Katie Englehart writes about the problem of loneliness that afflict a large number of older people in the US.

Older people are more likely to live alone in the United States than in most other places in the world. Nearly thirty per cent of Americans over sixty-five live by themselves, most of them women.
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In 2017, the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness an “epidemic” among Americans of all ages. This warning was partly inspired by new medical research that has revealed the damage that social isolation and loneliness can inflict on a body. The two conditions are often linked, but they are not the same: isolation is an objective state (not having much contact with the world); loneliness is a subjective one (feeling that the contact you have is not enough). Both are thought to prompt a heightened inflammatory response, which can increase a person’s risk for a vast range of pathologies, including dementia, depression, high blood pressure, and stroke. Older people are more susceptible to loneliness; forty-three per cent of Americans over sixty identify as lonely. Their individual suffering is often described by medical researchers as especially perilous, and their collective suffering is seen as an especially awful societal failing.

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Mick West, who has long studied UFOs (or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as the US government calls them) is not impressed with the recent flurry of reports that have given hope to believers that the ‘truth is out there’ that we are being visited by extraterrestrials. (I wrote about a recent New Yorker article that profiled a credulous journalist.) The seeming support, if qualified, given by high profile individuals has added to the expectation that the report that the US government will release later this month will vindicate their beliefs. West says that upon closer examination, these mysterious events invariably turn out to have mundane explanations.
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I was taken by surprise at the announcement that United Airlines had placed an order for 15 new supersonic planes that travel at twice the speed of sound, with the possibility for ordering 35 more from a Denver-based company named Boom. The first passenger-carrying flights are scheduled for 2029. What was even more surprising was the claim that these new jets would be free of some of the problems associated with the Concorde that flew from 1976 until 2003, such as excessive noise production and fuel consumption, and would also be “net-zero carbon from day one” and only use sustainable aviation fuels that are derived from waste or organic sources.
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I do not watch sports much at all and almost never events like gymnastics or figure skating. But I do know that in those events, winners are decided by judges who weigh various subjective factors like the level of difficulty involved in what was attempted and the grace and style with which it was achieved. And this had led to a controversy in women’s gymnastics involving Simone Biles. She seems to have superior athletic abilities and has done things that no woman before has done in competition. So you would think that she would score highly. But in fact the judges seem to actually penalize her for her ambition. The latest example occurred last week when she did what had been thought to be impossible, something that is called the ‘Yurchenko double pike’. You can see her do it here during Olympic training.
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Even though the CDC has said that it is now fine for vaccinated people to gather together without masks, it does feel a little strange for those us who closely followed the guidelines during the height of the pandemic (avoiding indoor settings outside out homes, wearing masks, keeping physical distancing, washing hands frequently, and even using hand sanitizer) to feel completely comfortable relaxing all or even some of those habits.
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