'Not hopeless because of Donald Trump'

Soviet Union-style price controls

Column Science Fiction Film Club La Jetée: Time Travel Through Snapshots of Memory Enigmatic and emotionally affecting, this iconic 1962 short film distills time travel stories down to their deeply human essence… By Kali Wallace | Published on August 21, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share La Jetée (1962) Directed by Chris Marker. Written by Chris Marker. Starring Hélène Châtelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux, and narrated by Jean Négroni. There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) in which Madeleine (Kim Novak) and Scottie (James Stewart) visit a forest of old-growth coastal redwoods. They look at a cross section of a felled tree with historical events marked on the rings. Madeleine points out where she was born and where she “died”—it makes sense in context, or at least as much sense as anything makes in Vertigo—and remarks that the longevity of the trees makes her feel her own mortality more acutely. A scene in Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée both references and echoes that scene from Vertigo. An unnamed time traveler (Davos Hanich) and an unnamed woman (Hélène Châtelain) look at a cross section of a tree trunk on display. The woman is presumed to mention Hitchcock—the narrator tells us that she mentions “an English name”—while they do what the characters in Vertigo did, and indeed what everybody does when faced with a labeled cross section of an ancient tree: marvel at the great span of time and the smallness of a human life within it. The scene in La Jetée is very different from the scene in Vertigo: a crowded Paris street versus a quiet California forest, still black and white photos versus moody and dramatic shades of green. The time traveler can only place himself far outside of the perimeter of the cross section. This is how he explains that he has come from the future—that he is out of time, beyond the reach of this particular snapshot of history. This might be the first time in this column where I feel genuinely at a loss for how to approach writing about this film. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I don’t know that I can say any of it better than the film itself already does. So we’ll start with La Jetée’s director, not that he’s much easier to talk about. Just about everything written about Chris Marker, including his 2012 obituary in The New York Times, describes him as “enigmatic.” When even The New York Times can’t confirm your birthplace or surviving family members, that seems like a pretty fair assessment. It’s not because Marker was reclusive or unknown. He was an extremely prolific and active filmmaker, writer, and artist for decades. He just seems to have had a preference that runs counter to what we expect from auteur directors: he wanted people to talk about his work, not about him or his opinions, to the point where he avoided giving interviews, disliked being in photographs, and would sometimes use his cat’s name and image as an additional pseudonym atop the “Chris Marker” pseudonym. (Note to self: Swap author photo out for picture of my cat for my next book.) Marker is generally associated with the French New Wave cinema movement, although he spent his very long and unclassifiable career making all kinds of things in all kinds of media: political documentaries from around the world, installation art, experimental films, novels, photography, films about filmmaking (such as a documentary about the making of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran), digital multimedia pieces, and more. A number of his works fall into the broadly-defined category that people call “film essays.” For example, Marker’s film Sans Soleil (1983), which is his best-known aside from La Jetée, is an experimental meditation on imagery, memory, and human experiences around the world that combines a fictionalized narration with video recordings and documentary footage. La Jetée sits in a similar position of being difficult to classify, because there isn’t anything else quite like it. It isn’t even quite a film in the sense we normally define the medium; it describes itself as a “photo-roman,” or a photo-novel, and is made up of a series of still photographs rather than moving images. A voice-over narration tells the story accompanied by gorgeous choral music by Trevor Duncan and a few well-chosen sound effects. (In French the narrator is Jean Négroni; the English narration is credited on IMDB and in a few other places to somebody named James Kirk. I’m not really sure where that info comes from, and I will let you make your own jokes about the name James Kirk showing up in relation to a time travel film.) The pier referred to by the title is a viewing deck at Orly Airport in Paris, and that’s where the story begins. The main character is introduced as “the man whose story we are telling,” and this scene at the airport is a vivid memory from his childhood. While visiting the pier, the boy witnesses a sudden, shocking act of violence. This act of violence, along with the woman he saw right before it happened, forms a powerful memory that stays with him through the onset of World War III, through the subsequent nuclear devastation that drives humanity underground, through his time as a prisoner of war. Because, yes, this is another post-World War II film that presumed the inevitability of WWIII and nuclear annihilation; Cold War sci fi filmmaking was nothing if not consistent in this regard. The next world war is shown in grim aerial images of Paris and close-ups of ruined buildings and, eventually, dark underground retreats where people live in shadows and gas masks. We learn that Paris is, as it was in WWII, a city under occupation, and the survivors and their captors live in tunnels beneath the city. The unnamed protagonist is chosen from among the prisoners for an experiment: his captors are trying to travel through time in order to ask the past and the future for help in saving the present. Left unspoken, but still very much obvious, is the twisted irony of the supposed victors in this war desperately wanting to travel through time not to prevent the war, nor to alter what has been done, but to save them from dying right alongside their prisoners in the darkness beneath a radioactive wasteland. The experiments involve forcing the man to focus on particularly intense memories. There has long been a conceptual link between time travel and memory; psychologists, philosophers, and evolutionary biologists have often noted that humanity’s ability to mentally project ourselves in the past and future is a significant cognitive trait. (It’s not a uniquely human trait; research suggests several animal species can do it as well. But it certainly does guide a lot of our human behavior.) The only stated mechanism for time travel in this film is making that mental ability into a physical one. This is where that day at Orly Airport comes in. That event, and particularly the woman he recalls seeing, serves as an anchor to the past. What we see of the experiments are bleakly low-tech: the man’s eyes are covered while he is given injections. He is in agony; these experiments are torture. But, eventually, they work, and the man travels back in time. Before we travel with him, a note about the casting. There aren’t really any actors here. Hélène Châtelain was a screenwriter and director; Davos Hanich was a painter and sculptor. Most interesting of all is the kindly-looking man carrying out the time travel experiments: he is played Jacques Ledoux, the first curator of the Royal Film Archive of Belgium (also known as Cinematek), one of the largest film archives in the world, which has been collecting and preserving films since 1938. Ledoux is specifically remembered in the film world for archiving, conserving, and publicly presenting all kinds of films, including those made by women and people of color, films censored or illegal in some locations, and works that were simply dismissed as too strange or experimental. He firmly believed that film archives should be public resources, not private collections. There is something wryly self-aware about a beloved film archivist in this role—especially knowing that many people in Marker’s 1960s New Wave film circles would be well acquainted with Ledoux, even if those of us watching 62 years later are not. In the film, the time travel is successful, and the man travels back to before WWIII. He meets the woman who anchored his memories, and over several trips they grow close to each other. Their relationship, like everything else in the story, is told through a series of still photographs—with one startlingly effective exception. The only instance of actual video in this film is a brief moment in which the woman wakes in bed. It’s soft and gentle, an achingly intimate break from the moments frozen in time. That small glimpse of motion amidst so much stillness serves to anchor the film for us the same way the memories anchor the time traveler: it makes everything around it feel more real, even if we are left to piece together the images ourselves. But, of course, the time traveler’s happiness cannot last. After one final day with the woman—they visit a natural history museum and wander among the preserved remains of the past—the man is sent by his captors to the future. We see very little of the future, and what we see is rather off-putting; the man meets cold, uncaring people with electronic devices on their heads. They only agree to help when he appeals to their sense of self-preservation. They give him an unlimited power source and send him back to his own time and to his captors. If you’re thinking, wait, giving an unlimited power source to people who respond to “winning” a global nuclear war by torturing prisoners into flinging themselves through time does not actually sound like a good way to achieve peace and harmony for mankind, well, you’re probably right, but it doesn’t matter in the end. Because the man whose story we are telling—that’s the only way we ever know him—is only a prisoner, a laboratory rat, a person easily discarded once he’s fulfilled his purpose. His captors plan to execute him, but the people from the future offer to bring him to the future with them. He asks, instead, to return to the past, where he left the woman behind. And we know where this is going. Here, in 2024, we’re genre savvy; we’re sci fi fans; we’ve already seen 12 Monkeys and dozens of other films and shows with tragic closed time loops. But it’s still effective. We still want there to be a different outcome when the man travels back to find himself on the observation deck at Orly Airport again. We know that he’s doomed. One of his captors has followed him and shoots him as he races to meet the woman—right in front of his younger self, for whom this apparently random murder will become a lynchpin memory throughout his life. Here’s the thing: La Jetée is brilliant. All the pontificating critics and avowed cinephiles are right about this one; its reputation is entirely deserved. It really is that good. It’s bleak and melancholy and grim, but also gentle and intimate and human. It’s easy to understand why it’s beloved by filmmakers, who speak of it with reverence and awe. From a technical standpoint, it plays with the idea of what a film can be—films, after all, are always sequences of still images, but to slow that sequencing down to snapshots and ensnare our attention is a unique way of forcing us to truly look where we might otherwise only glance. And the film never strays from telling a tight, emotional story; rather than leaning into narrative cleverness, it is as plain and clear as it can be, and all the more powerful for it. This is what happened. This is how it looked—but not exactly, never quite exactly, because the snapshots are limited, the perspective edited, the scenes incomplete, the memories only ever rendered in black and white, the same way the world might appear to people who have lived in darkness for too long. I think that’s what I love most about La Jetée, the way it distills time travel stories down to their most uncomplicated essence. There is perhaps nothing more human than obsessing over the past and the future. We are always holding onto the past, both as it happened and as it might have happened, what we didn’t do and what we could have changed. We are always looking toward the future, thinking about what will happen and what might happen, how we might change it and what we can’t predict. La Jetée feels like a capsule of that very human experience, the same way a shoebox full of old photographs and journals and letters might collect memories and hopes and regrets and dreams all in the same place. We carry all of that with us, all the time, and its lovely to watch a film that captures that feeling so well. What do you think of La Jetée? Do you have any favorite moments or scenes? I mentioned briefly but did not discuss the score, but I think Trevor Duncan’s music deserves a lot of credit for establishing and maintaining the tone throughout. Next week: We leave Cold War nuclear fears behind to tell the same story again, this time with bleak mid-90s eco-terrorist nihilism, in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. Watch it on Apple, Microsoft, Spectrum, and as of writing it’s also on Amazon, although sources disagree on how long it will be available there.[end-mark] The post <i>La Jetée</i>: Time Travel Through Snapshots of Memory appeared first on Reactor.

Sourdough making is an art that hinges on the health and vitality of your sourdough starter. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced baker, understanding how to care for your starter properly is crucial to achieving delicious, consistent results. Therefore, this guide will cover the essential steps to maintain and nourish your sourdough starter, ensuring it remains active and robust. What is a Sourdough Starter? A sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that houses a community of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. These microorganisms ferment the dough, causing it to rise and giving sourdough its characteristic flavor and texture. Thus, the key to successful sourdough making lies in taking care and feeding the starter. Creating Your Sourdough Starter If you don't have a starter yet, you can easily create one using just flour and water. Mix equal flour and water in a jar, stir well, and cover loosely. Next, set the mixture aside at room temperature. Feed it daily by discarding half and adding fresh flour and water. After about a week, the starter should be bubbly and have a pleasant tangy aroma, indicating it's ready for baking. Feeding Schedule for Sourdough Making Regular feedings keep your starter active and healthy. Here’s a simple feeding routine to follow: Daily Feedings: If you bake frequently, daily feedings are ideal. Start by discarding half of the starter, then add equal parts of water and flour. Mix well and let it sit at room temperature. Weekly Feedings: For those who bake less often, store your starter in the refrigerator and feed it once a week. Take it out, let it come to room temperature, discard half, and then add fresh flour and water. Maintaining Hydration Levels in Sourdough Making Consistency is key in sourdough making. Most starters are maintained at a 1:1 ratio of flour to water by weight, resulting in a 100% hydration starter. This balance ensures the starter remains active and easy to work with. If the starter is too thick, it may not ferment properly, while an overly thin starter can become watery and less vigorous. Temperature Control for Sourdough Making Temperature significantly affects your starter's activity. Warmer temperatures speed up fermentation, while cooler ones slow it down. Therefore, keeping your starter at a consistent room temperature is important. On the other hand, if you want to slow down the activity, refrigerate the starter, which is perfect for less frequent baking. Signs of a Healthy Sourdough Starter A healthy starter should be bubbly, have a pleasant, tangy smell, and double in size within a few hours of feeding. Look for these signs to know it's ready for baking: Bubbles: Indicates active fermentation. Pleasant Aroma: A tangy, slightly yeasty smell. Growth: Doubles in size a few hours after feeding. Want more tips to perfect your sourdough making? Explore our comprehensive guide by visiting our Baking Tips section. Troubleshooting Common Issues in Sourdough Making Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your starter might behave unexpectedly. Here are some troubleshooting tips: No Rise: Ensure regular feedings and maintain the correct hydration levels. Additionally, monitor the temperature to ensure it’s conducive to fermentation. Bad Smell: A foul odor can indicate spoilage. If this occurs, it’s best to discard the starter and start again. Mold: Visible mold means it's also time to start over. Make sure to clean the container thoroughly before beginning a new batch. Enhancing Flavor and Texture in Sourdough Making To deepen the flavor and texture of your sourdough, consider these tips: Whole Grain Flour: Incorporate whole grain flour into your feedings to boost the starter's activity and flavor. Autolyse Method: Mix flour and water and let it sit before adding the starter. This process enhances gluten development and dough texture. Long Fermentation: Extend the fermentation time to develop more complex flavors. Reviving a Dormant Sourdough Starter If your starter has been neglected, it may appear lifeless. With a bit of care, however, you can revive it: Clear any discolored liquid or crusty parts. Feed the remaining starter with fresh flour and water. Repeat the feeding process over several days until it becomes bubbly and active again. Common Myths and Misconceptions in Sourdough Making There are several myths surrounding sourdough starters. Myth 1: You Must Discard Half of Your Starter Every Time You Feed It Many believe that discarding half of the starter during feedings is wasteful and unnecessary. However, this step is crucial to maintaining a healthy balance of yeast and bacteria in the starter. It helps control the growth of these microorganisms, ensuring the starter doesn’t become too acidic or overrun with unwanted bacteria. Myth 2: Your Starter Must Be Fed at the Same Time Every Day Some think that feeding the starter at the same exact time every day is essential for its health. While consistency is important, the timing doesn’t have to be exact. As long as you feed your starter within a general time frame, it will thrive. Myth 3: Sourdough Starters Can Only Be Kept at Room Temperature There's a misconception that sourdough starters must always be kept at room temperature. In reality, storing your starter in the refrigerator is perfectly fine, especially if you don't bake often. Refrigeration slows down the fermentation process, allowing you to maintain your starter with less frequent feedings. Myth 4: A Strong Sourdough Flavor Means a Healthier Starter Some bakers believe that a strong, tangy sourdough flavor indicates a healthier starter. While a tangy flavor is a characteristic of sourdough, it doesn't necessarily mean your starter is healthier. The flavor profile can be adjusted based on fermentation time and feeding frequency. Myth 5: Sourdough Starters Are Difficult to Maintain There’s a myth that maintaining a sourdough starter is complex and time-consuming. In reality, with a basic understanding and regular feeding routine, caring for a starter becomes second nature. Starters are quite resilient and can recover from neglect with proper revival techniques. Tools and Equipment for Sourdough Making The right tools can make maintaining your starter easier. Use a clear glass jar to visually monitor the activity, a digital scale for accurate measurements, and a flexible spatula for thorough mixing. These tools help you maintain consistency and precision, key factors in successful sourdough making. For more on essential tools, visit our Sourdough Equipment Guide. Environmental Factors in Sourdough Making Environmental factors such as humidity and temperature can significantly affect your sourdough starter. High humidity makes the starter wetter, while dry conditions make it thicker. Therefore, adjusting the flour-to-water ratio to maintain the desired consistency is important. Additionally, consider any drafts or temperature fluctuations that could impact fermentation. Experimenting with Flavors in Sourdough Making Once you’ve mastered the basics, experimenting with different flours can yield exciting results. For example, rye flour can produce a more vigorous starter with a unique flavor profile. Adding small amounts of different grains can also introduce subtle flavor variations, enhancing your bread's complexity. Community and Resources for Sourdough Making Joining sourdough communities online or in person can provide additional support and inspiration. These groups often share tips, troubleshoot issues, and celebrate successes together. Books and blogs on sourdough baking are valuable resources for expanding your knowledge and honing your skills. For instance, check out King Arthur Baking Company for recipes and tips, or visit the Sourdough Library for inspiration. Bake Your Best Sourdough Loaf Yet! Mastering sourdough starter care is a rewarding journey that enhances your baking skills and results in delightful bread. Following these essential tips ensures your starter remains healthy and active, ready to create delicious sourdough loaves. Patience and consistency are key. Over time, you'll become adept at reading your starter's needs and adjusting your care routine. P.S. Have you nailed the perfect sourdough loaf? We’re excited to hear about your baking adventures! Also, don't forget to check out our Advanced Sourdough Techniques for more expert tips.

A Nation of Olivers Without a Bowl for Their Gruel

Green Rude Squeal: Ford Sounds Retreat on EVs, Writes Off $1.9 Billion

Scientists believe that humpback whales should join the esteemed rank of tool users, along with Homo sapiens, apes, crows, and a variety of other super-smart creatures. Unlike these other clever characters, humpbacks are particularly special because they create the tools themselves and ingeniously adapt them to suit their needs.The tools in question are “bubble nets” produced by the whale’s blowhole that are used to herd and catch krill. In a new study, researchers show how humpback whales in Alaska skillfully manipulate their unique bubble nets in various ways to maximize their food intake. “Many animals use tools to help them find food, but very few actually create or modify these tools themselves,” Professor Lars Bejder, co-lead author of the study and Director of the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, said in a statement. “This little-studied foraging behavior is wholly unique to humpback whales. It’s so incredible to see these animals in their natural habitat, performing behaviors that only a few people ever get to see,” explains co-author and MMRP researcher William Gough. To learn about this incredible behavior, the researchers headed to the ocean off Southeast Alaska and monitored the whales using non-invasive suction-cup tags on whales and drone videography. The wealth of data showed that the behavior is surprisingly complex – it appears the humpbacks can accurately gauge the size of the krill swarm and fine-tune their bubble blowing to optimize each catch.            “These whales skillfully blow bubbles in patterns that form nets with internal rings, actively controlling details like the number of rings, the size and depth of the net, and the spacing between bubbles. This method lets them capture up to seven times more prey in a single feeding dive without using extra energy. This impressive behavior places humpback whales among the rare group of animals that both make and use their own tools for hunting,” Bejder explained.Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are one of the largest animals on the planet, reaching lengths of up to 18.3 meters (60 feet). The species are baleen whales, the same as other giants like blue whales and fin whales.Their population numbers were decimated by the whaling industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, although have managed to bounce back in recent decades. Still, the species faces a slew of threats, from climate change and habitat loss to vessel strikes and pollution.The good news, the researchers say, is that they are clearly inventive and intelligent animals that are relatively well-prepared to face the challenges ahead. “What I find exciting is that humpbacks have come up with complex tools allowing them to exploit prey aggregations that otherwise would be unavailable to them. It is this behavioral flexibility and ingenuity that I hope will serve these whales well as our oceans continue to change,” notes Andy Szabo, co-lead study author and Executive Director of the Alaska Whale Foundation.The new study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

With the recent declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the clade I mpox outbreak originating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has become a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, it’s easy to get a spooky feeling of déjà-vu. Just over four years ago, the same agency was describing COVID-19 as the “most severe” health emergency ever.But it’s important to remember that we’re talking about two very different diseases – mpox is not another COVID-19. There are some very important reasons why the WHO has called for another emergency response, but we are not seeing a repeat of the early months of 2020. And here’s why.Mpox and SARS-CoV-2 are different types of virusesThis might sound obvious, but it’s a good place to start. Mpox and SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent behind COVID-19, belong to two very different families of viruses.SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus. It’s a big family of viruses that mostly only cause mild cold-like illnesses in humans, but SARS-CoV-2 joins two others that can cause much more serious disease: SARS-CoV, the original SARS virus, and MERS-CoV, which causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped virus with a single-stranded RNA genome. It only encodes a small number of proteins, and just four that are necessary to maintain the structure of the virus. One of these is the spike protein, which has become infamous in the last few years as the means by which the virus gains access to our cells. The spike protein is also the key target of the mRNA vaccines that altered the course of the COVID pandemic. Mpox, on the other hand, is a poxvirus. Their internal structure is quite different from that of coronaviruses: their genomes are double stranded DNA, not RNA, and they have much greater complexity. They do also have an outer envelope, but it has a large number of proteins that can allow them to enter multiple cell types. COVID-19 took the world by surprise, but humankind has a lot more experience dealing with poxviruses. Smallpox remains the only human disease to have been completely eradicated, thanks to vaccines, but it used to kill millions of people every year. Thankfully, no strain of mpox we’ve yet seen has anything like that kind of case fatality rate.   Mpox and SARS-CoV-2 are spread differentlyAs you might expect, these two very different types of viruses are also spread in different ways. We’ve only been dealing with SARS-CoV-2 for a relatively short amount of time, and our understanding of how it spreads has been developing as we’ve been trying to figure out how best to respond to the threat. Early in the pandemic, many suggested that contaminated surfaces were a key point of transmission, leading to a large emphasis on handwashing, cleaning, and sanitizing (remember wiping down all your groceries?). Edicts like the “2-meter rule” for social distancing aimed at limiting transmission via close contact with infected people through respiratory droplets. Critics at the time believed that this shifted focus away from the role of airborne transmission, a debate that was complicated by mixed messaging around what “airborne transmission” actually meant. The WHO staunchly maintained that COVID was not airborne for much of 2020.  Now, almost five years in, we understand a lot more about how COVID spreads and we know that it can linger in the air, and be transmitted over greater distances than many initially thought. Ventilation and air filtration are now considered important elements of a COVID-19 mitigation strategy.  For mpox, the situation is rather simpler. The disease spreads through close contact with an infected person, which includes sexual contact, and occasionally via contaminated objects and surfaces. Someone can be considered infectious until all of their mpox sores have completely healed, but the virus can persist on surfaces for some time if they’re not disinfected.One bit of good news is that as enveloped viruses both mpox and SARS-CoV-2 should be susceptible to most hand sanitizers, if soap and water are not available. Mpox and SARS-CoV-2 cause very different diseasesYou’re probably sensing a theme here. Mpox and COVID-19 are very different diseases with different risk profiles, and it’s important that health authorities respond to each one appropriately.Scientists are learning more every day about what the SARS-CoV-2 virus does once it gets inside the body. What we do know is that multiple organ systems can be affected, which helps explain the wide variety of symptoms people experience. Not everyone exposed to the virus gets any symptoms at all, of course, and human challenge studies have helped shed some light on how certain people’s immune systems seem better at fending it off. There’s also the issue of long COVID, where some people develop lingering health issues even after a comparatively mild initial infection. There are so many questions yet to be answered, and we’re going to be seeing more new research findings for years to come.Mpox has been around longer, and thus we have a better understanding of how it operates. The virus can enter the body via the mouth, nose, or through breaks in the skin. This point of entry is known as the inoculation site, and the virus begins to replicate here before spreading to the lymph nodes. It gains access to other organs via the lymphatic system, during an incubation period that can last up to 21 days in some cases.The initial symptoms generally include a fever, headache, and muscle pain – quite non-specific, and hard to pin down as mpox. This lasts a couple of days before the characteristic rash starts to appear, as lesions that can affect any area of the skin and also the inside of the mouth and throat. The blisters can be itchy or painful, and may persist for up to four weeks.For both diseases, treatment for more severe cases can include antiviral medications and hospitalization, but for most people, the focus is on relieving the symptoms while the disease runs its course.There’s no question that the arrival of vaccines changed everything with COVID. They don’t completely prevent someone from becoming infected with the virus – although they do offer a reasonable degree of protection on that score – but they’ve made a huge difference when it comes to severe disease and death. There are currently two approved vaccines for mpox as well, and authorities are trying to get more doses into the worst-affected regions. Public health messaging that explains who is at risk and how eligible people can access a vaccine is also key. The bottom lineWhen you get right down to it, there are few similarities between mpox and COVID-19. We’re not walking into another lockdown situation. The WHO’s Europe regional director Dr Hans Kluge recently spoke at a press conference, confirming that this time around, we have many of the tools we need to stop the spread of mpox – not least because we've just experienced an outbreak affecting dozens of countries, albeit with a less lethal variant of the virus, beginning in 2022. “Two years ago, we controlled mpox in Europe thanks to the direct engagement with the most affected communities of men who have sex with men,” Dr Kluge said, as reported by the BBC. “We can, and must, tackle mpox together – across regions and continents.”But there was also a warning mixed in. “Will we choose to put the systems in place to control and eliminate mpox globally or will we enter another cycle of panic, then neglect?” Dr Kluge asked. Mpox is not COVID – but that doesn’t mean we can or should ignore the lessons that COVID has taught us as we mobilize against the latest threat to global public health. 

The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission is on its way to Jupiter, but to get there it needs some help in the form of multiple gravity assists as it flies by various planets. Yesterday it successfully completed its first flyby, but it was not your standard gravitational assist maneuver. For the first time ever, a spacecraft used two celestial bodies in rapid succession to change its speed, and it was the first-ever flyby of the Earth and the Moon.The first half of the lunar-Earth flyby was carried out on Monday, August 19, with Juice snapping some amazing photos of the Moon as it went by. Yesterday it successfully completed the second leg, the flyby of Earth, sending more photos of our pale blue dot home. JUICE and the Moon right after the historic flyby on August 19, 2024.Image Credit: ESA/Juice/JMC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughreanJUICE needs to be traveling pretty fast to get to Jupiter but the lunar-Earth gravitational assist (LEGA) actually slowed the spacecraft down to put it on a Venus-bound trajectory. Once there it will get the initial substantial speed boost it needs, using the plenty for another gravity assist in August 2025. It will then be followed by two flybys of Earth, one in September 2026 and a final in January 2029. It is due to reach Jupiter and its icy moons in 2031.It was a daring maneuver but it saved JUICE a lot of fuel; so much so that it's actually opened up the possibility of carrying out a much closer study of Ganymede, the largest Moon of Jupiter, and the ultimate object of study of the mission.Earth snapped by Juice as it carried out a flyby on August 20, 2024.Image Credit: ESA/Juice/JMC Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughreanWhile the focus of this maneuver was to get into the right orbit at the right speed, the LEGA allowed the team to take the pictures of the Moon and Earth as well as test out some instruments that could not have been tested in realistic space conditions before.“The timing and location of this double flyby allow us to thoroughly study the behaviour of Juice’s instruments,” Dr Claire Vallat, Juice Operations Scientist, said in a statement.“It happens early enough in Juice’s journey that we can use the data to prepare the instruments for arrival at Jupiter. And given how well we know the physical properties of Earth, the Moon, and the surrounding space environment, it’s also the ideal location to understand how the instruments respond to a real target.”More high-resolution photos of the Moon and Earth taken by Juice’s scientific camera, JANUS are expected to be downlinked and shared in the coming weeks.