Camus (@newstart_2024)

Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. Elon Musk pointed to the same pattern that appears whenever a civilization gets comfortable: birth rates drop. Julius Caesar noticed it around 50 BC and explored incentives for a third child. Augustus went further with the Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppaea, creating the ius trium liberorum, privileges, tax relief, and inheritance advantages for those with three or more children, plus penalties for the childless. The laws failed to reverse the trend. Will and Ariel Durant’s reading of history shows the cycle repeating: higher births under stress, decline once external threats ease and prosperity rises. Few exceptions. A society that stays below replacement long enough disappears. Basic arithmetic.

Halle Berry’s perimenopause story hits hard. After a full year of great sex, she woke up in the worst pain of her life, everything swollen and unrecognizable. Her doctor immediately diagnosed worst-case herpes. For 72 brutal hours, she and her new partner spiraled through trust issues… until tests revealed it wasn’t herpes at all. It was severe vaginal dryness from perimenopause. Her elite doctor had barely been trained on it. That moment flipped a switch: Halle decided to speak out publicly, despite warnings it could kill her career, and break the silence around perimenopause and menopause for millions of women. Over 50% of women experience genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM), including vaginal dryness, yet it’s still wildly under-discussed and under-treated in medical training.

Gay men often have a more “hyper male” finger ratio. Andrew Huberman explained the science: pointer vs ring finger length is linked to testosterone exposure in the womb. Lesbians tend to show a pattern similar to heterosexual men. The more older brothers a guy has, the higher the chance he’ll be gay, due to increased testosterone in utero. These differences appear at birth, showing strong biological roots. What do you think about the role of biology in sexual orientation?