#he's fowking gone....

[cockinator3000]

i miss jung jinsung

[phroyd]

When pathologist Amy Rapkiewicz began the grim process of opening up the coronavirus dead to learn how their bodies went awry, she found damage to the lungs, kidneys and liver consistent with what doctors had reported for months.

But something was off.

Rapkiewicz, who directs autopsies at NYU Langone Health, noticed that some organs had far too many of a special cell rarely found in those places. She had never seen that before, yet it seemed vaguely familiar. She raced to her history books and — in a eureka moment — found a reference to 1960s report on a patient with dengue fever.

In dengue, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, she learned, the virus appeared to destroy these cells, which produce platelets, leading to uncontrolled bleeding. The novel coronavirus seemed to amplify their effect, causing dangerous clotting.

She was struck by the parallels: “Covid-19 and dengue sound really different, but the cells that are involved are similar.”

Autopsies have long been a source of breakthroughs in understanding new diseases, from HIV/AIDS and Ebola to Lassa fever — and the medical community is counting on them to do the same for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. With a vaccine probably many months away in even the most optimistic scenarios, autopsies are becoming a critical source of information for research into possible treatments.

When the pandemic hit the United States in late March, many hospital systems were too overwhelmed trying to save lives to spend too much time delving into the secrets of the dead. But by late May and June, the first large batch of reports — from patients ranging in age from 32 to 90 years who died at a half-dozen institutions — were published in quick succession. The investigations have confirmed some of our early hunches of the disease, refuted others — and opened up new mysteries about the pathogen that has killed more than 500,000 people worldwide.

Among the most important findings, consistent across several studies, is confirmation the virus appears to attack the lungs the most ferociously. They also found the pathogen in parts of the brain, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract and spleen and in the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, as some had previously suspected. Researchers also found widespread clotting in many organs.

But the brain and heart yielded surprises.

“It’s about what we are not seeing,” said Mary Fowkes, an associate professor of pathology who is part of a team at Mount Sinai Health that has performed autopsies on 67 covid-19 patients.

Given widespread reports about neurological symptoms related to the coronavirus, Fowkes said, she expected to find virus or inflammation — or both — in the brain. But there was very little. When it comes to the heart, many physicians warned for months about a cardiac complication they suspected was myocarditis, an inflammation or hardening of the heart muscle walls — but autopsy investigators were stunned that they could find no evidence of the condition.

Another unexpected finding, pathologists said, is that oxygen deprivation of the brain and the formation of blood clots may start early in the disease process. That could have major implications for how people with covid-19 are treated at home, even if they never need to be hospitalized.

The early findings come as new U.S. infections have overtaken even the catastrophic days of April, amid what some critics say is a premature easing of social distancing restrictions in some states, mainly in the South and West. A new modeling study has estimated that about 22 percent of the population — or 1.7 billion people worldwide, including 72 million in the United States — may be vulnerable to severe illness if infected with the virus. According to the analysis published this month in Lancet Global Health, about 4 percent of those people would require hospitalization — underscoring the stakes as autopsy investigators continue their hunt for clues.

Microclots in lungs

At their best, autopsies can reconstruct the natural course of the disease, but the process for a new and highly infectious disease is tedious and requires meticulous work. To protect pathologists and avoid sending virus into the air, they must use special tools to harvest organs and then dunk them in a disinfecting solution for several weeks before they are studied. They must then section each organ and collect small bits of tissue for study under different types of microscopes.

One of the first American investigations to be made public, on April 10, was out of New Orleans. The patient was a 44-year-old man who had been treated at LSU Health. Richard Vander Heide remembers cutting the lung and discovering what were probably hundreds or thousands of microclots.

“I will never forget the day,” recalled Vander Heide, who has been performing autopsies since 1994. “I said to the resident, ‘This is very unusual.’ I had never seen something like this.”

But as he moved onto the next patient and the next, Vander Heide saw the same pattern. He was so alarmed, he said, that he shared the paper online before submitting it to a journal so the information could be used immediately by doctors. The findings caused a stir at many hospitals and influenced some doctors to start giving blood thinners to all covid-19 patients. It is now common practice. The final, peer-reviewed version involving 10 patients was subsequently published in the Lancet in May.

Other lung autopsies — including those described in papers from Italy of 38 patients, a Mount Sinai Health study on 25 patients, a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and German researchers on seven and an NYU Langone Health study on seven — have reported similar findings of clotting.

Most recently, a study out last month in the Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, found abnormal clotting in the heart, kidney and liver, as well as the lungs of seven patients, leading the authors to suggest this may be a major cause of the multiple-organ failure in covid-19 patients.

Heart cells

The next organ studied up close was the heart. One of the most frightening early reports about the coronavirus from China was that a significant percentage of hospitalized patients — up to 20 to 30 percent — appeared to have myocarditis that could lead to sudden death. The condition involves the thickening of the muscle of the heart so that it can no longer pump efficiently.

Classic myocarditis is typically easy to identify in autopsies, pathologists say. It occurs when the body perceives the tissue to be foreign and attacks it. In that situation, there would be large dead zones in the heart, and the muscle cells known as myocytes would be surrounded by infection-fighting cells known as lymphocytes. But in the autopsy samples taken so far, the dead myocytes were not surrounded by lymphocytes — leaving researchers scratching their heads.

Fowkes, from Mount Sinai, and her colleague, Clare Bryce, whose work on 25 hearts has been published online but not yet peer reviewed, said they saw some “very mild” inflammation of the surface of the heart but nothing that looked like myocarditis.

NYU Langone’s Rapkiewicz, who studied seven hearts, was struck by the abundance in the heart of rare cells called megakaryocytes. The cells, which produce platelets that control clotting, typically exist only in the bone marrow and lungs. When she went back to the lung samples from the coronavirus patients, she discovered those cells were too plentiful there, too.

“I could not remember a case before where we saw that,” she said. “It was remarkable they were in the heart.”

Vander Heide, from LSU, who reported preliminary findings on 10 patients in April and has a more in-depth paper with more case studies under review at a journal, explained that “when you look at a covid heart, you don’t see what you’d expect.”

He said a couple of patients he performed autopsies on had gone into cardiac arrest in the hospital, but when he examined them, the primary damage was in the lungs — not the heart.

Brain grid

Of all the coronavirus’s manifestations, its impact on the brain has been among the most vexing. Patients have reported a host of neurological impairments, including reduced ability to smell or taste, altered mental status, stroke, seizures — even delirium.

An early study from China, published in the BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, in March, found 22 percent of the 113 patients had experienced neurological issues ranging from excessive sleepiness to coma — conditions typically grouped together as disorders of consciousness. In June, researchers in France reported that 84 percent of patients in intensive care had neurological problems, and a third were confused or disoriented at discharge. Also this month, those in the United Kingdom found that 57 of 125 coronavirus patients with a new neurological or psychiatric diagnosis had experienced a stroke due to a blood clot in the brain, and 39 had an altered mental state.

Based on such data and anecdotal reports, Isaac Solomon, a neuropathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, set out to systematically investigate where the virus might be embedding itself in the brain. He conducted autopsies of 18 consecutive deaths, taking slices of key areas: the cerebral cortex (the gray matter responsible for information processing), thalamus (modulates sensory inputs), basal ganglia (responsible for motor control) and others. Each was divided into a three-dimensional grid. Ten sections were taken from each and studied.

He found snippets of virus in only some areas, and it was unclear whether they were dead remnants or active virus when the patient died. There were only small pockets of inflammation. But there were large swaths of damage due to oxygen deprivation. Whether the deceased were longtime intensive care patients or people who died suddenly, Solomon said, the pattern was eerily similar.

“We were very surprised,” he said.

When the brain does not get enough oxygen, individual neurons die, and that death is permanent. To a certain extent, people’s brains can compensate, but at some point, the damage is so extensive that different functions start to degrade.

On a practical level, Solomon said, if the virus is not getting into the brain in large amounts, that helps with drug development because treatment becomes trickier when it is pervasive, for instance, in some patients with West Nile or HIV. Another takeaway is that the findings underscore the importance of getting people on supplementary oxygen quickly to prevent irreversible damage.

Solomon, whose work was published as a June 12 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, said the findings suggest the damage had been happening over a longer period of time, which makes him wonder about the virus’s effect on people who are less ill. “The big lingering question is what happens to people who survive covid,” he said. “Is there a lingering effect on the brain?”

The team from Mount Sinai Health, which took tissue findings from 20 brains, was also perplexed not to find a lot of virus or inflammation. However, the group noted in a paper that the widespread presence of tiny clots was “striking.”

“If you have one blood clot in the brain, we see that all the time. But what we’re seeing is, some patients are having multiple strokes in blood vessels that are in two or even three different territories,” Fowkes said.

Rapkiewicz said it is too early to know whether the newest batch of autopsy findings can be translated into treatment changes, but the information has opened new avenues to explore. One of her first calls after noticing the unusual platelet-producing cells was to Jeffrey Berger, a cardiac specialist at NYU who runs a National Institutes of Health-funded lab that focuses on platelets.

Berger said the autopsies suggest anti-platelet medications, in addition to blood thinners, may be helpful to stem the effects of covid-19. He has pivoted a major clinical trial looking at optimal doses of blood thinners to examine that question as well.

“It’s only one piece of a very big puzzle, and we have a lot more to learn,” he said. “But if we can prevent significant complications and if more patients can survive the infection, that changes everything.”

Phroyd

[rose-lily-hale]

Pweface

I'd nevew given much thought tuwu how I wouwd die — though I'd had weason enough in the wast few months — but even if I had, I wouwd nowt have imagined iwt wike thiws.

I stawed without bweathing acwoss the wong woom, intwo the dawk eyes of the huntew, awnd he wooked pweasantwy bawck at me.

Suwewy iwt was a good way tuwu die, in the pwace of someone ewse, someone I woved. Nobwe, even. Thawt ought tuwu count fow something.

I knew thawt if i'd nevew gone tuwu fowks, I wouwdn't be facing death now. But, tewwified as I was, I couwdn't bwing mysewf tuwu wegwet the decision. Whewn wife offews uwu a dweam so faw beyond any of youw expectations, iwt's nowt weasonabwe tuwu gwieve whewn iwt cowmes tuwu an end.

The huntew smiwed in a fwiendwy way as he sauntewed fowwawd tuwu kiww me.

[thevividgreenmoss]

The wealth that is the subject of the first sentence is not an a-historical or trans-historical category, but it is a category that pushes beyond its own historical specification. It does not stand outside the predicate, it is not external to the collection of commodities, but it does stand in-against-and-beyond it. It is not just an otherness that is announced in the opening words[10], but an antagonism, an antagonism that pushes beyond itself. The richness to which we are introduced in these opening words is not the richness of an a-historical humanism, but a richness that stands in historically specific revolt against its own limitation.

Wealth, the richness of human creativity, stands then as subject, as restless, unsatisfied subject. As proud subject, the first words of the first chapter. Wealth dares, wealth roars. With indignation certainly, with power perhaps. This turns on its head much of left-wing thought, which takes poverty, not richness, as its starting point. The first sentence of Capital makes us think otherwise: it is not because we are poor that we fight, but because we are rich. It is not because we are poor that we struggle against capitalism, but because “the absolute working-out of [our] creative potentialities” is frustrated, because “the absolute movement of [our] becoming” is leashed. It is our richness that raises its head and roars that it will break its bonds.

The predicate

Wealth, richness, appears in capitalist societies as “an immense collection of commodities”. The commodity, Marx tells us at the beginning of the second paragraph, “is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another” (translation by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, (Marx 1867/1965, 35)).[11] The commodity is an object outside us, a thing produced for sale.

Marx is taking us into the narrow confines of a dungeon. There is a dramatic transition in this first sentence from a world of richness (humanity “in the absolute movement of becoming”) to a world composed of an immense collection of objects outside us. Marx is taking us by the hand and leading us in to the horrific world of political economy. Dramatically, we are reminded of the subtitle of the book: A Critique of Political Economy. It is the tension between the subject and the predicate of this first sentence that is the basis of the critique. Once we have walked through this dire passage from wealth to commodities, then Marx can say, as he does in the second sentence, “Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.”[12] But that does not make the commodity the starting point of Marx’s analysis. It is wealth – that richness that stands in-against-and-beyond the world of commodities - that is the starting point. It is only after we have gone down in to the narrow, dark world of political economy that the commodity becomes the point of departure. If we forget the world outside, the world of richness, then we forget ourselves, our critique, our opposition, the real starting point.

The passage in the first sentence is a narrowing, a reduction of the richness of the world to the world of political economy, of commodities. Marx is often accused of being guilty of this narrowing, of having a purely economic view of the world, of leaving out of account the richness of life and the multiplicity of forms of oppression. It is clear from the first sentence that nothing could be further from the truth. His critique of political economy is not just a critique of the different theories of the economists, it is a critique of the economic as such, a critique of the world that reduces human richness to the economic. This is precisely the point made at the end of the passage from the Grundrisse previously cited: “In bourgeois economics – and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds – this complete working-out of the human content appears as a complete emptying-out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end.” It is not Marx but the world’s reduction of everything to the economic that cuts out that which does not fit in to the logic of the commodity.

The movement from wealth to commodities is a movement in to a law-bound world, a world of tight social cohesion, a world that can be understood as a totality, a world of synthesis. There is no inherent reason why the production of wealth should follow any set of laws. The absolute working out of our creative potentialities can be followed in many different directions, for different motives, at different rhythms. This is not so with commodities: they are produced for exchange and the need to exchange them imposes the need to produce them with labour that is socially necessary, and this creates a whole world of functional necessities, of social determinations that operate as laws independent of any conscious control. Marx examines these laws in Capital, but from a vantage point that is against and beyond this law-bound totality.

The movement from wealth to commodities is also the movement to a quantifiable and quantified world. The little addendum to the predicate, “its unit being a single commodity” (or in Fowkes’ translation: “the individual commodity appears as its elementary form”) acquires significance. If one thinks of wealth as “the absolute working-out of [human] creative potentialities”, then it makes no sense at all to think of it being subdivided into units or individual pieces of wealth. It is when this wealth is reduced to a collection of objects outside us that it becomes possible to speak of its subdivision into units: indeed not only possible, but the subdivision of this wealth into interchangeable units or individual commodities is an essential part of the passage from the subject of the sentence to its predicate.[13]

John Holloway, Read Capital: The First Sentence, Or, Capital starts with Wealth, not with the Commodity

[dipulb3]

New homes cost $36,000 more because of an epic shortage of lumber

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/new-homes-cost-36000-more-because-of-an-epic-shortage-of-lumber/

New homes cost $36,000 more because of an epic shortage of lumber

Random-length lumber futures hit a record high of $1,615 on Tuesday, a staggering sevenfold gain from the low in early April 2020. That’s a big deal because lumber is the most substantial supply that home builders buy.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said Brant Chesson, the president and CEO of Homes By Dickerson, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based home builder.

“It’s absolutely contributing to a shortage of housing,” he said.

‘This can only last for so long’

And because the housing market is on fire, the lumber shortage is costing many prospective home buyers even more money.

Surging lumber prices alone have pushed the price of an average new single-family home $35,872 higher, according to an analysis by the National Association of Home Builders.

“While lumber prices have gone up, we have been able to pass it on to the consumer with higher prices for homes,” Jeffrey Mezger, the CEO of KB Home (KBH), told Appradab Business. “And there is still far more demand than there is supply.”

But builders can’t jack up prices forever.

“This can only last for so long before affordability becomes pinched and demand pauses,” John Lovallo, lead home builders analyst at Bank of America, said in an email.

The median sale price of existing homes surged by a record 17.2% in March to $329,100 — the highest since the National Association of Realtors began tracking prices in 1999.

Lumber is so hot, it’s being stolen

Independent builders, which lack the scale advantages of large construction companies like KB Home, are already feeling the pain.

Tom McCarthy can’t finish building a home in Bergen County, New Jersey because of the lumber shortage.

“There are pieces of wood that we can’t find,” said McCarthy, a real estate broker with the Chen Agency who also builds homes with his father on the side.

McCarthy estimates the cost of lumber for the home will hit $70,000, nearly double the cost of building the exact same home in a nearby town just eight months ago.

Some renters are also paying the price. The NAHB estimates that the lumber price spike has added nearly $12,000 to the market value of an average newly built multifamily home — translating to households paying an extra $119 per month to rent a new apartment.

The shortage — and price boom — is so extreme that builders report having lumber and other raw materials stolen from their construction sites.

“Theft has been huge in our market. We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen during the year,” said Chesson, the North Carolina builder.

Saw mills can’t keep up with demand

Today’s shortage has roots in the previous housing boom. New home construction crashed after the housing bubble popped in the mid-2000s. That made sense because the market was badly oversupplied. But the downturn also drove countless sawmills out of business, leaving the industry unprepared for today’s surge in demand.

And then Covid happened. Sawmills eased output last spring in anticipation of another bust and as they grappled with heath restrictions.

“There was a great fear among sawmills to prepare for a downturn. When home buying surged, they could not open up capacity quickly enough,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

At the same time, demand for lumber is also being driven by a surge of renovations and expansions of existing homes.

But contractors are having trouble finding and paying for lumber, creating another headache for consumers.

“It’s a cost that our members can no longer shoulder the burden on,” said David Pekel, CEO of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. “They have to pass the cost on to the homeowner.”

Industry calls on Biden to act

The lumber shortage is just the latest example of how the rapid economic recovery from the pandemic is pushing supply chains to the limit. Manufacturers are desperate for workers. Smartphone, auto and appliance production is being sidelined by a shortage of computer chips. And the lack of tanker truck drivers has raised the specter of gas stations running on empty this summer.

In the case of lumber, the shortage is being amplified by tariffs.

In one of the first shots fired during the Trump trade wars, the previous administration hit Canada in April 2017 with tariffs of up to 24% on lumber. Late last year, the Trump administration slashed those tariffs to 9%.

The home building industry is now urging President Joe Biden to take further action. In a statement to Appradab Business, NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke called on the Biden administration to “temporarily remove” the 9% tariff on Canadian lumber “to help ease price volatility.”

Fowke also urged the White House to “bring together interested stakeholders to hold a summit on lumber and building material supply chain issues to identify the causes and solutions for high prices and supply constraints.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Sharp fall’ in lumber prices ahead?

The good news is that industry executives expect lumber production to catch up with demand — eventually.

Samuel Burman, an assistant commodities economist, predicted in a recent note to clients that there will be a “sharp fall” in lumber prices over the next 18 months.

“The mills are coming back online. I think we’re past the worst of it in terms of supply availability,” said Mezger, the KB Home CEO.

Let’s hope so, because the market desperately needs more supply.

“We have a housing shortage in America. The way to relieve that shortage is to build more homes,” said NAR’s Yun. “The housing market has created haves and have-nots. Home builders are smiling big, but first-time buyers are very demoralized.”

[orbemnews]

New homes cost $36,000 more because of an epic shortage of lumber Random-length lumber futures hit a record high of $1,615 on Tuesday, a staggering sevenfold gain from the low in early April 2020. That’s a big deal because lumber is the most substantial supply that home builders buy. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said Brant Chesson, the president and CEO of Homes By Dickerson, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based home builder. “It’s absolutely contributing to a shortage of housing,” he said. ‘This can only last for so long’ And because the housing market is on fire, the lumber shortage is costing many prospective home buyers even more money. Surging lumber prices alone have pushed the price of an average new single-family home $35,872 higher, according to an analysis by the National Association of Home Builders. “While lumber prices have gone up, we have been able to pass it on to the consumer with higher prices for homes,” Jeffrey Mezger, the CEO of KB Home (KBH), told CNN Business. “And there is still far more demand than there is supply.” But builders can’t jack up prices forever. “This can only last for so long before affordability becomes pinched and demand pauses,” John Lovallo, lead home builders analyst at Bank of America, said in an email. The median sale price of existing homes surged by a record 17.2% in March to $329,100 — the highest since the National Association of Realtors began tracking prices in 1999. Lumber is so hot, it’s being stolen Independent builders, which lack the scale advantages of large construction companies like KB Home, are already feeling the pain. Tom McCarthy can’t finish building a home in Bergen County, New Jersey because of the lumber shortage. “There are pieces of wood that we can’t find,” said McCarthy, a real estate broker with the Chen Agency who also builds homes with his father on the side. McCarthy estimates the cost of lumber for the home will hit $70,000, nearly double the cost of building the exact same home in a nearby town just eight months ago. Some renters are also paying the price. The NAHB estimates that the lumber price spike has added nearly $12,000 to the market value of an average newly built multifamily home — translating to households paying an extra $119 per month to rent a new apartment. The shortage — and price boom — is so extreme that builders report having lumber and other raw materials stolen from their construction sites. “Theft has been huge in our market. We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen during the year,” said Chesson, the North Carolina builder. Saw mills can’t keep up with demand Today’s shortage has roots in the previous housing boom. New home construction crashed after the housing bubble popped in the mid-2000s. That made sense because the market was badly oversupplied. But the downturn also drove countless sawmills out of business, leaving the industry unprepared for today’s surge in demand. And then Covid happened. Sawmills eased output last spring in anticipation of another bust and as they grappled with heath restrictions. “There was a great fear among sawmills to prepare for a downturn. When home buying surged, they could not open up capacity quickly enough,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. At the same time, demand for lumber is also being driven by a surge of renovations and expansions of existing homes. But contractors are having trouble finding and paying for lumber, creating another headache for consumers. “It’s a cost that our members can no longer shoulder the burden on,” said David Pekel, CEO of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. “They have to pass the cost on to the homeowner.” Industry calls on Biden to act The lumber shortage is just the latest example of how the rapid economic recovery from the pandemic is pushing supply chains to the limit. Manufacturers are desperate for workers. Smartphone, auto and appliance production is being sidelined by a shortage of computer chips. And the lack of tanker truck drivers has raised the specter of gas stations running on empty this summer. In the case of lumber, the shortage is being amplified by tariffs. In one of the first shots fired during the Trump trade wars, the previous administration hit Canada in April 2017 with tariffs of up to 24% on lumber. Late last year, the Trump administration slashed those tariffs to 9%. The home building industry is now urging President Joe Biden to take further action. In a statement to CNN Business, NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke called on the Biden administration to “temporarily remove” the 9% tariff on Canadian lumber “to help ease price volatility.” Fowke also urged the White House to “bring together interested stakeholders to hold a summit on lumber and building material supply chain issues to identify the causes and solutions for high prices and supply constraints.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. ‘Sharp fall’ in lumber prices ahead? The good news is that industry executives expect lumber production to catch up with demand — eventually. Samuel Burman, an assistant commodities economist, predicted in a recent note to clients that there will be a “sharp fall” in lumber prices over the next 18 months. “The mills are coming back online. I think we’re past the worst of it in terms of supply availability,” said Mezger, the KB Home CEO. Let’s hope so, because the market desperately needs more supply. “We have a housing shortage in America. The way to relieve that shortage is to build more homes,” said NAR’s Yun. “The housing market has created haves and have-nots. Home builders are smiling big, but first-time buyers are very demoralized.” Source link Orbem News #Business #cost #Epic #homes #lumber #shortage #Whylumberpricesaresohighandwhatitmeansforhomebuildingcosts-CNN

[gozel]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02599-5?utm_source=twt_nnc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=naturenews

How COVID-19 can damage the brain                                                    Some people who become ill with the coronavirus develop neurological symptoms. Scientists are struggling to understand why.                                                                                                                                

                   Michael Marshall                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Some evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect the brain comes from ‘organoids’ — clumps of neurons created in a dish. Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego

PDF version

The woman had seen lions and monkeys in her house. She was becoming disoriented and aggressive towards others, and was convinced that her husband was an impostor. She was in her mid-50s — decades older than the age at which psychosis typically develops — and had no psychiatric history. What she did have, however, was COVID-19. Hers was one of the first known cases of someone developing psychosis after contracting the disease1.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors struggled to keep patients breathing, and focused mainly on treating damage to the lungs and circulatory system. But even then, evidence for neurological effects was accumulating. Some people hospitalized with COVID-19 were experiencing delirium: they were confused, disorientated and agitated2. In April, a group in Japan published3 the first report of someone with COVID-19 who had swelling and inflammation in brain tissues. Another report4 described a patient with deterioration of myelin, a fatty coating that protects neurons and is irreversibly damaged in neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

“The neurological symptoms are only becoming more and more scary,” says Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla.

The list now includes stroke, brain haemorrhage and memory loss. It is not unheard of for serious diseases to cause such effects, but the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic means that thousands or even tens of thousands of people could already have these symptoms, and some might be facing lifelong problems as a result.

Yet researchers are struggling to answer key questions — including basic ones, such as how many people have these conditions, and who is at risk. Most importantly, they want to know why these particular symptoms are showing up.

Although viruses can invade and infect the brain, it is not clear whether SARS-CoV-2 does so to a significant extent. The neurological symptoms might instead be a result of overstimulation of the immune system. It is crucial to find out, because these two scenarios require entirely different treatments. “That’s why the disease mechanisms are so important,” says Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Affected brains

As the pandemic ramped up, Michael and his colleagues were among many scientists who began compiling case reports of neurological complications linked to COVID-19.

In a June paper5, he and his team analysed clinical details for 125 people in the United Kingdom with COVID-19 who had neurological or psychiatric effects. Of these, 62% had experienced damage to the brain’s blood supply, such as strokes and haemorrhages, and 31% had altered mental states, such as confusion or prolonged unconsciousness — sometimes accompanied by encephalitis, the swelling of brain tissue. Ten people who had altered mental states developed psychosis.

Not all people with neurological symptoms have been seriously ill in intensive-care units, either. “We’ve seen this group of younger people without conventional risk factors who are having strokes, and patients having acute changes in mental status that are not otherwise explained,” says Michael.

Neurological symptoms accompanying COVID-19 include delirium, psychosis and stroke.Credit: Stephane Mahe/Reuters

A similar study1 published in July compiled detailed case reports of 43 people with neurological complications from COVID-19. Some patterns are becoming clear, says Michael Zandi, a neurologist at University College London and a lead author on the study. The most common neurological effects are stroke and encephalitis. The latter can escalate to a severe form called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, in which both the brain and spinal cord become inflamed and neurons lose their myelin coatings — leading to symptoms resembling those of multiple sclerosis. Some of the worst-affected patients had only mild respiratory symptoms. “This was the brain being hit as their main disease,” says Zandi.

Less common complications include peripheral nerve damage, typical of Guillain–Barré syndrome, and what Zandi calls “a hodgepodge of things”, such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Similar symptoms have been seen in outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also caused by coronaviruses. But fewer people were infected in those outbreaks, so less data are available.

How many people?

Clinicians don’t know how common these neurological effects are. Another study6 published in July estimated their prevalence using data from other coronaviruses. Symptoms affecting the central nervous system occurred in at least 0.04% of people with SARS and in 0.2% of those with MERS. Given that there are now 28.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, this could imply that between 10,000 and 50,000 people have experienced neurological complications.

The lasting misery of coronavirus long-haulers

But a major problem in quantifying cases is that clinical studies have typically focused on people with COVID-19 who were hospitalized, often those who required intensive care. The prevalence of neurological symptoms in this group could be “more than 50%”, says neurobiologist Fernanda De Felice at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. But there is much less information about those who had mild illness or no respiratory symptoms.

That scarcity of data means it is difficult to work out why some people have neurological symptoms and others do not. It is also unclear whether the effects will linger: COVID-19 can have other health impacts that last for months, and different coronaviruses have left some people with symptoms for years.

Infection or inflammation?

The most pressing question for many neuroscientists, however, is why the brain is affected at all. Although the pattern of disorders is fairly consistent, the underlying mechanisms are not yet clear, says De Felice.

Finding an answer will help clinicians to choose the right treatments. “If this is direct viral infection of the central nervous system, these are the patients we should be targeting for remdesivir or another antiviral,” says Michael. “Whereas if the virus is not in the central nervous system, maybe the virus is clear of the body, then we need to treat with anti-inflammatory therapies.”

Getting it wrong would be harmful. “It’s pointless giving the antivirals to someone if the virus is gone, and it’s risky giving anti-inflammatories to someone who’s got a virus in their brain,” says Michael.

There is clear evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect neurons. Muotri’s team specializes in building ‘organoids’ — miniaturized clumps of brain tissue, made by coaxing human pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into neurons.

Profile of a killer: the complex biology powering the coronavirus pandemic

In a May preprint7, the team showed that SARS-CoV-2 could infect neurons in these organoids, killing some and reducing the formation of synapses between them. Work by immunologist Akiko Iwasaki and her colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, seems to confirm this using human organoids, mouse brains and some post-mortem examinations, according to a preprint published on 8 September8. But questions remain over how the virus might reach people’s brains.

Because loss of smell is a common symptom, neurologists wondered whether the olfactory nerve might provide a route of entry. “Everyone was concerned that this was a possibility,” says Michael. But the evidence points against it.

A team led by Mary Fowkes, a pathologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, posted a preprint in late May9 describing post mortems in 67 people who had died of COVID-19. “We have seen the virus in the brain itself,” says Fowkes: electron microscopes revealed its presence. But virus levels were low and were not consistently detectable. Furthermore, if the virus was invading through the olfactory nerve, the associated brain region should be the first to be affected. “We’re simply not seeing the virus involved in the olfactory bulb,” says Fowkes. Rather, she says, infections in the brain are small and tend to cluster around blood vessels.

Autopsy slowdown hinders quest to determine how coronavirus kills

Michael agrees that the virus is hard to find in the brain, compared with other organs. Tests using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) often do not detect it there, despite their high sensitivity, and several studies have failed to find any virus particles in the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord (see, for example, ref. 10)10. One reason might be that the ACE2 receptor, a protein on human cells that the virus uses to gain entry, is not expressed much in brain cells10.

“It seems to be incredibly rare that you get viral central nervous system infection,” Michael says. That means many of the problems clinicians are seeing are probably a result of the body’s immune system fighting the virus.

Still, this might not be true in all cases, which means that researchers will need to identify biomarkers that can reliably distinguish between a viral brain infection and immune activity. That, for now, means more clinical research, post mortems and physiological studies.

De Felice says that she and her colleagues are planning to follow patients who have recovered after intensive care, and create a biobank of samples including cerebrospinal fluid. Zandi says that similar studies are beginning at University College London. Researchers will no doubt be sorting through such samples for years. Although the questions they’re addressing have come up during nearly every disease outbreak, COVID-19 presents new challenges and opportunities, says Michael. “What we haven’t had since 1918 is a pandemic on this scale.”

Nature 585, 342-343 (2020)

****

COVID-19 beyne nasıl zarar verebilir? Koronavirüse yakalanan bazı kişiler nörolojik semptomlar geliştirir. Bilim adamları nedenini anlamakta zorlanıyor. Michael Marshall Küçük beyaz noktalar olarak görülen beyin organoidleri içeren bir bilim insanı tarafından tutulan bir laboratuvar tabağının altından görünüm SARS-CoV-2'nin beyni enfekte edebileceğine dair bazı kanıtlar, bir tabakta oluşturulan "organoidlerden" geliyor. Katkı Sağlayanlar: Erik Jepsen / UC San Diego PDF versiyonu Kadın evinde aslanlar ve maymunlar görmüştü. Kafası karışıyordu ve başkalarına karşı saldırganlaşıyordu ve kocasının bir sahtekar olduğuna ikna olmuştu. 50'li yaşların ortalarındaydı - psikozun tipik olarak geliştiği yaştan onlarca yıl daha yaşlıydı - ve psikiyatrik geçmişi yoktu. Bununla birlikte sahip olduğu şey COVID-19'du. Onun, hastalığa yakalandıktan sonra psikoz geliştirdiği bilinen ilk vakalardan biriydi1. COVID-19 salgınının ilk aylarında, doktorlar hastaları nefes almaya devam etmek için mücadele etti ve esas olarak akciğerlere ve dolaşım sistemine verilen hasarı tedavi etmeye odaklandı. Ancak o zaman bile, nörolojik etkilere dair kanıtlar birikiyordu. COVID-19 ile hastaneye kaldırılan bazı insanlar deliryum geçiriyordu: kafaları karıştı, yönleri bozuldu ve ajite edildi2. Nisan ayında, Japonya'daki bir grup, beyin dokularında şişme ve iltihaplanma olan COVID-19'lu birinin ilk raporunu yayınladı3. Başka bir rapor4, nöronları koruyan ve multipl skleroz gibi nörodejeneratif hastalıklarda geri dönüşü olmayan bir şekilde hasar gören yağlı bir kaplama olan miyelinde bozulma olan bir hastayı tanımladı. La Jolla'daki California Üniversitesi, San Diego'da nörobilimci olan Alysson Muotri, "Nörolojik semptomlar giderek daha korkutucu hale geliyor" diyor. Liste artık felç, beyin kanaması ve hafıza kaybını içeriyor. Ciddi hastalıkların bu tür etkilere neden olması duyulmamış bir şey değil, ancak COVID-19 salgınının ölçeği, binlerce, hatta on binlerce insanın bu semptomlara sahip olabileceği ve sonuç olarak bazılarının ömür boyu sürecek sorunlarla karşılaşabileceği anlamına geliyor. Yine de araştırmacılar, kaç kişinin bu koşullara sahip olduğu ve kimin risk altında olduğu gibi temel sorular da dahil olmak üzere temel soruları yanıtlamakta zorlanıyorlar. En önemlisi, bu belirli semptomların neden ortaya çıktığını bilmek istiyorlar. Virüsler beyni istila edip enfekte edebilse de, SARS-CoV-2'nin bunu önemli ölçüde yapıp yapmadığı açık değildir. Nörolojik semptomlar, bağışıklık sisteminin aşırı uyarılmasının bir sonucu olabilir. Öğrenmek çok önemlidir, çünkü bu iki senaryo tamamen farklı tedaviler gerektirir. İngiltere'deki Liverpool Üniversitesi'nden nörolog Benedict Michael, "Bu nedenle hastalık mekanizmaları çok önemlidir" diyor. Etkilenen beyinler Pandemi artarken Michael ve meslektaşları, COVID-19 ile bağlantılı nörolojik komplikasyonların vaka raporlarını derlemeye başlayan birçok bilim insanı arasındaydı. Bir Haziran makalesinde5, kendisi ve ekibi Birleşik Krallık'ta nörolojik veya psikiyatrik etkileri olan COVID-19 olan 125 kişinin klinik ayrıntılarını analiz ettiler. Bunlardan% 62'si beyin kanlanmasında felç ve kanamalar gibi hasar görmüştü ve% 31'i kafa karışıklığı veya uzun süreli bilinç kaybı gibi değişen zihinsel durumlara sahipti - bazen beyin dokusunun şişmesiyle birlikte ensefalit de eşlik ediyordu. Zihinsel durumlarını değiştiren on kişi psikoz geliştirdi. Nörolojik semptomları olan tüm insanlar yoğun bakım ünitelerinde de ciddi şekilde hasta değildir. Michael, "Konvansiyonel risk faktörleri olmayan, felç geçiren ve zihinsel durumlarında başka türlü açıklanamayan akut değişiklikler yaşayan bu genç insan grubunu gördük" diyor. Koruyucu kıyafet giyen bir fizyoterapist, Fransa'daki bir hastanede Covid-19'dan muzdarip bir hastaya yardım ediyor COVID-19'a eşlik eden nörolojik semptomlar arasında deliryum, psikoz ve felç bulunur. Kredi: Stephane Mahe / Reuters Temmuz ayında yayınlanan benzer bir çalışma1, COVID-19'dan nörolojik komplikasyonları olan 43 kişinin ayrıntılı vaka raporlarını derledi. University College London'dan nörolog ve çalışmanın baş yazarı Michael Zandi, bazı kalıpların netleştiğini söylüyor. En yaygın nörolojik etkiler felç ve ensefalittir. İkincisi, hem beyin hem de omuriliğin iltihaplandığı ve nöronların miyelin kaplamalarını kaybettiği akut dissemine ensefalomiyelit adı verilen şiddetli bir forma yükselebilir - bu da multipl skleroza benzer semptomlara yol açar. En kötü etkilenen hastaların bazılarında sadece hafif solunum semptomları vardı. Zandi, "Bu, ana hastalığı olarak vurulan beyindi" diyor. Daha az görülen komplikasyonlar arasında tipik Guillain-Barré sendromu olan periferik sinir hasarı ve Zandi'nin anksiyete ve travma sonrası stres bozukluğu gibi “bir sürü şey” dediği şey bulunur. Yine koronavirüslerin neden olduğu şiddetli akut solunum sendromu (SARS) ve Orta Doğu solunum sendromu (MERS) salgınlarında da benzer semptomlar görülmüştür. Ancak bu salgınlarda daha az insan enfekte oldu, bu yüzden

***

Etkilenen beyinler Pandemi artarken Michael ve meslektaşları, COVID-19 ile bağlantılı nörolojik komplikasyonların vaka raporlarını derlemeye başlayan birçok bilim insanı arasındaydı. Bir Haziran makalesinde5, kendisi ve ekibi Birleşik Krallık'ta nörolojik veya psikiyatrik etkileri olan COVID-19 olan 125 kişinin klinik ayrıntılarını analiz ettiler. Bunlardan% 62'si beyin kanlanmasında felç ve kanamalar gibi hasar görmüştü ve% 31'i kafa karışıklığı veya uzun süreli bilinçsizlik gibi değişen zihinsel durumlara sahipti - bazen beyin dokusunun şişmesiyle birlikte ensefalit de eşlik ediyordu. Zihinsel durumlarını değiştiren on kişi psikoz geliştirdi. Nörolojik semptomları olan tüm insanlar yoğun bakım ünitelerinde de ciddi şekilde hasta değildir. Michael, "Konvansiyonel risk faktörleri olmayan, felç geçiren ve zihinsel durumlarında başka türlü açıklanmayan akut değişiklikler yaşayan bu genç insan grubunu gördük" diyor.

[banishedblossomdancer]

"Well, Izanagi?" Percy called out, but mindful of his volume.

"Rrrrgh..." the dragon called irritably as he kept himself aloft in place with flaps of his large wings, "... Our runaway and her friends have been spotted... They're headed towards the mountains," reported the fiery dragon as he lowered himself back down, wings folded back as he lurched forward a little. "Urgh..."

"Ngh, hah, back still hurts, da?" The tall penguin snickered, but in an empathetic sense, as she could still feel the deep wound in her own body, "Fox girl did small number on us... surprisingkly stronk AND quick..." Naida acknowledged with some slight disdain. Before long, she and Izanagi's heads lifted as they felt a tender, refreshing essence course over their backs, shuddering a little as they felt the skin gradually mend back together.

"Ah got ye two, don'tcha worry over nuthin'," Camellia chuckled as she applied her magical know-how to restore the two tall starters back to their prime.

"Ooh! Naida feel like new voman!" Laughed the Empoleon, strutting herself. "Much thanks, yes!"

"Mmmngh..." Izanagi closed his eyes and turned his head, huffing out smoke, "... agreed. Now we can fight in the most optimal condition..."

"Your healing spell is quite a marvel in and of itself, non?" Percy stated as he approached the female fennec. "The wound on your neck looked as though it should have been fatal... yet your power, it..."

"Hah! Us Delphox dae know uir way aroond aw sorts o' spells an' whit hae ye, but healin' an' some stealthy magic is aw Ah need! Whit more coods a hunter ask fur? How dae ye think Ah biddin in mah prime, laddie?" Camellia responded with confident, hands on her hips and chest slightly jutted. "Always be prepared fur whatever comes next, a golden rule fur aw adventurers an' hunters!"

"I couldn't agree more, Camellia. And to run into you during a dire time that us three are facing could be a boon to us..." Perceval explained as he handed the wanted flyer to Camellia. The bark-brown fox looked it as she gave out a 'Tsk tsk tsk.'

"Ah, och aye, as ye tauld me earlier, that's why yoo’re it here… agh, 'at will certainly ruin a vacation, won’t it? Well guid oan ye fur daein' whit ye can fur yer fowk, laddie! Yoo're doin' th' reit thing, Ah assure ye!" Camellia patted Perceval's back gently in a genuinely friendly and supportive manner before rubbing the back of her neck with a conflicted smile. "Hah, Ah will admit, thes lassie yoo're efter, th' Gardevoir reit? She seems loch sic' a sweet an' elegant lassie too… guess ye can’t judge a flower by its colors, can ye?" She chuckles.

"… I’m… going to ignore what you just said, or at least, pretend to know what you meant by that," Perceval said after being somewhat stunned. If his face wasn't masked, there'd be a frown waiting for Camellia.

"Aheh, weel uh, whit about 'er friends? Dae ye know whit they're abit? Yoo're only efter that one lassie aren' ya?"

"As far as I’m aware of, they are innocent, no crimes to speak of. Only thing that can be said is that they sought after her to protect her… must be close acquaintances of hers, at the very least."

"Ah, hoo sweet of 'em…"

"I suppose so… be that as it may, they’re still assisting a wanted refugee." Perceval looked on as the whole band walked in the direction of the mountain together. "Moreover, they’ve both rushed to her in quite a hurry, and have intervened with our affairs. Both of which are offenses to add to the toll. And with how frantically they’ve fled to her, who’s to say that they’ve gone through proper procedures upon crossing the sea…? This could mean that they…" as Perceval trailed on that sentence, Camellia's ears and eyes perked up briefly at the implication.

"Ooooh… Ah see whit ye mean. Hah, weel, mair bunsens in yer pooch, aye laddie?"

"Possibly, or at least, more to spread around for those willing to assist us. That said… I have a proposition for you, mon amie."

"Hm? Yes, lad? Whit is it?"

"Will you join us in taking her in?" He bluntly but earnestly asked, looking at his fellow warrior in the eye from behind his facial shielding. "We could use your marksmanship and hunting expertise, not to mention your healing magic is quite a boon. I ask you this as a friend of old, and I will even split the bounty money with you as well, especially should her associates be charged as well."

Camellia took a moment to think this over... she was a somewhat busy woman already... but Perceval did sound like he was in the middle of a crisis. She always did admire how he could keep such a cool head even when things personal to him were in danger. The Delphox merely raised a finger.

"Oan one condition, if Ah may, mukker?"

"Of course. What would that be?"

"If ye can donner wi' me back tae th' ben village beyond 'at range sae Ah can report th' result o' thes hunt, 'en Ah'll be glad ta lend ye mah boo an' magic. Deal?"

Perceval wasted no time holding out his bouquet. "Agreed."

"Alrecht, it's settled 'en! Ye got anither 'unter in yer wee ceilidh, Percy! Ah woon't lit ye doon!"

The Roserade gave a relieved sigh. Having this huntress Delphox would certainly make things significantly easier, perhaps quicker too. Perceval pledged a bouquet over his chest and bowed to his friend.

"You have this rose's eternal, unwilting gratitude, mon amie. Thank you so much."

"Vell! This is becomingk quite a party, yes?" Naida chimed eagerly with a small laugh afterwards. "More members, more fun in the hunt! IS good to get blood pumpingk!"

"And to ensure our prey won't leave our grasp..." Izanagi added, snarling in a grudging fashion as he looked on into the dark horizon.

"Come, everyone... we've been through nigh-literal hell tonight. We shall rest within the mountain, then continue the hunt in the morning."

[artbookclubdublin-blog]

This is the list of book suggestions that were gathered for our first book club. We then voted for the book that we wanted to read for our first meeting. 

Documents of Contemporary Art: Participation, edited by Claire Bishop 

The desire to move viewers out of the role of passive observers and into the role of producers is one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century art. This tendency can be found in practices and projects ranging from El Lissitzky's exhibition designs to Allan Kaprow's happenings, from minimalist objects to installation art. More recently, this kind of participatory art has gone so far as to encourage and produce new social relationships. Guy Debord's celebrated argument that capitalism fragments the social bond has become the premise for much relational art seeking to challenge and provide alternatives to the discontents of contemporary life. This publication collects texts that place this artistic development in historical and theoretical context.

Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, Peter Bürger, Jen-Luc Nancy, Edoaurd Glissant, and Félix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Rancière's influential "Problems and Transformations in Critical Art." The book also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And it features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

Ways of Seeing, by John Berger

John Berger’s now classic article "Ways of Seeing" (1972) revolutionarily, for his time, analyses the manner in which men and women are culturally represented, and the subsequent results these representations have on their conduct and self as well and mutual perception.

The Sublime, edited by Simon Morley 

In a world where technology, spectacle and excess seem to eclipse former concepts of nature, the individual and society, what might be the characteristics of a contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus it is in the notion that the sublime represents a taking to the limits, to the point at which fixities begin to fragment. This anthology examines how ideas of the sublime are explored in the work of contemporary artists and theorists, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny and altered states.

Book of Mutter, by Kate Zambreno

Composed over thirteen years, Kate Zambreno's Book of Mutter is a tender and disquieting meditation on the ability of writing, photography, and memory to embrace shadows while in the throes -- and dead calm -- of grief. Book of Mutter is both primal and sculpted, shaped by the author's searching, indexical impulse to inventory family apocrypha in the wake of her mother's death. The text spirals out into a kind of fractured anatomy of melancholy that comes to contain critical reflections on the likes of Roland Barthes, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha , Peter Handke, and others. Zambreno has modeled the book's formless form on Bourgeois's Cells sculptures -- at once channeling the volatility of autobiography, pain, and childhood, yet hemmed by a solemn sense of entering ritualistic or sacred space.

Neither memoir, essay, nor poetry, Book of Mutter is an uncategorizable text that draws upon a repertoire of genres to write into and against silence. It is a haunted text, an accumulative archive of myth and memory that seeks its own undoing, driven by crossed desires to resurrect and exorcise the past. Zambreno weaves a complex web of associations, relics, and references, elevating the prosaic scrapbook into a strange and intimate postmortem/postmodern theater.

Aliens and Anorexia, by Chris Kraus  

First published in 2000, Chris Kraus’s second novel, Aliens & Anorexia, defined a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. Unfolding like a set of Chinese boxes, with storytelling and philosophy informing each other, the novel weaves together the lives of earnest visionaries and failed artists. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness; the artist Paul Thek; Kraus herself; and “Africa,” Kraus’s virtual S&M partner, who is shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest woods to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film.

In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus makes a case for empathy as the ultimate perceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor “self-esteem.” Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of the cynicism that this culture hands us through its food.

In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective, by Hito Steyerl  

Available on the e-flux website: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/24/67860/in-free-fall-a-thought-experiment-on-vertical-perspective/

The Temporality of the Landscape, by Tim Ingold

“In Tim Ingold's article, there are two themes present; that "...human life is a process that involves the passage of time," and that "...this life-process is also the process of information of the landscapes in which people have lived". Through the use of these themes and his methodological structure, Ingold argues that the landscape can be read as a text. First, he defines the terms landscape and temporality, and second, he introduces a new word, "taskscape", and considers how this relates to landscape. Finally, to further prove his point, the author attempts to "read" the landscape of a well-known painting, The Harvesters, by Bruegel, in which he interprets the temporality of this landscape. This article is useful in understanding cultural landscapes in that it encourages the researcher to think about an often missing, yet integral part of the interpretation of landscapes: time. The researcher is also made to question the relationship of the dimension of time to a particular landscape.” [E. Martin]

The Indiscipline of Painting, by Daniel Sturgis  

Essay and catalogue texts to exhibition.

 High Rise, by JG Ballard

High-Rise is a 1975 novel by British writer J. G. Ballard. The story describes the disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos.

Two Hito Steyrl essays, to be read in combination: 

Politics of the archive, Translations in film: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0608/steyerl/en  and In Defense of the Poor Image:

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

Curating Research, edited by Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. Specifically the text called ‘The Complete Curator’

This anthology of newly commissioned texts presents a series of detailed examples of the different kinds of knowledge production that have recently emerged within the field of curatorial practice. The first volume of its kind to provide an overview of the theme of research within contemporary curating, Curating Research marks a new phase in developments of the profession globally. Consisting of case studies and contextual analyses by curators, artists, critics and academics, including Hyunjoo Byeon, Carson Chan and Joanna Warsza, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Olga Fernandez Lopez, Kate Fowle, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Liam Gillick, Georgina Jackson, Sidsel Nelund, Simon Sheikh, Henk Slager, tranzit.hu, Jelena Vestic, Marion von Osten and Vivian Ziherl, and edited by curators Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson, the book is an indispensible resource for all those interested in the current state of art and in the intersection between research and curating that underlies exhibition-making today.

The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson

A brave, fascinating memoir about love, gender, gender theory, having children, death, writing, and the modern family. Maggie Nelson, an established poet and prose writer, details her love for and relationship with Harry Dodge, a charismatic, gender-fluid artist ('are you a man or a woman?' the narrator wonders, but it just doesn't matter). In a brilliantly-written account that is moving as well as fascinating, Nelson charts her thoughts and feelings about becoming a step-parent, her pregnancy, Harry's operation and testosterone injections, and the couple's complex joys in queer-family creation.

Staying with the Trouble, by Donna Haraway

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

[allisonperryart]

The Business of Art w/ Jeremy Cranford (Blizzard Entertainment) @ The Art Institute of California Inland Empire (7/29/17)

Special thanks to Jeremy Cranford and Thomas Brilliante for making this event possible. For more updates on future events like this in the southern California area, please consider following Inland Arts on FaceBook. (Text-only version of this document available on FaceBook)

James Cranford’s life

Humble beginnings: migrant parents, food stamps, etc.

Attending college was difficult because of finances, but he ended up studying graphic design because he got a scholarship

After doing graphic design for years, he got an art directing job with "Magic the Gathering” and working in games/illustration since 1996

Worked on “Metal World” style guide for “Mirrodin” set (2002)

What would environments look like on a metal planet? Rust, things hovering with magnetism, rolling silver plane, big metal spikes, mercury seas, retina green forests

Environments help you solve what the humanoids/creatures will look like in the environment

The humanoids/creatures? Enamel/scabs is replaced with metal, big metal bracers on humanoids

Also worked on "Spirit World” style guide for "Kamigawa” set (2003)

Started with the desire to help MtG sell better in Japan, which was a challenge because traditionally MtG is based on Arthurian lore/visuals

Unsure about just having American/Western artists riff on Japanese imagery, so he hired some Japanese artists to create more authentic content, which resulted in a very different feel

Example of a brief he didn’t like that he turned around into an engaging project

Also worked on “Ravnica” style guide

Brief: “overdeveloped urban fantasy setting”

Mountains = smelting buildings

Lead was very against having buildings on land cards, but this is an example of Jeremy challenging convention… why could land cards have buildings!?

Risked his job on this point because he really believed in it, and it ended up being a great decision

The creative solution may be an uphill battle, but it will always win out

Plains = created by the tops of buildings, inspired from looking out at the city from the World Trade Center

Swamps = city sewers, obviously

Forest = where they grew their food

First set when they started mixing colors (which are like “cultures” in MtG lore), which was an awesome opportunity to expand and develop new ideas

Blue/green = technology elves

Black/green = voodoo elves (inspired by New Orleans)

Black/red = fire demons, obviously

White/black = basically Catholicism

Red/white = military

Blue/red = mage + technology

First set to have a promo video (inspired by game cinematic trailers, intended to introduce the world)

Began working on World of Warcraft at Blizzard when they released a trading card game

Style was a bit of a learning curve (less realistic, more stylized)

Soon after, started working on miniatures game, which taught him a lot about manufacturing and allowed him to travel to China, etc.

He took a risk and left Blizzard to start a start-up with his friends called Solforge

It was fun for about 6 months, but he never regretted the experience because he learned a lot 

Goal was to push things more sic-fi (nuclear winter world) 

His philosophy over the years has been to take risks, embrace junctures in life, and have faith in the direction you’re going

Every time he took a risk, the pay off ended up being worth it 

The universe has a way of showing you the path that’s most right for you 

He says most of what he’s tried never works out, and he just ends up doing the next best thing - which turns out to be his career 

Doesn’t always know what he wants to do, but definitely knows what he doesn’t want to do 

Always wants to challenge convention 

“Don’t try to make the art you do what you think it should do, rather let the art take you where it wants to go.” - Ben Thompson 

“Leap, and build your wings while you’re falling.” - Ray Bradbury Finds inspiration from Borge Ousland (first human to go from Russia to Alaska)

Saw people’s discouragement as feedback/critique 

Constant failures for 10 years, but learned a little every step of the way that led to his eventual success 

Stick with it

Also finds inspiration from Richard MacDonald (inspirational sculptor, experienced a lot of misfortune, embodies the blind faith Jeremy talks about)

Advice for mastering your craft, building a portfolio, and being a professional

Being an art director is like being a coach - if the product isn’t performing well, the company looks to replace the art director 

It may take you longer to master your craft than 4 years in college (DaVinci took 7 years)… be patient with yourself! 

When he looks for an artist, he looks for a professional

Master your skills

Master drawing, anatomy, and rendering light onto form

Go to life drawing regularly… even if you’re not in school 

He oftentimes looks at the hands

Master design, not just drawing realistically

Creaturebox is a great example 

Large, medium, small shapes 

High density detail (busy) vs. low density detail (rest)

Master painting and color theory

Nathan Fowkes is a great example 

The best color is not always the most “realistic” colour

Master composition, eye flow, value groups, and negative shapes

Wayne Reynolds and Frazetta are great examples 

If you’re struggling, check out Edgar Payne’s book on composition 

Have a plan before you paint and add all your detail 

Jomaro adds “working in threes” is a good idea - working in twos becomes “equal” and too “balanced”

Master story, emphasis, mood, and point of view

Ian McQue's work in the “John Carpenter” art book is a great example 

Just because your rendering is perfect doesn’t mean people will care about what you’re drawing 

What are you trying to communicate? Write that down and make sure you execute it! 

Creating without a clear objective is a waste of time

Don’t cheat yourself - if you’re trying to hide your flaws… fix them!

Don’t use effects/tricks to hide your shortcomings

After you master your skills, target a market and advertise yourself (ArtStation, DeviantArt contests, etc.)

Send out cold-emails 

See if you can get current employees to refer you to art directors 

If you get rejected, evaluate your work and actually assign yourself tasks to improve on it

Pro life tips!!

Don’t be a drunk (why party when you can improve your skill?) 

Dedicate yourself to your career/something higher/something you love 

Have some range (in your portfolio) - never say “that’s not my style!”

Consider: reality vs. fantasy (in content), realism vs, abstraction (in style)

“I’m on it!” Never be an emotional tax on your team/leads - art directors will always go back to the artists that make things easy

This doesn’t mean be a pushover

"Show me the Money!” Think about how much you’re being paid and how many hours you’re putting in… are you even getting paid minimum wage?

If you’re being paid less than you’re worth/less than minimum wage, it’s not worth it… and you’re hurting the whole industry! 

You’re better off investing in yourself - work at Starbucks and build a strong portfolio at night/on the weekends

As your skills go up, the money goes up (you need to go from good to great if you’re going to make it) 

Do you know why you do what you do?

If it’s for the money… maybe you should just go into banking, because this isn’t really a path to make money 

Jeremy does it because he simply enjoys it, which takes the pressure off

"You’re okay, I’m okay”

Growing up, Jeremy had a lot of depression because he was seeking external approval 

If you get your approval from within, you aren’t giving the power to others to put you down 

You’re the final authority on how you fell about yourself, how you treat others, and what you love and want to do

There’s beauty in diversity - just be good to each other and celebrate your differences

Question time!

Where should I go to school?

Depends on what you want and how your learn best - really successful people have not gone anywhere and really unsuccessful people have gone to great schools 

Maybe consider non-traditional schooling like GumRoad and New Masters Academy 

At the end of the day, you need the skills, and however you get them doesn’t really matter

How do you manage your time to develop range and show that range in a portfolio?

When you email an AD/recruiter, consider attaching 3 images that highlight what that contact is looking for in the email… and then lead them to the rest of your work if they’re interested

That’s all you need for “portfolio geared to a company” - you don’t need a full portfolio geared to a portfolio if you have 3-5 images you can attach to an email

Keep your portfolio updated! Don’t leave up bad work from a long time ago! 

Even when you’re not asked to, following up on feedback from ADs/recruiters with new work is a great way to stay in contact and establish your worth 

If you gear your portfolio towards one company and you can’t get into that company, you might have trouble getting into other companies 

However, if you have a very rangey portfolio, sometimes all you need is an art test to prove you can execute the style 

Know your stylistic limitations, too - if you know you can’t do something, don’t waste your time and the AD/recruiter’s 

Having trouble focusing? Set an explicit goal for yourself/make an assignment for yourself… and set a deadline for it (or else you’ll never finish it)!

How do you connect with an AD without being annoying but also not getting ignored?

ADs are busy people, at the end of the day 

Consider joining a forum/contest… sometimes your peers are better critics for you than an AD 

Develop a circle of trust (people you trust to give you good feedback) 

When you do meet an AD, remember “everyone is people…” don’t be weird about it! 

Don’t be embarrassed/ashamed of negative feedback… own it and be fearless! 

Remember: it’s normal to ask ADs/recruiters to look at your work… just ask for permission, give them an opportunity to say “no,” and if they do say “no,” offer to follow-up or leave your email/card 

Also remember to maintain relationships with professionals, because they might be keeping an eye on you and hire you in the future… address their feedback, explain how you improved, etc.

How do you form a good narrative in a painting?

“Create a picture that has a gap for the viewer to fill in”/“Don’t answer/render everything” (Jomaro adds - “like a trailer!”) - Frazetta is a great example of this 

Engage the viewers curiosity and get them to want to know what’s happening 

Maybe look at storyboard artists/sequential artists 

Also maybe identify a feeling/single word/etc. that embodies your piece… and strive to communicate it fully! 

You can execute a complex idea in a very simple way

Do ADs judge you on your backlog/old work?

Always be producing work, or else you’re stagnant! 

Always update your work with your newest stuff 

ADs love seeing jumps in quality! 

ADs aren’t gonna judge you for old work they find in a deep-dive, but be sure to put your best foot forward and have that easiest to find

What can you do to stay in touch while you’re waiting for a response on an art test?

Once you submit the test, it’s out of your hands 

If it’s been a week, try following up with HR asking if there’s anything else you can do 

If you get radio silence, it’s not the end of the world - be positive about your experience and open to future opportunities

Do you need to master digital/PhotoShop/ZBrush/etc. just like you master anatomy/colour/etc.?

If you’re skills and design are good, they’ll show through in any medium, but at the same time, not knowing PhotoShop at all can get you dinged when working in-house

What was your favourite project to work on and what did you learn from it?

“Ravnica,” because he struggled with self-doubt and had to put his job on the line for something he believes in 

HearthStone has also been a blast

Is there anything outside of art that helps you as an artist?

Everything he’s told you not to do, he did himself, which is why he’s trying to help you avoid it 

Letting go of the idea that his self-worth was determined by how other people saw him… compete only against yourself 

It helped to stop taking himself so seriously and just have fun… eliminated the pressure and lets the creativity flow

Stop trying to get everyone to like you and your work! 

Don’t just be a theory expert… put things into practice! 

The biggest thing people are lacking is the mileage

Don’t get deflated by feedback… actually integrate it! 

Don’t get discouraged by people who are better than you that have been doing it for longer… that’s normal!