And another day of Patriarchy 2.0, existential threats from AIPAC, abortion rights on the November ballot for AZ and MO, American cities are roasting, the elderly and AI, an FDA approved app for depression, loneliness in America, water on Mars, and we all just want to be happy comes to a close:
“And you know that when the truth is told, that you can get what you want, or you can just get old.” -- Billy Joel
The right’s plan to fix America: Patriarchy 2.0. When you look at what the right’s rising leaders are saying, it’s clear that conservatives have become increasingly obsessed with the fate of the American family. From Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance assailing “childless cat ladies” to Elon Musk fretting about a birth rate apocalypse, there is a deep and abiding sense that the family is in dire need of defense. Recently, a loose group of conservatives has emerged with a solution: that the family can be defended by boldly reasserting the importance of old-school gender roles. The movement tells men to be strong and women to have babies without overtly insisting that women must submit to their husbands or stay at home. It’s an effort to revive an older model of gender relations without the explicitly sexist baggage (though it often resurfaces in a more subtle form). I call this loose movement “neopatriarchy,” and have come to believe that it is at the root of both some of the modern right’s biggest ideas and its most interesting internal conflicts.
Fact check: Trump made at least 20 false claims in his conversation with Elon Musk. Most of the falsehoods uttered by the Republican presidential nominee were claims that have been repeatedly debunked before, some of them for years. They spanned a broad range of subjects, from immigration to the economy to foreign policy to Trump’s record in office to Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent. -- If his mouth is open, he’s almost always lying.
Progressives face an existential threat from AIPAC. And there’s nothing to stop it. Progressive Democrats just watched pro-Israel super PACs spend jaw-dropping sums to wipe out two top liberals in Congress. And leaders fear they have no way to stop it from happening again in 2026. Those groups, chiefly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, spent a combined $25 million on ads to defeat Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) this summer in what became the two most expensive House primaries ever...After both Bowman and Bush crumbled under that avalanche of spending, prompted by their criticism of Israel in the country’s war with Hamas, progressive Democrats have awoken to a bleak new reality that could haunt them for years to come: They have no organized way to counter that kind of money. And they fear AIPAC and allied groups will be more empowered to take on even bigger targets next cycle and beyond because they know their strategy works.
Trump's plan to quell protests: 'Deport pro-Hamas radicals'. But protest organizers contend that Trump and other Republicans are ignoring key facts. The overwhelming majority of demonstrators are U.S. citizens who, under the First Amendment and current U.S. law, have the right to express pro-Hamas, antisemitic or anti-Israel views as long as they don’t break the law. And Muslim American civil rights organizations say the vast majority of pro-Palestinian protests have been peaceful and showed no public displays of support for Hamas...Civil liberties groups say attempts to deport protesters who are visa holders for speech-related offenses would spark legal battles nationwide...“No administration has ever really tried to do this,” Wizner said. “It would be an incredibly novel and extreme policy to remove people from the country simply for their political advocacy in a country that was founded on treasonous political advocacy.”
With over 577,000 signatures verified, Arizona will put abortion rights on the ballot. Arizona voters will get to decide in November whether to add the right to an abortion to the state constitution. The Arizona secretary of state’s office said Monday that it had certified 577,971 signatures — far above the required number that the coalition supporting the ballot measure had to submit in order to put the question before voters. The coalition, Arizona for Abortion Access, said it is the most signatures validated for a citizens initiative in state history. “This is a huge win for Arizona voters who will now get to vote YES on restoring and protecting the right to access abortion care, free from political interference, once and for all,” campaign manager Cheryl Bruce said in a statement.
Abortion rights initiative will appear on Missouri's November ballot. If approved, the initiative would amend the state's constitution to establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, remove the state's current restrictions on abortion, allow the regulation of reproductive health care to improve a patient's health, and require the government not to discriminate against people providing or seeking reproductive health care. The ballot would also protect abortion rights up until fetal viability, around the 24th week of pregnancy, except to protect the life or health of the mother.
American cities are getting unbearably hot. These ones are roasting the most. No, it’s not your imagination — summers in the US really are getting hotter. And longer. Human-caused climate change is turbocharging heat all over the country, but it’s most intense in cities, where more than 260 million Americans live. That’s because buildings, roads and sidewalks radiate more heat than grass and trees, in what’s known as the urban heat island effect, which can add as much at 20 degrees Fahrenheit to urban temperatures. All of the country’s 50 most-populated cities all have gotten hotter over the past half century, and all but three are experiencing more “extremely hot” days above 95 degrees, according to a data analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development, shared exclusively with CNN...In the decade from 1974 to 1983, the first extremely hot day of the season, on average, hit on June 22, and the last on September 4. But over the past decade, that period is starting more than a week earlier and is running about a week longer than it used to. That’s why, if you happened to have lived in those earlier decades, summers may feel like they’re getting longer.
'Never seen a fire like this': Thousands flee around Athens as Greece battles major wildfire. As the deadly inferno raged for a third day, flames tore through towns northeast of Athens before reaching the city’s suburbs, where residents evacuated their homes and many of them put on masks to breathe through the heavy, smoke-thickened air.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom nudges school districts to restrict student cellphone use. The efforts mark a broader push by officials in Utah, Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere to try to limit cellphone use in schools in order to reduce distractions in the classroom — and address the impacts of social media on the mental health of children and teens.
Older Americans prepare themselves for a world altered by artificial intelligence. This is how older adults — many of whom lived through the advent of refrigeration, the transition from radio to television and the invention of the Internet — are grappling with artificial intelligence: taking a class...But it also has drawbacks that are uniquely threatening to this older group of Americans: A series of studies have found that senior citizens are more susceptible to both scams perpetrated using artificial intelligence and believing the types of misinformation that are being supercharged by the technology. Experts are particularly concerned about the role deepfakes and other AI-produced misinformation could play in politics...The threats to seniors go beyond politics, however, and range from basic misinformation on social media sites to scams that use voice-cloning technology to trick them.
OpenAI worries people may become emotionally reliant on its new ChatGPT voice mode. OpenAI is worried that people might start to rely on ChatGPT too much for companionship, potentially leading to “dependence,” because of its new human-sounding voice mode...ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode sounds remarkably lifelike. It responds in real time, can adjust to being interrupted, makes the kinds of noises that humans make during conversations like laughing or “hmms.” It can also judge a speaker’s emotional state based on their tone of voice.
The FDA just cleared this app to treat depression (and it's not talk therapy). Rejoyn isn't a form of digital talk therapy or an expansive library of exercises in cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of treatment that helps people reframe negative thoughts and beliefs. Instead, the app's parent company, Otsuka Precision Health, likens Rejoyn to physical therapy for the brain. The app offers a six-week program that challenges patients to recognize and remember four specific emotions, like happiness and disgust, they see on a series of photos of faces, then determine whether they match the emotion on the face in front of them...Though Rejoyn is now available in the App Store and Google Play, only patients with diagnosed major depression who are currently on antidepressant medication are eligible for a prescription for the app. Patients must also be at least 22 years old.
The surprising truth about loneliness in America. Loneliness is more than just isolation: It’s the subjective experience of craving more social interaction than you currently have. It isn’t binary, either, and no one is immune. Loneliness exists on a continuum, says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University...Chronic loneliness has severe negative physical and mental effects: Loneliness is just as much of a health risk factor as smoking (one of Holt-Lunstad’s most publicized findings likened lacking social connection to smoking 15 cigarettes a day) and alcohol consumption; it has negative effects on cardiovascular and brain health, and may be linked to an increased risk of depression.
At the end of the day, don’t we all want to be happy? Here are 5 ways to get there. “What we found was that the important thing was to stay actively connected to at least a few people, because we all need a sense of connection to somebody as we go through life.”...What can you do to live your happiest life? Waldinger has these five tips.
Mars study suggests an ocean's worth of water may be hiding beneath the red dusty surface. This water — believed to be seven miles to 12 miles (11.5 kilometers to 20 kilometers) down in the Martian crust — most likely would have seeped from the surface billions of years ago when Mars harbored rivers, lakes and possibly oceans, according to the lead scientist, Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Just because water still may be sloshing around inside Mars does not mean it holds life, Wright said. “Instead, our findings mean that there are environments that could possibly be habitable,” he said in an email.
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Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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