Don’t Ignore Your Climate Anxiety

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Wildfires. Record-breaking temperatures. Dangerous air quality. Apocalyptic headlines.

This summer has highlighted the impacts of climate change, and even those who were feeling relatively safe are facing a new reality: Climate change is already happening, and it is going to affect all of us. In addition to all the minor annoyances and inconveniences (Canceled flights! Uncomfortable commutes! Restrictions on outdoor exercise!), these climate change events present real and serious threats not only to physical health and safety, but also to mental health. In the face of these conditions, people are feeling a wide range of negative emotions—sad, scared, overwhelmed, anxious—that are leading to new terms like eco-grief, climate anxiety, and solastalgia.

As a conservation psychologist, I have observed this through personal conversations and anecdotal reports, as well as multiple research studies on how our changing climate affects our mental wellbeing. Substantial survey data, such as a 2023 report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, show high levels of worry about the personal impacts of climate change. Research also supports a link between experiences and emotions. For example, a 2022 study showed that the 2021 heat dome (a weather event in which a high-pressure system traps hot air over an area, leading to extended and often record-breaking temperatures) in Canada was associated with a significant increase in climate change-linked anxiety.

These emotional responses are complex. People are not only feeling sad and anxious—young people feel betrayed by the inadequacy of governmental response; people who have contributed very little to climate change are angry that they are experiencing more than their share of the consequences; many feel frustrated by the responses of others, or guilty about their own individual or collective involvement. We might feel all these emotions at once, or cycle through them in the course of the day. These feelings are hard to cope with—but we should own them.

Read More: How Psychology Can Help Fight Climate Change—And Climate Anxiety

Although it is appropriate to be worried about climate change, at extreme levels, climate anxiety can threaten one’s ability to function, making it hard to sleep, work, or even have fun with family or friends. And since people don’t like to feel negative emotions, we have developed a number of strategies to cope with them—denying there’s a problem, avoiding thinking about it, or maintaining an unrealistic optimism that everything will work out. This makes some sense as a way to protect our mental health, but in reality, it is not very effective. Denying emotional responses does not make them go away. In fact, attempts to suppress them tend to be associated with worse mental health.

Therapists can offer an alternative toolbox of ways to deal with this feeling of overwhelm. For people who are feeling overly sad or worried, it might be worthwhile to step away from the news, and focus on sources of happiness or gratitude. Taking a long walk, ideally in a park or in the woods, can also help reduce stress and tension. We need to look after our own emotional state before tackling the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, we should allow ourselves to feel our negative emotions. Emotions don’t come out of nowhere; they reflect our understanding and interpretation of events. With some exceptions, we feel sad because something we value has been damaged or lost. We feel anxious because something we value is threatened. Avoiding these emotional responses would require us to reinterpret the event, and try to believe that there is no threat, or that it’s not something we care about.

Importantly, our emotions don’t only affect our own understanding; they communicate particular interpretations to other people. If I tell my friends that the wildfires make me anxious, I’m also saying that they should make people anxious, because my health, or my children’s health, or a place that I love, is at risk. Alternatively, if I don’t express any grief, I’m saying it wasn’t such a big deal. If I don’t express anxiety to my friends—or to elected officials, or industry leaders—I indicate that there’s nothing to be anxious about.

The result is a kind of collective or pluralistic ignorance, as most people believe that their peers or people within their communities are not anxious. (Remember, this is not true.) Social psychological research has shown that even in potentially dangerous circumstances, we look to others to help us interpret the situation, and if no one else does anything, we are likely to assume no action is needed. In an era in which there is a lot of disagreement about facts, truth, and objective reality, emotions contain their own kind of truth. We are sad. We are worried. By expressing these feelings, we legitimize them and allow other people to feel them, as well.

But these negative emotions can (and should) also co-exist with positive emotions. We need to hold on to hope. Hope is based on a belief that positive outcomes are possible, though not necessarily likely. Hope can be hard because it requires us to do something—whereas hopelessness lets us off the hook by saying that action and behavioral change are pointless. Hope allows us to envision a future in which people and societies can continue, thrive, and even experience positive transformation.

Without grief and anxiety, we will not be motivated to change. Without hope, we won’t think change is possible. As journalists and scientists and policymakers try to inform people about climate risks, they should find ways to communicate that allow people to feel this multifaceted emotional response.

Emotions are important not only to wellbeing, but also to action.

source https://time.com/6298051/climate-anxiety-essay/

What to Know About the Army Chief Who Will Be Cambodia’s Next Leader

After nearly four decades as Cambodia’s strongman leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced on Wednesday that he will step down in a matter of weeks to make way for his successor and son, Hun Manet, the country’s army chief.

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Hun Sen, 70, announced his departure during a news conference in Phnom Penh, marking the start of a close to a 38-year premiership that made him Asia’s longest ruling leader. Hun Sen, who said he will remain head of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, was once a mid-ranking commander in the totalitarian Khmer Rouge, but defected to Vietnam midway through its four-year reign. He was installed as foreign minister following the Vietnamese army’s invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, becoming Prime Minister in 1985.

In December 2021, Hun Sen made it known that Hun Manet was to succeed him and the CPP backed his endorsement. The official news of this step-back comes days after the CPP reported a landslide victory in sham elections that have been criticized by the U.S. as “neither free nor fair” after the main opposition party was prevented from participating.

Read More: After Suppressing Opposition, Hun Sen Declares Landslide Election Win to Extend Rule

Some observers have suggested that the Western-educated Hun Manet’s leadership could usher in a gradual shift toward liberalization and democratization in Cambodia. But experts tell TIME they remain skeptical that any major reform will follow as the result of political patronage.

“The fact Hun Sen groomed [his son] over the course of a few decades to take the reins suggests a strong degree of trust and confidence,” Lee Morgenbesser, a Southeast Asia politics expert at Australia’s Griffith University, tells TIME. “This can be seen in not only the positions of power he gave him, but the speed within which he gave him more responsibility.”

Here’s what to know about Hun Manet, Cambodia’s prime minister-in-waiting.

Who is Hun Manet?

Hun Manet is the eldest of Hun Sen’s five children. He grew up in Phnom Penh and joined the Cambodian military in 1995. Hun Manet graduated from the U.S. Military Academy West Point in 1999, and earned a master’s degree in economics from New York University in 2002 and a PhD in economics from the U.K.’s Bristol University in 2008.

Hun Manet is married to Pich Chanmony, the daughter of Pich Sophoan—former secretary of state at the Ministry of Labour—and the couple have three children, one of which is a U.S. citizen born while Hun Manet was a student in the country. 

“Hun Manet’s ascension within Cambodia’s ruling elite was rapid to say the least. Obviously Hun Sen played a large role in that, but his military training at West Point and doctoral degree from Bristol further solidified his credentials,” says Morgenbesser.

The military leader is also Head of the National Counter-Terrorism Special Forces and Commander of the Prime Minister’s Bodyguard Unit, which Morgenbesser says makes him complicit in “severe repression” observed in Cambodia’s recent history. 

The country has seen increasing internet surveillance and censorship as well as a growing crackdown on human rights activists, the political opposition, and free media, according to Human Rights Watch. Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World report classifies Cambodia as “Not Free,” with a score of 24 out of 100 in the most recent edition.

Will Hun Manet’s leadership differ from Hun Sen?

It remains to be seen but experts are not optimistic. “Whenever hereditary succession occurs in a dictatorship, there is a tendency to give the new leader the benefit of the doubt. The misguided assumption is that he won’t be as awful as his father; instead he will be more favourable, moderate, progressive, tolerant,” says Morgenbesser.

He adds that Western diplomats may be tempted to place significance on the newness of Hun Manet’s appointment, but “there is no historical evidence to suggest the sons of dictators are better news.” 

What’s next for Hun Sen?

In June, Hun Sen spoke about stepping down as Prime Minister but said he would not withdraw from politics. “Even if I am no longer a prime minister,” Hun Sen said on Wednesday, “I will still control politics as the head of the ruling party.”

Morgenbesser says that Hun Sen’s decision to stay on as CPP head will allow his son to strengthen his power base while maintaining his own influence. “Until Hun Manet consolidates his power in such a way that he cannot be credibly threatened with removal from office, Hun Sen will have a significant say in major policy decisions, the distribution of rewards, and the selection of personnel,” he adds.

source https://time.com/6298046/hun-manet-cambodia-leadership/

Kevin Spacey Acquitted of Sexual Assault Charges in London Trial

Kevin Spacey was acquitted of sexual assault on Wednesday after the Oscar winner’s testimony as a witness in his own defense spared him a possible prison term and gave him a shot at a career comeback.

Tears rolled down Spacey’s cheeks as the final “not guilty” verdict was read. It was his 64th birthday.

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Spacey’s wide-ranging testimony climaxed as he choked up speaking of the six years he’d gone without work after sex abuse allegations surfaced against him during the #MeToo movement in the U.S. in 2017.

“My world exploded,” Spacey testified. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything in a matter of days.”

Three men accused the Oscar winner of aggressively grabbing their crotches. A fourth, an aspiring actor seeking mentorship, said he awoke to the actor performing oral sex on him after going to Spacey’s London apartment for a beer and either falling asleep or passing out.

Spacey said he was a “big flirt” who had consensual flings with men and whose only misstep was touching a man’s groin while making a “clumsy pass.”

Defense lawyer Patrick Gibbs said three of the men were liars and incidents had been “reimagined with a sinister spin.” He accused most of them of hopping on a “bandwagon” of complaints in the hope of striking it rich.

Prosecutor Christine Agnew told jurors that Spacey was a “sexual bully” who took what he wanted when he wanted. She said he was shielded by a “trinity of protection”: he knew men were unlikely to complain; they wouldn’t be believed if they did complain; and if they did complain, no action would be taken because he was powerful.

Spacey had faced nine charges, including multiple counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

The accusations date from 2001 to 2013 and include a period when Spacey — after winning Academy Awards for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty” — had returned to the theater, his first love. During most of that period he was artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London.

The men came forward after an American actor accused Spacey of an incident of sexual misconduct as the #MeToo movement heated up in 2017.

Several of the men said they had been haunted by the abuse and couldn’t bear to watch Spacey’s films.

One of the men broke down when speaking with police as he provided details in a videotaped interview about the oral sex incident that he said he’d never told anyone before. Another man said he was angry about the abuse that occurred sporadically over several years and began to drink and work out more to cope with it.

Spacey choked up and became teary eyed in the witness box as he described the emotional and financial turmoil that the U.S. accusations brought and the barrage of criticism that followed on social media.

“My world exploded,” Spacey testified. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything in a matter of days.”

Gibbs said Spacey was being “monstered” on the internet every night and became toxic in the industry.

Spacey was booted from “House of Cards” and his scenes in “All the Money in the World,” were scrubbed and he was replaced by Christopher Plummer. Aside from some small projects, he has barely worked as an actor in six years.

A New York jury last year swiftly cleared Spacey in a $40 million lawsuit by “Star Trek: Discovery” actor Anthony Rapp on allegations dating back three decades.

Spacey had viewed the London case as a chance for redemption, telling German magazine Zeit last month that there were “people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London.”

source https://time.com/6298065/kevin-spacey-acquitted-sexual-assault-charges/

A Hive Mind of Doctors Can Mean Better Care for Patients

If you’re like an unlucky 5% of American adults, you’ll visit a doctor with a medical complaint this year, only to be misdiagnosed and, often, misprescribed a treatment. If you’re like a far less lucky one of 100,000 hospitalized Americans, such a misdiagnosis will cost you your life. There are a lot of reasons for medical errors: inexperienced caregivers; ambiguous symptoms; understaffed hospitals, underlying conditions. 

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But according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), there’s one more little-considered cause: doctors working alone—often with too little opportunity to think and rethink the case. By increasing the number of physicians weighing in on a case, doctors can significantly increase the likelihood of an accurate diagnosis and a favorable result, according to a team of researchers led by Damon Centola, professor and director of the Network Dynamics Group at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication..

“We are increasingly recognizing that clinical decision-making should be viewed as a team effort that includes multiple clinicians and the patient as well,” said co-author Dr. Elaine Khoong, of the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, in a statement accompanying the release of the study.

Medical collaboration is hardly a new thing. As Centola points out, many hospitals, especially ones in lower-income areas, rely on “e-consult technologies,” in which a clinician sends a message to an outside specialist for a second opinion on a case, with results usually taking 24 to 72 hours to come back. But two minds, Centola and his collaborators theorized, are less effective than a hive mind—and they set out to prove that idea.

A meeting of the minds

Recruiting a subject group of 2,941 physicians, the authors divided them into a sample group of 2,053 and a control group of 888. All of the subjects were drawn from one of three specialties: internal medicine, emergency medicine, and cardiology. All of them too were presented with case studies of real-life patients who had presented with illnesses known to have high rates of diagnostic error: acute cardiac events, geriatric care, low back pain, and diabetes-related cardiovascular illness prevention. Then they were set to work diagnosing the cases and prescribing a treatment—a process that was divided into three steps, which both groups conducted in different ways.

The 888 members of the control group worked alone. They read the case scenario and were given two minutes (sometimes all a doctor gets in an emergency situation) to provide a risk assessment—how serious the patient’s symptoms were, and what the likelihood of severe illness was—and recommend a treatment. This was repeated two more times, with the members of the control group given a second and a third opportunity to re-read and reconsider the case—again with a two-minute timeline, but at least with greater familiarity of the scenario now—and again recommend a treatment.

Read More: AI Cough-Monitoring Can Change the Way We Diagnose Disease

Things were very different with the other subjects. The 2,053 members of the sample group were divided into smaller groups of 40 each. All of them began the experiment the same way the control group did—taking two minutes to read, diagnose and recommend a treatment for the case study. They too were given a second chance to analyze the case, but before they did, they were also shown the average risk estimate the other 39 doctors in their group—whose identities were not disclosed—had given for the severity of the case. They could then either stick with their initial assessment of the severity of the condition or change it to one more in keeping with the majority. In the third round they did the same, only this time with their treatment recommendation.

Both groups benefited from the opportunity to take multiple looks at the same case. In the control group, the doctors improved from an accuracy rate of 76.8% in the first look they took at the case study to 79.3% by the third—or a 3.3% improvement. The sample group, in which the doctors had the benefit of one another’s insights—doubled the improvement of the control group, going from an accuracy of 76.1% to 81.1%, or a 6.6% bump. (There was no indication in the results of the hive mind in the 2,053-person sample leading the doctors to a collective wrong conclusion.)

Multiplying intelligence

Over a potential U.S. patient population of 332 million, that 6.6% improvement can mean 21.8 million people.

“We can use doctors’ networks to improve their performance,” said Centola in a statement. “The real discovery here is that we can structure the information-sharing networks among doctors to substantially increase their clinical intelligence.”

What’s more, Centola thinks the 40-doctor model his group hit on is a good one. “Forty people in a network gets you a steep jump in clinicians’ collective intelligence,” he said. “The increasing returns above that—going, say, from 40 to 4,000—are minimal.” What’s more, in the sample group, whose members not only read the case study three times, but also read their peers’ responses, the entire trial still took only 20 minutes—far less than the 24 to 72 hours a single-specialist consultation now takes.

Effective as the protocol is, there are obstacles to implementing it widely. The amount of time physicians have to spare on cases that are not their own, and reimbursement policies for their work, are both issues to be resolved. More challenging. Centola says, is changing the culture around the business of diagnosing and prescribing—which is too often seen as an entirely solitary practice. “This network innovation,” he says, “replaces that view of decision-making with the insight that it is also a social and behavioral process that can be improved by structuring the flow of information and influence among clinicians.”

When it comes to saving human lives, speed counts, accurate diagnoses count, and getting the right treatment to the right patient counts. If it takes 40 doctors to get all that right, it’s worth the extra work.

source https://time.com/6297810/doctors-hive-mind-patient-care/

The Connection Between Diabetes and Heart Arrhythmias

The human heart beats roughly 3 billion times during the course of an average lifetime. Every single time it beats, blood is drawn into its two upper chambers, held there briefly by a network of valves, and then pumped out forcefully through its two lower chambers. This drawing-and-pumping action ensures that about six liters of freshly oxygenated blood leaves the heart and enters the bloodstream every minute—a volume that can rise to more than 35 liters per minute when someone is exercising.

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But none of that can happen unless the heart’s complicated machinery—its assorted valves and muscles and electrical circuitry—is working in harmony. When that harmony breaks down, the heart can pump too fast or too slow, or it can lose coordination among its various chambers. This breakdown is known as an arrhythmia, and it can lead to complications ranging from fatigue or shortness of breath to a heart attack or stroke.

“When we say arrhythmia, we literally mean the heart is out of rhythm,” says Dr. Jonathan Piccini, a cardiologist and arrhythmia specialist at Duke University Medical Center. He compares the heart’s operation to a symphony orchestra. “If someone was playing off the wrong sheet of music or if their instrument were out of tune, that would not be subtle. It would be profoundly disruptive,” he says. “The same is true of a heart arrhythmia.”

Heart arrhythmias are common; up to 5% of the general population has some form of the condition. The most common form, by far, is atrial fibrillation, or “Afib.” This is a type of arrhythmia that arises in the upper chambers of the heart. “Between 60 and 100 beats per minute is normal,” Piccini says. “In Afib, the top regions of the heart are in total chaos and could be beating on the order of 400 to 600 beats per minute.”

According to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one out of every seven strokes is caused by Afib. This and other life-threatening complications have led researchers to scrutinize the most common risk factors for Afib and other arrhythmias. “There’s a super long list of things that can promote or trigger or cause Afib, and one of the big ones is diabetes,” says Piccini, whose work in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology has examined the relationship between the two conditions. By some estimates, people who have Type 2 diabetes are 34% more likely to develop Afib than people without diabetes.

Here, Piccini and other experts explain how diabetes and heart arrhythmias may be connected. They also discuss how both conditions are treated—either alone or in tandem—and how people with diabetes can protect themselves from serious heart complications.

The diabetes-arrhythmia connection

The Framingham Heart Study is one of the most famous and fruitful research efforts ever undertaken. It began in 1948 with 5,000-plus study participants—all from the town of Framingham in Massachusetts—and continues to this day. 

The purpose of the study is to track participants’ health and lifestyles over time in order to uncover potential risk factors for heart disease. Thanks in large part to the Framingham Heart Study, researchers recognized that smoking, high blood pressure, too little physical activity, and many other variables could raise a person’s risk for heart disease.

Almost 30 years ago, data from the Framingham Heart Study helped reveal that people with diabetes are at increased risk for Afib. However, the connection between the two conditions has only recently garnered serious research attention. “This is an area of tremendous interest primarily because we have discovered newer classes of medications that, in addition to lowering glucose, can also reduce the risk of heart complications,” says Dr. Jennifer Green, a diabetes and metabolism specialist at Duke who, along with Piccini, has conducted research on diabetes and Afib.

A lot more work is needed to determine exactly why people with diabetes are at increased risk for Afib. “But there does seem to be a cause-and-effect relationship between the two,” she says. One hypothesis is that elevated levels of blood sugar (or glucose), which is a hallmark of diabetes, causes damage to the heart that may result in arrhythmias. “There are things we call advanced glycation end products”—harmful compounds that arise when blood sugar combines with blood proteins or fats—“that we know can be responsible for organ damage,” she explains. 

Another hypothesis is that diabetes contributes to the development of high blood pressure (hypertension), which may cause damage to the heart in ways that result in an arrhythmia. “Diabetes affects the blood vessels in ways that make them stiffer and that makes blood pressure rise,” says Dr. Mattias Brunström, a hypertension specialist and physician researcher at Umeå University in Sweden. Roughly two-thirds of adults with diabetes also have hypertension, and people with hypertension are almost twice as likely to develop Afib as people who do not have hypertension. 

Yet another possibility is that diabetes-related inflammation may contribute to the development of an arrhythmia. “In people with diabetes, there are both systemic and localized increases in inflammation that, if severe enough and prolonged enough, could increase the risk of arrhythmia,” Green says.

All of these hypotheses could turn out to be accurate. “It’s probably not just one mechanism or one explanation, but several,” she says.

Read More: High Blood Pressure and Diabetes Are Linked. Here’s How to Reduce Your Risk for Both

Prevention and treatment 

There is good evidence that people who have well-controlled diabetes are much less likely to develop Afib or other types of arrhythmias than people who have poorly controlled diabetes. 

“We’ve learned that the higher the glycemic load, the higher the likelihood a person will develop Afib,” Piccini says. Managing glycemic load (keeping blood sugar at a healthy level) is the main purpose of taking medication for diabetes. It’s possible that people who are undergoing treatment for diabetes don’t need to do anything different to lower their risk for an arrhythmia. “For anyone with diabetes, the goal is good glycemic control,” he says. “It’s not clear whether we should be treating them any differently in order to prevent an arrhythmia.”

However, there are some newer types of diabetes drugs that may help lower a person’s odds of developing an arrhythmia. “There’s some evidence that certain classes of diabetes drugs, such as SGLT2 inhibitors, may reduce the risk of atrial arrhythmias,” Green says. There are also some drugs that are aimed specifically at reducing the risks of heart complications in people with diabetes. For example, some work has found that a drug called finerenone may lower the likelihood that someone with diabetes will go on to develop heart complications, including an arrhythmia. “This drug helps counteract inflammation, and may provide a benefit through that process,” she says. 

While some of this work is promising, Green notes that more follow-up is needed. “A lot of what’s been published already are analyses of observational data, so looking at outcomes among people receiving the drugs and seeing how they do,” she says. “That information can be helpful, but we need randomized controlled trials to see if these drugs really do reduce risks.” 

Piccini echoes her assessment. “There really haven’t been any studies expressly asking, does treatment with one of these lead to better outcomes?” he says. These sorts of studies are in the works, he adds, but we don’t have answers yet. In the meantime, Piccini notes that people with diabetes who are concerned about heart complications, including arrhythmias, should focus on controlling their blood sugar as well as their overall health. That means taking their diabetes medications as their doctor advises, and also trying to eat right, exercise, stop smoking, and maintain a healthy body weight. “Don’t drink to excess, and get plenty of sleep,” Piccini adds.

It might also be helpful for people with diabetes to ask their care provider about medications that have been shown to reduce heart-related complications. “The landscape of treatments to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in people with Type 2 diabetes has completely altered over the last 10 years,” Green says. “I think it is time for everyone, clinicians in particular, to reassess whether the regimens they are prescribing are the most effective for their patients.” The American Diabetes Association produces guidelines that are updated annually and intended to help diabetes doctors choose the optimal treatments for their patients. “A person with diabetes should ask their doctor whether they are on the guideline-recommended therapy, because unfortunately, many are not,” she adds. 

For a person who has been diagnosed with both diabetes and a heart arrhythmia, the situation is much the same. Some drugs have shown promise in treating both conditions, but experts say more work is needed. As Piccini puts it: “If someone has Afib and diabetes, should we be using some medications in preference to others? This is an area where we need more information.”

Setting aside treatments that target both conditions, there are a number of effective ways for doctors to handle an arrhythmia—regardless of whether a person has diabetes. One technique called electrical cardioversion uses low-energy electrical pulses—shocks, basically—to help reset and normalize the heart’s rhythm. The introduction of a pacemaker or other less-invasive procedures can also resolve or reduce the risks of an arrhythmia.

Read More: These New Developments Could Make Living With Type 2 Diabetes More Manageable

Looking ahead

Almost 9% of American adults have been diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is also much more common among children and adolescents today than it was even 20 years ago. Meanwhile, 38% of Americans have prediabetes, which refers to abnormally high blood levels that may soon progress to diabetes. All of these figures are at historic highs, and they’re expected to increase in the future. As a result, a lot of research is now looking at ways to not only prevent and treat diabetes, but to manage associated risks or complications—including arrhythmias.

The good news is that there are many promising medications in the research pipeline. Medical science’s ability to not only control diabetes but also to reduce a person’s risks for heart-related complications is getting stronger all the time. As the work in this area intensifies, breakthroughs are sure to follow. In the meantime, there’s good evidence that controlling one’s diabetes using a mixture of existing medications and healthy lifestyle practices can prevent heart complications, including arrhythmias. “Right now,” Piccini says, “we already have so many ways to treat these conditions, and our understanding is only going to get better.”

source https://time.com/6297676/diabetes-heart-arrhythmias/

UPS Reaches Tentative Contract With 340,000 Unionized Workers, Potentially Dodging Strike

UPS has reached a tentative contract agreement with its 340,000-person strong union, potentially averting a strike that threatened to disrupt logistics nationwide for businesses and households alike.

The agreement was announced after UPS and the Teamsters came back to the negotiating table Tuesday to talk over remaining sticking points in the largest private-sector contract in North America. Both sides had already reached tentative agreement on a host of issues but remained at odds on things like pay for part-time workers who make up more than half of the UPS employees represented by the union.

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The Teamsters called the tentative agreement “historic” and “overwhelmingly lucrative” in a prepared statement. It includes, among other benefits, higher wages and air conditioning in delivery trucks.

“Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” Carol Tomé, UPS chief executive officer, said in a written statement. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive, serve our customers and keep our business strong.”

The company said the five-year agreement covers U.S. Teamsters-represented employees in small-package roles and is subject to voting and ratification by union members.

The union, which had long threatened a strike, boasted about the “historic wage increases” for its members, saying existing full- and part-time UPS Teamsters will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more per hour over the length of the contract.

It said the agreement includes provision to increase starting pay for part-time workers to $21 per hour, up from $16.20 today. It also reiterated prior concessions it got from the company, such as making Martin Luther King Day a full holiday for the first time and ending forced overtime on drivers’ days off.

Members of the Teamsters, angered by a contract they say was forced on them five years ago by union leadership, clashed with UPS over pay as profits for the delivery company soared in recent years. Union leadership was upended last year with the election of Sean O’Brien, a vocal critic of the union president who signed off on that contract, James Hoffa, the son of the famous Teamsters firebrand.

The two side had reached a tentative agreement early on safety issues, including equipping more trucks with air conditioning equipment. Under the agreement, UPS said it would add air conditioning to U.S. small delivery vehicles purchased after January 1, 2024.

Profits at UPS have grown more than 140% since the last contract was signed as the arrival of a deadly pandemic drastically transformed the manner in which households get what they need.
Unionized workers argued that were the ones shouldering growth at the Atlanta company and appeared dead set on righting what they saw as a bad contract.

The 24 million packages UPS ships on an average day amounts to about a quarter of all U.S. parcel volume, according to the global shipping and logistics firm Pitney Bowes. As UPS puts it, that’s the equivalent of about 6% of nation’s gross domestic product.

Member voting begins Aug. 3 and concludes Aug. 22.

UPS has the largest private-sector contract with workers in North America and the last breakdown in labor talks a quarter century ago led to a 15-day walkout by 185,000 workers that crippled the company.

If a strike occurred, logistics experts had warned that other shipping companies wouldn’t have had the capacity to handle all the packages that would flow their way. Customers who shop online could have faced more shipping fees and longer waits.

The deal averts a big crisis in shipping just as merchants were in the throes of the back-to-school shopping season, the second largest sales period behind the winter holidays.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a national retail trade group that counts retailers like Best Buy, CVS Health and Kohl’s as members, called the tentative pact “an enormous relief to retailers, who have been navigating the possibility of a strike and the associated uncertainty for weeks.”

“We’ve learned all too well over the last several years the impact supply chain disruptions can have,” the group said in a statement. “We’re grateful that this challenge, which would have had a price tag in the billions of dollars and a long runway for recovery, was avoided.”

Matt Ott contributed to this report from Washington, D.C. and Anne D’Innocenzio contributed from New York City.

source https://time.com/6297556/ups-teamsters-contract-agreement/

5 Reasons Barbenheimer Had a Massive Box Office Weekend

Movies are back. Finally. After weeks of feverish speculation about whether the combined forces of Barbie and Oppenheimer could revive the movie theater business, Barbie earned $337 million worldwide and Oppenheimer brought in another $174 million. Together, the movies delivered the biggest weekend at the box office since Avengers: Endgame dropped in April of 2019. Barbie, in particular, has skyrocketed beyond analysts’ predictions to land the biggest debut of the year so far. Writer-director Greta Gerwig can now also claim the biggest opening weekend for a female director ever.

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But what was so striking about this past weekend wasn’t the cash totals at the box office but the throngs of pink-clad fans flocking to movie theaters that have felt all-too-empty since the pandemic. For once, people didn’t opt to stay home and watch Netflix. Instead, they went out, met up with friends, and maybe even donned a T-shirt depicting a pink A-bomb explosion to celebrate the two films. Thematically, tonally, even in terms of color, Barbie and Oppenheimer could not be more different. But both offered audiences something they were sorely missing: A good time at the movie theater.

Studio executives are surely already picking apart the Barbenheimer phenomenon for lessons about future film rollouts. Maybe there’s something to be gleaned from the double feature mania: More than 200,000 people purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. But this particular phenomenon may not be replicable. Here’s what we learned this weekend.

Read More: How Barbie Came to Life

Barbie and Oppenheimer actually boosted each other’s sales

In the lead up to Barbenheimer, much was made of whether Barbie would pull audiences away from the World War II era biopic or vice versa. Given how weak the box office has been so far this year, surely one movie would cannibalize the other. But it turns out that a rising tide lifts all boats. Every time one movie dropped a trailer, the other seemed to always trend on Twitter.

And six percent of people who bought a ticket to Oppenheimer this past weekend did so because their first choice, Barbie, was sold out, according to a poll conducted by The Quorum as reported by Matt Belloni in Puck. That equals about $5 million of Oppenheimer‘s impressive $80.5 million in domestic ticket sales.

The festive Barbenheimer challenge certainly helped. Individuals who may have been inclined to just see one of the two films may have been cajoled into watching the second by friends, family, or partners who wanted to participate in the double feature. I felt a tinge of FOMO for not watching the movies back-to-back (despite already watching Barbie months ago to report TIME’s cover story on the film) and even tried and failed to snag last-minute tickets to the doll movie to add on to my Oppenheimer experience. All but the first rows were sold out at every convenient theater.

Those Oppenheimer numbers were also significantly boosted by the fact that moviegoers sought out expensive IMAX tickets for the film. Premium ticket prices made up nearly half of all ticket sales for the film its opening weekend, according to Variety. The limited number of IMAX screens also created a sense of scarcity around Oppenheimer tickets—a quick look at Manhattan and Brooklyn’s theaters on Friday night and Saturday afternoon revealed that no seats remained in any 70 mm showings of the film, let alone IMAX screenings screening, save a few front row spots. Seats are regular screenings of both movies were nearly as rare, no doubt further driving demand. No one wants to show up to happy hour drinks this week and not have an opinion on Barbenheimer.

Read More: Why Barbenheimer Mania Is Unstoppable

Women want to see movies too

As I argued in a recent piece, Barbie is a rarity because it courts a primarily female audience, partially by embracing a hot-pink feminine aesthetic. Most big-budget action movies, from Mission: Impossible to Marvel—even the ones starring women—are mostly marketed toward young men. The few marketed toward women are often way too small in budget and scale to ever court this level of success.

Women want to see big splashy movies made by women, for women. And it turns out if you make those movies for women, they will buy tickets too. I don’t know when Hollywood forgot that: Probably around the time they started shoving rom-coms onto streaming services.

Read More: We’re Ignoring the Real Reason Barbie May Dominate the Box Office

That’s not to say men didn’t run to Barbie too. The audience opening weekend was 65% female, which means that men made up a significant portion of the audience. As Barbie producer David Heyman predicted in an interview for TIME’s Barbie cover story in June, Ryan Gosling’s performance as Ken resonated with that demographic. “I think Ryan is undeniable and so affecting in the film. People really care for Ken even when he’s misguided,” he said. “I think a lot of boys and men will find there’s a lot to relate to in Ken as they try to find their place in the world. But it’s all done with such a light touch and such generosity, and Ryan is just, I think, extraordinary.”

Read More: Barbie Is a Movie About Male Fragility. Let’s Dig In

And then there’s there are few current directors who speak directly to women quite like Greta Gerwig does. Her previous films, Lady Bird and Little Women did well at the box office, with the former making $79 million and the latter bringing in $206 million, both impressive numbers given their budgets. But those box office totals are just a fraction of the $337 million Barbie made in her opening weekend. Gerwig’s name was surely a draw to regular Letterboxd users, but the Barbie audience wound up being far more expansive than film buffs. Many of the text messages that poured in over the weekend with friends’ Barbie reviews cited Gerwig’s incredible instincts for truthfully capturing the inner lives of women and the relationships between female characters. “Watch Lady Bird and Little Women next,” I urged.

The larger culture’s discovery of this particular genius reminds me of the moment after Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther became a massive hit, and moviegoers went back to discover Creed and Fruitvale Station. Sometimes it takes a mega blockbuster based on IP for a general audience to discover a creative genius. And sometimes it takes a studio trusting a creative genius to turn its product into art.

Read More: In a Year Marked By Division, Black Panther Director Ryan Coogler Brought People Together

Trust good directors to make good movies based on original ideas

Studios and the media are rushing to draw conclusions about the state of film. Movies like Fast X, The Flash, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underperformed at the box office earlier this year. Does the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer suggest that audiences are hungry for new ideas rather than old IP? Maybe. Superhero fatigue is real. But it’s not that simple.

When trying to dissect why movies like Fast X, The Flash, and Ant-Man failed, I can’t help but recall how those films left me feeling utterly exhausted. It’s not just that I had to expend energy trying to remember what happened in the many other installments. Or that I had to figure out which plot points I needed to retain to enjoy future entries in the Fast & Furious, Marvel, and, DC universes. These entries just weren’t very good movies.

A brief glance at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic confirms that I’m not alone in feeling depleted by sequels. I have specific complaints about those movies, like an over-reliance on poorly-rendered CGI. (Both Barbie and Oppenheimer are beautifully shot and incredibly tactile, a respite from the muddy space landscapes of recent superhero films.) But 10, 15, and 32 movies into these franchises, respectively, it also feels as if their creators are running out of ideas.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse is also a superhero film, and a sequel. It’s currently the No. 2 movie at the domestic box office this year. Why? Because it’s actually a good movie. We’ve seen countless Spider-Man films over the years. We should be sick of this character too. But the animation is innovative and gorgeous. The ideas turn superhero tropes on their heads.

Barbie and Oppenheimer are actually good. I realize that’s a qualitative statement, not a quantitative one. And while most of the reviews for both films have been rather rapturous there are exceptions. (TIME’s own Stephanie Zacharek wasn’t a huge fan of Barbie.) Neither film is perfect. But both are ambitious and engaging. The filmmakers clearly felt passionate about the material and it shows onscreen.

Read More: Why It Took 64 Years to Make a Barbie Movie

Does making a good movie guarantee box office success? Of course not. Plenty of great movies have failed at the box office over the years. Some have become cult classics or found a second life on DVD or on streaming. I will never get over a terrific thriller like Widows faltering at the box office. Blame audiences for simply not turning off Netflix and leaving their houses enough. But it happens all the time. But word-of-mouth buzz can boost a movie significantly. Moviegoers are certainly more likely to want to see a film their friends say is good than one their friends say is bad.

And can good directors totally muck up a big IP project? Definitely. The Eternals and Thor: Love and Thunder faltered even though Chloe Zhao and Taika Waititi are some of the best directors working today. I would argue those films were bogged down with so much internal superhero lore and fan service that their failings can be attributed as much to Marvel as the individual directors.

Nolan and Gerwig seemed to operate largely free from studio machinations in the creation of these films, however unlikely that may sound. Nolan has had a blank check to make almost whatever he wants since The Dark Knight. No other director could get away with shooting a biopic like it was a thriller, hopping across multiple timelines. And in TIME’s Barbie cover story I reported extensively on how, even though executives at Mattel may have had differing ideas of what Barbie should be, ultimately Gerwig says she was allowed to make the movie she envisioned. The results speak for themselves.

Read More: Barbie Is a Movie About Male Fragility. Let’s Dig In

This may be a once-in-a-decade phenomenon

So what can Hollywood learn from the success of Barbenheimer? Perhaps not much. While a good deal of the Barbie marketing was orchestrated by Warner Bros. and Mattel—as one Mattel executive reminded me in an interview, Barbiecore “didn’t just happen”—which movies become social media sensations and which ones falter is a puzzle that will likely never be completely solved.

The people behind Barbie certainly weren’t trying to boost Oppeneheimer‘s ticket sales along with their own. Barbenheimer T-shirts featuring both the doll and the physicist were all generated by fans. And remember the #GentleMinions trend last year? That was unexpectedly born from Gen Zers nostalgic for a movie series from their childhood, not by some genius executive.

Studio attempts to control such narratives often fail. When the Spider-Man villain film Morbius released last year, fans seized onto the catchphrase “It’s Morbin’ Time” (never actually uttered in the film) to poke fun at the poorly reviewed movie. Sony tried and failed to capitalize on the viral moment by re-releasing the film, which then bombed at the box office for a second time.

The marketing for Barbie was inescapable and yet for some reason, we didn’t resent it. The absurdity of its ubiquity maybe won us over. Or we were happy to just share a laugh over the same joke about just how many products companies could turn pink.

Read More: Every Single Barbie Partnership We Could Find

We need communal culture again

If there’s one lesson to be learned here, it’s that we as a society are desperate for communal experiences. To state the obvious, we all really needed a fun weekend at the movies. It’s been a rough few years. The pandemic separated us. So do streaming services that keep us at home, and the increasing stratification of cultural experiences that preclude water cooler moments in the culture.

These movies performed well because audiences remembered for the first time in years why we go to theaters: To enjoy movies with other people. You take photos with your friends. You plan to meet for cocktails between the two legs of your double feature. You laugh when everyone else in the theater laughs, and your seat shakes when every other seat in the theater shakes.

Not since millions of people across the world decided to host Game of Thrones watch parties has a cultural phenomenon felt quite so inescapable. It’s fun to talk to your friends about a movie or TV show you’ve all seen instead of the increasingly fraught topics of politics and pandemic fears and job anxieties. Oppenheimer isn’t exactly a laugh riot. (Neither, for that matter, was Game of Thrones.) But it was a thought-provoking movie we could discuss online and in person—and contrasting it with Barbie was delightful. Maybe the big takeaway should be: Make moviegoing fun again.

source https://time.com/6297101/barbie-oppenheimer-box-office-hollywood/