James' World 2

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Galaxies in our universe seem to be achieving an impossible feat. They are rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago. The same is true of galaxies in clusters, which leads scientists to believe that something we cannot see is at work. They think something we have yet to detect directly is giving these galaxies extra mass, generating the extra gravity they need to stay intact. This strange and unknown matter was called “dark matter” since it is not visible.

Dark matter

Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot. In fact, researchers have been able to infer the existence of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Dark matter seems to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe. Here’s a sobering fact: The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 5% of the content of the universe! But what is dark matter? One idea is that it could contain “supersymmetric particles” – hypothesized particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may provide more direct clues about dark matter.

Many theories say the dark matter particles would be light enough to be produced at the LHC. If they were created at the LHC, they would escape through the detectors unnoticed. However, they would carry away energy and momentum, so physicists could infer their existence from the amount of energy and momentum “missing” after a collision. Dark matter candidates arise frequently in theories that suggest physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions. One theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know. If one of these theories proved to be true, it could help scientists gain a better understanding of the composition of our universe and, in particular, how galaxies hold together.

Dark energy

Dark energy makes up approximately 68% of the universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in space. It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time – in other words, its effect is not diluted as the universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious substance exists.

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What is it?

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• Inauguration Day: The public inauguration ceremony featuring Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, is taking place hours after he was officially sworn in during a brief private event held shortly after midnight.

• Other oaths: The city’s comptroller, Mark Levine, and public advocate, Jumaane Williams, were also sworn in.

• Special guests: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York spoke of New Yorkers’ “courage” and “ambition” during opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will administer a ceremonial oath of office to Mr. Mamdani.

 

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani

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The recent surge in the use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs has propelled addiction-adjacent terms such as “food noise” and “food cravings” into common vernacular. But can food actually be addictive? Now some neuroscientists and food behavior researchers are trying to understand if food—particularly ultraprocessed foods—can be addictive in the same way as other known substances, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and cocaine.

For foods to be potentially addictive, “they’re created in a way that is most palatable and most delicious,” says Alex DiFeliceantonio, an appetitive neuroscientist at Virginia Tech. “When you look at the food environment, those tend to be ultraprocessed.”

Scientific American spoke with DiFeliceantonio about research unpacking whether food addiction is real, whether certain types of foods might have more addictive qualities, and how related eating disorders can be addressed.

What does it mean to have a “food addiction”?

When we’re thinking about food addiction and looking qualitatively at what people are eating when they are saying that they can’t stop eating, we have to put it in the framework of a substance use disorder. These disorders affect life in an untenable way. Food addiction isn’t in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) like substance use disorder is, but there is a proposal to have it put in the DSM.

We typically look to the Yale Food Addiction Scale for clinical evaluation. The scale was designed to assess the same criteria as the substance use disorder criteria in the DSM. The scale also contains what we call clinical indicators that a person is experiencing symptoms of an addiction, and those symptoms are poorly affecting life, such as the ability to engage in social situations or engage in aspects of work or life. If we accept that food addiction exists—if you give the Yale Food Addiction Scale to large population-level studies and do it across multiple countries internationally—we generally find that around 12 percent of people [experience] it.

A combination of factors can lead to an addictive behavior. And the most common is the addictive potential of the substance combined with the vulnerability of the person. We think about both of those things with food, too: ingredients that could have addictive potential and the people who could be most vulnerable. We also look at food attributes, such as high refined carbohydrate content, which is known to trigger reward pathways in the brain

Other aspects of substance-use-disorder criteria include loss of control over intake and highly patterned intake. That’s what we see in binge-eating disorder. Binge-eating disorder and food addiction are not the same thing, but they share similarities. If we look at the foods people report consuming when they binge eat, they tend to be things that would be classified as ultraprocessed—things like pizza, ice cream, candy, chips. They’re very rarely things like fruit, nuts, beans.

What do you consider an ultraprocessed food?

There are multiple definitions. I would say the one most studied and what we use in my lab is the NOVA [“new” in Portuguese] definition; it has four levels, and the fourth is ultraprocessed foods.

The NOVA level-four foods contain ingredients or processing methods that are not available to the home cook. You can think about additives like stabilizers, cosmetic additives that enhance color or flavor, or emulsifiers to maintain texture. If you add vitamin D or calcium—types of nutritional fortification—that doesn’t make a food a NOVA ultraprocessed food by itself. Ultraprocessed might also refer to foods produced with an industrial method, like making starch slurries that are then extruded, puffed, subjected to high heat, or molded in ways that you really wouldn’t be able to make in your kitchen.

Why might ultraprocessed foods in particular fire up reward pathways in the brain?

The current scientific thinking is we have one reward system and lots of different things that can be rewarding. All addictive drugs increase dopamine in the striatum [a brain region beneath the cerebral cortex that is involved in motor and reward processing]. This has been the dogma since 1988 with [a paper by pharmacologists Gaetano Di Chiara and Assunta Imperato]. It’s the same thing [with certain foods]. If you infuse sugar and fat into the oral cavity of an animal, you see an increase in dopamine. If you infuse these things directly into the gut [of animals], you also see increases in dopamine. There is no agreed-upon threshold in which we say a substance that is addictive must increase dopamine in the striatum by x amount.

Modern ultraprocessed foods started to become widespread in the U.S. around the 1950s. Those foods are acting on a reward system that evolved to deal with natural rewards from the environment.

When we’re thinking about food addiction, we know that there are certain levers or ways to highly activate the reward system, and ultraprocessed foods seem to access the most levers. They elevate levels of sodium, fat, and refined carbohydrates in the body. And this is aided in various ways—with emulsifiers, with texture changes, with flavor changes—ultraprocessed foods are made to be the most palatable, the most delicious. We don’t think about broccoli as an addictive substance; we think about foods that contain enough of these potentially addictive nutrients in combination to be addictive substances.

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Hmmmm … Trump is trying to get in on Nuclear Fusion for $6 billion.

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ITER installs third sector module, marking major progress in vacuum vessel assembly.

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The ensuing period of talks between U.S. and Venezuelan officials resulted in the release of 17 American citizens and permanent residents held in Venezuela.

But the Trump administration’s decision to suspend those talks in favor of a military and economic pressure campaign against Mr. Maduro put an end to prisoner releases. The number of detained Americans in Venezuela began to rise again in the fall, according to the U.S. official. That rise coincided with the deployment of a U.S. naval armada in the Caribbean and the start of airstrikes against boats that Washington says transport drugs on Mr. Maduro’s orders.

The United States further escalated its pressure campaign this month, targeting tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and paralyzing the country’s biggest source of exports.

The U.S. Embassy in Colombia, which deals with Venezuelan affairs, declined to comment on American detainees in Venezuela, and referred questions to the U.S. State Department.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Venezuela’s Communication Ministry, which handles the government’s press requests, did not respond to a request for comment.

The identities of most of the Americans detained in Venezuela in recent months are unknown.

The family of a traveler named James Luckey-Lange of Staten Island in New York City, reported him missing soon after he crossed Venezuela’s volatile southern border in early December.

The U.S. official said Mr. Luckey-Lange, 28, is among the recently imprisoned and is one of the two Americans who may be designated as wrongfully detained.

Mr. Luckey-Lange is the son of the musician Diane Luckey, who performed as Q Lazzarus and is best known for her 1988 single “Goodbye Horses.” A travel enthusiast and amateur martial arts fighter, Mr. Luckey-Lange worked in commercial fishing in Alaska after graduating from college, according to friends and family.

He embarked on a long trip across Latin America in 2022 after the death of his mother. His father died this year.

“He has been traveling around, figuring out what to do with his life,” said Eva Aridjis Fuentes, a filmmaker who worked with Mr. Luckey-Lange for a documentary about Q Lazzarus. “He has had so much loss.”

Mr. Luckey-Lange wrote on his blog in early December that he was doing research on gold mining in the Amazon region of Guyana, which borders Venezuela. On Dec. 7, he wrote a friend that he was at an unspecified location in Venezuela, and he last spoke to his family the following day. He said he was heading to the capital, Caracas, where he was planning to catch a flight on Dec. 12 that would eventually bring him home to New York.

It is unclear if Mr. Luckey-Lange had a visa to enter Venezuela, as the country’s law requires of American citizens.

His aunt and next of kin, Abbie Luckey, said in a phone interview that she has not been contacted by U.S. officials and is seeking any information about his whereabouts.

Some American citizens who have been released from prison in Venezuela earlier this year have described abusive conditions and lack of due process. Many were not charged with any crimes, and few were convicted.

A Peruvian-American named Renzo Huamanchumo Castillo said he was detained last year after traveling to Venezuela to meet his wife’s family, and charged with terrorism and conspiring to kill Mr. Maduro.

He said the charges made no sense. “We realized afterward, I was just a token,” he added.

Mr. Huamanchumo, 48, said he was frequently beaten and received one liter of muddy water each day while detained in a notorious Venezuelan prison called Rodeo I. “It was the worst thing you can imagine,” he said.

He was freed in a prisoner swap in July.

At least two other people with U.S. ties remain imprisoned in Venezuela, according to their families: Aidel Suarez, a U.S. permanent resident born in Cuba, and Jonathan Torres Duque, a Venezuelan-American.

Mr. Torres’s mother, Rhoda Torres, said her son, who is now 26, had returned to Venezuela after the family had been living in the United States for around a decade. She believed he was detained based on his athletic build and American accent, she said.

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President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela at a rally in Caracas, the capital, earlier this month. Credit…Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times

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China is pushing ahead on plans to regulate humanlike artificial intelligence, including by forcing AI companies to ensure that users know they are interacting with a bot online.

Under a proposal released on Saturday by China’s cyberspace regulator, people would have to be informed if they were using an AI-powered service—both when they logged in and again every two hours. Humanlike AI systems, such as chatbots and agents, would also need to espouse “core socialist values” and have guardrails in place to maintain national security, according to the proposal.

Additionally, AI companies would have to undergo security reviews and inform local government agencies if they rolled out any new humanlike AI tools. And chatbots that tried to engage users on an emotional level would be banned from generating any content that would encourage suicide or self-harm, or that could be deemed damaging to mental health. They would also be barred from generating outputs related to gambling, obscene, or violent content.

A mounting body of research shows that AI chatbots are incredibly persuasive, and there are growing concerns around the technology’s addictiveness and its ability to sway people toward harmful actions.

China’s plans could change—the draft proposal is open to comment until January 25, 2026. But the effort underscores Beijing’s push to advance the nation’s domestic AI industry ahead of that of the U.S., including through the shaping of global AI regulation. The proposal also stands in contrast to Washington, D.C.’s stuttering approach to regulating the technology. This past January, President Donald Trump scrapped a Biden-era safety proposal for regulating the AI industry. And earlier this month, Trump targeted state-level rules designed to govern AI, threatening legal action against states with laws that the federal government deems to interfere with AI progress.

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Israeli Prime Minister said he will award Trump with Israel prize, highest civilian honor, while visiting Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm while offering full-throated support to Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in Florida.

In a bravura display of mutual admiration, Netanyahu announced that the US president would be awarded the Israel prize, the country’s highest civilian honour, which, since its inception in the 1950s, has never before been given to a non-Israeli person.

The trip by Netanyahu to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence came amid a new push by officials in Washington to force concessions from Israel to allow progress towards the second phase of a Gaza peace plan, which in October halted the devastating two-year-long war.

Asked if he and Netanyahu had discussed Israel pulling back troops before Hamas fully disarmed, Trump told reporters: “If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do – they agreed to it – then there’ll be hell to pay for them, and we don’t want that, we’re not looking for that. But they have to disarm within a fairly short period of time.”

He described the question of Israel withdrawing its forces as “a separate subject”, adding only: “We’ll talk about that.”

Last week, the US news outlet Axios reported that the Trump administration wanted to announce a Palestinian technocratic government for Gaza and an international stabilisation force as soon as possible, and that senior Trump officials were growing exasperated “as Netanyahu has taken steps to undermine the fragile ceasefire and stall the peace process”.

But Trump himself appeared to show no such qualms after Monday’s meeting. He said he was “not concerned about anything that Israel is doing” and “Israel has lived up to the plan, 100%”.

He repeatedly pointed the finger at Hamas, saying, “it’ll be horrible for them” if they failed to disarm. “It’s going to be really, really bad for them, and I don’t want that to happen. But they made an agreement that they were going to disarm. And you couldn’t blame Israel,” he said.

Hamas retains large quantities of small arms but only a fraction of the heavy weapons that enabled its surprise attack into southern Israel in 2023, during which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 abducted.

More than 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the ensuing Israeli offensive, and vast swathes of Gaza reduced to ruins. About 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the October ceasefire.

In recent weeks, Hamas has successfully established its authority over the parts of Gaza it controls with a series of executions, raids and beatings targeting rival power brokers, collaborators with Israel and criminal gangs. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is said to now live in the Hamas-controlled zone.

The Islamist militant organisation has proposed some solutions to allow some of its weapons to be put into storage but has refused to accept full disarmament.

Hamas’s armed wing reiterated on Monday that it would not surrender its weapons.

“Our people are defending themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as the occupation remains,” the new spokesperson for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who has adopted the name of his late predecessor Abu Obeida, said in a video statement.

Trump claimed that other countries that supported the peace deal would “go in and wipe out Hamas” if it fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

Trump and Netanyahu earlier held a lunch meeting inside Mar-a-Lago along with their delegations. Netanyahu was expected to tell Trump that Hamas must return the remains of the last Israeli hostage left in Gaza before the next stages of the stalled ceasefire can be implemented, Israeli officials and analysts said.

Speaking to reporters before the meeting, Trump falsely said “just about” every hostage was released because of him and his team, whereas “none” were released during the Joe Biden administration. In fact, Hamas released a total of 138 hostages as a result of deals that the Biden administration helped broker, according to the Snopes fact-checking site.

The family of the last person whose remains have not been returned, Ran Gvili, has joined the Israeli prime minister’s visiting entourage and will meet officials in Washington later this week.

n Israeli official in Netanyahu’s circle told Reuters that the prime minister would demand that Hamas return the remains of all hostages in Gaza, as required under the ceasefire deal, before moving to the next stages of Trump’s plan.

A second phase of the peace plan calls for an interim authority made up of non-aligned Palestinian technocrats to govern the Palestinian territory, and an international stabilisation force of thousands of troops to be deployed. Israel has significant concerns about both.

Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer, was badly wounded and then abducted during the October 2023 Hamas raid into Israel that triggered the conflict. It is unclear if he died of his wounds during the raid or in Gaza. Hundreds gathered on Saturday night in Tel Aviv to demand that Israel make no concession to advance the ceasefire deal until his remains are returned.

Lianne Pollak-David, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and peace negotiator in the prime minister’s office, said the failure to return the remains of Gvili was a serious issue. “Netanyahu and the Israelis as a people are simply not going to accept this,” she said.

Hamas has freed 20 living hostages and returned the bodies of 27 dead hostages since October, and some observers see the insistence on Gvili’s remains being returned as a delaying tactic to allow Israel’s military forces to remain in the 53% of Gaza they currently control.

Daniel Levy, a UK-based analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator, said Netanyahu had no intention of withdrawing further from Gaza or allowing any international force that would deter Israeli military action.

“He feels he has a number of cards to play yet, and the remains of Gvili is the easiest one to play now, but there are others,” Levy said.

For Netanyahu, who faces an election within 10 months, the prospect of Iran repairing the damage inflicted on its nuclear programme in its short war with Israel and the US this summer and building up its ballistic missile capabilities is another priority.

Trump had previously insisted that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “completely and fully obliterated”. But on Monday, he said: “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because, if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”

The president added, “Iran may be behaving badly. It hasn’t been confirmed. But if it’s confirmed, look, they know the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time.” Pressed for evidence, he said: “This is just what we hear, but usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

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Trump says there will be ‘hell to pay’ if Hamas refuse to disarm – video

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In Brigitte Bardot’s death, I see the passing of a generation: the Frenchwomen who tried to find a path to autonomy in the 1950s and ’60s. One of the last things Ms. Bardot did was write a book, published this year in French, an abecedarium titled “Mon BBcédaire.” The book, a not very chic compendium of thoughts scrawled in her own handwriting, received a tepid reaction from the French press, which was mostly disappointed by her portrayal of France. (“F is for … France, dear country of my youth! She has grown dull, sad, submissive, ailing — damaged, ravaged, banal, vulgar.”)

Young Brigitte Bardot, the actress, was a vessel for the imagination. Her sun-drenched, instinctual sexuality onscreen thrilled France, and then the whole world. She seemed to be without artifice, feral and physical. Men projected onto her, but she could not be possessed. She was the very idea of postwar Frenchwomen: provocative, apparently in control. They liked men, and were convinced that they could manipulate them to their whims.

As a girl, Ms. Bardot left her strict, bourgeois, Catholic industrialist family for the life of a bohemian; at 39, she gave up being a film actress and retreated from the public’s adulation (and later foreclosed any potential return to it). She pursued animal liberation with intensity. “Animals saved me,” she once said. “Without them, I would have committed suicide.”

As her life progressed, Ms. Bardot provoked in new, often bigoted ways. She tarnished her legacy with her frequent racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, and anti-trans comments and by mocking the #MeToo movement. I grew up around strong Frenchwomen of Ms. Bardot’s type, beautiful and independent, yes, but often cutting and cruel. They said horrendous, retrograde things with a mischievous twinkle in their eye.

I admit I loved those women, even as I strongly disagreed with their beliefs. They were not sweet; they were formidable. My grandmother lived alone on a houseboat on the Seine after divorcing my grandfather in the early 1970s. She gave me advice about men: “You must keep them like a pretty puppy on a leash, nice to show off but never to be taken seriously.” And to my surprise, she was completely accepting when I told her I dated women. She told me that she, too, had been in love with a woman once — a famous tennis player who drove a racecar, owned a pet cheetah, and looked a bit like my grandfather. She would never date a woman again, she said. It was far too painful.

Brigitte Bard

t died on Sunday. Let her memorialize herself in her own words.

Reading them, I laugh, often despite myself.

A comme ABANDON (A IS FOR ABANDON)

Absolute distress.

D comme Désir (D is for desire)

An erotic compulsion for another, which can go as far as murder!

E comme Enfer (E is for hell)

It exists on Earth.

F comme Fumer (F is for smoking)

It’s marvelous! It’s forbidden! Everything that does us good is forbidden. I’m sick of it!

I love smoking, I’ve always smoked, and I always will. I like to defy the forbidden; it is my passion!

G comme Grossesse (G is for pregnancy)

A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man … it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship.

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Brigitte Bardot in 1962. Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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The holiday season is often painted as an idyllic vision of rest, conjuring images of warm beverages and bountiful time with loved ones. But many people have trouble unwinding at this time of year. Why do the December holidays offer the promise of respite but never seem to deliver? And is more restorative rest possible during this busy season?

I am a psychologist who studies how rest supports learning, creativity, and well-being. Sleep is often the first thing that many people associate with rest, but humans also require restorative downtime when awake. These active rest periods include physical, social, and creative experiences that can occur throughout the day – not just while mindlessly scrolling on the couch.

When holiday stresses begin to snowball, rest periods replenish depleted psychological resources, reduce stress, and promote well-being. But reaping the full benefits of rest and leisure requires more than a slow morning or a mug of hot cocoa. It’s also about intentionally scheduling active recovery periods that energize us and leave us feeling restored.

That’s because good rest needs to be anticipated, planned, and refined.

Holiday stress

The winter holiday season can take a toll on well-being. Financial stress increases, and daily routines are disrupted. Add the stress of travel, plus a dash of challenging family dynamics, and it’s not surprising that emotional well-being declines during the holiday season.

Quality rest and leisure periods can buffer these stressors, promoting recovery and well-being. They also can help reduce psychological strain and prolong positive emotions as people return to work.

Effective rest comes in many forms, from going outdoors for a walk to socializing, listening to music or engaging in creative hobbies. These activities may feel like distractions, but they serve important mental health functions.

For instance, research finds that walking in nature results in diminished activation in the area of the brain associated with sadness and ruminating thoughts. Walks in nature are also associated with reduced anxiety and stress.

Other studies have shown that activities such as playing the piano or doing calligraphy significantly lower cortisol, a stress hormone. In fact, some of the most promising interventions for depression involve participation in pleasant leisure activities.

Not all idle time is restorative

So why does it feel so hard to get good rest during the holidays?

One of the most robust findings from psychologists and researchers who study leisure is that the effectiveness of rest periods depends on how satisfying they feel to the individual. This might sound obvious, but people often spend their free time doing things that are not satisfying.

For example, a famous 2002 study of how people spent their time found that the most popular form of leisure was watching television. But participants also rated TV time as their least enjoyable activity. Those who watched more than four hours of TV a day rated it as even less enjoyable than those who watched less than two hours a day.

A few years ago, my colleagues and I collected data from college students and found that students reported turning to mindless distractions, such as social media, at the end of the day, but that it usually did not leave them feeling reenergized or restored. Although this study was specifically about college students, when I presented the findings to the larger research team, one of my collaborators said, “It really makes you think about yourself, doesn’t it?” There were silent nods around the room.

Planning for good rest

To combat the pitfall of poor rest cycles, science suggests planning for active rest and pleasant activities, and carrying through with those plans. A large body of research shows that designing, scheduling, and engaging in enjoyable activities is effective at lowering symptoms of depressionand anxiety.

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Twelve years ago, when my daughter was born, my parents were there in the hospital room with me to welcome her. My mother cut the cord, and my father announced, “It’s a girl!” The three of us exclaimed over her incredible size — over 9 pounds — and off-the-charts length — 23 astounding inches. It was everything I’d been dreaming of since I’d first set out to become a single mother by choice.

But not too far away, waiting patiently by the phone for news, was another person, my sometimes-live-in girlfriend, Sarah.

She wasn’t at the birth because I hadn’t invited her to be. In fact, I had expressly told her that she was not invited. I didn’t even want her waiting at home for us. I had embarked on my path toward motherhood on my own, and I was determined to see it through that way, even if the solitude of the journey had become something I had to enforce.

My girlfriend and I had first dated in college, and had spent those years of our early 20s madly in love. But our relationship had ended when she broke my heart by refusing to come with me when I headed off to the West Coast for graduate school. We’d stayed in touch for a while, and then she’d stopped answering my calls. I cried into my whiskey and referred to her among my new friends as “the one who got away.”

I spent the next seven years in and out of disastrous relationships with men who were mostly all wrong for me, commitment-phobic bad boys who couldn’t have been further from wanting what I did: a child. I was approaching 30 and desperate to settle down and start a family. One day, I asked my mother why it was taking so long to find someone who wanted to make a life with me.

“Maybe you’re not someone who’s meant to have just one great love. Maybe your great loves will be many,” she said. This from a woman who’d been married to the same man for nearly 40 years.

But if this was true, I reasoned, then why not have a child on my own right now? I could always fall in love at 50, but I couldn’t have a baby at that age. The more time I spent making the case to everyone around me, the more attached I became to the vision of myself as a single mother by choice. Why would anyone do this with a partner, I thought, when it’s so much less complicated to do it on your own?

So I asked an old ex-boyfriend — smart, attractive, and completely off the rails — if he’d be the donor. He breezily said yes, and I began to make plans to draw up paperwork with a lawyer. And that’s when Sarah stepped back into my life.

First she sent me an email on New Year’s Eve, wishing me an early happy birthday and asking if we could talk on the phone sometime. I was furious. Who did she think she was to show up in my life now, crashing my pre-baby bliss and being a downer on both New Year’s and my birthday? I said sure, she could call me — but she better have a good reason for it.

I wasn’t going to let another relationship head off my dreams of starting a family.

As it turned out, she did: She had cut off contact all those years before because she hadn’t been able to get over our romance. And that’s why she was back in touch now. We still lived on opposite sides of the country, and neither of us had jobs we were ready to walk away from, but how could I say no to the most romantic proposal of my life? She wanted me back.

After that, we spent hours on the phone each day, relearning each other with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. We knew that we belonged together, but “together” was a complicated prospect. At first, she seemed understanding about my continued determination to become a single mother by choice. I made it clear that any relationship with her wasn’t going to change that for me, and she said she wouldn’t mind dating a pregnant lady. In these conversations, we chose to ignore the obvious fact that pregnancy only lasts nine months.

As the weeks passed, she began to ask for me to postpone the paperwork, to wait until our relationship had had more time so that we could embark on this journey of parenthood together, as partners, and without the conspicuous intrusion of my ex-boyfriend’s sperm. But I felt I’d waited long enough. I wasn’t going to let another relationship head off my dreams of starting a family.

Not surprisingly, like so many things having to do with getting pregnant, this was entirely out of my control. Days before Sarah’s first visit to spend a weekend with me at my place in San Francisco, I went to the emergency room for a burst appendix. I had surgery and was officially out of commission for several weeks as I recovered.

By that time, I’d accepted a one-year teaching position in Pennsylvania, only an eight-hour drive from her home in Boston, and I decided it was no longer convenient to use the West Coast ex-boyfriend’s sperm. I spent the next few months moving cross-country, researching clinics, picking an anonymous donor, and downing prenatal vitamins. Then I gave myself a shot of hormones and drove my Subaru to the insemination. I was doing this on my own, just like I’d promised myself.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I had come a long way on our path back to partnership. And, up until the morning sickness kicked in, I continued to give her every indication that we were walking it together. Then came months of physical and emotional agony, our lives moving forward against the backdrop of my severe nausea and vomiting, with a propulsion that felt out of my control. I took a permanent job in a small college town in Alabama. She found a new job in Atlanta and followed me south. We bought the house that I lived in mostly without her, and she rented an apartment in the city for herself. My family was thousands of miles away, and I knew no one in my new hometown. On weekends, she’d drive the two hours from Atlanta to buy my groceries and listen from the other room while I threw up. I couldn’t have gotten through it alone, but at the time, alone was exactly what I wanted to be.

While she was doing everything she could to make our dreams come true, I had turned inward. I stopped talking about our future together and started thinking about my own. My all-day, eight-month morning sickness was exacerbated by smell and touch, and I couldn’t stand for her to be near me. The only person I could imagine sharing a space with was the baby, and my tunnel vision of life as a single mom narrowed again.

But though my vision for the future felt like it was gaining new focus, everyone around me seemed to grow more confused. Sarah’s parents called with well-wishes and inquiries about baby gifts, which I accepted with a mixture of scorn and appreciation. Not surprisingly, my new co-workers didn’t understand the situation either, clearly longing to turn our story into one of a happy, little queer nuclear family — something I vehemently objected to, even as Sarah rubbed my swollen feet. It’s a stretch to say that anyone was convinced by the explanation I gave — we’re dating, and I’m having a baby on my own — but I stuck to it. At the baby shower my new friends threw for me, I gleefully unwrapped a baby book and declared, “I hope this one doesn’t have a family tree in it because our family tree only has one side!” My girlfriend sat an armchair away.

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