Compassion tied to higher life satisfaction

Feeling happier starts with kindness 

By Linda Schädler, Universität Mannheim

edited by Lisa Lock, reviewed by Robert Egan

People who treat others with compassion often feel more at ease themselves. This is the key finding of a new study by Majlinda Zhuniq, Dr. Friedericke Winter, and Professor Corina Aguilar-Raab from the University of Mannheim. Their study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Key findings from the meta-analysis

While the link between self-compassion and well-being is well established, this effect has hardly been researched with respect to compassion for others. 

In a meta-analysis, the research team analyzed data from more than 40 individual studies.

The results showed that people who empathize with others, support them, or want to help them report greater overall life satisfaction, experience more joy, and see more meaning in life. 

On average, these people's psychological well-being was higher. The link between compassion and a reduction in negative feelings, such as stress or sadness, was weaker. However, slight positive trends could also be seen in this respect.

Likely Brown University killer found dead in New Hampshire

Suspect in Brown University mass shooting found dead in New Hampshire

From a press release posted by SteveAhlquist.news

The above video still of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente was taken from Alamo Rent a Car on November 17, 2025. This shows Valente picking up the car.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, the Providence Police Department, the Rhode Island State Police, the Boston Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island are today announcing the death of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the individual responsible for the murders of two students during a mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, December 13, 2025.

You can watch the news conference video here.

“Our singular goal was to obtain justice for the victims of this senseless act, and tonight our community can begin to heal as we close the book on this unimaginable tragedy,” said Attorney General Neronha. 

“While we’ll never be able to prosecute this individual, I hope this result begins to provide some small measure of closure for the victims and their families. I want to extend enormous gratitude to all of our law enforcement partners for their outstanding work in this case. Since Saturday, these men and women have worked around the clock to achieve justice for the victims and restore a sense of peace to Rhode Islanders.”

On December 18, 2025, a Rhode Island state court, based on an affidavit from a Providence Police Detective, issued a state arrest warrant for Neves Valente, charging him with two counts of murder and 23 felony counts of assault and felony firearms offenses.

Earlier this evening, law enforcement located Neves Valente at a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. After obtaining a federal search warrant for the unit, authorities entered and found Neves Valente deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Neves Valente (age 48) was born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal, and was a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States. Neves Valente arrived in the United States in August 2000 as an F-1 student at Brown University and subsequently obtained U.S. lawful permanent residency in April 2017. While at Brown University, he enrolled in a doctoral program but later withdrew from the university.

Full details of the investigation and subsequent identification of Neves Valente can be found in this affidavit.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Valente is also believed by authorities to have killed MIT nuclear scientist Nuno F.G. Loureiro on Monday at his home in Brookline, MA. 

Predictably, Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has suspended the program that allowed Valente to be granted a green card.

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Accusations of Mortgage Fraud by His Enemies

Classic Trump: He does what he accuses others of doing

by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica

For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.

Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action.

But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show.

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.

In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud. 

At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner who was herself later the rental agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.”

Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.

Birthright Citizenship Is in the Constitution Plain As Day

Almost the entire Trump family, including Donald himself, are children of immigrants.

By Mitchell Zimmerman 

At least four Supreme Court justices recently signaled their apparent agreement with Donald Trump’s effort to roll back the Fourteenth Amendment’s definition of American citizenship.

The case at issue, Trump v. Barbara, involves birthright citizenship — the principle that you’re a citizen of the country where you were born.

In the United States, birthright citizenship was written into the Constitution after the Civil War. Following the end of slavery, the amendment confirmed that the fundamental rights of citizenship do not depend on white ancestry, but belong to everyone born in this country.

On Day One of his presidency, Trump issued an Executive Order to overthrow that principle. He ordered that babies born in the U.S. of undocumented immigrants should not be considered citizens.

If Trump’s order were deemed legal, he would have the power to annul the citizenship of tens of millions of Americans, deny their right to vote and other legal entitlements, and even deport them. Trump’s endorsement of racial targeting in ICE arrests confirms that, in revoking citizenship, he would focus on people of color.

The first judge to hear a challenge to Trump’s order, federal Judge John Coughenour, concluded it was plainly illegal. “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” he continued. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Coughenour is no “radical liberal.” He was appointed to the bench by conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan. But any reasonable judge would reach the same conclusion — and many did, including judges of the Ninth and First Circuits.

Disturbingly, however, the Supreme Court may validate this “blatantly unconstitutional order.” Under Supreme Court rules, at least four justices must vote to take up a lower court ruling. So at least four decided Trump’s incredible claims were sound enough to put on the Supreme Court docket.

The decision is unsupportable. The Fourteenth Amendment begins with this plain statement: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s lawyers assert that children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants aren’t citizens because they aren’t subject to U.S. jurisdiction. That’s nonsense — jurisdiction has nothing to do with whether someone is legally in the United States.

“Jurisdiction” refers to the lawful authority a government exercises over individuals within its territory. If someone is not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, that means U.S. laws don’t apply to them.

Trump responds to Browning shooting and Reiner murders

Sunday protests in Westerly

Trump's "warrior dividend" lie

The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research

Science relies on the shared, free flow of information

By James M. Smoliga

When Donald Trump’s administration abruptly canceled federal subscriptions to Springer Nature journals this summer, government researchers across the country suddenly lost access to some of the most influential publications in science. News reports framed the decision as part of a broader narrative about an attack on science — and indeed, journal access is essential to researchers.

What the uproar really revealed, however, was something subtler but just as corrosive: the hidden economics of how science gets published and accessed. 

Most Americans don’t realize they are paying not once, not twice, but at least three times for the same body of research. 

Inside universities, this academic triple tax, as I think of it, is so normalized that faculty barely notice it, and they feel paralyzed to do anything about it. It’s woven into the daily routines of professors, grant writers, peer reviewers, and librarians. Yet it quietly drains billions of public dollars each year, enriching a handful of for-profit publishers while eroding the budgets of the very institutions that produce the research.

Restaurant angst

If you're looking for a distraction from real problems, here it is

By City St George’s, University of London

Restaurants and dinner hosts may be able to create more comfortable dining experiences by ensuring that everyone at the table is served at the same time, according to a new study.

Most people recognize the familiar moment at a restaurant or dinner party when their meal arrives, yet they hesitate to begin eating because others are still waiting. This long-standing custom was the focus of new research co-authored by Bayes Business School. The findings show that individuals tend to worry more about breaking this norm themselves than about others doing so.

The study, conducted by Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Janina Steinmetz, Professor of Marketing at Bayes, together with Dr Anna Paley from the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, explored how people judge their own behavior compared with what they expect from others in the same situation. Their work drew on six separate experiments.

Participants were asked to imagine sharing a meal with a friend. In some scenarios, they received their food first; in others, they watched their dining partner receive a meal before them. Those who were served first rated, on a numerical scale, how long they felt they should wait or whether they should start eating. Those who were still waiting evaluated what they believed their companion ought to do.

The results showed a clear gap between how people judge themselves and how they judge others. Individuals served first thought they should wait significantly longer than their dining partners actually expected them to.

High winds (20-50 mph) forecast for Charlestown tonight through tomorrow

 

Trump Economic Approval Hits All-Time Low as White House Official Insists ‘Nothing Bad Is Happening’

Two-thirds of the public don't believe him and he's pissed

Brad Reed

A new poll shows US voters’ approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy has hit an all-time low, even as the president and his officials insist the economy is the best in the world.

The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of the economy was “poor.”

What’s more, Trump’s approval rating on the economy among Republican voters now stands at just 69%, a strikingly low figure for a president who has consistently commanded loyalty from the GOP base.

Despite the grim numbers, the president and his administration have continued to say that the US is now in the middle of an economic boom.

During a Thursday morning interview on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US now has “the greatest $30 trillion economy in the world.”

“We are doing great,” Lutnick said. “Nothing bad is happening. Greatness is happening. We grew at 4% GDP! Come on!”

Lutnick’s message echoes the one Trump delivered earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania, where he said that voters’ concerns about being able to afford basics such as groceries, electricity, and healthcare were a “hoax” concocted by Democrats.

“Prices are coming down very substantially,” Trump falsely claimed during his speech. “But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.”

School shootings dropped in 2025 - but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention

US owns almost half of all the guns in the world, around 500 million

James Densley, Metropolitan State University

Wrong questions. Wrong answers

Active shootings represent a very small percentage of on-campus university violence.

But among those that do happen, there are patterns. And as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Dec. 13, 2025, Brown University shooting, similarities can be seen with other active shooter cases on college campuses that scholar James Densley has studied. “They tend to happen inside a classroom, and there tends to be multiple victims,” Densley explains.

The Brown University tragedy, in which a shooter killed two students and injured nine more, marks the fourth deadly shooting at a U.S. university in 2025.

The Department of Education in Rhode Island, where Brown University is located, said on Dec. 16 that it is urging local elementary and secondary schools to review safety protocols.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Densley about how schools have been given what he describes as an “impossible mandate” to try to prevent shootings.

What is the overall trajectory of school shootings over the past few years?

K-12 school shootings appear to be trending downward, at least in the past two years. But we actually saw the largest jumps in this type of violence in the three to five years leading up to 2024, which trends closely with the broader rise in homicide and violent crime we saw in the pandemic era.

In 2025, there have been 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. – still a staggeringly high number. This compares with 336 school shootings in 2024, 352 in 2023, 308 in 2022, and 257 in 2021.

How this relates to an increase in schools trying to institute security measures to prevent shootings is an open question. But it’s true that many schools are experimenting with certain solutions, like cameras, drones, AI threat detection, weapons scanners, panic apps and facial recognition, even if there is only weak or emerging evidence about how well they work.

Schools are treated as the front line, because the larger, structural solutions are too difficult to confront. It is much easier to blame schools after a tragedy than to actually address firearm access, grievance pathways – meaning how a person becomes a school shooter – and the other societal problems that are creating these tragedies.

Incentives

An example of truth being stranger than fiction, here is an actual Homeland Security recruitment ad

How To Have a Plastic-Free Holiday Season

Some suggestions

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Our world is awash in plastic. From single-use water bottles and food packaging to synthetic clothes, shoes, and even nail polish, our overreliance on plastic is spreading a toxic, chemical-laden material all over the planet — including in our own bodies.

Most Americans are sick of plastic use, but manufacturers continue to push the product on us. This holiday season, is it possible to have a plastic-free celebration?

There’s no substitute for systemic policy change to regulate plastic use, but individual actions on a mass scale can have an impact. They can also be a dinner table conversation, potentially spurring cultural shifts and inspiring local activism.

“None of us voted for more plastic,” says Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics. Enck, who served as regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, adds that “the reason we have so much plastic is because there is a glut of fracked gas on the market.”

Enck says it’s entirely possible to have a plastic-free holiday season. She suggests forgoing disposable dinnerware for your Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa meal. “You can rent glassware and plates and beautiful reusable tablecloths and napkins from local vendors,” she says.

Trump Administration asking universities to provide lists of Jews.

This is never a good thing.

Beth Kissileff

(RNS) — Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust and Eastern European tyranny, has a tip for dealing with authoritarianism: “Don’t obey in advance.” 

So, when the university that granted me my doctorate and educated four generations of my family was asked by the Trump administration in July for lists of Jewish faculty members, I held my breath. Would I be able to continue to be proud of the University of Pennsylvania, the place I learned so much from?

In the past year, universities have varied widely in their responses to demands from the Trump administration to fall into line on ridding their campuses of wokeness and antisemitism. Columbia University (my undergraduate alma mater) settled with the administration, paying $21 million in return for restoring its federal research grants. 

It’s hard to see how cutting basic science research will help reduce antisemitism. It will likely only cause Jews’ presence at a university to be seen as somehow disruptive. (See the recent arguments that women ruined the workplace.)

Other universities have variously complied with administration demands or resisted, but a few, such as Barnard College of Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, acquiesced and shared personal cellphone numbers of Jewish faculty. (Penn refused, and is now being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) Nara Milanich, a Barnard history professor, said it reminded her of 1930s Italy, when lists of Jews were put together by the local government. “We’ve seen this movie before, and it ends with yellow stars,” she said.

It also troubled Milanich that the government appeared to be “fishing” for reports of antisemitism: According to the Forward, the University of California, Berkeley said it had provided the names of 160 individuals involved in cases of antisemitism. “Evidently, they don’t have sufficient people to file lawsuits, so they have to go shake the trees to find people?” said Milanich.

Lists of Jews are never a good thing. Amanda Shanor, a professor at the Wharton School and Penn’s law school, told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper: “The history of government demands for lists of Jewish people is one of the most terrifying in world history. I hope that students, faculty, and staff — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — will tell their family and friends about the government’s demand for a list of Penn’s Jews.”