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The author and her family moved home to live with her parents, and months later, her father was diagnosed with Parkinson's.
Courtesy of Melissa Noble
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I've always been a little woo-woo. Throughout my life, I've had this strange sense that the universe was guiding me in a particular direction.
Looking back, I can also pinpoint a handful of sliding door moments that drastically changed the course of my life. Last July, I experienced one of them.
I was holidaying on the Gold Coast, where my parents live, sitting in a park with my dad while my three kids played nearby. Out of nowhere, my dad began to tell me how much he loved me and what a wonderful daughter I'd been.
I'd already noticed subtle changes in my dad's health during that trip, and somehow the conversation felt like a goodbye. For the first time, I was struck by the terrifying realization that my time with my parents was running out.
Something told me to move back home and be with my parents
When I flew back to country Victoria, I couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling that I needed to go home and be with my parents. I'd been living away from them for 15 years, always saying I'd move back "one day." But this felt different. It's hard to explain, but deep down I felt like it was now or never. After some convincing, my husband agreed to try it.
Moving interstate as a family of five is no small undertaking. Over the next few months, we were under tremendous stress to make the move happen. My husband had to figure out what to do with his remedial massage and myotherapy clinics in Victoria, while I focused on finding the right school for our kids.
More than once, I questioned whether we were making the right decision, but the feeling never left me. It was like the universe was nudging me forward.
In January, we packed up our belongings and left them in storage at my husband's parents' place, then drove up the east coast of Australia in two cars. As we crossed the New South Wales border into Queensland and saw the sign saying, "Welcome to the Gold Coast," tears streamed down my cheeks.
It had taken me a long time, but I was finally home.
Since then, we've been living with my parents, making memories together. There have been challenges, particularly for my husband, who has had to open a new remedial massage clinic and start from scratch. But in June, something happened that confirmed, beyond any doubt in my mind, that we'd made the right decision.
My dad's Parkinson's diagnosis confirmed it was the right decision
One Sunday morning, I took my dad to see a neurologist. We'd noticed a slight tremor in his right hand that came and went, and we wanted to get it checked out.
I waited outside while Dad went in. When he emerged, he smiled.
"It's good news," he said.
I assumed that meant he'd been given the all clear.
"I have Parkinson's," he clarified.
I stood there, dumfounded, then burst into tears, crying like a little girl, despite being 41.
"How is that good news, Dad?" I asked.
My dad is one of my favorite people in the world, and one of the things I admire most about him is his optimism. He's a glass-half-full person in every sense.
"Well," he said, "it's the lesser of two evils. It's better than Alzheimer's." That's one disease Dad has always feared.
I've felt both grief and gratitude since that day
On the way home, we stopped at a café, and I bought him breakfast. As I looked across the table at this beautiful man who had always seemed invincible in my eyes, my heart broke. How could he have Parkinson's?
But as the days passed and we began to process the diagnosis, another emotion slowly emerged alongside the grief. Gratitude.
I was so grateful to be home. Grateful to my husband for agreeing to uproot our lives in order to give me more time with my parents. Grateful to my kids for coming along for the ride. And grateful to my parents for welcoming us into their house.
Maybe it's a coincidence that I felt that unmistakable pull to come home. Maybe it's intuition. Either way, I know I'm exactly where I need to be at this point in my life. By my Dad's side, ready to support him on the road ahead.
Norway's soldiers want to give their Ukrainian counterparts a "Viking mentality" as they lead training for them in Poland.
NATO
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Norwegian soldiers are bringing their own "Viking mentality" and warrior culture to the training of Ukrainian troops for war with Russia.
Norway is leading Operation Legio, a new international effort to support, train, and equip Ukrainian soldiers for the fight. Battlefield training combines Ukrainian combat experience with NATO warfighting practices.
The training, supported by 11 nations, is primarily conducted by personnel from the Telemark Battalion, an elite mechanized infantry battalion of the Norwegian Army that has made aspects of Viking culture central to its identity.
Maj. John, the S3 Operations Officer in charge of synchronizing the overall training operation, told Business Insider that Norway's Telemark Battalion puts great emphasis on building skills, but also developing a "warrior mentality" that allows them to fight and "thrive in harsh conditions."
"We draw that warrior mentality from our Viking heritage," he said, "and the Viking culture is very important for us." He asked to only be identified by his first name for security reasons.
The elite battalion, which has deployed on combat missions in places like the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, is represented by the emblem of a Viking ship, and the unit's Viking-inspired battle cry is: "To Valhalla!" In Norse mythology, Valhalla is the great hall in Asgard for brave warriors slain in battle.
John said the battalion's mindset is "not like over-aggressive, over-eager, doing stupid stuff. We take the best parts of that Viking mentality and then apply it to the ethical and moral standards that are required of our soldiers."
The insignia of the Telemark Battalion, visible in the green background flag, is a Viking ship.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
John said the training emphasizes both battlefield skills and the "warrior mentality" and discipline needed to "thrive in harsh conditions."
"It's a mix between skills and mentality," he said.
The Ukrainians arriving for training are not necessarily novices when it comes to enduring harsh conditions. Many of them come from a military shaped by years of high-intensity warfare, and Norwegian leaders repeatedly described the training as an exchange in which Ukraine's combat experience shapes what its NATO partners teach.
The way the Norwegians reinforce their approach, John said, is "through exposing them to harsh training." The training, conducted at a camp in southeastern Poland, is designed to be tough, with daytime and nighttime operations and scenarios intended to replicate battlefield conditions as closely as possible.
Brigadier Atle Molde, commander of Task Force Legio, doesn't currently serve in the Telemark battalion, but he said of this unit that "they have their culture, and of course, a warrior mentality is a good thing as long as it drives unit cohesion and fighting for something common."
Even the training camp, a purpose-built training site in Poland, roughly two hours from Ukraine's border, reflects that Viking identity.
Camp Jomsborg was established in 2025, and it began its fifth 51-day rotation of Ukrainian soldiers in late May. Norway acts as the framework nation, providing the main structure and leadership for the other participating countries.
"It's all about the Ukrainian soldier and increasing his lethality and survivability within this program before he leaves for front-line war," said John. The main goal, he said, is supporting Ukraine so it can keep defending itself and win the war on its own or negotiate a peace agreement on its own terms.
The name Camp Jomsborg comes from the legendary Viking fortress Jomsborg. Molde said that what characterized the Jomsvikings, a legendary warrior brotherhood based along the Baltic Sea, "was that they were very disciplined and professional warriors. So that's where the name comes from."
That history is visible throughout the camp, which Business Insider visited. Viking-inspired signs and a large Viking ship decorate the huge, purpose-built site where soldiers train, eat, and sleep. There are other references to Norwegian culture, too, with its streets named after figures like Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
The Camp Jomsborg training site has Viking-inspired decoration.
Sinéad Baker
Molde said that "unit cohesion is important," and that the Telemark Battalion was seeking to take what it sees as positive in its own culture and "try to give that over to the Ukrainians as well. So long as it has a positive effect, it's a good thing."
Plus, he said, "for one reason or another, the whole Viking mythology, the Ukrainians like that."
Ukraine's military and civilian population have shown extraordinary resilience under years of sustained Russian attacks against not just military targets, but civilian ones as well. Western leaders have repeatedly said that Moscow is seeking to break Ukraine's spirit and willingness to resist and force it into submission. Instead, Ukraine has continued fighting and adapting, developing battlefield innovations and tactics that its Western partners increasingly want to study and learn from.
Ukraine's military and population are enduring conditions that no Western country has experienced in decades, including heavy attrition, constant attacks, and enormous losses.
Ukraine's battlefield experience and expertise are central to the Legiotraining operation. "We have defined this as a Ukrainian training center," John said.
Ukraine outlines what it needs and wants to learn, and its partners structure the training around those requirements, with Ukrainian instructors also helping to lead. The program was built around Ukrainian requests and expertise and is regularly updated based on Ukrainian feedback.
Defining it that way means Ukraine can "hold us accountable for quality and delivering that realistic training," John said. That cooperation, he said, "is what has made this an effective training mission."
Many of the Ukrainians at Camp Jomsborg have real-world lessons from brutal warfare that their instructors lack, while Western trainers have decades of institutional experience and NATO practices to offer in return. Molde said it's a case of everyone working together to combine those strengths and learn from one another.
Jørgen, a Norwegian instructor at the camp, told Business Insider that training the Ukrainians isn't difficult. "I think it's quite incredible how eager to learn they are in general," he said. "It kind of confirms how good the guys are."
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Sinéad Baker
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Sinéad Baker is a Military and Defense Correspondent based in Business Insider's London bureau, writing about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and NATO actions.Sinéad most often covers soldiers' experiences, military strategy, battlefield developments, the defense industry's response, and geopolitical decisions that surround the war. She has reported from NATO’s frontlines and around Europe, has interviewed multiple prime ministers and defense ministers, has appeared on BBC News and The Guardian's politics podcast, and has been cited by Congressional hearings.Sinéad has also extensively covered US politics and previously led Business Insider's breaking news coverage from London.Sinéad previously completed a master's degree in investigative journalism at City, University of London, and has written for The Guardian, The Observer, and TheJournal.ie. Sinéad is the former editor of the multi-award-winning The University Times in Dublin.Expertise
Experiences of soldiers in Ukraine, including battlefield developments and tactics
Western military responses to the war, and lessons they should learn
New weaponry built for and in response to the war
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Intense wildfires, like the Mount Underwood blaze on Vancouver Island last year, are expected to remain a fixture of Canadian life.
Faced with another summer when wildfires have scorched millions of hectares of land and blankets of smoke have disrupted daily life nationwide, Canada is trying to limit the annual devastation.
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Yet, despite procuring new water bombers and deploying forest management strategies to protect populated areas, experts caution that intense wildfires will remain a fixture of Canadian life.
"We're going to have to live with this," said Normand Lacour, who spent decades at Quebec's wildfire prevention and detection organization (SOPFEU).
Canada is home to about a quarter of Earth's boreal forest area, and average annual temperatures in the country are increasing roughly twice as fast as the global average.
That makes conditions in Canada particularly "conducive to intense and very extensive forest fires," University of Ottawa geography professor Patricia DeRepentigny told AFP.
Canada's last three wildfire seasons have been among the 10 worst on record, including the devastating summer of 2023, when 18 million hectares (44.5 million acres) were torched, an area nearly as large as Syria.
Toronto had the worst air quality of any major city in the world for a period last month, caused by smoke from fires in northern Ontario.
This summer is not currently on track to approach that historic toll, with 4 million hectares burned so far, but the damage has been widespread.
In the western province of British Columbia, 15,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes, while residents of major eastern population centers like Toronto endured some of the world's worst air quality last month.
Changing methods
Canada's emerging response is broad-based.
The federal government has invested CAD$317 million (US$227 million) over five years "to establish a new national aerial firefighting surge capacity," Ottawa announced in May.
The money is being used to lease 10 aircraft capable of confronting wildfires, to be dispatched to provinces facing intensifying blazes.
Ottawa is also backing a CAD$150 million program that aims to clear flammable material such as vegetation from populated areas.
Provinces have also beefed up their firefighter capacity, including in Quebec, where SOPFEU staffing levels are up 40%.
But, when it comes to protecting people from wildfires, "Canada is not in an excellent position," said Ryan Ness, the director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Institute.
There are "too many communities in wildfire-exposed areas that continue to develop," he told AFP.
Fire clouds
Canada is also extremely vulnerable to "fire clouds," or pyrocumulonimbus clouds, immense blazes that create their own wind and even lightning that can spark fresh fires.
The phenomenon, a consequence of the more frequent heat waves caused by climate change, was once rare in Canada, but that is changing.
Fire clouds were recorded 140 times in Canada in 2023, compared with once or twice a year historically, DeRepentigny said.
Fire clouds are unpredictable and can spread at staggering speeds. Battling them is a near-impossible challenge.
"There's not much we can do when this happens, apart from pulling crews out of the field and repositioning them behind the fire," said SOPFEU meteorologist Claudia Vaillancourt.
Citation:
Canada tries to adapt to a future of wildfires (2026, August 8)
retrieved 8 August 2026
from https://phys.org/news/2026-08-canada-future-wildfires.html
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part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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You can spend every day surrounded by other people and still feel lonely. You can also spend long periods alone without finding the experience distressing.
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That difference may help explain why loneliness affects health differently from social isolation. In a new study, my colleagues and I found evidence that loneliness may contribute to poorer mental health and well-being, and to some measures of poorer general health. Social isolation appeared to have a narrower influence, with the clearest evidence involving poorer well-being.
Around 1 in 6 people worldwide experiences loneliness, according to the World Health Organization. Loneliness is the distress someone feels when their relationships do not provide the closeness or connection they want. Social isolation describes the number and frequency of a person's social contacts. The experiences can overlap, although a person may experience either one without the other.
These patterns cannot establish cause and effect. Loneliness might contribute to ill health, while illness can restrict someone's activities and relationships. Poverty, disability and childhood circumstances may also influence both health and social connection.
Our study used several statistical approaches with different strengths and sources of bias. Taken together, the results suggest that loneliness may contribute to depression and increase the risk of self-harm or a suicide attempt. It may also reduce life satisfaction and other aspects of well-being.
We found evidence that the relationship can operate in the opposite direction. Depression may increase loneliness, while poorer well-being may increase both loneliness and social isolation. Evidence that depression contributes to social isolation was less consistent. Previous longitudinal research has also found a two-way relationship between loneliness and common mental health problems.
Loneliness was linked to poorer general health, including multimorbidity, which means living with two or more long-term health conditions. We found no consistent evidence that loneliness or social isolation affected the specific physical health outcomes examined. These were coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, systolic blood pressure, which is the upper number in a blood-pressure reading, and type 2 diabetes.
This does not rule out an effect. Some estimates were too imprecise to support a firm conclusion, and previous longitudinal studies have reported links between loneliness, isolation and physical illness.
Combining different kinds of evidence
In the study, we used an approach known as triangulation. This involves studying the same question using methods affected by different potential sources of bias. When several approaches produce similar results, researchers can be more confident that the conclusion is not driven entirely by the limitations of one method.
First, we analyzed information from UK Biobank, which has collected health, lifestyle and genetic information from around 500,000 people in the UK.
We then compared siblings from the same families. Because siblings often share aspects of their childhood environment and genetic background, these comparisons can help account for family influences that might otherwise distort the results.
We also used Mendelian randomization. This method uses genetic variants statistically associated with a tendency toward loneliness or social isolation as proxies to investigate whether those experiences may affect health.
Mendelian randomization can reduce some sources of bias that affect conventional observational research. These include reverse causation, where an outcome may influence the supposed cause.
However, the method relies on assumptions that cannot always be fully tested. This is especially important for complex social experiences, which are only indirectly related to the genetic variants used as proxies. We therefore considered these findings alongside evidence from the other methods.
What the study cannot tell us
The research has several limitations. In the UK Biobank analyses, loneliness and social isolation were measured at one point during middle or later adulthood. The findings may therefore apply differently to children, younger adults and people in very old age.
Loneliness was measured using one question asking whether participants often felt lonely. Social isolation was assessed through household size and the frequency of visits from friends or family.
This measure did not include contact through work, group activities or other parts of social life. The findings therefore relate to these particular measures and may not capture every form of loneliness or isolation.
Measuring each experience once also meant the study could not distinguish a short period of loneliness from loneliness lasting several years, or examine how experiences earlier in life might affect later health.
UK Biobank participants tend to be healthier and less economically disadvantaged than the wider population, a pattern described as healthy volunteer selection bias. The genetic analyses were restricted to people of European ancestry, limiting how confidently the findings can be applied to other populations.
The study did not test treatments or services, so it cannot identify which interventions work best. However, it strengthens the evidence that loneliness may contribute to poorer mental health and well-being, and that loneliness and social isolation should be examined separately.
This distinction may affect how support is designed. Increasing opportunities for social contact may reduce isolation. Addressing loneliness may require support focused on the quality of relationships and whether people experience them as close, trusting and meaningful.
Citation:
Loneliness may damage health in ways isolation does not: New study (2026, August 8)
retrieved 8 August 2026
from https://phys.org/news/2026-08-loneliness-health-ways-isolation.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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It will focus on rewarding users that regularly post original content.
Yalcin Sonat/Shutterstock
X has stopped accepting new applications for its revenue-sharing program and will completely shut it down after September 7. The website has launched the new Original Content Rewards Program to take its place, which it says will "reward creators who bring original ideas, expertise, reporting, creativity and commentary to X." Under the new program, creators can earn money based on the qualified impressions their original content gets.
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The website describes original content as users' original writing or reporting, photos or videos they take and memes or illustrations they create. They can earn from other people's posts, but they will have to add meaningful commentary or analysis to them, or to do some creative editing to existing videos or photos. If the user just adds captions or text overlays to other people's content that simply describe what's going on, it won't be counted as original. Bottom line, if a user's addition to another person's creation adds little to no value, it's not "original content" under X's policy.
To be eligible for the new rewards program, users have to be 18 or older and live in a country where it's available, as listed on the X's help page. They need to be paying for a Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business subscription, have at least 500 verified followers and have at least 500,000 Home timeline views from verified users within the last 90 days. That means for impressions or views to count towards the creator's total, they'll have to be unique impressions from Premium users, as well. In addition, creators must continue meeting those requirements even after they've been accepted to the program to be able to get payouts.
People currently part of X's revenue-sharing program will need to reapply for the new one when they become eligible for it on September 8. Those who aren't part of the old program can apply for original content rewards now.
Back in March, X updated its revenue-sharing program to give more weight to engagement from a user's home region. It was most likely meant to deter users from pretending to be Americans after it was revealed earlier this year that dozens of popular accounts tweeting pro-Trump sentiments and US commentaries as a whole weren't even based in the country. It's not clear if X's new program will have the same policy. %!s()
