Researchers Reverse Cognitive Impairments in Mice with Dementia

Reversing memory deficits and impairments in spatial learning is a major goal in the field of dementia research. A lack of knowledge about cellular pathways critical to the development of dementia, however, has stood in the way of significant clinical advance. But now, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) are breaking through that barrier. They show, for the first time in an animal model, that tau pathology—the second-most important lesion in the brain in patients with Alzheimer's disease—can be reversed by a drug.

"We show that we can intervene after disease is established and pharmacologically rescue mice that have tau-induced memory deficits," explained senior investigator Domenico Praticò, MD, Scott Richards North Star Foundation Chair for Alzheimer's Research, Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Microbiology, and Director of the Alzheimer's Center at Temple at LKSOM. The study, published online in the journal Molecular Neurobiology, raises new hope for human patients affected by dementia.

The researchers landed on their breakthrough after discovering that inflammatory molecules known as leukotrienes are deregulated in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. In experiments in animals, they found that the leukotriene pathway plays an especially important role in the later stages of disease.

"At the onset of dementia, leukotrienes attempt to protect nerve cells, but over the long term, they cause damage," Dr. Praticò said. "Having discovered this, we wanted to know whether blocking leukotrienes could reverse the damage, whether we could do something to fix memory and learning impairments in mice having already abundant tau pathology."

To recapitulate the clinical situation of dementia in humans, in which patients are already symptomatic by the time they are diagnosed, Dr. Praticò and colleagues used specially engineered tau transgenic mice, which develop tau pathology—characterized by neurofibrillary tangles, disrupted synapses (the junctions between neurons that allow them to communicate with one another), and declines in memory and learning ability—as they age. When the animals were 12 months old, the equivalent of age 60 in humans, they were treated with zileuton, a drug that inhibits leukotriene formation by blocking the 5-lipoxygenase enzyme.

After 16 weeks of treatment, animals were administered maze tests to assess their working memory and their spatial learning memory. Compared with untreated animals, tau mice that had received zileuton performed significantly better on the tests. Their superior performance suggested a successful reversal of memory deficiency.

To determine why this happened, the researchers first analyzed leukotriene levels. They found that treated tau mice experienced a 90-percent reduction in leukotrienes compared with untreated mice. In addition, levels of phosphorylated and insoluble tau, the form of the protein that is known to directly damage synapses, were 50 percent lower in treated animals. Microscopic examination revealed vast differences in synaptic integrity between the groups of mice. Whereas untreated animals had severe synaptic deterioration, the synapses of treated tau animals were indistinguishable from those of ordinary mice without the disease.

"Inflammation was completely gone from tau mice treated with the drug," Dr. Praticò said. "The therapy shut down inflammatory processes in the brain, allowing the tau damage to be reversed."

The study is especially exciting because zileuton is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of asthma. "Leukotrienes are in the lungs and the brain, but we now know that in addition to their functional role in asthma, they also have a functional role in dementia," Dr. Praticò explained.

"This is an old drug for a new disease," he added. "The research could soon be translated to the clinic, to human patients with Alzheimer's disease."

by Temple University |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

Frida Kahlo and the Birth of Fridolatry

Frida, the unapologetic bitch. Frida, the disabled artist. Frida, symbol of radical feminism. Frida, the victim of Diego. Frida, the chic, gender-fluid, beautiful and monstrous icon. Frida tote bags, Frida keychains, Frida T-shirts, And also, this year’s new Frida Barbie doll (no unibrow). Frida Kahlo has been subject to global scrutiny and commercial exploitation. She has been appropriated by curators, historians, artists, actors, activists, Mexican consulates, museums and Madonna.

Over the years, this avalanche has trivialised Kahlo’s work to fit a shallow “Fridolatry”. And, while some criticism has been able to counter the views that cast her as a naive, infantile, almost involuntary artist, most narratives have continued to position her as a geographically marginal painter: one more developing-world artist waiting to be “discovered”, one more voiceless subject waiting to be “translated”.

In 1938, Frida Kahlo painted Lo que el agua me dio (What the Water Gave Me), the painting perhaps responsible for launching her international career, but also her international mistranslation. In this self-portrait of sorts, we see Kahlo’s feet and calves inside a bathtub and above them, as if emanating from the steam, a collaged landscape: an erupting volcano out of which a skyscraper emerges; a dead bird resting on a tree; a strangled woman; a Tehuana dress dramatically spread out; a female couple resting on a floating cork. Kahlo was working on Lo que el agua me dio when the French surrealist André Breton arrived in Mexico for a visit. He was transfixed by it. He called Kahlo a “natural surrealist”, and in a brochure endorsing her New York debut at Julien Levy’s gallery in 1938, he wrote: “My surprise and joy were unbounded when I discovered, on my arrival in Mexico, that her work has blossomed forth, in her latest paintings, into pure surreality, despite the fact that it had been conceived without any prior knowledge whatsoever of the ideas motivating the activities of my friends and myself.”

Though “natural surrealist” was a label that helped translate Kahlo’s paintings for European and American audiences, it was one that she always rejected. To be projected as a “surrealist” in Europe helped audiences to understand her work more immediately – more palatably. She was branded as authentically Mexican, with international flair. But to be seen as a “naturalsurrealist” also transformed her into a kind of sauvage: unconscious of her talent, unsuspecting of her mastery. After her debut, a Time magazine critic described her work as having “the daintiness of miniatures, the vivid reds and yellows of Mexican tradition and the playfully bloody fancy of an unsentimental child.”

Kahlo was hardly unsuspecting, hardly unconscious of what she was doing and who she was. She knew how to capitalise on the elements of her private life and cultural heritage, curate them carefully, and use them to build her public persona. She was a mestizo, born in Mexico City, who had adopted a traditional Zapotec-Tehuana “look”. Her father, the German-born Carl Wilhelm “Guillermo” Kahlo, was a well-known photographer, and the family lived in a neocolonial mansion in Coyoacán, the famous Casa Azul. Kahlo was very much aware of the complex politics of selfhood she was creating and manipulating. In a 1939 photograph taken during the opening of Kahlo’s first exhibition in Paris, she is posing in front of Lo que el agua me dio. She is wearing a Tehuana dress and her unibrow is underscored with black eyeliner: Frida representing Frida. (It is unclear which one is the artwork.)

The way Kahlo’s work and persona were read in Mexico was of course very different from the way they were translated into other cultural milieux. Just as Breton had attached the category “natural surrealist” to her art and framed her work in a discourse that she herself did not embrace, many others did the same with various aspects of her public and private life.

by Valeria Luiselli, The Guardian | Read more:

Image: Frida Kahlo/Alarmy
[ed. See also: Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up]

Sir Sly

Repost

The Biggest Scandal in American History

The other evening I was on a cable news show to cover the latest Russia news of the day—and I had an epiphany.

We were talking about a recent scoop from Michael Isikoff, the co-author of my latest book, Russian Roulette. He had reported that a Spanish prosecutor had handed the FBI wiretapped transcripts of a Russian official who was suspected of money laundering and for years had been trying to gain influence within the American conservative movement and the National Rifle Association. We then discussed a New York Times article revealing that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime fixer, had met with a Russian oligarch in January 2017, around the time a US company affiliated with this tycoon began making $500,000 in payments to Cohen. Next we turned to the latest in the so-called Spygate nonscandal—the false claim, championed by Trump and his defenders, that the FBI infiltrated a spy into his presidential campaign for political purposes.

Then the show moved on. We had spent 15 or so minutes on these important developments, delving into the details—but without referring to the essence of the story. And it hit me: Though it’s clear Trump’s presidency has been hobbled by the Russia scandal, the manner in which this matter plays out in the media has helped Trump.

Almost every day, Trump pushes out a simple (and dishonest) narrative via tweets and public remarks: The Russia investigation is a…well, you know, a witch hunt. Or a hoax. Or fake news. He blasts out the same exclamations daily: Witch hunt, hoax! Hoax, witch hunt! That’s his mantra.

His synopsis is easy to follow. It encompasses (even if by ignoring) every new fact and revelation. It connects all the inaccurate and false dots Trump and his partisans toss out: Unmasking! Obama wiretapped Trump! The FBI improperly obtained warrants to conduct surveillance on his campaign advisers! And so on. He’s the victim. The bad guys are the Dems, libs, prosecutors, and deep staters pursuing this huge nothing-burger for nothing but political gain. The Russia story, in Trump’s telling, is a black-and-white tale of evildoers persecuting a great man—him. Sad. And this bully uses his pulpit (and smartphone) to transmit this simple message nonstop.

The other side—the accurate perspective—isn’t that complicated. In 2016, Vladimir Putin’s regime mounted information warfare against the United States, in part to help Trump become president. While this attack was underway, the Trump crew tried to collude covertly with Moscow, sought to set up a secret communications channel with Putin’s office, and repeatedly denied in public that this assault was happening, providing cover to the Russian operation. Trump and his lieutenants aligned themselves with and assisted a foreign adversary, as it was attacking the United States. The evidence is rock-solid: They committed a profound act of betrayal. That is the scandal.

But how often do you hear or see this fundamental point being made? The media coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal—which has merged with Cohen’s pay-to-play scandal, the Stormy Daniels scandal, and a wider foreign-intervention-in-the-2016-campaign scandal—has yielded a flood of revelations. Yet the news reporting tends to focus on specific components of an unwieldy and ever-expanding story: a Trump Tower meeting between Trump aides and a Kremlin emissary; what special counsel Robert Mueller may or may not be doing; the alleged money-laundering and tax-evasion skullduggery of Paul Manafort; a secret get-together in the Seychelles between former Blackwater owner Erik Prince and a Russian financier; the Kremlin’s clandestine exploitation of social media; Russian hackers penetrating state election systems; Michael Flynn’s shady lobbying activities; Trump’s attempted interference in the investigation; and so much more. It is hard to hold on to all these pieces and place them into one big picture.

These revelations do not emerge in chronological or thematic order. They arrive as part of the fusillade known as the daily news cycle. One day, we learn that Trump last year leaned on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Another day, we see headlines that Mueller has indicted Russian trolls. We learn that—yikes!—a former Trump campaign adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his efforts to put the campaign in secret contact with Putin’s regime. We’re told that Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign met with a shady character representing the princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who were secretly offering to help Trump. Or the big story is that Trump has acknowledged he dictated a false statement issued in his eldest son’s name about the Trump Tower meeting. What’s the connection? Is there a connection? And how is each new headline related to Putin’s war on America? Attempting to track this whole damn thing—while the nation experiences a larger hurricane of crazy—can make one feel like Carrie Mathison on Homeland. Do you even have enough string or enough space on the bulletin board?

And that’s just it. Trump has no bulletin board—and no need for one. He only requires 280 characters. Or less. Sometimes just those two words—witch hunt—accompanied by other tweets designed to fog and distract by raising peripheral and non-evidence-based matters, such as the phony Uranium One scandal and other supposed examples of Democratic malfeasance. The problem is there is no organized force with as loud a bullhorn countering his disinformation in fundamental terms.

In the face of Trump’s fact-free denials, who is reminding the public of the basics—that Russia attacked, and that Trump aided and abetted the operation?

by David Corn, Mother Jones |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. Bumbling con men and amatuers with authoritarian impulses. Which is fine if you're China or Russia. Hey, does anyone even remember the Paradise Papers? It seems so long ago, so 2017.]

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[ed. Sorry for the sporadic posts lately. I just moved into my new house yesterday. Feels weird and fun.]

Seiichi Hayashi
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Anthony Bourdain and the Power of Telling the Truth

I have long maintained a theory that Anthony Bourdain—who died on Friday, at the age of sixty-one, of an apparent suicide—was the best-known celebrity in America. There are, I realize, actual ways to measure this sort of thing, but the intimacy that Bourdain cultivated with his fans was of a sort that transcended Q scores and approval polls. His show brought in millions of viewers, his books found millions of readers, and—especially for people outside of the food world, and to his own great irritation—he seemed to be everyone’s first idea of the “celebrity chef,” even though he hadn’t worked in a restaurant kitchen in years. (At best, he said, he could be described as a “cook.”)

Bourdain’s fame wasn’t the distant, lacquered type of an actor or a musician, bundled and sold with a life-style newsletter. Bourdain felt like your brother, your rad uncle, your impossibly cool dad—your realest, smartest friend, who wandered outside after beers at the local one night and ended up in front of some TV cameras and decided to stay there. As a writer himself, he was always looking out for other writers, always saying yes, always available for interviews and comments. You had to fight through a wall of skeptical P.R. to get to someone like Guy Fieri, but Bourdain was right there, for everyone, in equal measure. He remembered names. He took every question seriously. He was twenty minutes early to every appointment, to the minute. Every newspaper, every magazine, every Web site that asked got its Bourdain quotes—and good ones, too! Not pre-scripted pablum but potent missiles of cultural commentary—bombastic wisdom, grand pronouncements, eviscerations of celebrities, flagrantly named names.

Another way of putting it is that Anthony Bourdain built his career on the telling of truth. The son of a French father and an American mother (Gladys Bourdain, writing as G. S. Bourdain, was a writer and a copy editor at the Times), he was a novelist before he became an essayist, but, even in the realm of fiction—as in his series of sardonic crime thrillers, including the novels “Bone in the Throat” and “Gone Bamboo”—he evinced a fascination with how people lived within and around their ill behaviors. “Guys who wake up every morning, brush their teeth, shower, shave, then go to work at the serious business of committing felonies,” he wrote in “A Life of Crime,” an essay in his collection “Medium Raw.” “These are the characters who continue to dominate my reverie.” In crime there’s not just transgression, there’s clarity: being in the conspiracy, knowing the inner workings of the machine, seeing what’s really going on. This was the engine that powered “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” Bourdain’s 1999 New Yorker story that stripped the elegant window dressing from the world of high-end restaurants—the article that, in short order, evolved into his blockbuster 2000 memoir, “Kitchen Confidential.”

This attraction to the secrets behind the façade—the frantic, shadowed stage-managing happening in the wings—is perhaps the singular theme threading through all of Bourdain’s work. He was a relentless reader, looking not only for knowledge and diversion but for tools of the craft. He was less a television star than a television creator: an obsessive film buff, he crafted each episode of “Parts Unknown” like a feature film, plotting every shot, every music cue, every visual flourish. When I interviewed him for a podcast, in 2016, we talked about how he used those tools of storytelling as a way to bring his audience to him, to get them to a place where they could receive what he was giving. “You want them to feel how you felt at the time, if you’re telling something that you experienced,” he said. “Or you want to drive them to a certain opinion or way of looking at things.”

As Bourdain’s career grew, the truths he was positioned to tell grew, as well. He was never able to shake off his association with the now-pedestrian revelations of “Kitchen Confidential”—the cook’s antipathy toward brunch, the daily special as a dumping ground for leftover ingredients, the questionable integrity of Monday’s fish. But his Food Network show, “A Cook’s Tour,” his Travel Channel show, “No Reservations,” and his CNN show, “Parts Unknown” (which remains in production; at the time of his death, Bourdain was filming in France for the show’s twelfth season), allowed him to acknowledge that the point of his journeys—and of sharing them with his massive, ever-growing audience—was not a gastronomic fluency but a broader cultural one. In what is likely the most famous episode of “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain sat on low plastic stools at an unadorned noodle shop in Hanoi, Vietnam, eating bún chả with Barack Obama—at the time a sitting President. The meeting, which Patrick Radden Keefe chronicled in a Profile for the magazine, was momentous for both men—both had grown up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and that conflict, its long shadow, and its human costs suffused the hour-long episode. Bourdain ended the episode on a brutal note, with an infamous quote from William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, a reminder of America’s racist dehumanization of the culture we at home had just spent an hour celebrating.

Bourdain effectively created the “bad-boy chef” persona, but over time he began to see its ill effects on the restaurant industry. With “Medium Raw,” his 2010 follow-up to “Kitchen Confidential,” he tried to retell his story from a place of greater wisdom: the drugs, the sex, the cocky asshole posturing—they were not a blueprint but a cautionary tale. Ever resistant to take on the label of chef, he published a book of home recipes, in 2016, inspired by the cooking he did for his daughter. Despite its chaotic cover illustration by Ralph Steadman—and its prurient title, “Appetites”—the book, which was co-written with his longtime collaborator, the writer Laurie Woolever, is a tender memoir of fatherhood, an ode to food as a vehicle for care.

Beneath the vivaciousness and the swagger, Bourdain was still a man whose life was marked by darkness. His memoirs, in “Kitchen Confidential” and elsewhere, tell of an early life spent struggling with anger, hard-drug use, and other self-destructive behaviors. His parents’ marriage ended when he was young, leaving a lasting scar; Bourdain’s own first marriage, to his high-school girlfriend, Nancy Putkoski, lasted for twenty years, ending in 2005, shortly after his ascent to fame. When the dissolution of his second marriage, to Ottavia Busia, the mother of his daughter, was announced in the tabloids, Bourdain seemed profoundly disturbed by the evidence of public interest in his private life. In a 2016 episode of “Parts Unknown,” set in Buenos Aires, he held an on-camera therapy session. “I will find myself in an airport, for instance, and I’ll order an airport hamburger,” he says, lying on a leather couch. “It’s an insignificant thing, it’s a small thing, it’s a hamburger, but it’s not a good one. Suddenly, I look at the hamburger and I find myself in a spiral of depression that can last for days.”

In other moments, particularly when he wasn’t the one controlling the narrative, Bourdain could be slippery about personal matters—the critic Maria Bustillos, in a 2017 piece analyzing his literary œuvre, observed his tendency toward “a gentle drawing of the curtain over private moments.” A year and a half ago, just after the Presidential election, I interviewed Bourdain for a profile in Eater, where I was an editor at the time. We sat for a few hours at a yakitori restaurant in midtown, eating chicken hearts and drinking beer. The Rome episode of “Parts Unknown” had just aired, and, as we settled into our conversation, I jokingly mentioned his obvious crush on the Italian actor and filmmaker Asia Argento, who had been featured in the episode. At the mention of her name, Bourdain’s large, tanned hand swept over the microphone of the recorder. “What do you mean, my crush on Asia?” he said, and I laughed, telling him his puppy-dog eyes were in every frame—not to mention his Twitter posts about the episode, which fairly breathed with infatuation. He took his phone out and scrolled through his recent tweets, asking me to point out specific evidence. “We’re trying to keep it under wraps,” he said.

by Helen Rosner, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Twitter
[ed. See also: Anthony Bourdain Was a Teller of Often Unappetizing Truths]

How the Monstera Leaf Took Over Design

Rachel Berger, a 29-year-old Philadelphia native and bride-to-be, recently told her wedding florist that for the event’s table arrangements, she’d like leaves of the Monstera deliciosa: a plant with big, waxy, hole-riddled leaves that’s also known as the Swiss cheese plant.

Initially, her florist balked at the request. Why would an East Coast wedding feature a leaf that hails from Central American rainforests and is typically associated with a tropical vibe? But Berger had seen the leaf on social media and was a fan, and so she asked him to research ways to incorporate it into arrangements.

By their next meeting, the florist’s attitude toward the leaf had changed. He’d learned that the Monstera wasn’t just a now-popular leaf for floral arrangements: It was everywhere.

The current Monstera leaf craze might have started off niche, but it’s now been watered, pruned, and fed lots and lots of Miracle-Gro: The Monstera has become ubiquitous across fashion, retail, and branding.

“The Monstera is everywhere you turn, and everyone wants one in their space,” says Charlotte Parker, the social manager of Apartment Therapy’s Instagram, who estimates that Monstera leaves are featured in more than 25 percent of interior design content she sees on Instagram. Recently, the interior design site launched an Instagram account just for plant content, IPlantEven, and its logo features, of course, the Monstera leaf.

So why is this leaf everywhere? (...)

Like most modern trends — luxury pool floats, scammy teatoxes, color-coded bookshelves — the Monstera has social media to thank for its current A-list status.

Justina Blakeney, the designer and author behind the interior design lifestyle blog the Jungalow, doesn’t exactly claim the current Monstera trend as her own, but she recalls a blog post from February 2015 about the Monstera leaf that went viral. When Blakeney wrote the post, she had 1 million followers on Pinterest. (She now has 6.6 million.) Within a few days of publishing, photos from the post spread all across Pinterest, Instagram, and were “reposted by a gajillion blogs.”

Ever since, she says, the Monstera leaf has “slowly taken over.” Now on Instagram, the Monstera is generally potted in handmade ceramics or woven baskets and placed next to velvet sofas and rustic woven rugs. On Pinterest, the leaves are commonly spotted as placemats and on wallpaper.

It helps that the leaf lends itself to a minimalist brand aesthetic. Eliza Blank, the founder of the online and IRL plant shop The Sill, points out that stores like COS, Reformation, and Away — all of which use the leaf in stores — have an extremely similar retail aesthetic: white walls, bright lighting, neat and carefully curated product (what New York magazine recently called retail’s “Minimalist Art Gallery”). And while the Monstera leaf is associated with bohemian Jungalow branding, it can also steer a minimalist aesthetic away from feeling cold and sterile.

“The Monstera is a safe, modern add for a store like Away or Reformation,” Blank says. “A bouquet of flowers probably couldn’t work inside there because it might feel feminine or romantic, and isn’t the muted minimalist look they want. But the Monstera is cool and chic. It has a unique graphic and architectural element to it, with that whimsical wabi-sabi type of Japanese imperfection, where its design is tied to nature and the earth. I think this really resonates in fashion.”

by Chavie Lieber , Racked | Read more:
Image: The Sill

Aaron Marcus, Symbolic Constructions series, 1971-1972
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WhatsApp and Facebook's Broken Promises

The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell story on Tuesday about what reporters Kirsten Grind and Deepa Seetharaman call “the messy, expensive split between Facebook and WhatsApp’s founders.” The dishy piece makes for great reading. (Do the multibillionaire founders of global communications platforms make time to grouse at each other about who gets to pick out office chairs? Yes. Yes, they do.) Behind the dishiness, however, is a very important story that pretty much clears up any doubt as to whether Mark Zuckerberg is a trustworthy man who keeps his promises—or a profit-obsessed machine who’s much stronger on greed than he is on morals.

By the time you’ve finished the WSJ piece, only two options seem possible: Either Zuckerberg is a liar, or he’s a liar with absolutely no concept of the sunk-cost fallacy. When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, the companies rolled out a very clear messaging campaign, based around WhatsApp’s motto of “no ads, no games, no gimmicks.” The messaging service would be owned by Facebook, and Facebook could continue to make as much money as it wanted from ads on its own platform, but WhatsApp would retain its purity of product and even roll out end-to-end encryption. As co-founder Jan Koum wrote in a blog post after the deal was announced:

Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible: You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address. We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address. We don’t know where you work. We don’t know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that. 

If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it. Instead, we are forming a partnership that would allow us to continue operating independently and autonomously. Our fundamental values and beliefs will not change. Our principles will not change… 

Make no mistake: our future partnership with Facebook will not compromise the vision that brought us to this point.

WhatsApp wasn’t an easy acquisition for Zuckerberg, because the two apps have very different founding principles. Koum, who grew up in Ukraine, believes deeply in privacy; Zuckerberg thinks that the more open and connected we are, the happier we all become. And so in order to acquire WhatsApp, Zuckerberg not only had to pay a lot of money and give up a board seat to Koum; he also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization initiatives” like advertising onto WhatsApp, its founders’ shares would vest immediately, and they could leave without suffering any kind of financial penalty.

Thus did WhatsApp retain exactly the independence that it had been promised—until it didn’t.

Today, it seems inevitable not only that advertising will make it onto WhatsApp, but also that the advertising in question will be targeted—which is to say that when you use the app, Facebook will know exactly who you are, where you live, and what kind of products you might be interested in buying. It’s a complete repudiation of WhatsApp’s founding principles, and makes a mockery of its end-to-end encryption.

What’s more, WhatsApp’s two founders both left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, so keen were they to leave Facebook’s ad-friendly walls. (It turns out that their contractual right to being paid out in full would require them to sue for the money, and, according to the Journal, neither of them had the appetite for that.) Brian Acton resigned in September; Koum stayed on until the end of April. In leaving before November of this year, Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you basically can’t be fired.

The cause of that unhappiness seems as clear as Koum’s 2012 blog post titled “Why We Don’t Sell Ads”—a post that starts off by saying that “advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need,” and gets more vehement from there. Koum and Acton really didn’t want ads, but, as the WSJ puts it, Zuckerberg and his number two, Sheryl Sandberg, “grew impatient for a greater return on the company’s 2014 blockbuster $22 billion purchase.” After the two founders left, Zuckerberg installed in their place “a longtime Facebook executive who is tasked with finding a business model that brings in revenue at a level to justify the app’s purchase price.”

by Felix Salmon, Slate |  Read more:
Image: Lluis Gene/Getty Images

Sleep Radio

John Watson is the first to admit that his DJ skills put people to sleep. Lucky for him, that is the point.

For the past four years Watson, who lives in the tiny New Zealand township of Te Aroha, has been broadcasting to the world. But instead of seeking an engaged listenership, Watson wants those who tune into his station to literally fall asleep. And they do.

People from as far away as Afghanistan, Israel, Russia, Hungary, Taiwan and Puerto Rico log on to Watson’s station Sleep Radio. Someone in Prague has been listening for three days straight.

The idea of a radio station that sends listeners to sleep came to Watson after he had a heart attack 10 years ago. Following five coronary artery bypasses he began to suffer from chronic depression and insomnia.

“I never used to have trouble going to sleep but now I was lying awake watching the sun rise and feeling like a zombie,” he said.

Watson, 62, was treated with medication and started seeing a counsellor who suggested he try relaxing, ambient music to help him sleep. Soon he found there was not a lot out there for sleep music aficionados.

“Even on the radio you would be listening to relaxing music, trying to get to sleep and, all of a sudden, an advert would come on, yelling at you to buy something.”

Watson thought he could do better. He did his research, looking into royalty-free ambient music and taught himself how to set up a digital radio station. Sleep Radio was born.

He said the project is a “hobby and a passion”. He often gets grateful listeners emailing him with their success stories, including a mother whose newborn baby is also seemingly a fan.

However, Watson is quick to say that ambient music does not work for everyone. His wife, for example, finds it too boring. Sleep Radio has now expanded into an app that allows people to set a timer for their listening.

Meanwhile Watson has not had to source new music for over a year. There are ambient music producers lining up to have people fall asleep to their material. However there are rules – no vocals, no piano, guitar or harp solos, and absolutely no ocean sounds or birdsong.

by Charles Andersen, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Supplied

[ed. Sleep Radio here.]

Redux: Fasting – The New Fad Diet?

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a beautiful rural home that belongs to my parents’ friends, a slim and sophisticated couple who enjoys bird watching and international travel. I was meeting this pair—let’s call them George and Marsha—for the first time. I’m inherently nosy, so while the rest of the group chatted, my eyes scanned the room. On the fridge, I noticed a slip of paper that looked to be George and Marsha’s weekly dinner menu. That night they’d be having polenta and pork roast. The other days had meals written next to them too, all except for Monday and Wednesday. Next to those two days, Marsha (or George) had scrawled “Fast.”

Fast as in not eat? Marsha and George didn’t seem like the type to fall for juice cleanses or fad diets. My parents said the couple had probably seen the same documentary they had. The show follows Michael Mosley, a BBC journalist and former physician, on his quest to become slimmer and healthier through fasting.

I’ve never heard of Michael Mosley, but I’m not sure how I missed him. Lately Mosley is everywhere — on the BBC, on PBS, in the news. In January he launched a bestselling diet book co-authored by journalist Mimi Spencer. Here’s the approach they’re advocating: To lose weight and improve health, dieters should fast two days each week. On fasting days, women should consume no more than 500 calories. Men are allowed 600. The other five days dieters have no restrictions.

In the BBC documentary my parents referenced, a chubby, unhealthy, middle-aged Mosley seeks the secret to weight loss and health. He starts his journey by visiting Joseph Cordell, a lawyer who practices calorie restriction. Individuals who follow this diet, known as CRONies, generally cut their caloric intake by 25%. So a woman who typically eats 2,000 calories a day would consume just 1,500. There’s lot of science to support the benefits of calorie restriction. I wrote about a few studies here. But there’s no doubt it has drawbacks, hunger being among them. Emily Yoffe, who tried caloric restriction back in 2007, had this to say: “Each meal I ate now had the poignancy of a Shakespeare sonnet: how much I longed for each bite, how aware I was of how few there would be.”

Mosley wasn’t convinced he could adopt calorie restriction as a lifestyle. “What I really want to do is try to understand the ways in which calorie restriction works,” Mosley said in the documentary. “Then hopefully I can get all the delicious benefits without actually having to do it.”

In other words, Mosley wanted what the entire human race has always wanted — a shortcut.

Mosley’s search for a shortcut leads him to fasting. Not all fasts are created equal, and Mosley flirts with various forms. He first tries a painful three-day fast. But he wants something a little less intense, so he visits Krista Varady at the University of Illinois. She’s studying alternate day fasting. Participants in her studies fast every other day and on those days Varady’s subjects eat a single meal that’s about 400-600 calories. The other days they can eat whatever they want. Varady has found that alternate day fasting can help participants shed pounds and lower their cholesterol and blood pressure.

“I am now starting to be won over by the idea that a simple pattern of feast and fast can be powerful,” Mosley says after his visit with Varady. “It seems to have an impact which goes beyond simply eating less. And I think it could work for someone like me.”

But Mosley doesn’t adopt alternate day fasting. In the book, he writes that fasting every other day “can be socially inconvenient as well as emotionally demanding.” Instead he chooses to fast two days a week, eating 600 calories those days and a normal diet the other days. And it seems to work. In three months, Mosley loses 19 pounds. His body mass index falls from 26.4 to 24, and his body fat drops from 28% to 21%.

“The results have been absolutely fantastic for me. But that doesn’t mean that intermittent fasting will work for everyone. It’s really important that they do more trials on humans to find out if, in the long term, it is safe and effective,” Mosley says in the documentary.

Yet, early this year, Mosley launched a diet book that advocates the exact diet that he once said needs more research. The book description includes this line: “Is it possible to eat normally, five days a week, and become slimmer and healthier as a result? Simple answer: yes.”

by Cassandra Willyard, The Last Word on Nothing |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. I gained 60 lbs. my first year in college (keggers and dorm food and... you know) so I went on a diet very similar to this, except 1000 calories a day - generally a tiny lunch (or light snacks), moderate dinner and one or two beers (I don't think I could fast completely). On weekends I'd eat and drink as much as I wanted, pizzas and beers galore. My appetite shrunk. Even with the opportunity to binge, I just didn't want that much after a while (but it was still important to have that weekend safety valve). Long story short - I lost all the weight I had gained in less than 7 months (I still have the stretch marks to prove it), and have kept it off, 40 years later. (Tip: get a calorie counter so you know what you're eating. After a while, a reduced appetite just feels normal).] 

Stay Tuned

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In the Mood for Love: Frames Within Frames

[ed. See also: Why Wong Kar-wai is the Grandmaster of Cinema]

Getting Down Payment Help Now. Sharing Home’s Gain (or Loss) Later.

For aspiring homeowners, coming up with a healthy down payment has long been the biggest obstacle to owning a home.

With property values soaring in many areas — median prices in San Jose, Calif., and Denver are 60 percent above their prerecession peaks — the barrier is rising. That has some firms promoting unconventional ways to scrape together a down payment, including crowdfunding and using Airbnb rental income.

Now, a small but growing number of home buyers are trying something different: asking an outside investor to put down money alongside them.

It is called shared equity, and Unison, a company based in San Francisco, is the largest of a handful of firms putting it to work. Unison will provide at least half of a consumer’s down payment in exchange for a piece of any appreciation in the home’s value when it is sold. If the home sells at a loss, the company absorbs a share of that, too.

Until the home sells, Unison is mostly a silent partner. The homeowner pays taxes, insurance and all other necessary costs.

The idea behind the program is to provide home buyers with more options. It can help those who are short on down payment funds increase their buying power, though it may also work for people who simply do not want to sink every last dime into their homes. But whether it is right for any individual buyer — upfront cash now versus less proceeds later — is a difficult and highly personal calculation.

Most first-time home buyers put down only about 7.4 percent, on average, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Although there are plenty of programs that permit small down payments, they can substantially increase monthly housing costs.

Unison and its competitors help increase a down payment to 20 percent of a home’s purchase price — the magic number needed to qualify for the best interest rates and to avoid the added cost of private mortgage insurance.

But relying on an outside investor challenges traditional attitudes about homeownership, even if the conventional approach may be just as risky: Where else in our lives are we encouraged to plunk a huge piece of our net worth into a single asset? The same sort of behavior would be considered reckless in a retirement portfolio.

Shared equity also raises a fundamental question about our overall approach to buying homes, given that the average homeowner moves after about eight years. (...)

For now, shared equity deals are a droplet in the giant pool of new mortgages. Unison, which operates in 22 states, said it had invested alongside 450 home buyers last year, and was on track to invest with roughly 2,500 to 3,000 more in 2018. It has an investment management arm, and its investors — mostly pension funds and university endowments seeking a return slightly above inflation — provide the money for the down payments.

Unison’s costs and approach vary slightly from those of its competitors, including Landed, which offers a similar service for public school employees, and Own Home Finance of San Marcos, Calif.

Here is how Unison’s program works.

THE BACKGROUND. Shared equity started as a way for people with low and moderate incomes to buy homes. The latest incarnation is geared toward those with solid incomes who can qualify for a traditional home loan or even a jumbo mortgage.

Unison began in high-price markets like California, so most people using the program are at least in their 40s with incomes between $75,000 and $150,000. The company said it expected those numbers to fall now that it had branched into different areas.

THE PROCESS. Unison teams up with specific lenders that home buyers must work with. Applicants must qualify for a mortgage, and the home must be one that Unison wants to invest in. That generally means it has to be “typical” for its neighborhood. A McMansion on an acre plot amid more modest homes may not qualify.

The company will invest in single-family and multifamily homes with up to four units, and in townhouses and condominiums. To discourage the quick flipping of properties for a profit, Unison requres buyers to occupy the properties, but they can sell whenever they want.

THE STRUCTURE. Unison’s portion of the down payment is not a loan. No payments are made; no interest accrues. The company’s agreement with a home buyer is structured as an option contract, with its investment effectively giving it the right to buy a stake in the home at a later date, typically when it is sold or after 30 years, whichever comes first. So if the company contributes half of a down payment, it collects over a third of any appreciation in the home’s value (in addition to the original sum it invested).

A homeowner can sell at any time, but Unison absorbs a loss only after three years of ownership. Alternatively, the homeowner can buy out Unison’s share — at a price based on an independent appraisal — although that is permitted only after three years. In such instances, Unison does not share in any losses.

THE RULES. Homeowners generally cannot draw on their home equity beyond the amount of the original mortgage. And they must cover the entire cost of any renovations, although Unison credits the value the work adds to the home’s ultimate sale price. Conversely, there can be repercussions if a home is not well maintained.

In the event of default, Unison — which places liens on the properties it invests in — has the right to foreclose to protect its stake. More often, company executives said, it may step in to help settle arrears and to initiate a more orderly sale — at a price.

by Tara Siegel Bernard, NY Times | Read more:

Image: Max Whittaker for The New York Times

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Why Read Aristotle Today?

The fundamental tenet of peripatetic philosophy is this: the goal of life is to maximise happiness by living virtuously, fulfilling your own potential as a human, and engaging with others – family, friends and fellow citizens – in mutually beneficial activities. Humans are animals, and therefore pleasure in responsible fulfilment of physical needs (eating, sex) is a guide to living well. But since humans are advanced animals, naturally inclining to live together in settled communities (poleis), we are ‘political animals’ (zoa politika). Humans must take responsibility for their own happiness since ‘god’ is a remote entity, the ‘unmoved mover’ who might maintain the universe’s motion but has neither any interest in human welfare, nor any providential function in rewarding virtue or punishing immorality. Yet purposively imagining a better, happier life is feasible since humans have inborn abilities that allow them to promote individual and collective flourishing. These include the inclinations to ask questions about the world, to deliberate about action, and to activate conscious recollection.

Aristotle’s optimistic, practical recipe for happiness is ripe for rediscovery. It offers to the human race facing third-millennial challenges a unique combination of secular, virtue-based morality and empirical science, neither of which seeks answers in any ideal or metaphysical system beyond what humans can perceive by their senses.

But what did Aristotle mean by ‘happiness’ or eudaimonia? He did not believe it could be achieved by the accumulation of good things in life – including material goods, wealth, status or public recognition – but was an internal, private state of mind. Yet neither did he believe it was a continuous sequence of blissful moods, because this could be enjoyed by someone who spent all day sunbathing or feasting. For Aristotle, eudaimonia required the fulfilment of human potentialities that permanent sunbathing or feasting could not achieve. Nor did he believe that happiness is defined by the total proportion of our time spent experiencing pleasure, as did Socrates’ student Aristippus of Cyrene.

Aristippus evolved an ethical system named ‘hedonism’ (the ancient Greek for pleasure is hedone), arguing that we should aim to maximise physical and sensory enjoyment. The 18th-century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham revived hedonism in proposing that the correct basis for moral decisions and legislation was whatever would achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number. In his manifesto An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Bentham actually laid out an algorithm for quantitative hedonism, to measure the total pleasure quotient produced by any given action. The algorithm is often called the ‘hedonic calculus’. Bentham spelled out the variables: how intense is the pleasure? How long will it last? Is it an inevitable or only possible result of the action I am considering? How soon will it happen? Will it be productive and give rise to further pleasure? Will it guarantee no painful consequences? How many people will experience it?

Bentham’s disciple, John Stuart Mill, pointed out that such ‘quantitative hedonism’ did not distinguish human happiness from the happiness of pigs, which could be provided with incessant physical pleasures. So Mill introduced the idea that there were different levels and types of pleasure. Bodily pleasures that we share with animals, such as the pleasure we gain from eating or sex, are ‘lower’ pleasures. Mental pleasures, such as those we derive from the arts, intellectual debate or good behaviour, are ‘higher’ and more valuable. This version of hedonist philosophical theory is usually called prudential hedonism or qualitative hedonism.

There are few philosophers advocating hedonist theories today, but in the public understanding, when ‘happiness’ is not defined as the possession of a set of ‘external’ or ‘objective’ good things such as money and career success, it describes a subjective hedonistic experience – a transient state of elation. The problem with both such views, for Aristotle, is that they neglect the importance of fulfilling one’s potential. He cites approvingly the primordial Greek maxim that nobody can be called happy until he is dead: nobody wants to end up believing on his deathbed that he didn’t fulfil his potential. In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2011), the palliative nurse Bronnie Ware describes exactly the hazards that Aristotle advises us to avoid. Dying people say: ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.’ John F Kennedy summed up Aristotelian happiness thus: ‘the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope’.

For Aristotle insisted that happiness is constituted by something greater from and different to an accumulation of agreeable experiences. To be happy, we need to sustain constructive activities that we believe are goal-directed. This requires conscious analysis of our goals and conduct, and practising ‘virtue ethics’, by ‘living well’. It requires being nurtured effectively to develop your intellectual and physical capacities, and identify your potential (Aristotle had strong views on education), and also training yourself to be the best possible version of yourself until you do the right thing habitually, on autopilot. If you deliberately respond in a friendly way to everyone you encounter, you will begin to do so unconsciously, making yourself and others happier.

Historically, of course, many philosophers, such as Egoists, have questioned whether virtue is inherently desirable. But, since the mid-20th century, others rehabilitated virtue ethics and focused intensively on Aristotle’s ideas: unfortunately, this academic interest has yet to achieve any real public presence in broader culture in the way that Stoicism has.

Some thinkers today distinguish between two sub-categories of virtue: between virtues such as courage, honesty and integrity, which affect your own and your community’s happiness; and ‘benevolence virtues’ such as kindness and compassion, which benefit others but are less obviously likely to gratify the agent. But Aristotle, for whom self-liking is necessary to virtue, argues that virtues do have intrinsic benefits, a view he shares with Socrates, the Stoics and the Victorian philosopher Thomas Hill Green. (...)

Aristotle says that if happiness is not god-sent, ‘then it comes as the result of a goodness, along with a learning process, and effort’. Every human being can practise a way of life that will make him happier. Aristotle is not offering a magic wand to erase all threats to happiness. There are indeed some qualifications to the universal capacity for pursuing happiness. He accepts that there are certain kinds of advantage that you either have or you don’t. If you have the bad luck to have been born very low down the socio-economic ladder, or have no children or other family or loved ones, or are extremely ugly, your circumstances, which you can’t avoid, as he puts it, ‘taint’ delight. It is harder to achieve happiness. But not impossible. You do not need material possessions or physical strength or beauty to start exercising your mind in company with Aristotle, since the way of life he advocates concerns a moral and psychological excellence rather than one that lies in material possessions or bodily splendour. There are, he acknowledges, even more difficult obstacles: having children or friends who are completely depraved is one such obstacle. Another – which Aristotle saves until last and elsewhere implies is the most difficult problem any human can ever face – is the loss of fine friends in whom you have invested effort, or especially the loss of children, through death.

Yet, potentially, even people poorly endowed by nature or who have experienced terrible bereavements can live a good life. It is possible to undergo even apparently unendurable disasters and still live well: ‘even in adversity goodness shines through, when someone endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience; this is not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.’ In this sense, Aristotle’s is a deeply optimistic moral system. And it has practical relevance to ‘everyone’, implied by Aristotle’s inclusive use of the first personal plural: ‘This sort of philosophy is different from most other types of philosophy, since we are not asking what goodness is for the sake of knowing what it is, but with the aim of becoming good, without which our enquiry would be useless.’ In fact, the only way to be a good person is to do good things and treat people with fairness recurrently.

by Edith Hall, Aeon |  Read more:

Image: Alexander Koerner/Getty