, because she’d had a body mass index of less than 35 when she started Zepbound. The 25-year-old who lives in New York had been taking Zepbound without incident for months, so she was confused: Why was her BMI, which had been around 32 when she started, becoming an issue only now? Wensley had no interest in quitting an effective drug. “Going right off like that, it’s easier said than done,” she said. Her doctor fought to keep her on the GLP-1 agonist, the category that includes weight loss and Type 2 diabetes drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. But Wensley ultimately had to switch from Zepbound to Wegovy to meet her plan’s requirements. She said she doesn’t like Wegovy as much as her old medication, but she now feels lucky to be on any GLP-1. Lots of research suggests such medications must be used indefinitely to maintain weight loss and related health benefits. But with list prices of roughly $1,000 a month, public and private payers are struggling to keep up with ballooning demand for GLP-1 weight loss drugs and in some cases are eliminating or restricting their coverage as a result. North Carolina Medicaid plans to end GLP-1 coverage for weight loss on Oct. 1, just over a year after starting the coverage. Pennsylvania is planning to limit Medicaid coverage to beneficiaries at the highest risk of complications from obesity. And despite recent reports of a potential federal pilot program to extend coverage of GLP-1 obesity drugs under Medicaid and Medicare, all state Medicaid programs are likely to be under pressure due to steep spending cuts in the budget reconciliation package recently signed into law by President Donald Trump. Already, many GLP-1 users quit within a year, studies suggest — often due to side effects, high costs, or insurance issues. Now a growing number of researchers, payers, and providers are exploring deliberate “deprescription,” which aims to taper some patients off their medication after they have taken it for a certain amount of time or lost a certain amount of weight. The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which creates guidance for the National Health Service, recommends two-year limits on the use of some weight loss medications, such as Wegovy. And the concept was raised in a recent Institute for Clinical and Economic Review report on affordable access to obesity drugs. A. Mark Fendrick, who directs the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan, has argued that if some people using GLP-1s to lose weight were eventually transitioned off, more people could take advantage of them. “If you’re going to spend $1 billion or $100 billion, you could either spend it on fewer people for a long period of time, or you can spend it on a lot more people for a shorter period of time,” he said. Fendrick’s employer, the University of Michigan, indeed does that. Its prescription drug plan caps coverage of GLP-1 drugs at two years if they’re used solely for weight loss. Jamie Bennett, a spokesperson for Wegovy and Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk, declined to comment on the concept of deprescription, noting that its drugs are intended for chronic conditions. Rachel Sorvig, a spokesperson for Zepbound and Mounjaro manufacturer Eli Lilly, said in a statement that users should “talk to their health care provider about dosage and duration needs.” Studies have shown that people typically regain a substantial amount of weight within a year of stopping GLP-1 medications, and that many people who quit ultimately go back on the drugs. “There’s no standard of care or gold standard on how to wean right now,” said Allison Adams, an obesity and internal medicine doctor with UK HealthCare in Kentucky. But the math shows why time-limited coverage is appealing to payers that struggle to pay for beneficiaries’ GLP-1 prescriptions, said Michelle Gourdine, chief medical officer for the pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark. And states are “between a rock and a hard place,” said Kody Kinsley, who until January led North Carolina’s Health and Human Services Department. “They’re going to have to look at every single thing and trim dollars everywhere they can.” Pennsylvania was looking for cost-saving strategies even before the new federal tax-and-spending law, according to Brandon Cwalina, press secretary for the state’s Department of Human Services. Pennsylvania projects it will spend $1.3 billion on GLP-1 drugs this year. Plans could see real savings, Fendrick said, if they covered GLP-1s for initial weight loss then moved people to cheaper options — such as more affordable drugs or behavioral health programs — to maintain it. Plenty of companies are eager to sell insurers, employers, and individuals on behavioral alternatives. One is Virta Health, which advertises its nutrition-focused weight management program as “a proven approach for deprescribing GLP-1s when clinically appropriate.” A Virta-funded study assessed 154 people with Type 2 diabetes who stopped using GLP-1 medications but continued following Virta’s program, concluding that their weight did not significantly increase after a year. Researchers affiliated with a European weight management company also recently reported that slowly tapering off the medications may help maintain weight loss. For employers and insurers, the “initial question” was whether to cover GLP-1s for obesity, said Virta CEO Sami Inkinen. “Now, basically, everyone’s coming to the middle and asking, ‘How do we responsibly cover these drugs?’” Part of responsible coverage, Inkinen said, is providing other forms of support to patients who stop using GLP-1 medications, by choice or otherwise. For some people, however, maintaining weight loss without a GLP-1 remains a challenge, even with other options available. Lily, who lives in Michigan, lost almost 80 pounds in roughly 18 months on Wegovy. But she had to quit the drug when she turned 26 and left her parents’ insurance plan this year. The plan her employer offers stopped covering GLP-1s for weight loss right around the time she joined. Lily, who asked to be identified by only her first name because she is not out to her family as transgender, has tried other medications since then, and previously tried lifestyle programs to control her weight. But she said nothing works as well for her as Wegovy. She has regained 20 pounds since going off the drug at the beginning of the year and worries that number will continue to rise, potentially contributing to future health problems. “Just give people the drugs,” she said. “It seems cheaper and safer in the long run.” KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing. This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. — Previously Published on kffhealthnews.org *** Subscribe to The Good Men Project Newsletter Email Address * If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. On Substack? Connect with us there. — Photo credit: unsplash The post As Insurers Struggle With GLP-1 Drug Costs, Some Seek to Wean Patients Off appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Stress management is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. You’re still bleeding out. Deep breathing doesn’t correct unrealistic expectations. Taking a walk doesn’t resolve people-pleasing. Squeezing a stress ball doesn’t help you establish boundaries. Stress management doesn’t work when we ignore root causes. Symptoms of stress: Headaches Muscle tension Body aches Fatigue Trouble sleeping Rapid heartbeat Dry mouth Lower immunity Irritability Difficulty concentrating or racing thoughts Loss of motivation Pessimism Indecisiveness Avoidance Overeating or loss of appetite Increased use of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, or drugs Chamomile tea won’t fix a broken team. A weekend away won’t fix your attitude toward a toxic boss. Meditation won’t fix a calendar filled with meaningless meetings. Reject the glamour of solving symptoms. It’s easier to deal with fruit than to dig up the root. Ask yourself why you’re stressed. Reject the Lies of Stress Management Don’t just manage stress. Investigate it. 7 questions that dig deeper than symptoms. What am I tolerating that needs to stop? Where am I overcommitted—and why? How am I living someone else’s values? Where am I looking for satisfaction in the wrong places? How am I letting someone else run my life? Why don’t I speak up? What gives me energy? Real relief from stress begins when you stop comforting symptoms and start confronting causes. Get Real About Stress Meaningful stress makes life worthwhile. “Eustress (healthy stress) helps us stay motivated, work toward goals, and feel good about life.” Dr. Michael Genovese The American Institute of Stress says good stress helps you grow. Anyone who goes to the gym understands that stress expands capacity. A Final Word Stress management strategies are often good for us. They just don’t solve the problem. Which idea in this post seems most useful to you today? Moving From Distress to Eustress – Leadership Freak — This post was previously published on LEADERSHIPFREAK.BLOG and is republished with Creative Commons license. — Subscribe to The Good Men Project Newsletter Email Address * Subscribe If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: iStock.com The post Stress Management Is a Scam appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

The Ukrainian leader argued that Moscow was “playing games” with the US US President Donald Trump handed Russian President Vladimir Putin a public relations victory during their one-on-one summit in Alaska last month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed. Trump met with Putin on August 15 as part of efforts to mediate a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev. Although the meeting produced no breakthroughs, both sides described it as a positive step. “It’s a pity that Ukraine was not there, because I think that President Trump gave Putin what he wanted,” Zelensky told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in an interview aired on Sunday. “He wanted very much to meet with President Trump, with the president of the United States. And I think that Putin got it. And, it’s a pity,” Zelensky added. Zelensky further argued that Putin was “playing games with the United States,” claiming that the Russian leader had sought “to show everybody video and images” from his summit with Trump. He called for increased pressure on Moscow, saying it is “not fair” that some EU countries continue to buy Russian oil and gas. Trump, who has previously criticized both Russia and Ukraine, hinted on Sunday that he was ready to impose additional sanctions on Moscow. He had earlier added a 25% tariff on Indian imports of Russian oil. Russia has demanded that Ukraine recognize its new border and abandon plans to join NATO. Moscow also listed an end to Western arms deliveries to Kiev as one of the conditions for a ceasefire. View the full article

By Kaja Šeruga On the outskirts of Lisbon, an abandoned industrial site has been given a new lease of life as a state-of-the-art biorefinery. It is scaling up the production of microalgae – a new source of nutrition. These single-celled organisms can produce compounds such as proteins, lipids and carbohydrates with very little water and no need for arable land – all crucial elements in the quest to improve food security. But there is a catch. It remains challenging to grow and process microalgae at a scale and cost that can compete with common nutritional products like palm oil or soybeans. Changing food production The Lisbon site, part of an EU-funded research collaboration called MULTI-STR3AM, may have offered a way forward. The cooperation brought together a multinational team of researchers and industry experts to tackle this challenge. “You can cultivate microalgae in old industrial sites or other areas that are not suitable for agricultural use,” said Mariana Doria, head of business and market analysis at Portuguese biotechnology company A4F – Algae for Future. She coordinated the international collaboration, which ran from 2020 to April 2025. You can cultivate microalgae in old industrial sites or other areas that are not suitable for agricultural use. Mariana Doria, MULTI-STR3AM Agriculture currently uses almost 40% of land in the EU and a quarter of its water. Separating food production from land is therefore a crucial step towards improving food security and a more sustainable food industry. MULTI-STR3AM was funded by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking. This public-private partnership between the EU and the Bio-based Industries Consortium supports research that helps the transition towards a competitive, sustainable, and low-carbon economy in Europe. “The world is changing, agriculture is changing,” said Rebecca van der Westen, senior product technologist at Flora Food Group, a Dutch branded food company active in over 100 countries worldwide. “So, how do we sustain ourselves in a healthy way? Microalgae are one of the answers.” When the opportunity came up to collaborate with international researchers, van der Westen seized it. “I love working in niche areas – that’s where you find the gold,” she said. Algae alchemy To grow, microalgae need water, CO2, and essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Through their metabolic processes, they turn these inorganic nutrients into glucose and other organic molecules. Most of the time, this process happens through photosynthesis, which requires sunlight. However, some microalgae can grow in the dark by feeding on organic nutrients such as glucose, a process known as heterotrophic growth. In MULTI-STR3AM, microalgae are cultivated in photobioreactors or fermentation tanks. Once they have grown sufficiently, their biomass is harvested and transferred for processing at the Lisbon biorefinery. The microalgae cells are broken open, and their valuable components – proteins, lipids, pigments and carbohydrates – are separated and refined into usable ingredients. The facility processes around 10 tonnes of biomass per year and is designed to handle a wide range of microalgae strains. To increase sustainability, waste CO2 from natural gas combustion is fed back into the system as a resource for microalgae. Liquid waste from nearby industries serves as the culture medium, and water is recirculated after biomass is harvested. Finally, the processed ingredients are supplied to various industries for use in consumer products. Multipurpose product As the researchers overcame technical barriers to cultivating and processing microalgae at scale, their advances opened the door to a diverse range of potential products. Over the course of the research, more than 40 samples of microalgae-derived ingredients were created for industry partners in the food, animal feed and fragrance sectors. Working across countries and sectors was crucial to ensuring that the ingredients could eventually be used in consumer-ready products, said van der Westen. “Cross-collaboration is fundamental because everybody has their strengths.” After considering technical and financial viability, as well as market potential, the research team eventually narrowed their focus down to three core ingredients: beta-carotene-rich oils used as food colourants and antioxidants in spreads and cheese, protein-rich additives for animal feed, and protein-based capsules that protect and gradually release fragrance ingredients. Scaling up Van der Westen is keen to dispel the common misconception that microalgae-based ingredients taste like algae. The ingredients are not simply ground-up biomass, she said. In the biorefinery, the cells are opened and their molecular structures separated. “If you look at the basic structure of a fatty acid chain or a few amino acids forming a protein, they exist in microalgae and don’t have a taste or smell,” said van der Westen. “They contain the same fats as olive oil and similar proteins to poultry, fish and beef.” If you want to sustain a happy planet, you need to do this type of research. Rebecca van der Westen, MULTI-STR3AM Integrating multiple technologies, microalgae strains and production methods into one centralised biorefinery was a major step towards scaling up. But developing a deeper understanding of each microalgae strain was equally important. “Some microalgae are better known and easier to scale up, while for others we still need to learn how,” said Doria. Part of this work involves determining the ideal growth conditions for each strain, including temperature and nutrient levels, so they can grow faster and yield the most nutritional value. “When moving from the controlled environment of the lab to larger scales, we need to understand which parameters are most sensitive,” said Doria. This knowledge also helps scientists steer production towards specific outputs. “We can adjust conditions to make them produce more of one ingredient or another, depending on our goals,” she said. From lab to market Currently, these new ingredients are undergoing rigorous testing and tasting before they can reach supermarket shelves, said van der Westen. While this work is still in the early stages, she is confident that microalgal ingredients will eventually become mainstream. “Microalgae are definitely going to be part of our food in the future. That’s just a question of time,” she said. For van der Westen and her research team, their work is part of a mission to reimagine how we produce food sustainably and develop a concrete blueprint for the future. “If you want to sustain a happy planet, you need to do this type of research,” she said. “It is fundamental for the future.” Research in this article was funded by the EU’s Horizon Programme. The views of the interviewees don’t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media. — This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine with Creative Commons Attribution *** Subscribe to The Good Men Project Newsletter Email Address * If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo: iStock The post Magic of Microalgae: Sustainable Ingredients for Food, Feed and Fragrance appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Ben Jodway, Buckeye Flame An Ohio case around a transgender student in Tipp City using bathrooms that matched her gender identity was rendered moot by a federal appeals court due to the state’s bathroom ban. However, the ACLU of Ohio still sees the majority opinion as a win. In 2022, a group of Ohio parents sued Bethel Local School District, which is located north of Dayton. The parents claimed the school district’s trans-inclusive bathroom policy was a violation of their religious freedom and parental rights. One year later, a lower federal district court found that the parents’ claims were invalid because the high school had since installed a single-occupancy bathroom that anyone could use. If a cisgender girl was uncomfortable with a trans girl using the communal bathroom, the cisgender student could instead use the other bathroom. The parents appealed to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared the case moot on Aug. 26 because the trans student has since left the district and the state bathroom ban was signed into law in November 2024. However, Circuit Judges R. Guy Cole Jr. and Karen Nelson Moore, both appointees of former President Bill Clinton, and Judge Joan Larsen, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in their opinions that if Ohio Republicans had not passed the bathroom ban the court would have unanimously found Bethel Local School District’s bathroom policy constitutional. “We hold that, when it was in effect, the policy was constitutional so long as it was rationally related to a legitimate government purpose,” Cole and Moore wrote. Larsen wrote a separate opinion, agreeing with the ruling but thought Cole and Moore interpreted the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor “narrowly.” She thinks Mahmoud could be interpreted as to extend into the school environment. “All sorts of non-curricular school rules—which aren’t clearly ‘educational’—can interfere with parents’ religious upbringing of their children,” Larsen wrote. “Whether a policy applies in the school classroom, lunchroom, or restroom, it may still substantially interfere with parents’ rights to instill in their children the principles of their faith.” sixth-circuit-ohio-transgender-bathroom-policy-opinion– Download The Supreme Court ruled in the Mahmoud case that districts must allow parents to opt their children out of curriculum that could violate their religious freedom. While there is concern online that the SCOTUS case could extend to the school environment itself, in addition to instructional content, ACLU of Ohio Managing Legal Director David Carey said this ruling from the Sixth Circuit shows that Mahmoud might not extend that far. “It’s not clear how far Mahmoud goes,” he said. “ Even if you are to assume that Mahmoud extends to school conditions like restroom use, [Trump appointee] Judge Larsen agreed [saying], ‘ Look, they offered an opt out, so what are you complaining about?’” The ACLU of Ohio intervened in the lawsuit in 2023. The opinion is “bittersweet” now that the bathroom ban is passed, but it’s still an important win to celebrate even if it’s small, Carey said. “It’s an important precedent to establish  that nobody has the constitutional right to compel discrimination against transgender students,” he said. IGNITE ACTION The Buckeye Flame’s 2025-2026 LGBTQ+ legislation guide is available here. To register to vote or to check your voter eligibility status in the state of Ohio, click here. To find contact information for your Ohio state representative, click here. To find contact information for your Ohio state senator, click here. To access an interactive map of Ohio’s state House and Senate districts, click here. — The Buckeye Flame is an online platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ Ohioans to support community and civic empowerment through the creation of engaging content that chronicles their triumphs, struggles, and lived experiences. *** Does dating ever feel challenging, awkward or frustrating? Turn Your Dating Life into a WOW! with our new classes and live coaching. Click here for more info or to buy with special launch pricing! *** On Substack? Follow us there for more great dating and relationships content. Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: thebuckeyeflame The post Court: Ohio School’s Trans-Inclusive Bathroom Policy Would Have Been Lawful if Bathroom Ban Had Not Passed appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

I used to think a breakup was about losing a person. I was wrong. It’s about discovering who you are without them — and the revelation can be devastatingly simple. My worst breakup didn’t end with slammed doors or dramatic arguments. It ended with a quiet, seven-word text message after a three-year relationship: “I just can’t do this anymore.” The silence that followed was louder than any sound I’d ever heard. In that void, I didn’t just miss him; I realized I had no idea who I was. The Foundation Was Built on Sand I had built my entire identity on being his girlfriend. His interests became my hobbies. His friends became my social circle. My weekends were molded around his schedule. I prided myself on being “easy-going,” but in reality, I was erasing myself. I thought compromise meant always being the one to bend. When he left, the entire structure of my life collapsed. It wasn’t just a partner I lost; it was my daily routine, my plans, my sense of being loved and chosen. I felt like a house after a hurricane — only the wreckage remained, and I had no blueprint for rebuilding. The Withdrawal Symptom Nobody Talks About We talk about heartbreak in terms of sadness, but we skip the most brutal part: the ego death. My self-worth was so entangled with his validation that his rejection felt like a factual statement on my value. “You are not enough,” my mind would whisper on a loop. If I were worthy, why would he have left? I scoured our memories for clues. Was it something I said? Was I not pretty enough, smart enough, fun enough? This obsessive audit of my own flaws was a special kind of torture. It was also completely backwards. The Pivot That Changed Everything One night, rock-bottom and surrounded by tissues, a terrifying question popped into my head: What if this wasn’t about my value, but about his inability to see it? The thought was so revolutionary it almost felt arrogant. But it was the first crack of light in a dark room. I began the painfully slow work of rebuilding. Not for him, or for the next person, but for me. It was in that lonely, quiet space that I learned the lessons that now form my non-negotiable foundation: Your worth is not external. It cannot be given, and it cannot be taken away. It is an inner constant, like your height or your birthday. You might forget it sometimes, but it never changes. A partner’s job isn’t to create your value; it’s to celebrate it. Alone is not synonymous with lonely. I forced myself to take myself on dates. Coffee shops, movies, long walks. I learned to enjoy my own company. The silence stopped being scary and started being peaceful. I became my own best friend. The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. It sets the template for everything else. You will only accept the love you think you deserve. When you know your own worth, you become allergic to people who treat you like an option. My worst breakup was the greatest gift I never wanted. It forced me to meet myself, to sit with myself, and to finally, truly, learn to love myself. The person who emerged from the wreckage was more whole, more resilient, and more authentically me than the person who entered it. He didn’t break me. He just handed me the pieces and forced me to build something better. So, I’m curious… Did this resonate with you? Have you ever had a moment that forced you to rebuild? Clap if you know the struggle of finding yourself after losing someone else. Share your story in the comments — I read every single one. Follow me for more raw takes on love, life, and learning the hard way. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash The post What My Worst Breakup Taught Me About Self-Worth appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Ukraine lacked the expertise to bomb the Baltic Sea pipelines, Nikolay Patrushev said The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines could not have been carried out without Western commandos, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, singling out Britain as the likely culprit. German prosecutors have attributed the explosions in international waters in September 2022, which disabled the twin pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, to a group of Ukrainian nationals. In an article published Sunday in Kommersant, former head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolay Patrushev argued that Ukrainians lacked the expertise to carry out such a complex operation independently. The sabotage was likely “planned, overseen, and executed with the involvement of highly trained NATO special forces,” Patrushev wrote, adding that the perpetrators were experienced in deep-sea operations and familiar with working in the Baltic. “Few armies or intelligence services have divers capable of executing such an operation correctly and, above all, covertly. One unit with the necessary skills is the British Special Boat Service,” he said. Founded during World War II, the SBS is the Royal Navy’s elite squad specializing in amphibious warfare. Russia has criticized the German investigation for a lack of transparency and for not including Russian authorities. In 2024, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service claimed it had “credible information” that the US and UK were directly involved in the sabotage, a claim denied by both London and Washington. View the full article

— There’s a unique satisfaction that comes from being self-reliant. Whether it’s mastering the grill for a neighborhood cookout, ensuring your family stays warm during a power outage, or tackling an off-grid project, having the right tools is essential. One of the most versatile and reliable tools for energy independence is the humble propane tank. It’s a symbol of preparedness and capability, powering everything from our weekend hobbies to our essential home systems. Understanding the world of propane can feel a bit daunting at first. With various sizes, types, and safety considerations, making the right choice is crucial. This guide is here to demystify the process. We’ll explore how to select the right propane tank for your needs, cover the essentials of safety and maintenance, and help you make a confident, informed decision that empowers your home and lifestyle. Why Propane? The Versatile Fuel for the Modern Man Propane is more than just fuel for your BBQ. It’s a clean, efficient, and incredibly versatile energy source that can power a significant portion of your home. Its stability and ease of storage make it a superior choice for anyone who values readiness and independence from the public grid. Here’s a look at what makes propane a smart choice: Home Heating: Propane furnaces and boilers are highly efficient, providing consistent and comfortable heat, often at a lower cost than electricity in many areas. Water Heaters: Tankless propane water heaters offer endless hot water on demand, a luxury you’ll appreciate every single day. They are also more energy-efficient than traditional electric tanks that constantly heat a stored water supply. Cooking: Many chefs and home cooks prefer gas ranges for their precise temperature control. A propane-fueled stove gives you that professional-grade capability anywhere, even in a rural home without natural gas lines. Backup Power: When the power goes out, a propane-powered generator can be a lifesaver. Unlike gasoline, propane doesn’t degrade over time, so it’s ready to go when you need it most, keeping your lights on and your family safe. Outdoor Living: From grills and fire pits to patio heaters and pool warmers, propane is the king of the backyard, extending your living space and making it more enjoyable year-round. Choosing propane is a step toward greater control over your energy consumption and a hedge against the unpredictability of public utilities. It’s about being prepared for anything. Sizing It Up: From Backyard BBQs to Whole-Home Solutions The first step in harnessing the power of propane is choosing the right tank size. Your needs will dictate the best option, and it’s important to get this right to avoid constant refills or overpaying for capacity you don’t need. For smaller, portable needs like grilling or a single patio heater, the standard 20 lb tank is perfect. You can easily exchange these at most hardware or grocery stores. However, for more substantial applications, you’ll need to think bigger. When you start looking for a permanent solution for your home, you’ll often find a propane tank for sale that fits a more permanent installation. These larger tanks are the workhorses that can power your entire home’s energy needs. Common residential tank sizes include 100-gallon, 500-gallon, and 1000-gallon tanks. A 500-gallon tank is often the standard for homeowners who use propane for heating, hot water, and other appliances. It strikes a good balance between a manageable physical footprint and a large enough capacity to minimize the frequency of refills. The Sweet Spot: Is a 250-Gallon Tank Right for You? For many homeowners, the massive 500 or 1000-gallon tanks can be overkill, while smaller tanks require too-frequent refilling. This is where the middle ground offers a perfect solution. A 250 gallon propane tank is an excellent choice for those who need more than what a small canister can provide but don’t require the capacity to heat a large home through a harsh winter. This size is ideal for a few specific scenarios: Supplementing Your Main Heat Source: If you use propane for a secondary heat source, like a large garage heater or a fireplace insert, a 250-gallon tank is perfect. Powering Multiple Appliances: For homes that use propane for a water heater, clothes dryer, and cooking range but rely on another source for primary heating, this size offers ample supply without taking up excessive space. Backup Generation: A 250-gallon tank can run a whole-home backup generator for several days, providing true peace of mind during extended power outages. Choosing this size gives you a significant fuel reserve while maintaining a relatively compact profile in your yard. It’s a practical, efficient choice for the prepared homeowner. Smart Savings: The Case for Used Propane Tanks Investing in your home’s energy infrastructure is a significant decision, and being smart with your budget is part of being a responsible provider. While new is always an option, you can often find significant value by exploring the market for used propane tanks for sale. Propane tanks are built to last for decades, and a well-maintained, recertified used tank can offer the same safety and reliability as a new one for a fraction of the cost. Tanks are made from robust steel and are designed to withstand the elements and high pressure for many years. When a tank is taken out of service, it is often inspected, tested, and recertified by professionals to ensure it meets all current safety standards. This process includes checking for rust, dents, and valve integrity. A recertified tank is a safe and economical way to get the propane storage you need. When considering a used tank, always ensure it comes from a reputable dealer who can provide documentation of its inspection and recertification. This isn’t the time to cut corners; safety is paramount. A properly vetted used tank is a savvy financial move that doesn’t compromise on security. Your Path to Energy Independence Taking control of your home’s energy is a powerful move. It’s about more than just keeping the lights on; it’s about providing security, comfort, and reliability for yourself and your family. By understanding your needs and exploring your options—from choosing the right size to considering the value of a recertified used tank—you can build a more resilient and self-sufficient household. Whether you’re gearing up for a winter storm, planning a major home improvement project, or simply want the best fuel for your master-level grilling, propane delivers. Make the informed choice, invest in your independence, and enjoy the confidence that comes with being prepared for whatever comes your way. — This content is brought to you by Sky Link Building iStockPhoto The post Powering Your Independence: A Man’s Guide to Propane Tanks appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Ananya Sen Glioblastomas are the deadliest form of malignant brain tumor, and most patients diagnosed with the disease live only one or two years. In these tumors, normal cells in the brain become aggressive, growing rapidly and invading the surrounding tissue. The resulting cancer cells are metabolically different from their neighboring healthy cells. In a study published in Nature, researchers from the University of Michigan tracked how glucose is used in glioblastoma tumor cells. The team, a partnership between the Rogel Cancer Center, Department of Neurosurgery and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, discovered that brain tumors differ in how they consume certain nutrients in diets. “We altered the diet in mouse models and were able significantly slow down and block the growth of these tumors,” said co-senior author Daniel Wahl, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology. “Our study may help create new treatment opportunities for patients in the near future.” Conventional treatments consist of surgery followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy. However, the tumors eventually return and become resistant to treatment. Previously, researchers have shown that resistance is due to metabolic rewiring within cancer cells. Cancer cells in the brain use sugars differently compared to healthy cells Metabolism is the process by which our bodies break down molecules like carbohydrates and proteins so that our cells can either use them or build new molecules. Although both brain and cancer cells depend on sugar, the team wanted to see if they use sugar differently. They injected small amounts of labelled sugar into mice and, importantly, into patients with brain tumors to follow how it is used. “To really understand these brain cancers and improve treatments for patients, we needed to do the hard work of studying the tumors in patients themselves, not just in the lab,” said co-senior author Wajd Al-Holou, M.D., a brain tumor neurosurgeon who co-directs the Michigan Multidisciplinary Brain Tumor Clinic. Although both normal tissues and tumor cells used a lot of sugar, they used it for different purposes. “It’s a metabolic fork in the road,” said Andrew Scott, Ph.D., a research scholar in Wahl’s lab. “The brain channels sugar into energy production and neurotransmitters for thinking and health, but tumors redirect sugar to make materials for more cancer cells.” The team found that healthy tissues used sugars to generate energy and make chemicals that allow the brain to function properly. Glioblastomas, on the other hand, turned off those processes and instead converted sugar into molecules like nucleotides—the building blocks of DNA and RNA—that helped them grow and invade the surrounding tissues. Amino-acid restricted diets can improve treatment outcomes in mice The researchers also noticed other important differences. The normal brain used sugar to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. However, brain cancers seemed to turn this pathway off and instead scavenged these amino acids from the blood. This finding led the researchers to consider whether lowering the levels of certain amino acids in the blood could affect brain cancer without affecting the normal brain. They tested whether mice that were fed an amino acid-restricted diet had better treatment outcomes. “When we got rid of the amino acids serine and glycine in the mice, their response to radiation and chemotherapy was better and the tumors were smaller than the control mice that were fed serine,” said co-senior author Deepak Nagrath, Ph.D. professor of biomedical engineering. Based on their measurements in mice, the team also built mathematical models that can track how glucose is being used in different pathways, which can help identify other drug targets. Co-senior author Costas Lyssiotis, Ph.D., professor of molecular and integrative physiology, compared metabolic pathways to roads and drugs to roadblocks. Dropping a roadblock on a fast highway with a lot of traffic will have a greater effect than blocking a country road with a lower speed limit and only a few cars. Similarly, in a normal brain, the uptake of the amino acid serine from the blood is like a slow country road. But brain cancer is like a busy freeway, giving researchers the opportunity to selectively target the cancer. The team is working on opening clinical trials soon to test whether specialized diets that limit blood serine levels can also help glioblastoma patients. “This is a multidisciplinary effort from across the university,” Wahl said. “It is a study that no individual investigator could do on their own and I’m grateful to be part of a team that works together to make important discoveries that can improve treatments for our patients.” Additional authors: Anjali Mittal, Baharan Meghdadi, Alexandra O’Brien, Justine Bailleul, Sravya Palavalasa, Abhinav Achreja, Weihua Zhou, Jie Xu, Angelica Lin, Kari Wilder-Romans, Ningning Liang, Ayesha U. Kothari, Navyateja Korimerla, Donna M. Edwards, Zhe Wu, Jiane Feng, Sophia Su, Li Zhang, Peter Sajjakulnukit, Anthony C. Andren, Junyoung O. Park, Johanna ten Hoeve, Vijay Tarnal, Kimberly A. Redic, Nathan R. Qi, Joshua L. Fischer, Ethan Yang, Michael S. Regan, Sylwia A. Stopka, Gerard Baquer, Krithika Suresh, Jann N. Sarkaria, Theodore S. Lawrence, Sriram Venneti, Nathalie Y. R. Agar and Erina Vlashi. Funding/disclosures: Scott was supported by the National Cancer Institute (K99CA300923; F32CA260735). Wahl was supported by NCI (K08CA234416; R37CA258346), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS129123), Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation, Sontag Foundation, Ivy Glioblastoma Foundation, Forbes Institute for Cancer Discovery, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and Chad Tough Defeat DIPG foundation. Wahl and Lawrence were supported by NCI P50CA269022. Nagrath was supported by NCI (R01CA271369). Wu, Feng and Qi were supported by NIDDK MMPC-Live (1U2CDK135066). Zhou was supported by University of Michigan Medical School’s Pandemic Research Recovery grant (U083054). Al-Holou was supported by NINDS (K08NS12827101), American Cancer Society (CSDG-23-1031584-01-MM), and American Brain Tumor Association. Palavalasa was supported by American Cancer Society (PF-23-1077428-01-MM). Venneti was supported by NINDS (R01NS110572 and R01NS127799) and NCI (R01CA261926). Vlashi and Bailleul were supported by NCI (CA251872 and CA251872-S1). Bailleul was supported by a UCLA JCCC Fellowship Award. Park was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35GM143127). Sarkaria was supported by Mayo Clinic and the William H. Donner Professorship.  Agar was supported by the Daniel E. Ponton Fund, National Brain Tumor Society, Mass Life Sciences Center, and NCI(U54CA283114). Tech transfer(s)/Conflict(s) of interest: Wahl has consulted for Agios Pharmaceuticals, Admare Pharmaceuticals, Bruker and Innocrin Pharmaceuticals. He is an inventor on patents pertaining to the treatment of patients with brain tumors (U.S. Provisional Patent Application 63/416,146, U.S. Provisional Patent Application 62/744,342, U.S. Provisional Patent Applicant 62/724,337). Scott, Nagrath, Lyssiotis, Mittal, Achreja and Meghdadi are co-inventors on U.S. Provisional Patent Application 63/416,146. In the past three years, Lyssiotis has consulted for Odyssey Therapeutics and Third Rock Ventures. Al-Holou has consulted for Servier Pharmaceuticals. Agar reports the following disclosures: key opinion leader to Bruker Daltonics, collaboration with Thermo Finnigan, service agreement with EMD Serono, service agreement with iTeos Therapeutics, and founder and board member of BondZ. Paper cited: “Rewiring of cortical glucose metabolism fuels human brain cancer growth,” Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09460-7 Sign up for Health Lab newsletters today. Get medical tips from top experts and learn about new scientific discoveries every week. Sign up for the Health Lab Podcast. Add us wherever you listen to your favorite shows. — Previously Published on michiganmedicine.org with Creative Commons License *** – The world is changing fast. We help you keep up. We’ll send you 1 post, 3x per week. Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: unsplash The post Dietary Changes Could Provide a Therapeutic Avenue for Brain Cancer appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

— Think back to the last ad that really stuck with you. Was it a jingle on the radio, a print ad in a magazine, or a thirty-second TV spot? Or was it something you actually experienced? Maybe a brand event you attended, a booth at a festival, or a product sample you tried at the mall? Chances are, it was the one you experienced. That’s because people don’t just remember what they see or hear. They remember how something made them feel. This is the difference between traditional and experiential marketing. Both have their place, but they work in very different ways. If you’ve ever looked into premium experiential marketing services, you’ll know the goal isn’t just to show people a message but to let them live it. Traditional ads talk to people. Experiential efforts invite them in. Deciding which is better for your business really depends on what you want to achieve. What Traditional Marketing Does Well Most of us grew up with traditional marketing, such as television ads, billboards, and radio spots. These formats still work when you want a quick, wide reach. They’re familiar and can put your brand in front of a lot of people. They also last. A billboard stays up for weeks, a print ad sits on a table, and a TV spot runs repeatedly. That repetition builds recall, even if people don’t notice it closely the first time. The catch is that audiences are overloaded. People skip, block, or scroll past ads now. Traditional channels push messages out, but they don’t always invite people to engage. Why Experiential Marketing Feels Different Experiential marketing is less about telling and more about letting people try. It could be a pop-up shop, a tasting booth, or a hands-on demo. The point is simple: create a moment people remember. It works well for brands that want to build an emotional connection. For example, a sneaker brand might set up a pop-up basketball facility, or a food brand could hand out samples at an event. These experiences are real, and people often share them online without being asked to. It does require more effort and money than a regular ad, but the impact usually runs deeper. One strong memory can stick with a person much longer than a billboard they barely noticed. How to Decide What’s Right for You There isn’t one clear winner here. It really comes down to what you want from your marketing. If you’re a new brand that just needs to get on people’s radar, traditional ads, like billboards or digital campaigns, can help you get seen quickly. But if your product has something people need to touch, taste, or experience to “get it,” then putting it in their hands through events or live demos makes more sense. For brands that want to build something deeper, where people keep talking about them long after the first impression, experiential marketing usually wins. Money matters too. Traditional ads are easier to run on a large scale. Experiential marketing requires more creativity and planning. Sometimes, it even feels risky because you’re betting on people showing up and engaging with your product. But when it lands, the impact is usually far stronger than a passive ad ever could be. And if budget is on your mind, it’s worth exploring different funding solutions to help your business grow so you can invest in the right kind of marketing without slowing down your other plans. Blending the Two You don’t always have to choose sides. Some of the best campaigns mix both. A TV ad can build awareness, while an event on the ground gives people something real to try. You can promote an immersive setup through print and digital ads, so more people know about it. When you combine the two, you get reach from traditional channels and depth from experiential marketing. One spreads the word; the other makes it stick. Final Thoughts At the end of the day, marketing is about connection. Traditional formats are effective for spreading your name far and wide. Experiential marketing is good at making people stop, pay attention, and feel something. Neither one is automatically better; it just depends on what you want right now. — This content is brought to you by Hubert Dwight iStockPhoto The post Experiential vs. Traditional Marketing: Which One Fits Your Goals? appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Kate Yoder, Grist This story was originally published by Grist. Should you be worried about climate change? The answer used to be debatable — literally. Way back in 2007, NPR aired a debate over the proposition that “Global Warming Is Not a Crisis.” The panel had six commentators, divided equally into two sides. Those on the “not a crisis” side (which included Jurassic Park author and nonscientist Michael Crichton) argued that much of the current alarm was based on “ignorance.” Sure, the climate was changing, but that wasn’t anything new, they said. They weren’t convinced carbon dioxide was driving it this time around, either. Those stuck arguing that global warming was not not a crisis — an awkward double negative — countered that the scientific community was in near-universal agreement that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions were at fault. They laid out the dire consequences (rising seas, shrinking ice caps, warming oceans) and called on the audience to think of the planet their children and grandchildren would inherit. Afterward, the conservative think tank The Heartland Institute declared that the climate “realists” had beaten the “alarmists.” Polling the audience, NPR found that 57 percent thought that global warming was a crisis before the debate, but only 42 percent did afterward. The results seemed to confirm the fears that participant Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist, had outlined on his blog ahead of the event. “Is this kind of rhetorical jousting useful for clarifying issues of science … ? Or does it just validate the least serious opposition?” he wrote. In 2010, around the time when these kinds of debates were popular, almost half of Americans falsely believed there was a lot of disagreement among scientists that climate change was happening. Fast-forward to today, and the public’s understanding has evolved. More Americans acknowledge that scientists agree on climate change. People are also increasingly worried about the consequences: The intense floods, wildfires, and heat waves battering the country have sparked concern not only for the future, but for the present. And yet the old way of discussing climate change — framing it as a debate — appears to be coming back into fashion, this time spurred by the federal government. A new report from the Department of Energy, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” arrived in late July. “Climate change is a challenge — not a catastrophe,” Chris Wright, the Trump-appointed energy secretary, declared in the foreword. He wrote that the public conversation on climate change had “drifted from the science” because of exaggerated media coverage, potentially leading to “misguided policies based on fear.” While the report acknowledged that yes, the planet is getting warmer, and yes, it’s caused by humans, it argued that these changes aren’t as bad as you think. It contended that carbon dioxide is good for plant growth, that computer models are overstating predictions of future warming, and that sea level rise isn’t accelerating. These conclusions were no surprise considering that the report’s five authors — John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer — have a long track record of pushing back against mainstream narratives about climate change. Among those who care deeply about climate change, the report sounded alarm bells. Critics pointed to its use of selectively chosen data. A fact-check from the data journalism nonprofit Carbon Brief identified more than 100 cases of false or misleading claims in the 140-page document, with some researchers saying their cited work had been mischaracterized. Some scientists, led by Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M University, have begun organizing an academic response to the report. “It is a shock to see the U.S. government, in an official document, deny scientific realities and spew so much disinformation,” said Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. But getting scientists riled up might have been intentional. One of the report’s authors, Koonin, recently told E&E News that the expected pushback to the DOE report is part of a long-standing effort to create a “red team, blue team” exercise that could revive the “debate” over climate change. “Red team, blue team” is a reference to an adversarial military exercise used to expose weaknesses. The idea, with roots in 19th-century Prussian war games, took off in the U.S. during the Cold War in the 1960s and has since become popular in cybersecurity. Companies will hire a “red” team to try to poke holes in their “blue” team’s digital defenses. These provocations help companies bolster their defenses against actual hackers. The red team, blue team idea was floated by an EPA official during President Donald Trump’s first term as a way to challenge mainstream climate science. Before that, it had been raised by Spencer, another author on the 2025 report, as early as 2009. For a matter like climate change, however, a loud red-team attack has the effect of making the whole field look wobbly, split into two equally divided sides. “It can really create perceptions of false equivalence in the public sphere,” said Max Boykoff, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Matt Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming, said that the context of the DOE report — the Trump administration’s broader assault on climate information — makes it hard to take it seriously. While the DOE report was underway, officials removed congressionally mandated climate reports on how climate change affects life in the United States from the federal website they lived on. The administration has also cut billions in funding for climate programs and research, and has proposed halting projects that monitor climate change. On the same day the DOE report was released in July, the Environmental Protection Agency fired another shot at climate science, saying it would roll back the Obama-era finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health — the scientific foundation that allows the agency to address climate change. In its proposal to repeal this so-called “endangerment” finding, the EPA cited the new DOE report, and many have interpreted it as a pretext for the EPA’s announcement. So the “blue team” pushed back. Two environmental groups, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, filed a lawsuit against both agencies earlier this month, arguing that Wright had secretly arranged for five “hand-picked skeptics” to write a report challenging the scientific consensus on climate change. The lawsuit alleges that involving a “secret, unaccountable” group in policymaking concerns violated federal law. (The DOE did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) But scientists may want to be careful in how they push back at the report, since arguing over fringe viewpoints may have the effect of amplifying them, falling into the same trap created by the climate debates of 20 years ago. One study from 2023 found that disinformation about climate change was more emotionally compelling and persuasive to people than scientific facts. To Cleetus, the government’s revival of the climate “debate” is a distraction from the task at hand. “We’re losing precious, precious time to help stave off these terrible impacts of climate change,” Cleetus said. “And I don’t know what we will say to our children and grandchildren, that this is what we wasted our time on.” Much of the polarization around climate change appears to stem from disagreements over what to do about it. In recent years, many advocates have justified faster action — more regulations, fewer fossil fuels, and more green technology — by appealing to “science.” The Biden administration even enshrined “listen to science” as its official policy. But while science can inform policy decisions, it doesn’t answer the question of how to navigate the complex moral and cultural issues that come with reimagining life after fossil fuels. The political left has used the science-has-all-the-answers framing to shut down important conversations about real trade-offs, said Travis Fisher, who helped organize the DOE report. He is also the director of energy and environmental policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. He says that by using “the science” as justification to push through controversial policies, it invites skepticism in science as an objective force. “There’s only so many times you can get hit with that, like, trademark ‘science’ club before you start saying, ‘Hey, what’s actually in that club that you have?’” Fisher said. “‘Is it as solid as you say it is?’” It bears repeating that upward of 97 percent of climate experts agree that human-caused climate change is happening, but there are many areas of climate science that merit further study. For example, the question of whether climate change affects tornadoes (not yet clear) or just how quickly and strongly CO2 emissions will drive global warming in the future. (The DOE report argues that the planet is less sensitive to CO2 than commonly believed, while scientist James Hansen argues that it’s actually more sensitive.) Science is always evolving as new evidence comes in, and it takes many studies to create a sufficient body of evidence before a causal argument can be accepted. Take that famous 97 percent stat from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example. According to the organization, it came from “not just … a single study, but by a converging stream of evidence over the past two decades from surveys of scientists, content analyses of peer-reviewed studies, and public statements issued by virtually every membership organization of experts in this field.” To Burgess, the environmental economist, the messy context around the DOE report represents a missed opportunity — particularly because he thinks the critics make some good points. There are certain narratives, especially around the severity of climate impacts, he said, “that are underappreciated in the mainstream discourse.” But the solution, Burgess said, isn’t war-room style debates — it’s open, transparent collaboration between what might be described as the “blue team” and “red team.” As an example of a way to encourage thoughtful engagement, he pointed to the University of Pennsylvania’s Adversarial Collaboration Project, which encourages scholars who disagree to work together to resolve polarizing scientific disputes. “We do ourselves and the community a favor when we dispassionately try to, through things like adversarial collaboration, get to the bottom of genuine scholarly debates about how to interpret facts,” Burgess said. “Even if we don’t like the people who interpret the facts differently than we do.” Wright has hinted that the DOE’s report, which is open to the public to comment, may just be the start of the administration’s move to stir up debate over climate change. “We’ll probably have public events here in D.C. this fall,” he said in an interview with CNN earlier this month. “We want to have an honest dialogue with the American people about climate change.” Burgess interprets the whole episode around report differently. “I think it’s just basically another opportunity for people to yell at each other online and go back to their silos,” he said. This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/us-government-revive-climate-change-debate/. Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. — Republished with permission from Nevada Current Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: iStock The post Why the US Government Is Trying to Revive the Climate Change ‘Debate’ appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

By Irene Landini EU-level concern about inclusion and workplace sexual harassment is on the rise. Despite this, European academic research continues to overlook how race, class, and legal status shape victims’ experiences. Irene Landini says it’s time for studies of sexual harassment in higher education to take an intersectional turn Sexual harassment and inequality in European universities Universities across Europe present themselves as promoters of inclusion and anti-discrimination research. Yet within their own walls, various forms of inequality and discrimination continue to unfold. European universities including the renowned College of Europe, the University of Lausanne and many others recently experienced sexual harassment scandals. Even prestigious institutions, it seems, can become unsafe workplaces. The advent of digital platforms has enabled new forms of workplace harassment, often replicating and reinforcing existing patterns of harm. Recent investigations show that victims of online and/or face-to-face sexual harassment in HE often hail from diverse backgrounds. Some belong to the white, middle-class majority in their home countries. Others come from lower-income or racialised communities. In acknowledgement of this, the EU developed its Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025. The Strategy underlines the need for increased attention to online and offline/face-to-face workplace sexual harassment at EU policy level — and not just in higher education institutions. The strategy likewise calls for more trauma-informed, intersectional research. The academic blind spot Policymakers and practitioners, too, are calling for a more intersectional response to workplace sexual harassment — especially in higher education. Despite this, most research on the topic still lags behind . This is particularly the case for research produced by, and located in, contexts outside the US and non-English-speaking countries. With some important exceptions, the voices and experiences of those who do no not fit into these strict categories often remain absent. Since Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational work in 1989, scholars have drawn attention to how gender, race, class, disability, and more interact to produce unique experiences of oppression and privilege. Indeed, ‘intersectionality’ has grown to become a commonly invoked term. Disadvantaged migrants and ethnic minorities remain persistently absent from academic studies on sexual harassment in higher education Examining sexual harassment in higher education through an intersectional lens would significantly advance conceptual and empirical understanding of the problem. It would give voice to people rarely at the centre of mainstream research: those outside white, middle-class, majority-ethnic groups. Disadvantaged migrants and ethnic minorities remain persistently absent from academic studies on sexual harassment in higher education. With only a few, albeit important, exceptions, and interesting pieces of work, their experiences remain largely unexamined, especially in Europe. Academic research tends to focus primarily on the so-called ‘international staff’: Erasmus students, visiting professors, or PhD researchers. These groups typically include individuals who are highly resourced, well-supported institutionally, and, often, only temporary. But what about the many scholars, staff members, and early-career researchers who have relocated for economic, political, or personal reasons, and who live and work in host countries long-term or permanently? What about those whose socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds differ significantly from the elite profiles often associated with academic mobility? Sexual harassment isn’t just about sex Yet, as Crenshaw and colleagues argued in 2013, a truly intersectional approach doesn’t simply create a checklist of individual characteristics, differences, and layers of structural oppression. It goes deeper. Intersectionality interrogates how these categories interact, compound, and shift depending on the structural context and, especially, the systems of power and structural inequality, such as the workplace or society at large. It challenges us to see our own and others’ identities not as a static sum of parts, but as something produced through social, institutional, and historical dynamics. Identity is also something that transforms, adapts, and takes on a different meaning depending on the workplace, the broader social context, or one’s position in intersecting systems of power. It evolves over time and across space. Intersectionality, in this sense, is not about counting fixed differences. It is about the dynamic interplay of power, context, and positionality. A truly intersectional approach doesn’t simply create a checklist of individual characteristics; it interrogates how these characteristics interact, compound, and shift depending on the structural context To combat sexual harassment in higher education effectively, we must stop seeing victims as a monolithic category. Not all women experience face-to-face or online sexual harassment in the same way just because they identify as women. Similarly, not all migrants experience harassment in the same way. Legal status matters. Skin colour matters. Class, race, age, nationality, contract type, institutional context, and many other characteristics and factors affects who gets targeted, how it happens, and what consequences it carries. And when one’s personal situation changes over time, past vulnerabilities may recede while new challenges emerge, shaped by shifting positionalities. If a refugee student acquires citizenship, for example, this may lessen her risk of sexual harassment because her legal status becomes more secure. She may still, however, suffer sexual harassment because of her ethnicity, financial precarity, or marginalised social position. The academic and political cost of inaction These dynamics are never neutral. Systems of power and structural inequality that operate across the social, institutional, and geopolitical domain produce and transform them. Ignoring them has serious consequences, not just for research accuracy, but for policy and justice, too. If scholarly studies do not reflect the diverse reality of victimisation, how can policies claim to protect us all? If scholarly studies do not reflect the diverse reality of victimisation, how can policies claim to protect us all? Without intersectionality we risk retaining outdated laws that leave those most at risk unprotected, unrepresented, and unheard. Even worse: as academia itself becomes complicit. Research is not neutral, indeed. Who we include, what we ask, and how we analyse, all reflects our assumptions about whose experiences do really matter. If we continue to study sexual harassment through a narrow lens, we will continue to get only partial answers — and partial justice. But if we widen our scope, listen more carefully, and focus on those who are too often excluded, we can build a research landscape — and a university culture — that is not only more accurate, but more just. This article was originally published at The Loop and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. — Subscribe to The Good Men Project Newsletter Email Address * Subscribe If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: iStock The post Why European Research on Sexual Harassment Must Shift Focus appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Kiev’s forces struck Russia’s Donetsk on Sunday A Ukrainian kamikaze drone struck a park in Russia’s Donetsk on Sunday, injuring six people, including a teenage girl, according to regional authorities. Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said the UAV hit the Gulliver park in the western part of the city, an area that has often come under shelling during the conflict. He added that Kiev’s forces carried out 15 “armed attacks” on Donetsk and the nearby town of Makeevka, using 155mm artillery and drones. Footage from RT’s Murad Gazdiev, filmed shortly after the strike, shows debris, blood stains on the pavement, and benches damaged by shrapnel. A school was also heavily damaged, though no one was injured inside as it was closed at the time. View the full article

— Booking business flights shouldn’t feel like running a marathon. But if you’ve ever tried to do it yourself, you know the pain. You start with good intentions, open a couple of tabs, compare prices… and two hours later, you’re still stuck. The fare you thought was decent has gone up. The “deal” you found comes with three layovers. And you’re left wondering if there’s some secret trick you’re missing. That’s exactly why weengs flights takes such a different approach. Instead of tossing you into the maze, they strip things down. You give them your info, and they take over. That’s it. No guessing, no late-night stress, no staring at fare calendars until your eyes glaze over. Why Simplicity Matters in Business Travel If you’re traveling for work, chances are your schedule is already packed. Meetings. Presentations. Calls that don’t stop just because you’re boarding a plane. The last thing you need is another time-consuming task on your to-do list. Simplicity, in this context, isn’t just convenient—it’s survival. When you’re juggling deadlines and trying to make sure you’re rested enough to perform at your best, wasting hours shopping for flights just doesn’t make sense. That’s the gap weengs flights fills. They give you a way to book premium travel without draining your time and energy. Step 1: Submit Your Contact Information The first step almost feels too easy. You head over to weengs flights, drop your contact info, and tell them where you’re headed. Dates, round-trip or one-way, and you’re done. That’s it. No twenty-field forms, no “create an account” pop-up slowing you down. It’s the kind of quick handoff that feels like texting a friend—“Hey, can you handle this for me?” And once you’ve hit submit, you can move on with your day. Step 2: Weengs Managers Do the Work for You Here’s where things actually get interesting. Instead of leaving you to dig through a dozen flight options, the managers at weengs flights take over. And we’re not talking about a faceless algorithm spitting out whatever’s left in the system. These are people who know the industry, know the airlines, and know where the hidden deals live. They do the searching, the comparing, the negotiating. You get results that actually fit your trip instead of being forced to adjust your plans around whatever you could find online. It feels a bit like having your own travel assistant—minus the cost of actually hiring one. Why This Model Saves You Time and Energy Ask anyone who travels often: booking flights is a time sink. Even if you’re quick, you’re still scrolling, refreshing, second-guessing, and wondering if tomorrow’s price might be better. It’s exhausting. The Weengs system flips that around. You hand off the grunt work, they do it for you, and you get to keep your time and headspace for things that matter. For business travelers, that can mean finishing up a presentation, or simply getting a decent night’s sleep instead of wrestling with airline websites. Either way, it’s a win. Business Travelers Who Benefit from Weengs’ Simple System This setup works especially well for the kind of people who never really stop moving. The consultant who spends three weeks a month on the road. The founder is chasing opportunities across different continents. The executive who needs to land in Frankfurt one week and Singapore the next. But honestly, it’s not just the high-flyers. Even someone who only books a few business trips a year can benefit. Why waste hours on a single booking when you can hand it off and get it done right the first time? Once you’ve tried it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t switch sooner. The Advantages of DIY Booking Platforms DIY booking platforms aren’t terrible—but they’re built for volume, not for personalization. They’ll show you a list, sure, but they won’t hold your hand when something changes. And they definitely don’t tell you when a better deal is hiding just outside of what’s publicly visible. With weengs flights, you get more than just a list of options: Deals that often aren’t listed on public booking engines. Real people you can talk to if you need changes or support. Prices that don’t suddenly balloon with hidden fees at checkout. A smoother process from start to finish. That little bit of human attention makes all the difference—especially when your trip isn’t just about getting from A to B, but arriving ready to actually do business. Conclusion: Simplify Your Next Flight with Weengs At the end of the day, booking business travel doesn’t have to feel like a second job. With weengs flights, you submit your info, they do the heavy lifting, and you end up with a flight that makes sense—without the wasted hours. So the next time you catch yourself staring at endless fare calendars, ask yourself: do you really want to spend another night doing this? Or would you rather hand it off and move on with your life? If simplicity sounds better than stress, give weengs flights a shot. It’s a smarter, easier way to travel—and once you’ve tried it, there’s no going back. — This content is brought to you by Rana Adnan Photo provided by the author. The post Business Flights Made Simple: Submit Your Info and Let Weengs Handle the Rest appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

A few months ago, I showed up solo to a wedding. I was looking good: red dress, smug confidence, hair doing exactly what I asked it to for once. I made it all the way to the cake cutting before one of my mom’s friends leaned in and whispered, “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll find someone soon.” Ma’am, I wasn’t worried until you said that. Also, I was too busy demolishing a slice of chocolate cake to feel incomplete. Honestly, the cake was better than most men I’ve dated. Being single isn’t the problem. The problem is that everyone else treats it like a contagious disease. Like you should be quarantined until someone puts a ring on your finger. Singlehood isn’t a waiting room. It’s not the sad prequel to “real life.” And if you treat it that way, yeah, you’ll lose your damn mind. But if you don’t? Being single can be one of the richest, most interesting times of your life. … Single=Broken? Let’s kill the clichés: You’re not “picky.” You’re not “behind.” You’re not “half a person.” You’re just… single. That’s all there is. Society acts like you should be swiping desperately on dating apps before your eggs shrivel, or you turn into some kind of folklore cautionary tale. But being single isn’t a flaw. It’s a season. Sometimes a short one. Sometimes a long one. But never a defect. You’re not incomplete. You’re not missing anything essential. Unless, of course, you count oat milk you forgot to buy at the grocery store because you’re the only one in charge of the list. But that’s not about singlehood. That’s just adulthood. … What You Can Control Here’s what you can’t control: Whether Tinder serves you someone who can spell. Your aunt interrogating you about your love life over Thanksgiving pie. How many engagement announcements pop up on Instagram in a single week (spoiler: too many). Here’s what you can control: Your attitude — seeing singlehood as punishment vs. possibility. Your effort — building a life that doesn’t feel like it’s missing a piece. Your perspective — remembering relationships don’t guarantee happiness (shocker, I know). Stop Acting Like You’re on Pause I used to treat being single like I was in some purgatory. Friday night alone was proof that I was failing at life. Scrolling past couples on vacation made me feel like everyone else was happier than me. Until it hit me: nobody was holding me back from living. I was. The moment you stop treating singlehood like a waiting period, it turns into freedom. It’s no longer empty but wide open. Nobody’s asking you to compromise on Thai food vs. pizza. Nobody’s hogging the blankets. Nobody’s sighing when you binge the same comfort show for the third time. Singlehood is space. And you get to decide how to fill it. Build a Life That’s Juicy Without a Plus-One People talk about love like it’s the ultimate ingredient for joy. Cute. But I’ve seen couples fight about dirty dishes with the intensity of a Netflix drama. Love isn’t the only thing worth living for. Fulfilment comes from work that excites you, friendships that carry you, and rituals that make you proud to be alive, even on a Tuesday. If you want to stay single without losing your mind, stop waiting and start building: Take yourself out (yes, to a restaurant table for one, and yes, order dessert). Travel solo. It’s terrifying and liberating in equal measure. Throw yourself into hobbies you secretly wanted to try but didn’t because your ex hated them (hello, pole dance classes). The point is: create a life so textured, so good, so unmistakably yours that it’s not a “placeholder” for a partner. Make it the main event. Relationships Aren’t Heaven, FYI Rarely does anybody admit it out loud: a lot of people in relationships are lonely. A lot of marriages are miserable. Some of the most “settled” people you know cry in the bathroom at night. I am not bitter. But it’s reality. Having a partner doesn’t guarantee bliss. Sometimes it guarantees headaches and joint tax returns. Partnership can be amazing, yes. But it’s not salvation. And singlehood isn’t exile. You’re not lacking or in limbo. You’re living. Right now. Decide You’re Enough The actual secret to staying single without losing your damn mind? Stop waiting for your “other half.” Your worth doesn’t fluctuate based on your relationship status. You’re not “half a person” waiting for your other half. You’re already whole. Anyone who comes along is extra. You can want love someday, sure. But you don’t need to treat your single life like some tragic holding pattern until it arrives. … Singlehood isn’t the problem. How you see it is. And the next time your aunt tilts their head sympathetically and asks, “Still single?” don’t flinch. Smile and say, “Yep. And I’m doing just fine.” Then go back to eating your cake, living your life, and enjoying the kind of freedom people in relationships sometimes secretly envy. … Let’s keep in touch! Join my Substack: MindsetMatters Your support means a great deal to me. If you would like to fuel my creativity with coffee, buy me a coffee and share your thoughts. — This post was previously published on medium.com. Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox. Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice. Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there! Hello, Love (relationships) Change Becomes You (Advice) A Parent is Born (Parenting) Equality Includes You (Social Justice) Greener Together (Environment) Shelter Me (Wellness) Modern Identities (Gender, etc.) Co-Existence (World) *** – Photo credit: Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash The post How to Stay Single Without Losing Your Damn Mind appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article

Government lawyers reportedly believed the ex-president failed to properly vet the criminals whose sentences he commuted Former US President Joe Biden’s own officials objected to how his team handled the sweeping pardons issued shortly before he left office, Axios reported on Sunday, citing internal emails and people familiar with the matter. Biden faced widespread criticism for granting clemency to his son Hunter, despite pledging not to do so. Hunter Biden had previously pleaded guilty to tax evasion and gun violations. “There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon – and they largely didn’t run it by the Justice Department to vet them,” a source told Axios. Many of the pardons were signed with an autopen, a device that replicates the president’s signature. The move was reportedly authorized by Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, with his aide Rosa Po frequently sending the authorizations by email. Bradley Weinsheimer, a senior ethics attorney at the Justice Department, wrote a scathing memo in January, a day after Biden freed thousands of criminals he described as non-violent drug offenders, Axios said. Weinsheimer argued that Biden’s statement was “untrue, or at least misleading,” and provided a list of violent offenders released as a result. In January, White House staff secretary Stef Feldman reportedly questioned the use of the autopen, asking: “When did we get [Biden’s] approval of this?” Biden later insisted he had made “every decision” himself and claimed the autopen was needed to process a large number of documents. However, records indicate he only had to sign “a few documents for every large group of people he granted clemency,” according to Axios. Biden ultimately pardoned 4,245 people, with more than 95% of those decisions made in the final months of his presidency, the outlet said. The former president argued at the time that the prosecution of his son was politically motivated. View the full article

By The Editors Welcome to Entanglements. In this episode, hosts Brooke Borel and Anna Rothschild ask: Should we run outdoor geoengineering experiments? Geoengineering — intentionally altering the planet’s climate to slow the effects of climate change — has been fiercely debated for years. And although some scientists are increasingly open to the idea, there is still disagreement on whether or not to move forward. As always, to dig in, our hosts invited two experts with differing opinions to share their points of view in an effort to find some common ground. The point isn’t to both-sides an issue or to try to force agreement. Instead, they aim to explore the nuance and subtleties that are often overlooked in heated online forums or in debate-style media. Their guests this week are Frank Keutsch, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University, and Raymond Pierrehumbert, a planetary physicist at Oxford University. Below is the full transcript of the podcast, lightly edited for clarity. New episodes drop on Wednesdays. You can also subscribe to Entanglements on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Brooke Borel: OK Anna, I want to read a social media post to you. Anna Rothschild: OK, I’m kind of nervous, but I’m ready. Brooke Borel: OK. So this is a post from July 5th on the platform X from Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia. Anna Rothschild: OK… Brooke Borel: It reads: “I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.” Anna Rothschild: Wow. Brooke Borel: And then it goes on to say: “We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.” Anna Rothschild: Oh my goodness. Are we finally doing a geoengineering episode? Brooke Borel: We sure are! [MUSIC] Hi listeners, this is Entanglements, the show where we wade into heated scientific debates and search for common ground. I’m Brooke Borel, articles editor at Undark Magazine. Anna Rothschild: And I’m science journalist Anna Rothschild. OK, Brooke, let’s get back to the geoengineering. Brooke Borel: Yes! So geoengineering is basically deliberately tweaking the planet’s climate to try and slow climate change. And Greene’s bill — which, who knows what’s going to happen with it, right? But Greene’s bill is covering some other stuff, too, but in general she’s opposed to anyone intentionally injecting stuff into the atmosphere to alter it. Anna Rothschild: Yeah, this is getting more mainstream now, but I know this has been a debated topic even among scientists for years. Brooke Borel: Yeah, I mean, the idea of trying to intentionally change the climate on our entire planet is really controversial. Especially when you start thinking about who gets to make a decision like this on behalf  of our whole species and everything else on the planet. Anna Rothschild: Right, exactly. And there are some pretty wild ideas out there, right? Like I heard there’s one about putting giant mirrors up in space to reflect sunlight away from Earth? Things like that. Brooke Borel: Right. And most scientists are not seriously considering doing anything like that anytime soon. But some are thinking about other ways we might reflect sunlight away from Earth, like altering Earth’s atmosphere to be more reflective. So, one way you could do this would be injecting little reflective particles up into the atmosphere. Another idea is to brighten marine clouds to make them more reflective. And these approaches are commonly called Solar Radiation Modification, or SRM. Now, this is also controversial. But there are some scientists who are increasingly open to it because they think it just might be necessary in light of where climate change is headed. Anna Rothschild: Yeah, I can see that. Brooke Borel: Right. So that is what we’re talking about today. And in particular, we’re asking the question: Should we be doing geoengineering experiments? And let me just say: It was not easy to find two experts willing to tackle this one. Anna Rothschild: Why? Brooke Borel: Well, here is a direct quote from someone who is very against geoengineering, when I was trying to entice him onto the show. He said: “There are a few people with scientifically respectable thoughts on this subject, but there are also a lot of geoengineering zealots out there I don’t want to be in a direct public discussion with.” Anna Rothschild: Oh! OK, gotcha. Brooke Borel: Guess what though? I got that guy to come on the show and I found someone he was willing to talk to. Anna Rothschild: Oh! You’re so good. Brooke Borel: I tried. It took me months but here we are. So we’re going to hear from the pro-geoengineering experiments person first. Anna Rothschild: Great, I’m so excited. Brooke Borel: Let’s get into it. [MUSIC] Frank Keutsch: I started really getting into this field about 10 years ago, and before that I had heard about this field, but was quite honestly thinking that the idea of working on this topic and people pursuing this kind of research was really a little crazy. Brooke Borel: This is Frank Keutsch. He’s an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University. And despite his initial reaction, a few years later he was spearheading a potential geoengineering experiment called SCoPEx. That project never happened — and we’ll get into why in a moment. But for now, all you need to know is that when it comes to geoengineering, his stance is: No, it’s not time to deploy it, but it’s time to start exploring it. Brooke Borel: What changed that made you decide to pursue something like this? Frank Keutsch: After much internal debate, the reason I actually went in this direction is that if I — I looked at the expertise I have. I’m an atmospheric scientist, an atmospheric chemist, and I really wanted to do work that I felt could address impacts of climate change in a significant way, potentially. And when I looked around, one of the things I noticed is that there was this field of, as people refer to it, solar geoengineering, and there were virtually no atmospheric chemists in this field. And so I thought at least here, there may be a place where my expertise could come in usefully, in particular, to answer a huge array of open questions that correspond to risks in this research that I thought really needed to be addressed. Brooke Borel: So what kind of things are helpful to include in that from the perspective of an atmospheric chemist? Like what was missing did you think? Frank Keutsch: The really detailed understanding of what happens when I introduce particles into the stratosphere. And the reason I also was interested in that, in that it sort of fits in the broader research that I’m doing. And that is really trying to understand how human activity is resulting potentially in a new state of the stratosphere. Brooke Borel: But Anna, to be clear, we are nowhere near this yet. When Frank first got into this field, it was with a super small-scale experiment. Anna Rothschild: OK. Brooke Borel: He wanted to release about a kilogram of particles to see how they would spread through the atmosphere, what pattern they would make. And the experiment didn’t even use the same types of chemicals that would be used in an actual geoengineering project. Anna Rothschild: OK. So what was the point then? Brooke Borel: Well, before anyone even thinks about putting particles in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, first they need to understand basic things about how the atmosphere spreads and moves them around, which is called turbulent mixing. Anna Rothschild: OK. And that way they can figure out how actual reflective particles would move around if they did ever decide to put those in the atmosphere later. Brooke Borel: Yep. Here’s how Frank describes it: Frank Keutsch: Imagine you have a giant Olympic-size swimming pool and I’m putting in a drop of ink, right? How does that spread out until it fills the whole swimming pool? And that is a big unknown. And the question is, does it even spread out evenly? That was the main scientific topic that we wanted to explore with SCoPEx. Brooke Borel: So I’m curious from your perspective, what makes — whether SCoPEx or just other geoengineering projects more broadly — what makes this kind of research controversial? Frank Keutsch: It really just doesn’t address the problem, right? Brooke Borel: The problem of climate change, that is. Frank Keutsch: At best it’ll address symptoms of a problem. What SRM is offering is a painkiller or anesthesia that takes away some of the symptoms, which is the pain, but essentially never addresses the underlying problem. And that of course comes with a number of risks that are associated with it. And I think one of the main risks is what has been called moral hazard or mitigation deterrence. The idea that if you know there’s a painkiller, rather than going to the dentist right now and having a tooth fixed, you’re like, oh, I have all these important appointments. Let me just take some painkillers and I’ll do that some other day. Anna Rothschild: OK, that is so relatable. Brooke Borel: Yeah, who among us has not put something off that we really should do right now? Anna Rothschild: Yeah, I have a list. Brooke Borel: Yeah, I have a list too. So to apply that to climate change, the moral hazard issue is that if we have a technology that can help cool the planet, maybe we won’t work so hard to address the actual problem, which is to take carbon out of the atmosphere and also just produce less of it. Anna Rothschild: Right. But all this said, Frank doesn’t sound like he’s some sort of geoengineering deployment evangelist, right? Brooke Borel: No, not at all. But given our climate change predicament, he thinks it’s at least worth understanding all the options on the table. So, he says, hey, I’m a scientist and I can help answer some key, basic questions about this sort of project. And then at least people who decide these things can be more informed. Anna Rothschild: Right. But wait, what happened to SCoPEx? Because you said he didn’t even get to do that, right? Brooke Borel: Right. Because for some people, even a geoengineering experiment is a step too far. Ray Pierrehumbert: Of all the kinds of research on solar geoengineering, the most threatening kinds of research are outdoor geoengineering experiments where you actually put something in the actual atmosphere to see what happens. Brooke Borel: This is Raymond Pierrehumbert. Ray is a planetary physicist at Oxford University and he basically researches the climate of any planet with an atmosphere — including Earth. Ray Pierrehumbert: All of these experiments are really too small-scale to answer any of the really serious questions of what would happen in a full-scale deployment or even a partially full-scale deployment. But nonetheless, the dangerous thing about most of these experiments, these outdoor experiments that people would like to run, is that to some extent they all develop engineering technologies that would make it possible for somebody to deploy the technology, whether it’s wise or safe to do so or not. Brooke Borel: Are you more concerned then about the actual materials in a small-scale experiment that are going into the atmosphere, or you’re more concerned with the fact that they would then be developing technologies to make this easier in the long run? Ray Pierrehumbert: So, in terms of the dangers of outdoor experiments, for the ones that are actually proposed so far, I’m not so concerned about the actual physical effects of these experiments. You know, they are legitimately described as small enough scale that their actual physical hazard, I think, is not the main issue. The hazard is a technological issue. The fact that it makes it easier for somebody to deploy these technologies. Anna Rothschild: So this is a slippery slope argument. Brooke Borel: Exactly. The initial experiments may not harm the planet, but they will provide the next step to get geoengineering off the ground. Large scale deployment will likely require technology that doesn’t exist yet: Like airplanes equipped to spray the particles high up into the atmosphere. So, a small scale experiment may help, develop, say, a nozzle to spray those particles out. Anna Rothschild: Mm-hmm. Brooke Borel: And like Frank, Ray’s first reaction to geoengineering schemes was more or less: This is crazy. But unlike Frank, he has not budged on that idea, and he just still doesn’t like it. Anna Rothschild: Right. Brooke Borel: And he says it’s only getting worse. Ray Pierrehumbert: I’m a lot more scared now because for decades, it was a tiny fringe of people who were pushing this idea. There was no funding, there was just a trickle of funding from a few philanthropic organizations. But, you know, I thought there was a reasonable chance it was all just gonna go away. As the climate crisis has become more clear and present, and as the frustration with not making progress on decarbonization of the economy has grown, the frustration of that lack of progress has grown, even some scientists who have been hanging out on the edge, and certainly a lot of political leaders, are starting to think, well, we’re in a panic. We have to do something. And in a panic is not a good way to make good decisions. Brooke Borel: What potential consequences of geoengineering worry you the most? Ray Pierrehumbert: The most threatening thing about it if it should ever become deployed is that there’s a fundamental mismatch in the timescales over which carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere and causes warming and the timescales over which these aerosols, which reflect sunlight persist in the atmosphere. Brooke Borel: In other words, the aerosols last a far shorter time than carbon, so you have to keep putting them in. Ray Pierrehumbert: So if you get into a situation where you need solar geoengineering to make the earth habitable, then you’re stuck doing it essentially forever. That’s what I call millennial commitment. Because if you stop injecting stuff into the stratosphere, those particles will fall out in a matter of two years or so. Then if something ever happens in the next thousand or 10,000 years to force you to stop, like there could be climate wars. If Russia doesn’t like the geoengineering and wants to have warm water ports in the Arctic, there could be world depressions, there could be wars, pandemics. You know, all sorts of things can happen. Brooke Borel: So, Ray isn’t just worried about these major global events. He’s also worried about what would happen if they disrupted ongoing geoengineering work and triggered what’s called termination shock. Anna Rothschild: That sounds sort of post-apocalyptic. Brooke Borel: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. So, the idea is that if geoengineering is the only thing keeping the temperature down, and then you have to suddenly stop the geoengineering scheme, the temperature is going to bounce back up to whatever it would have been without that technological intervention. And this will happen quickly, too, so it’s bad news. Anna Rothschild: Yeah, I don’t love that. Brooke Borel: Me either! And here, he and Frank agree: Termination shock is a big concern. And they also agree about the moral hazard issue. Ray Pierrehumbert: As long as you’re emitting CO2, the world will continue to warm because CO2 will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. So right now when we haven’t really started the process of getting carbon dioxide emissions down to zero, this is a particularly dangerous time to be developing the technology because it increases the temptation to actually use solar geoengineering instead of decarbonizing. Brooke Borel: Is there not some value? Can’t we have both things happening at once, where we’re focused on bringing down carbon levels, but also developing this technology? I mean, it seems like if we did get to the point where we would need to deploy such a thing and we don’t have it in place and haven’t done the work to get it in place, that we wouldn’t have it when we might possibly need it. This would be an argument anyway that you would hear from folks that are more gung ho about this technology. What do you say to that? Ray Pierrehumbert: Yeah. And that’s the desire to have a plan B and the problem with that scenario is just what do you do about termination shock? Either you do it just a little bit, in which case it’s just a minor part, not a critical thing, not the make or break thing, or you do it big. Brooke Borel: Then you have the risk — Ray Pierrehumbert: Then you have the risk of this big termination shock. Brooke Borel: And Ray has other concerns too. Ray Pierrehumbert: Even in the scientific community, sometimes people who are reasonably well-informed, they still don’t understand this mismatch in timescale issue. You know, you often hear the sentiment that we’ll use it to buy time until we reach net zero. And that sort of implies that you can maybe do some solar geoengineering while we’re waiting to reach zero emission of carbon dioxide and then we can stop. But that’s not the case. Because that CO2 we emitted while we’re buying time is still in the atmosphere and we’ll still be there at significant levels for thousands of years. [MUSIC] Brooke Borel: OK, Anna, let’s address the elephant in the room. Anna Rothschild: You mean what happened to Frank’s experiment? Brooke Borel: Exactly. So Frank spent almost a decade trying to make SCoPEx happen. Anna Rothschild: Stop trying to make SCoPEx happen! Brooke Borel: A lot of people did, OK! So he and his colleague at Harvard, a physicist named David Keith, they first wanted to do the experiments in the American Southwest. Anna Rothschild: K. Brooke Borel: But then in 2020 they moved the plans to Sweden. And there was enough pushback there that the whole plan fell apart. Anna Rothschild: Ooh gosh. Brooke Borel: It did not happen. And Ray was among the critics who ultimately got the whole thing squashed. Anna Rothschild: Oh, I wonder how Frank feels about that. Brooke Borel: Well, take a listen. Frank Keutsch:  Ray may be surprised to hear that I have absolutely no problem at all. That Ray went out and, and sort of tried to, and — not just tried, was effective in arguing against this experiment. That is entirely fine. The much more interesting question is who you actually should talk to about a stratospheric experiment, but in a sense that Ray, who opposes this, goes and talks to people to oppose this is entirely understandable, and sort of what he actually should be doing. Ray Pierrehumbert: Well, yeah. So actually, I have to say that I sort of helped get it going, but the prominent environmental campaigners like Bill McKibben and Greta Thunberg, in the end, probably did much more than I did. Although I think I provided much of the scientific underpinning about why many of us think this is going down this slippery slope. But part of the reason I thought this experiment was a dangerous direction to go, not physically, but in terms of sort of crossing a boundary that was not justified by the kind of scientific payback you get from this is that it’s an actual release of a material into the stratosphere at a time when there’s no governance to actually say what’s an allowable experiment and what isn’t. Brooke Borel: Frank, so one of the criticisms is that an experiment like yours could potentially help push the technology and develop the technology that would be needed to then eventually have a geoengineering scheme like maybe making a certain nozzle that you need for the experiment that then eventually would evolve into the type of nozzle you might need, for example, on an airplane to do this on a larger scale. Do you think that that is a valid concern when it comes to experiments like SCoPEx? Frank Keutsch: I think the technology that we would’ve used for this would not really have been scaled up and it wouldn’t have been useful. I’m not saying that for other experiments. I think it is, to me, important that if people develop some nozzle, say, for example, for marine cloud brightening, where there are experiments going on, you know, the nozzle design and how you do it — that, I think, that should be made publicly available, knowledge of that, so that there’s no, I would say, commercial self-interest in doing this. Now that does leave open that you maybe develop a technology that could advance use or not. And I admit that is true. But I can speak to the kind of science I’m doing. I’m really not trying to develop deployment technology. I’m more interested in fundamental properties. Fundamental science — influence of turbulence, how does this plume evolve. I personally am not that interested in development of technology — at least at the moment. Things can always change. Brooke Borel: I’m curious, Ray, do you think that there is any potential scientific value in SCoPEx, even though you ultimately opposed it? Could you see any value in it at all? Ray Pierrehumbert: I mean, I did my thesis on turbulent mixing. I don’t have my turbulent mixing hat. But if I put on my turbulent mixing hat — Brooke Borel: We all want one of those. Ray Pierrehumbert: — the places where you get this turbulence are very different from one place to another. And that’s another issue with something like SCoPEx. How much sampling do you need before you actually have a picture of the stratosphere? So scientifically, actually, if I thought of this just as a turbulence experiment and there wasn’t this SRM risk out there in the future, I should be pretty interested in it. Frank Keutsch: So, I’ll say, Ray, actually what I heard you say just now is that there need to be multiple SCoPEx experiments. I’m very supportive of that, Ray. Anna Rothschild: OK, but Ray doesn’t really think that there should be more SCoPEx experiments. Brooke Borel: No, no, no, no, no. They definitely still don’t agree on the point regarding small scale experiments. And they also disagreed on an even broader point, which is: What role should scientists even be taking in this discussion? Should they just do their science to help inform the people who make the ultimate decisions? Or should scientists weigh in on the ethical and societal implications? Anna Rothschild: Oh. Brooke Borel: Frank falls squarely into the first category. Frank Keutsch: I think I have absolutely no say in that. I’m a scientist. I can provide information, I can conduct research, but I have no mandate to make decisions. I have no training in making policy decisions, none of those things. There are people who are experts on governance, and I feel if I start, as a physical scientist, start talking about governance and what future generations should decide or not, how would I feel if they start telling me something about small-scale stratospheric turbulence, the governance people? So I personally, because I don’t know enough, think if I talk about governance, it’s actually slightly disrespectful to some really highly trained people who really know what they’re talking about. Ray Pierrehumbert: Yeah. And here is — I completely disagree about how separated the issues of opinions on governance or the sociopolitical setting are from the basic scientific questions. I think people who understand the scientific impact of their technologies and of their research are, in some ways, the best place to actually understand what the implications are. So, for example, you know, no amount of research is going to make the problem of termination shock go away. You know, unless someone waves a magic, you know, develops a way of sucking massive amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere rapidly, no amount of research could make that go away. That’s sort of a fundamental thing. And so that has certain implications for governance. And I know, I’ve looked at some of the professional governance literature. And I’m not that convinced that the people doing this theoretical political science have a better grip on what the world would be like under SRM than I do. A lot of these, these governance regimes that are proposed, they assume a complete science fiction world where the world can make agreements and stick to it. Brooke Borel: Is there something that each of you wish the other would understand or give more weight to when it comes to geoengineering experiments or even what to do about climate change? Frank Keutsch: It’s actually — I think it’s the opposite. I think I would enjoy talking more with Ray to sort of really understand his point of view better. You know, sometimes it takes a few conversations to really get that. Ray Pierrehumbert: I should mention that we’ll have lots more time to talk. I accepted a faculty position at MIT starting January, so I’ll be there — Frank Keutsch: Fantastic. Ray Pierrehumbert: — at least one semester a year going forward. Frank Keutsch: I look forward to it. Ray Pierrehumbert: Yeah, but I’m glad that we, unlike so much of political discourse out there these days, we do share a reality. Frank Keutsch: Yes, I would agree. Yeah. Ray Pierrehumbert: We share a reality, quite a lot of reality. [MUSIC] Anna Rothschild: So nice that they agree that they exist in the same reality and — Brooke Borel: Hey, I mean, especially in today’s world, like — Anna Rothschild: Exactly. I mean, they can actually have a discourse on this. Brooke Borel: Which is what we’re trying to do here. Anna Rothschild: Exactly. Good job, Brooke. Brooke Borel: Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it feels really good when it works. Anna Rothschild: It does. Brooke Borel: But one thing that they both talked about that I did not have you listen to yet, is this other idea that this technology is already getting commercialized. Anna Rothschild: Oh, OK. Brooke Borel: There are some groups that aren’t even just like proposing to do small-scale experiments, which is of course what we were listening to the sort of pros and cons on here. But there are companies that are trying to develop proprietary technology to be hired to do this, for example. Anna Rothschild: Wow. And how would that even work, like from a regulatory standpoint? Brooke Borel: It’s — well, that’s a good question. There are not very many regulations on this. Usually it’s whatever the municipality that the company or the experiment is existing in, or the country. There aren’t really any global sort of oversight governance things happening yet with geoengineering that are binding. There are some groups trying to figure that out, right. But it’s really the Wild West, as we like to say, when there’s no regulation on stuff like this. And one of the companies that’s doing this, it’s a company based in Israel called Stardust. Undark has written about this in the past. And they’re quite secretive about what they’re doing, but they’re making what we think are proprietary materials to inject into the atmosphere, developing technologies that are kind of under wraps to do that. And there’s just not a lot of transparency in what they’re working on. Anna Rothschild: Hmm. OK. Wow. Yeah. The thing that I keep coming back to is, you know, I get the moral hazard argument about like, doing these geoengineering projects would maybe make it less desirable to just cut carbon. But, you know, I don’t know why I don’t see that as huge of an argument, as the termination shock issue. Brooke Borel: Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. Because it seems like, OK, we could work really, really hard to get this off the ground and have it work. And then even if it worked, even if it was able to help sort of mitigate some of these issues with climate change, even if we had all of the answers as to how those particles are floating through the atmosphere and what they’re gonna do and how much light they’re gonna reflect, if we cut it off, we’re still in really big trouble. Anna Rothschild: Exactly. I don’t love the idea that we’re doing something that’s almost just like a Band-Aid that needs to keep being reapplied. If it felt more sustainable, I would have a little bit more enthusiasm maybe about this. Brooke Borel: If the world were a more stable place. Anna Rothschild: Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, I don’t think we can rely on humanity to, you know, keep something going for the rest of time. Like that just seems really difficult. Brooke Borel: It’s a really big ask. Anna Rothschild: Yeah, it’s a huge ask. Brooke Borel: It’s a really big ask. Yeah. So, I don’t know. I wonder what our listeners think. Is that a big ask? Do they think that this technology sounds promising? What do they think about all of this? Anna Rothschild: Yeah, send us an email at entanglements@undark.org. Brooke Borel: And that’s it for this episode of Entanglements, brought to you by Undark Magazine, which is published by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT. Our wonderful producer and editor is Samia Bouzid. The show is fact-checked by Undark deputy editor, Jane Reza. Our production editor is Amanda Grennell. And Adriana Lacy is our audience engagement editor. Special thanks to our editor-in-chief, Tom Zeller Jr. I’m Brooke Borel. Anna Rothschild: And I’m Anna Rothschild. Thanks for listening. See you next time. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. — Previously Published on undark.org *** Does dating ever feel challenging, awkward or frustrating? Turn Your Dating Life into a WOW! with our new classes and live coaching. Click here for more info or to buy with special launch pricing! *** On Substack? Follow us there for more great dating and relationships content. Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today. All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. A complete list of benefits is here. — Photo credit: unsplash The post Podcast: Should We Change Our Planet’s Climate…on Purpose? appeared first on The Good Men Project. View the full article