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Above, the body mass index has long been criticized as a flawed indicator of health.The body roundness index has been gaining support. (Photo source: Kurhan/stock.adobe.com)

Time to say goodbye to the B.M.I.?

September 6, 2024

Move over, body mass index (BMI). Make room for roundness—to be precise, the body roundness index (BRI), reports The New York Times.

The body mass index is a ratio of height to weight that has long been used as a medical screening tool. It is one of the most widely used health metrics—but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.

The classifications have been questioned by athletes like the American Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher, whose BMI of 30 technically puts her on the cusp of obesity. “But alas,” she said on Instagram, addressing online trolls who tried to shame her about her weight, “I’m going to the Olympics and you’re not.”

Advocates for overweight individuals and people of color note that the formula was developed nearly 200 years ago and based exclusively on data from men—most of them white—and that it was never intended for medical screening.

Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of BMI. The American Medical Association warned last year that BMI is an imperfect metric that doesn’t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can’t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.

“Based on BMI, Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.

“But as soon as you measured his waist, you’d see, ‘Oh, it’s 32 inches.’”

So welcome a new metric: the body roundness index. BRI is just what it sounds like—a measure of how round or circlelike you are; using a formula that takes into account height and waist, but not weight.

It’s a formula that may provide a better estimate of central obesity and abdominal fat, which are closely linked to an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, unlike fat stored on the buttocks and thighs.

A paper published in JAMA Network Open in June was the latest in a string of studies to report that BRI is a promising predictor of mortality. B.R.I. scores generally run from 1 to 15; most people rank between 1 and 10. Among a nationally representative sample of 33,000 Americans, BRI. scores rose between 1999 and 2018, the new study found.

Those with BRI scores of 6.9 and up—indicating the roundest bodies—were at the highest risk of dying from cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses.

Their overall mortality risk was almost 50% greater than those with BRIs of 4.5 to 5.5, which were in the midrange of the sample; while those with B.R.I. scores of 5.46 to 6.9 faced a risk that was 25% higher than those in the midrange.

But those who were least round were also at elevated risk of death: People with BRI scores under 3.41 also faced a mortality risk that was 25% higher than those in the midrange, the study found.

The paper’s authors suggested the lower scores—seen mostly in those 65 and older—might have reflected malnutrition, muscle atrophy, or inactivity.

“BMI cannot distinguish body fat from muscle mass,” Wenquan Niu, who works at the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at the Capital Institute of Pediatrics in Beijing and was a senior author of the paper, wrote in an email. “For any given BMI, fat distribution, and body composition can vary dramatically.”

Indeed, Dr. Niu wrote, “When BMI is used to frame risk, it often overestimates risk for muscular athletes, whereas it underestimates risk for older persons with muscle mass that’s been replaced by fat.”

Research contact: @nytimes

Above, Khloe (left) and Kris Kardashian support the Swedish brand. (Photo source: Nick's)

How a Swedish company plans to dominate better-for-you snacking

September 6, 2024

Niclas Luthman has been an entrepreneur his entire career—and frequently has needed a quick meal or snack on the go, reports Food Dive.

“I was always going from one meeting to the next, always on the go, and so I was eating a lot of energy bars. I thought I was pretty healthy, you know I would exercise a lot, until my doctor told me that I was pre-diabetic, right on the edge,” he said to Food Dive in a recent interview.

That was 2014, when the Swedish business owner started taking his health more seriously. A mechanical engineer by trade, Luthman used his scientific background and embarked on an extensive research mission to find a treatment for his condition through food.

“I read everything I could and, besides controlling my diabetes through an anti–inflammatory diet, I was able to get rid of knee and back pain,” he said, “I am living proof that eating this way works.”

m there, Luthman engineered Nick’s, a better-for-you snacking brand that produces ice cream, candy bars, nut bars and protein bars.

The company’s Lighter Ice Cream features Epogee Foods’ fat-replacing ingredient EPG, which is a rapeseed oil-based fat substitute that can reduce fat calories by 92% because the oil cannot be absorbed by the body.

Instead of traditional sugar, the pints are sweetened with natural substitutes, including stevia, monk fruit, erythritol and xylitol. This means that Nick’s products have much fewer calories and sugar than conventional ice cream.

Standing out by leading with taste and smart partnerships

With consumers increasingly prioritizing health and wellness through food and beverage products, the better-for-you space has become inundated with startup brands and novelty products.

Luthman said Nick’s intends to stand out from the crowd in two key ways: leading with taste and smart, relevant partnerships.

The company officially launched in the United States in 2020 and is now in 13,000 stores nationwide—including ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Harris Teeter, and Acme, among others.

“If you taste our ice cream versus Halo Top, for example, there’s no question that ours is better, it’s creamier and gives the feeling of real ice cream,” says Brittany O’Brien, senior brand manager at Nick’s.

The key to Nick’s marketing strategy as a brand has been avoiding exhausting the consumer with health information.

“We have to make this an attractive brand for all people, and keep it a sexy brand that tastes good. And all the other benefits just come along with it.”

Luthman said he knows that a diet that is low carb and anti-inflammatory has many health benefits, but that shouldn’t be the number one reason why people reach for his product in the store.

“A lot of people don’t have the time that I have to read scientific articles and really understand all these things. We have to give it to them in the form of a very understandable brand,” said Luthman.

“We try to really be on top of what real science is. And there are fads going on left and right, some that last and some that don’t, but we’re not adjusting to the fads. We adjust to what the best science is out there.”

Finally, Luthman and the marketing team at Nick’s have also been laser-focused on key brand partnerships they think can help them further expand into the United States. The company recently landed a partnership with The Kardashians after sending them products to which they had a positive reaction.

“We were excited to partner with the Kardashians because we want to take [the brand] beyond being diabetic friendly; but we want everyone to have the option to eat sweets how they want—no judgment—and both versions of our products taste delicious.”

Nick’s carries a line of both Light Ice Cream and Ice Cream Novelties, which have different calorie ranges and sugar content.

Luthman said the company has a lot of “surprising” things on the docket for 2024, but for now, the brand is keen on making its splash with U.S. consumers and maintaining its brand integrity.

Research contact: @FoodDive

Above, the campaign will have more than 2,000 events that it expects will reach more than 1 million voters this weekend ahead of the debate. (Photo source: EPA-EFE)

Harris campaign to launch a big ‘weekend of action’ around Trump and Project 2025 ahead of the debate

September 6, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is planning to launch a “weekend of action” focused on what it calls the dangers of a potential second Trump presidency and Project 2025,—a conservative governing agenda that Harris has repeatedly criticized on the campaign trail and plans to bring up during the presidential debate on Tuesday, September 10, reports NBC News.

As part of the effort, which Harris’ aides said was the campaign’s biggest weekend of action to date, the campaign will have more than 2,000 events that it expects will reach more than 1 million voters.

Volunteers, who plan to work more than 20,000 shifts, and key campaign surrogates will talk to voters “about Trump’s extreme plan to ban abortion nationwide, cut Social Security, and Medicare, and spike taxes by $3,900 each year for middle-class families.”

The efforts are also aimed at appealing to swing voters who may be drawn in by the recent endorsements of Harris by former Repreesentative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Senator John McCain (R-Arizona).\

“With hundreds of offices and thousands of staff across the battlegrounds, we are able to harness all the buzz around the debate and break through to hard-to-reach voters on Project 2025,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign battleground states director, in a statement provided to NBC News. “We are speaking to those Americans who are turned off by Trump’s extremism and making sure they know there’s a home for them in Vice President Harris’ campaign.”

“Gaining Representative Cheney’s and First Lieutenant McCain’s support this week was a powerful signal to swing voters,” he added. “This weekend, we are building on that momentum and taking our message directly to the voters who will decide this election in our largest ever campaign mobilization.”

The Harris campaign also plans to host virtual and in-person “Project 2025 message trainings” in battleground states. According to the campaign, to date, it has held more than 60 such training sessions to help volunteers talk about Project 2025 with their friends and neighbors.

The weekend of action will also feature canvass launches, phone banks, and cookouts.

The move by the Harris campaign comes just days before the first presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, scheduled for Tuesday in Philadelphia. Harris plans to bring up Project 2025 on the debate stage as she makes her case that she is more qualified and better suited to be president than Trump, according to a campaign official.

Research contact: @NBCNews

Above, according to Parnia, studies suggest that our brains remain 'salvageable for not only hours, but possibly days.' (Photo source: Futurism)

NYU professor of medicine says death appears to be reversible

September 4, 2024

A near-death experience expert insists that one’s heart stopping doesn’t have to be the end, with current medical interventions that can help patients cheat death, reports Futurism.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Associate Professor of Medicine Sam Parnia at New York University’s Langone Medical Center insisted that by and large, the medical industry is still very behind on the concepts of death and dying.

According to Parnia, studies from the last five years— including some undertaken by his own eponymous lab at NYU—have suggested that our brains remain “salvageable for not only hours, but possibly days” after death.

In one such Parnia Lab study from last year, for instance, researchers found that some cardiac arrest patients had memories of their death experiences up to an hour after their hearts had stopped, and brain activity from those same patients suggests a similar phenomenon. For 40% of those subjects, brain activity also returned to normal or near-normal an hour into cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Combined with other studies—including a particularly gruesome one out of Yale that involved decapitated pig brains being revived up to 14 hours after their beheadings—the seemingly death-defying doctor said that the idea that death is a definitive state is “simply a social convention that does not conform with scientific realities.”

“If we remove that social label that makes us think everything stops, and look at it objectively, [death is] basically an injury process,” Parnia told The Telegraph.

By his reasoning, that process can be reversed not only by using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines, which act as a body’s heart and lungs when those functions have failed, but also specific cocktails of drugs that have been demonstrated to aid in the process of resurrection in animal studies.

Parnia told the British newspaper that he believes his team is the only one in the world giving patients these so-called “CPR cocktails“—which can include epinephrine, the diabetes drug metformin, vitamin C, the antidiuretic drug vasopressin, and the fatigue supplement Sulbutiamine—to cardiac arrest patients in efforts to revive them.

The 52-year-old doctor is so confident in his approach that he’s taken to telling people that, given his age and gender, he’s likely “going to have a cardiac arrest soon,” and that he shouldn’t have to die then when interventions like ECMO and CPR cocktails are at his disposal.

“If I have a heart attack and die tomorrow, why should I stay dead?” the death defier asked the newspaper. “That’s not necessary anymore.”

Obviously, Parnia’s idea of post-death revival is extremely dependent upon timing—but if he has his way, we might start seeing beyond death less as a final frontier, and more as something reversible in its immediate aftermath or even beyond.

Research contact: @futurism

Above, Perkins believes that Sizzler can become a regional landmark, like In-N-Out Burger on the West Coast, or Wawa on the East Coast. (Photo source: Tavern)

Sizzler is back from the brink with a shiny new brand and ambitions to match

September 4, 2024

Sizzler is a bit of an anomaly: Despite having shrunk to a fraction of its former size and retreating primarily to the West Coast, it’s a brand that remains a ubiquitous cultural touchpoint—in movies and online, on South Park and Saturday Night Live. And even if you’ve never eaten at one, you probably know what it is.

This made it a dream client for Mike Perry, founder and chief creative officer of Tavern, which collaborated with the beloved yet beleaguered chain on a comprehensive brand refresh spanning from its website to its stores, reports Fast Company.

“This brand is weirdly working backwards—it exists within the mind, but not necessarily in the world or in the hand,” Perry says. “It’s the most fun to take the brand that has been beaten up for decades and restore it. It’s not fun to take the shiny one and push it a little further.”

Digging into Sizzler’s past

When it launched in 1958 in Culver City, California, Sizzler helped invent the casual dining chain restaurant. It had its ups and downs over the years, but for an eatery known as much for its endless salad bar (which accounts for 40% of its business) as its affordable steaks, a global pandemic was not a great development.

The chain filed for bankruptcy in September 2020 and has been building back since. Today there are 75 locations (down from 270 at Sizzler’s peak). Christopher Perkins—formerly of Anheuser-Busch InBev—joined in 2019, and is now president and CEO.

Perkins says the brand had lost its way, and he knew it needed more than just a new coat of paint. He aspired for Sizzler to become a brand not locked in the past, but rather one of Southern California’s regional landmarks, like In-N-Out Burger, or Wawa on the East Coast.

In addition to losing its way, Perkins discovered that Sizzler had also lost its history, quite literally—there was no robust archive of assets and other ephemera. So he began to do a bit of archaeology into the company’s past, at one point sending a marketing intern on missions to the brand’s storage facility to see what could be dug up.

Prior to launching Tavern, Perry had worked on the Budweiser account at Jones Knowles Ritchie, which is where he originally met Perkins. Once Tavern came on board the project, Perry and Perkins immersed themselves in all things Sizzler—from store walk-throughs to the corporate side of the business—and did a bit of brand excavation of their own, buying up everything they could find on eBay.

In the end, Tavern saw the solution to Perkins’s problem as a “modern heritage” approach.

“It’s the search for timelessness,” Perry says. “The real tension between modernity and heritage and finding that is taking the old and ultimately making it new—and making it new so that it can continue to work in the future …. If you’re always trying to balance that, that’s really where the good stuff starts to come out.”

A cast of characters

One archival find was a steak-shucking bull character rendered in a Hanna-Barbera-esque style, which they dubbed Ribby Ribeye.

“All great brands have characters,” Perry says. “[Ribby Ribeye] is exactly what embodies a famous Southern California brand from both the midcentury and today, and it seemed like a no-brainer to bring back.”

Tavern built out a supplementary cadre of characters representing the brand’s other best-known offerings—the cheese toast, the unlimited shrimp, a lobster tail; and Perry’s favorite, the Salad Barbarian, an amorphous blob on a plate representing all the goods available at the beloved bar.

For the brand’s fonts, Tavern again turned to the past. Perry says Sizzler had used cuts of Windsor and Caslon Black Swash from its beginning through the mid-’80s or so, and they felt very Southern Californian in design and aesthetic, so his team utilized Windsor EF-Extra, Emfatick NF (a take on Caslon Black Swash), and Block Berthold Heavy and Condensed. For a contemporary feel, all the elements are blended with modern messaging and photography.

Tavern was given a mandate not to mess with the logo, so the team only slightly messed with the logo. They essentially cleaned it up—ditching the black background and dialing it back to a single color; refining the type in minute ways, and flattening it out. They also slanted it at an angle to drive home the notion of the brand’s cattle-brand element.

The Sizzler glow-up

Of course, all of these aesthetic updates mirror larger—and perhaps more consequential—changes. Tavern also worked on the restaurant interiors, uniforms, the living “brand” of how workers talk and embody the restaurant (think Chick-fil-A and all those “my pleasures”), the plates, and more.

It’s safe to say that if you stepped inside any of the competition in the category—Outback, Chili’s, Applebee’s, etc.—in the absence of a logo, you’d probably have no definitive idea of where you were. They all tend to look more or less the same: dark environments, menus with food shot on dark backgrounds, which Perry says doesn’t exactly convey freshness or taste.

So, the team sought to separate Sizzler from the rest of the pack by resurrecting the brand’s ownable red color, aiming for a bright and friendly overall vibe. The new website is now live, and Perkins says the changes will be rolling out to physical restaurants in phases.

In many ways, the rebrand is an attempt to remind the world that Sizzler is an anomaly. It exists in a space between chain restaurant and steak house, not to mention past and present. As for the future, the team says the key to all that nostalgia not feeling dated is to maintain a constant understanding of what is culturally relevant today—and then looking to the brand’s heritage and seeing what resonates with it.

As always, time will tell. For now, Perry says, “[After working] on big brands, we get bored of the brand a lot faster than the consumer. And just frankly [with Sizzler] I’m not—and that’s what I think a successful rebrand is.”

Research contact: @FastCompany

Above, Jimmy McCain in Phoenix, on Tuesday, September 3. (Photo source: Megan Mendoza /The Republic/USA Today)

John McCain’s son endorses Harris and hits Trump over Arlington Cemetery incident

September 4, 2024

The incident involving Donald Trump’s campaign staff at Arlington National Cemetery was the last straw for Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), reports NBC News.

In an interview Tuesday, Sptember 3, on CNN, McCain said that after last week’s events at the cemetery, he registered as a Democrat and decided to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris this fall.

McCain, who recently returned from deployment at a military base in Jordan where three Army Reserve soldiers were killed in January, said he changed his party affiliation to honor his father and put “country first.”

“I care about my family. I care about equal rights of everyone in this country. I care about all this,” McCain said. “As much as I stayed as an Independent, I decided that, you know, it was time to move on and do what I believe in.”

McCain called Arlington National Cemetery “sacred” and said three generations of his family are buried there. He called Trump’s incident at Arlington a “violation.”

Trump visited the cemetery last week with relatives of the service members who were killed in the Abbey Gate attack on Kabul airport during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago. According to the Army, a member of Trump’s team “abruptly pushed aside” a cemetery official so that campaign staff could take photos and videos in an area where they are normally prohibited. Trump’s team has disputed the Army’s account.

“Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives to this country,” McCain said. “When you make it political, you take away the respect of the people who are there.”

McCain also said that he has never forgiven Trump for calling his dad a “dummy” and saying that he was “not a war hero” because he had been held captive.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 comments. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Trump, who never served in the military, then said: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. OK, I believe—perhaps he’s a war hero.”

John McCain was tortured and spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

In response to McCain’s remarks on CNN, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “there has been no greater advocate” for the military than Trump.

“President Trump rebuilt the military after eight years of decline under Obama/Biden, secured the largest pay raise for our troops in a decade, and became the first leader since Ronald Reagan not to start a new war and put our troops in harm’s way,” she said.

John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, wrote on X on Tuesday that she remains a Republican, but will not be voting for Trump or Harris in November.

“I greatly respect the wide variety of political opinions of all of my family members and love them all very much,” Meghan McCain wrote. “I, however, remain a proud member of the Republican Party and hope for brighter days ahead.”

The Harris campaign promoted McCain’s endorsement of the vice president Tuesday in news releases and social media.

Research contact: @NBCNews

Above, Piper Taich’s stylized trays are all about ‘having fun.’ (Photo source: @pipertacih/TikTok

The airport tray trend stirring outrage and delight

September 3, 2024

They might be grey, plastic, and reportedly, very dirty, but airport security trays are in demand. Online, a new trend called the “airport tray aesthetic” sees people carefully curating the contents of a tray—showcasing their shoes, scents, accessories, headphones, hats, and reading material against a backdrop of polypropylene—and then photographing them to share with their followers, reports The Guardian.

Sometimes called referencing the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, some of the compositions are understated and minimalist, featuring neatly placed flasks and hair clips. Others are more chaotic.

They have been met with a variety of reactions. Some people seem to read them as a waste of time; others, as a means to humblebrag about fancy perfumes and highbrow books. But for others, they are simply an expression of personal style and creativity.

“In my art director era,” Piper Taich captioned one of her videos featuring multiple compositions: one including Adidas trainers, an Olympus camera and tan bag; another with pink mules, a lime green bag and a Canon camera. A professional graphic designer, Taich sees the purpose as “expressing yourself and having fun.”.

“Part of my job is directing photoshoots, so putting together an eye-catching, cohesive composition like in the trend is something I really enjoy.” For work, she does it with food; for fun, she does it with accessories.

Brands, including those in the sustainable fashion and skincare business, are hopping onboard. The publisher Faber posted half a dozen trays themed around its books on Instagram; while the bag, brand August Noa, used it to showcase their designs surrounded by Chanel mules, claw clips, and sunglasses.

According to J’Nae Phillips, a senior trend analyst, fashion columnist and creator of the Fashion Tingz newsletter, it is “the latest form of digital flexing”.

While the cliche on Instagram is photographs of food, this could be read as a 2024 update. “This phenomenon is an evolution of #foodstagram and aesthetically pleasing foodie pics posted online, where curated food displays signaled a certain lifestyle and sense of taste,” said Phillips. “Security tray photos go one step further than this, blending the thrill of travel with conspicuous consumption, allowing people to construct and broadcast their aspirational identities in a way that feels current and fresh.”

It isn’t the first time people on social media have come up with seemingly unlikely backdrops against which to photograph what they are wearing or reading. Plates, shelves, and bedside tables have all been visual vessels through which to offer such snapshots. In fact, as part of another current trend, people share pictures of what they are carrying—Prada handbags, flowers and nice bottles of—in their bike baskets, often offering some handy marketing for bike-share schemes such as Lime in the process.

Not everyone is onboard with the airport tray aesthetic, however. Long queues are one of several annoying facts of air travel, and much of this content has a few disgruntled comments complaining about the perceived hold-up caused. But content creators have hit back, saying they go to great lengths to avoid inconveniencing others.

The digital creator and secondhand clothes lover Chelsea Henriquez, who goes by the name Chelsea As of Late on TikTok, has a tutorial outlining how she goes through security and then takes the tray to the side to, as she puts it in the video, “set up your little tray to your heart’s desire.”

The video Taich shared of how she creates hers at home, with a tray bought on Amazon, has been viewed more than 1.5m times. She even makes herself a fake boarding pass on Photoshop to make the scene feel more real.

Taich understands people’s “initial outrage when they think these photos are being taken in line”. But, she said: “I’m not sure it would even be possible in the speed and chaos of the TSA line, so like me, other creators are mimicking the trend at home, or doing it once exiting the line.” In any case, she said, she immediately recognized the trend as “concept photography”. “Who is flying with just loose jewelery, lip gloss, and heels?”

Henriquez has this sage advice to offer: “If you’re mad about people taking a tray from the TSA line, going to a separate section and setting up a cute little aesthetic photo where they are not bothering anybody … then, I dunno, grab a Snickers. You might be hungry.”

Research contact: @guardian

Above, Brooke Shields says, “When your voice isn’t necessarily strong enough or going to be heard, [unions] can step in and speak for you.” (Photo source: Marvin Joseph for The Washington Post)

Meet one of America’s newest union leaders: Brooke Shields

September 3, 2024

Brooke Shields has taken over America’s stage actors’ union at a moment of crisis.

While show-goers have flocked back to concerts and sporting events, live theater attendance still lags pre-pandemic times—sidelining the industry longer than others shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, reports The Washington Post.

The storied Actors’ Equity Association union—representing 51,000 stage actors and managers from Broadway to San Francisco—also is fighting a high-profile battle for its first contract for Disneyland Resort performers in Anaheim, California. And there’s an ongoing strike against theaters for higher pay for shows in development.

Plus, the union’s top legislative priority is to get Congress to rewrite tax policy so that unreimbursed business expenses are tax deductible again—a 2017 change that hit the industry hard.

“It’s usually money that is the factor that gets us shafted,” Shields, 59, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “What I have come to see is that those that can [afford it] really seem to give the least at times.”

It may seem surprising that the model and actress would step up to take on such a demanding unpaid position. Indeed, Shields won the union’s highest office in May, beating out two more seasoned union activists. But she says she plans to use her celebrity to put money into actors’ pockets, saying that the position “was something that I could give my energy to more than anything,” especially as her two daughters left home for college last month.

Shields has been in the spotlight for nearly half a century, first becoming a card-carrying union member with the Screen Actors Guild around age 11, during the filming of the controversial film “Pretty Baby.” More recently, she has starred in a top Netflix movie, launched a hair-care company, written books and been the subject of a Hulu documentary chronicling her experience of sexual objectification as a child and teenager.

Since 29, Shields has appeared in five Broadway musicals. She replaced leading actors as Betty Rizzo in “Grease,” Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” and Morticia Addams in “The Addams Family.”

“It wasn’t a popular idea,” Shields recalls, but Actor’s Equity backed her through it. She’s also had roles in regional theater and off-Broadway productions.

This spring, fresh off last year’s strike victories for Hollywood screen actors and writers, Shields ran for the newly open president’s seat, hopeful that she could use her platform to “ask for more for the members.”

“I felt that [our union] needed to be … seen as formidable,” Shields said. “I can respectfully shout out things that need to change. … There has to be good value for [fame]. Otherwise you’re probably just getting a table at a restaurant.”

The years leading up to the pandemic shattered records for attendance and earnings on Broadway, with blockbusters hits like “Hamilton” and “The Lion King” grossing more than $100 million in a season. But the pandemic reversed those fortunes, with many Actor’s Equity members still unable to meet their pre-pandemic working hours or qualify for health insurance.

“A lot of people still have not recovered from the pandemic,” Shields said. “We have people with [medical] treatments that they need to be continuing. … So they’re forced to have two and sometimes three jobs. A salary on Broadway is almost impossible to live on in today’s New York City … and you’ve got regional theater all over the country that has to be heard.”

Shields plans to spread the message that arts and entertainment are an economic driver—not only in big cities like New York and Chicago, but also in much smaller cities like Birmingham, Alabama, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“When it comes to politics, it’s always interesting to me how the arts and education are the easiest ones to cut,” Shields said. “We can’t lose sight of that; otherwise we become the type of country we don’t want to be.”

“I look at unions as parents,” Shields said. “When your voice isn’t necessarily strong enough or going to be heard, they can step in and speak for you. I’ve been a member since I was a little girl. And my mom would say, if I can’t help you, we can go to [the union], and they will.”

Research contact: @washingtonpost

Above, Trump last week asked for a second time to move his New York state criminal case to federal court. (Photo source: Agence France Presse)

Manhattan DA says Trump’s second removal effort should not put hush money case on ice

September 3, 2024

The Manhattan district attorney’s office says former President Donald Trump’s latest effort to remove his hush money criminal case to federal court should not put proceedings on ice as his sentencing nears, reports The Hill.

In a Friday, August 30, letter to Judge Juan Merchan that was made public on Tuesday, September 3, state prosecutors said the court should not heed requests to delay due to Trump’s removal bid—instead suggesting the judge should rule on the former president’s outstanding motions regarding presidential immunity and the timing of his sentencing.

“Federal law is clear that proceedings in this Court need not be stayed pending the district court’s resolution of defendant’s removal notice,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote.

Trump last week asked for a second time to move his New York state criminal case to federal court, suggesting that pushing ahead with the “purely political” state prosecution would cause him “direct and irreparable harm” in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan in a Thursday, August 29, letter to refrain from ruling on his presidential immunity motion and said the judge “may not” move forward with Trump’s September 18 sentencing while the removal proceeding is ongoing.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office said Trump’s concerns over timing as November nears are a result of his “own strategic and dilatory litigation tactics,” noting that the former president’s second removal effort came nearly ten months after dropping his first unsuccessful attempt and three months after his conviction.

However, the office maintained its previous position that it will defer to Merchan on whether Trump’s sentencing should move forward as scheduled.

Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment that his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, made to a porn actor to keep her alleged affair with Trump a secret ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump denies the affair and any wrongdoing regarding the payment.

Research contact: @thehill

Above, the study revealed that family members within a marmoset group use similar vocal labels to address different individuals. (Photo source: Neurosciene News)

Marmoset monkeys give each other ‘nicknames,’ just like humans

Sepember 2, 2024

Marmoset monkeys have a surprising method of naming each other—and scientists say they’ve found the first evidence of such behavior, reports The Sun.

Marmosets are native to South America, with a range that extends outside Brazil. The species includes some of the smallest primates in the world.

They are known for having complex speech patterns that help them to communicate in tight-knit family groups. What’s more, a study published in the journal, Science, reveals that marmosets use specific sounds, dubbed “phee-calls,” to name each other.

Scientists say this behavior was previously known only to exist in humans, dolphins, and elephants. The naming of others is a “highly advanced cognitive ability” only observed in social animals.

But our closest evolutionary relatives— nonhuman primates like the chimpanzee and bonobo —weren’t thought to be able to do so.

A team of researchers from the David Omer Lab at Hebrew University made the groundbreaking discovery after closely observing marmoset behavior. The team recorded conversations between monkey pairs, as well as interactions between the tiny creatures and a computer system. The marmosets were revealed to use their “phee-calls” to address specific individuals.

Furthermore, the monkeys could tell when a call was directed at them and were able to respond “more accurately.”

“This discovery highlights the complexity of social communication among marmosets,” Omer said. “These calls are not just used for self-localization, as previously though. Marmosets use these specific calls to label and address specific individuals.”

By studying parent-offspring pairs, the researchers found that relatives use similar vocal labels to address different individuals and even use similar noises to represent names.

This behavior is even present among adult marmosets who aren’t blood relatives, indicating t that hey learn vocal labels from other members of their family group.

“Marmosets live in small monogamous family groups and take care of their young together, much like humans do,” Omer explained. “These similarities suggest that they faced comparable evolutionary social challenges to our early pre-linguistic ancestors, which might have led them to develop similar communicating methods.”

Further research may elucidate how the human ability to communicate evolved.

Research contact: @TheSun