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krystalxu

Why Some of Us Are Thrill-Seekers | Health | US News - 0 views

  • Or being strapped into a zero-gravity roller coaster and preparing to whirl upside down, again and again. Thrill-seekers crave that rush; they thrive on it.
  • Thrill-seekers tend to be creative folks who like to make up their own minds.
  • All the signals in our body tell us we're headed in a bad direction.
tongoscar

Hong Kong protests: Knife attacker bites man's ear after stabbing four - BBC News - 0 views

  • One of the injured had his ear partially bitten off by an as-yet unidentified male attacker, who was subdued by passersby in the mall.
  • The campaign began in March with demonstrations against a bill that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China but evolved into broader demands.
  • In the five months since they began, the protests have evolved into a call for universal suffrage for the territory - the right of almost all adults to vote in elections.
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  • With no end in sight, China's leaders signalled this week that they were preparing to change how the mainland administered Hong Kong.
manhefnawi

How To Bolster Your Negotiations With Informal Fallacies - 0 views

  • An informal fallacy is an attempt at making a logical argument where there’s a failure in the reasoning itself. This can stem from a number of causes, such as the misapplication of words and phrases, or misunderstandings based on inappropriate assumptions. Illogical sequences in an argument can also cause informal fallacies. While informal fallacies can result in inaccurate arguments and false conclusions, that doesn’t mean they can’t be very persuasive.
  • When negotiating, for instance, it’s fairly common for self-made millionaires to employ informal fallacies. Many self-made millionaires develop well-defined plans on how they’ll use informal fallacies as part of their preparation as well as regularly incorporate these fallacies into verbal dueling with adversaries.
  • Confusing causality for correlation: You connect events that happened at the same time or one after another even though one need not have caused the other.
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  • Self-made millionaires also rarely want the success of their deal making to hang on informal fallacies. Instead, they use informal fallacies to accentuate and strengthen pieces of their argument. Using informal fallacies this way makes sure that if they don’t get the desired reaction from negotiating adversaries, they can be easily discarded in favor of new proofs.
anniina03

Don't Scream: Why do we find things scary? - BBC Three - 0 views

  • Spiders? Clowns? Really tall buildings? There are lots of things that might make you scream — but why is it that we get so scared and what can we do to control these fears?
  • "It's evolutionary, it's biological and essentially it's about survival," says Dr Warren Mansell, a psychologist at the University of Manchester and author of a book about coping with fear."Our bodies need a way of getting ourselves prepared to either escape or defend ourselves against some kind of threat.""Being able to recognise and respond to a threat quickly and to get away is essential," adds sociologist Dr Margee Kerr, who specialises in the study of fear. "It's definitely kept us humans alive."
  • The most common way we deal with fear is the "fight-or-flight" response, when your heart rate increases and your pupils dilate.
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  • There's also the startle response — when you jump out of your skin — which is a way to get yourself away from something when you haven't got the time to even work out what it is, but it's coming at you very suddenly and very loudly.
  • First up, there's the classic jump scare, explains Andy Nyman, co-creator of the long-running London horror stage play Ghost Stories, which was also turned into a 2017 film starring Martin Freeman. "Often people think that's a bit of a cheap thing to do but the reality is that it's actually quite a sophisticated thing to pull off."If you can get it right, misdirecting an audience properly and then giving them a jump scare is a really wonderful thing because you're properly catching them off guard."
  • Then, Andy goes on, there's the type of scare that you can't shake off. "These are the scares that are attached to imagery or a moment that means when you close your eyes that's all you can see. These are much deeper-rooted."
  • If you're a very jumpy person who gets scared easily (or if you have a specific phobia, a severe form of fear that impacts on your life), there are things you can do on your own and with a therapist to help you improve
  • "The first thing is to realise that it's best to take things at your own pace and that may mean you don't need to face that fear right now but you're going to do it when you're ready."Most things that frighten people can be broken down into smaller, more manageable sections
  • And Dr Kerr has some practical tips, too, including exposure therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and breathing exercises.
tongoscar

Live Updates: Economic Fallout From Coronavirus Grows - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Reports from manufacturing, banking and other sectors showed the worsening impact of the epidemic, which has brought much of China’s economy to a standstill.
  • Right NowJapan plans to release about 500 cruise ships passengers on Wednesday.
  • Economic fallout from the new coronavirus epidemic continued to spread on Tuesday, with new evidence emerging in manufacturing, financial markets, commodities, banking and other sectors.
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  • U.S. stocks declined on Tuesday, a day after Apple warned that it would miss its sales forecasts due to disruption in China, as concerns about the impact of the outbreak weighed on the outlook for the global economy.
  • Half of China’s population is facing new travel restrictions.Image
  • At least 150 million people in China — over 10 percent of the country’s population — are living under government restrictions on how often they can leave their homes, The New York Times found in examining dozens of local government announcements and reports from state-run news outlets.
  • Japan says 500 people will be released from cruise ship after more cases confirmed.
  • Australia plans to repatriate about 200 of its citizens aboard the ship on Wednesday, and other countries have similar plans, but Japanese officials did not say whether any of those people were among the 500 who would be allowed to disembark.
  • Britain prepares to evacuate citizens from cruise ship.
  • The new virus is deadlier than the one that causes the flu, Chinese figures suggest.Image
  • The director of a hospital in Wuhan has died from the virus.
  • Stigma surrounding virus impacts communities in Europe.
  • Domestic workers from the Philippines will be permitted to return to Hong Kong.Image
  • South Korea’s leader warns of a dire impact on economy.
  • Cruise ship passengers blocked from leaving Cambodia.
anniina03

Marine Labs on the Water's Edge Are Threatened by Climate Change - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A marine laboratory 85 miles southwest of New Orleans was designed to be a fortress against extreme weather. But it might be defeated by climate change.
  • It stands 18 feet above the ground on pillars with pilings that extend more than 100 feet underground. Its walls can withstand winds of up to 250 miles per hour.But the water is coming.
  • The assault from climate change is slower but more relentless than any storm, and will ultimately do more damage. It threatens researchers’ ability to study marine environments up close at a time when it’s more vital than ever to understand them.
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  • Fox Island Environmental Education Center, a Virginia institution that has opened up the wonders of the natural world to young people for more than 40 years, shut down in November. Between erosion and sea level rise, so much of the island’s salt marsh had disappeared that “it made it unsafe to run the program,” said Tom Ackerman, vice president for education at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which owns the island center.
  • because south Louisiana’s land is subsiding while the oceans are rising, the region has what may be the highest relative sea level rise in the country. “We’re just 10 to 30 years in front of the curve of everybody else,” he said.
  • Officials predict that, without action, the lab might need to shut down several dozen days each year within the next 10 to 15 years. The corrosive saltwater attacks the structure and has risen up through the soil into buried electrical cables, at one point causing a blackout. Some floods are accompanied by droves of fiddler crabs that sometimes find their way into the elevators.
  • Many marine labs are preparing to meet similar challenges, though they are in locations that are not yet facing the level of threat that Louisiana is.
  • At the Louisiana center, Ms. Conover sees educational value in their problems. Along with its mission as a scientific research facility, it is also a center for environmental education with visits from some 5,000 students each year. “If our parking lot is flooding when a group is here, we definitely talk about why we’re flooding on that given day, when five years ago we wouldn’t, given the same conditions.” That example, she said, “gives the perspective of what our coastal communities are dealing with.”
  • “Global sea-level rise is one of the greatest challenges facing society in the 21st century, and understanding how this phenomenon impacts coastal systems, infrastructure and the people who use them requires a regular coastal presence.”
katherineharron

Four ways the Mars 2020 rover will pave the way for a manned mission - CNN - 0 views

  • When NASA's Mars 2020 rover lands on the Red Planet in February 2021, it will touch down in Jezero Crater, the site of a lake that existed 3.5 billion years ago. The next generation rover will build on the goals of previous robotic explorers by collecting the first samples of Mars, which would be returned to Earth at a later date.
  • "We're very much thinking about how Mars could be inhabited, how humans could come to Mars and make use of the resources that we have there in the Martian environment today," said Stack. "We send our robotic scouts first to learn about these other places, hopefully for us to prepare the way for us to go ourselves."
  • "Combining an understanding of the composition of the rocks, but also the very fine detail that we see in the rocks and the textures, can make a powerful case for ancient signs of life," Stack said. "We know that ancient Mars was habitable. But we haven't yet been able to show that we have signs, real signs, of ancient life yet. And with our instrument suite, we think we can make real advances towards that on the surface.
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  • "This is a huge endeavor for the human species, and it'll take cooperation from more than just our own space program," Stack said. "Once the resources are there, we can develop the technology. It's getting the buy-in from international partners and from our own space administration and government to really make this happen."
  • No matter the mission, sticking the landing is key for future success. The 2020 rover will land on Mars using the new Terrain Relative Navigation system, which allows the lander to avoid any large hazards in the landing zone.
  • Astronauts exploring Mars will need oxygen, but carting enough to sustain them on a spacecraft isn't viable. The Mars 2020 rover will carry MOXIE on board, or the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
  • Speaking of "The Martian," the events of the book and its film adaptation are set in motion when a surprise, devastating dust storm impacts astronauts on the Red Planet. Understanding the weather and environment on Mars will be crucial for determining the conditions astronauts will face.
  • For the first time, a surface mission will include a ground-penetrating radar instrument called RIMFAX, or Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment. It will be able to peek beneath the surface and study Martian geology, looking for rock, ice and boulder layers. Scientists hope that RIMFAX will help them understand the geologic history of Jezero Crater, according to David Paige, principal investigator for the experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles.
katherineharron

Lindsey Graham encourages senior judges to step aside ahead of election - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday encouraged senior federal judges to step aside so his committee can approve conservatives who President Donald Trump would nominate to replace them ahead of the November election.
  • "This is an historic opportunity," Graham said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "If (Trump) can get four more years, I mean, it would change the judiciary for several generations. So if you're a circuit judge in your mid-60s, late 60s, you can take senior status, now would be a good time to do that if you want to make sure the judiciary is right of center."
  • The unusual plea was prompted by Hewitt and reflects a recognition from Senate Republicans they may not control the chamber next session and therefore won't be in a position to push through confirmations of Trump's judges should he win reelection.
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  • Federal judges who have reached age 65 are eligible to take "senior status" depending on their number of years on the bench. That allows them to maintain a reduced caseload, while creating a vacancy on the court
  • Should Trump lose his reelection bid to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, any future vacancies could potentially be filled by liberal judges. If Trump remains in office but Democrats take control of the Senate, his nominations could be blocked by the new majority.
  • "Obviously, the senior judges need to let the White House know in advance of the actual date so that we can be prepared to move the new nominee. As I said, my motto for the year is leave no vacancy behind, and that's exactly what I mean," the Kentucky Republican told Hewitt in an interview in February.
  • Speaking late last year to Hewitt, McConnell remarked that "one of every four of the US circuit judges in the country have been put on the bench" during Trump's tenure.
tongoscar

Russia Unveils Climate Change Adaptation Plan - 0 views

  • The National Action Plan for the First Phase of Adaptation to Climate Change for the Period up to 2022 was published online by the Russian government.
  • The document outlines the measures to be taken by federal and regional authorities to “reduce the vulnerability of the population, economy and natural environment to the impacts of climate change.” Moreover, it defines a number of possible opportunities arising from climate change.
  • Russia will likely experience more intense and frequent droughts, precipitation, floods, fires, and the degradation of permafrost in the North.
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  • The first seven pages of the document outline the planning, implementation and evaluation of a climate change adaptation plan. The government pledges its support by offering scientific assistance and expects to take responsibility for the security of people impacted by the consequences of climate change. Russia only officially ratified the Paris agreement in October 2019. The new plan reiterates Russia’s obligation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other international treaties.
  • These measures include upgrading the national climate monitoring system, preparing assessments of the impacts of climate change and developing adaptation strategies for specific sectors (such as the energy, transport and agriculture industries).
  • Russia, the world’s largest country, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. In July 2019, the government declared an emergency after raging wildfires engulfed an area in Siberia bigger than the size of Belgium.
katherineharron

The world sacrificed its elderly in the race to protect hospitals. The result was a catastrophe in care homes - CNN - 0 views

  • Three months ago, as the novel coronavirus began to gain a foothold in countries across Europe, officials in the UK said they were still confident that the risk to the British public remained low.
  • but at the time there were just 13 confirmed cases and no deaths in the UK. While the government ordered hospitals to prepare for an influx of patients, its advice to some of the country's most vulnerable people -- elderly residents of care or nursing homes -- was that they were "very unlikely" to be infected.
  • By May 1, of the 33,365 total confirmed deaths in England and Wales, at least 12,526 -- or 38% -- were care home residents, according to the latest estimates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
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  • The UK is not alone. Many other nations were slow to respond to the threat at care home facilities, and the consequences have been devastating.
  • Comparing death tolls can be difficult: some countries have separate data covering elderly care homes, while others include facilities for those with disabilities. Some countries do not include in their data those residents who die in hospitals, some have regional variation​, and some have no data at all.
  • There had been 1,661 coronavirus deaths among care home residents out of 3,395 total coronavirus deaths in Sweden by May 14, or 49%, according to LTCcovid's report.
  • 19 residents out of 110 had died in the past two months, but only five were confirmed Covid-19 deaths -- the rest were "undetermined," he said. He said he thought there had been "slight under-reporting" of deaths in the UK because of a lack of testing, and said the situation had been "harrowing."
  • A similar story played out in France, where coronavirus fatalities among care home residents in all settings make up more than half of all coronavirus deaths recorded as of May 18, according to health ministry data used in the LTCcovid report.
  • Elderly care sector professionals and care home workers published a letter to Health Minister Olivier Véran on March 20 expressing alarm and requesting 500,000 masks per week in affected areas, to which he agreed.
  • By March 24, the Spanish army was drafted in to help and found "abandoned" ​care home residents dead in their beds, according to Defense Minister Margarita Robles. The government said at its briefing the next day that the information had been passed to the public prosecutor, who was investigating. New care home guidelines called for extended isolation measures, but some homes said they would now have to send all staff home to comply.
  • She said the DHSC was prioritizing testing in care homes and had provided £3.2 billion ($3.9 billion) to local authorities to ease pressure on services including care homes, as well as an additional £600 million ($730 million) for homes last week. "Since the start of this pandemic we have worked to ensure our care homes and frontline care workforce get the support they need. Almost two thirds of care homes have not had an outbreak and deaths in all settings, including care homes, are falling."
  • Raffaele Antonelli Incalzi, head of the Italian geriatric society SIGG, said in a statement in early April that care homes were "biological time bombs," in part because overcrowded hospitals were moving elderly patients to unprepared homes.
  • The UK initially did not record care home deaths. While the latest official ONS data for England and Wales shows that 38% of coronavirus deaths occurred in care homes, LTCcovid said the figure could be far higher.
  • LTCcovid's report found that 3,890 of Canada's 4,740 coronavirus-linked deaths took place among care home residents as of May 8, or 82%, and Health Canada told CNN the percentage was nearly 80% on May 19. Canada's largest province, Ontario, has announced an independent inquiry.
  • Of the 247 total Covid-19 deaths in South Korea that had been confirmed as of April 30, 84 were care home residents -- a share of 34%. No large care home outbreaks have occurred since the measures were implemented.
katherineharron

Trump pursues his political obsessions as stark 100,000 coronavirus deaths landmark looms - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Sometime in the next few days, the 100,000th American will succumb to Covid-19 in a pandemic that President Donald Trump once predicted would just "miraculously" disappear.
  • In his most politically significant maneuver, he heaped intense pressure on North Carolina's Democratic governor to permit a normal, crowded Republican National Convention, despite fears such a mass gathering could seed virus hot spots. Trump warned he could pull the huge money-earner out of Charlotte, which was picked to play host in August.
  • And he indulged his preoccupations on his tax returns, Hillary Clinton, Fox News, slanders against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, the Russia investigation, Joe Biden's mental health, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, mail-in voting in November and highlighted dangerous and unproven Covid-19 therapies promoted on conservative media he has tested himself.
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  • "For as long as we have citizens willing to follow their example, to carry on their burden, to continue their legacy, then America's cause will never fail and American freedom will never, ever die."
  • But that doesn't mean it isn't jarring, as the most wrenching moment so far approaches in the nation's battle against a pandemic that while ebbing in terms of total deaths is trending up in 18 states, is steady in 22 and easing in 10 more. More than 98,000 people in the US have now died from the coronavirus and more than 1.6 million have been infected. More than 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate is approaching Great Depression levels.
  • There was little evidence of a deeper meaning to his presidency at this stage than personal and political grievances.
  • No White House could have been fully prepared for the disaster and subsequent economic hollowing of this year's pandemic
  • Trump spent much of Memorial Day, fulminating against Cooper, complaining that the North Carolina governor was "unable to guarantee" the arena for the convention in August can be filled to capacity. The President is determined to deploy the full pageantry of convention season to portray a nation and economy in the full throes of what he calls a "transition to greatness."
  • Yet such a spectacle as the Republican convention seems utterly incongruous with real-world events. Sports teams that use such arenas are expecting to play without fans for at least months in a bio-secure environment. The prospect of thousands of delegates pouring into convention cities from all over the country, including coronavirus hotspots, is a huge headache for organizers.
  • "In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space."
  • It was not immediately clear whether Trump and the Republican National Committee are serious about pulling the convention from Charlotte.
  • Trump has used federal resources multiple times to fly to his resorts and golf courses. Trump's two rounds this weekend struck critics as inappropriate during a national crisis and on a weekend when American remembers its war dead.
  • "Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work. Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing," Biden wrote in a tweet accompanying an online ad Saturday.
  • Trump may not come under such criticism had he not been so dismissive of Obama's afternoons on the golf course -- and saying he wouldn't have time to play golf if he was elected president.
johnsonel7

Why don't we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as coronavirus? | Owen Jones | Opinion | The Guardian - 0 views

  • It is a global emergency that has already killed on a mass scale and threatens to send millions more to early graves. As its effects spread, it could destabilise entire economies and overwhelm poorer countries lacking resources and infrastructure. But this is the climate crisis, not the coronavirus. Governments are not assembling emergency national plans and you’re not getting push notifications transmitted to your phone breathlessly alerting you to dramatic twists and developments from South Korea to Italy.
  • More than 3,000 people have succumbed to coronavirus yet, according to the World Health Organization, air pollution alone – just one aspect of our central planetary crisis – kills seven million people every year. There have been no Cobra meetings for the climate crisis, no sombre prime ministerial statements detailing the emergency action being taken to reassure the public. In time, we’ll overcome any coronavirus pandemic. With the climate crisis, we are already out of time
  • Pandemics and the climate crisis may go hand in hand, too: research suggests that changing weather patterns may drive species to higher altitudes, potentially putting them in contact with diseases for which they have little immunity.
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  • There is a key difference between coronavirus and climate crisis, of course, and it is shame. “We didn’t know coronavirus was coming,” says Stirling. “We’ve known the climate crisis was on the cards for 30 or 40 years.” And yet – despite being inadequately prepared because of an underfunded, under-resourced NHS – the government can swiftly announce an emergency pandemic plan.
krystalxu

The Key to Good Politics? Good Communication | Center on Representative Government - 0 views

  • chief among them is the ability to communicate. Politics — both getting elected and making a meaningful contribution to public life — is largely about interaction with other people.
  • lots of us it's a skill we learn with practice, and it's invaluable to a politician. 
  • More than a few times, I've prepared for a public appearance only to have my speech become irrelevant when some national issue became the only topic people were interested in discussing. 
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  • They prefer dialogue with their elected representative rather than a set speech. 
  • Any public policy debate of consequence will have good points on both sides, and learning to welcome multiple perspectives is vital. 
katherineharron

'Life or death still possible': 31 days at my dad's virtual bedside - CNN - 0 views

  • The attending physician at the intensive care unit had called that morning and asked whether they should include a Do Not Resuscitate order in my dad's chart. They had asked before. I had been indecisive. A successful resuscitation would extend his life. But it might also lead to brain damage.
  • "If it continues in this direction," he told me, "we're talking about a single-digit chance of survival."
  • I suspected that my father had a will and a health care directive inside the house. I put on my mask but couldn't find a clean pair of latex gloves in my duffel bag. It was cold in the backyard. I had a pair of leather gloves. I put those on and entered my childhood home for the first time in weeks. My mother barely registered my presence. She was crying on the couch.
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  • I was relieved -- we wouldn't have to make what felt like an impossible decision -- but then I kept reading. My father had noted that he did not want to be supported by a ventilator or hooked up to a feeding tube for any length of time. He had been connected to both for nearly two weeks.
  • There was grief on her face, but also curiosity. What had finally gotten to her younger son, the one who so rarely showed emotion during his father's hospitalization?
  • I called the hospital and approved the DNR. They told me his status was still dire. I called my dad's closest friends and started preparing them for the worst.
  • My father's lungs showed no signs of progress. The double pneumonia they diagnosed days before was worsening. His kidneys were failing. Dialysis was required but would put a strain on his blood pressure, which was already dangerously low. There was a special form of dialysis designed for delicate situations like this -- continuous veno-venous hemofiltration -- but it wasn't available at Lawrence
  • The morning after I searched for my father's health directive and drafted his obituary, I woke up and tried to turn on my laptop. It wouldn't start. When it eventually booted up, it asked if I wanted to restore an unsaved document. No, I thought, let's see what happens today.
  • It was the same doctor as yesterday, the one who asked about the DNR. "Look, your dad is on a ventilator. That's a form of life support. He's experiencing kidney failure and requires dialysis. His situation is still very acute. He was in good health before the Covid, but his kidney, heart, and lungs are 69 years old. It's tough for them to recover. But the numbers from today are undeniably better than yesterday. There's been an improvement at almost every level. Your dad is a tough guy."
  • One of my close friends, a nurse practitioner, would help me understand all the terminology and its implications. He was treating Covid patients at an ICU upstate. At the end of our calls I'd ask him how he was doing. "We ran out of gowns," he told me one day. "My ICU is out of ventilators -- we're diverting people to Albany," he said another time.
  • "There's a difference between good intentions and good outcomes," I explained to her. She would wave me away and pick up. Inevitably the call would bring her tears. I stewed on the porch. My brother, uncle and I would spend hours trying to ease her mind and pacify her anxiety. Any inquiry or outreach was like sticking a finger in the open wound of her anguish.
  • I called my friend, the nurse practitioner, and gave him the latest update. He seemed upset. "You OK, dude?" "A nurse from my hospital died," he explained.
  • The nurses and doctors who took care of my father -- first for four days at NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital, then for nearly a month at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia -- were always empathetic, straightforward and willing to trust me with complicated details.
  • About a week after writing -- then refusing to recover -- my father's obituary, his condition was continuing to improve.
  • "He's only improving," I told her, "because of the life-saving care you guys have given him. The whole city is in awe of you. They should have a parade for you down the Canyon of Heroes."
  • Covid-19 was new and largely unstudied. Maybe one of these seemingly odd treatments would work.
  • "Yesterday was a stumble, but we're getting back on course," I emailed the group. "We always knew this recovery wasn't going to be a straight line. It's important to remain resilient and optimistic even when there are temporary setbacks."
  • "Oh Lou, I've been waiting for your call. I have such good news. They are planning to extubate him tomorrow. They are going to take your father off the ventilator!" She was practically screaming with excitement. I was speechless.
  • I had been withholding certain information from my family and friends during this whole ordeal. My dad had developed a blood clot two weeks into his hospitalization. Clots are extremely dangerous, of course, but it was small and in a relatively manageable location.
  • I called my brother and told him about the plan to get my father off the ventilator. Since there were a number of contingencies, we debated telling my mother. She was living and dying with every update.
  • My father's breathing was labored on the morning they were planning to extubate. They delayed the procedure a day. That next morning, April 16, a doctor called. I was in the shower and rushed out to answer my cell. He said they were doing the extubation within the hour. What do we want to do if the extubation fails?
  • "It went as well as we could have hoped for," the doctor said. "His vitals are stable and he's breathing well. He's resting now." She explained that my father was disoriented and it probably wasn't a great idea to speak with him that day. Whatever, I thought, I'll speak with him when he gets home. He had been on a ventilator for 28 days.
  • I called the doctor later in the day. She told me my dad seemed distressed. He was trying to speak, but his vocal cords were too swollen. "It's so frustrating," she told me. "I don't know what he wants to tell me."
  • "Each facility has their own Covid rules," she explained. "I'll send you over a list." On the list was the nursing home where my grandfather had died several years before. My father had visited him every day.
  • I called the step-down unit where he had been the past three days. They transferred me to his nurse. "He's doing better, love. We took him off the pressor and his blood pressure is in a good range. His heart rate is good. He's breathing fine. The doctors decided he didn't need to go back to the ICU. He's ok."
  • "I've repeatedly said that recovery isn't a straight line. ... Yesterday we managed the roller coaster ride as a family. My brother, uncle and I were with my mother the entire day. We never lost hope or confidence in my dad's medical care and ultimate recovery. If there's a light at the end of the tunnel, it's a blinking one. Right now, it shines again."
  • I drove back to my mom's house. I scanned the block for my brother's car. He had not arrived. I parked. I have to wait for him and then tell my mother, brother and uncle all at once, right? Should I call my wife first? Should I call my dad's best friend?
  • I called my wife. I called my dad's best friend. I called the guys he grew up with. I called his former colleagues. I began every conversation the same way, "This is that call." I listened to each of them yell and cry and ask if I was serious. Then I said I had to make another call.
  • I wrote about my father's career. How he got his law degree at night school and became a prosecutor at the city, state, and federal level. How he convicted mobsters, drug dealers, and those who abused power.
  • I wrote about my dad's volunteer work -- at the Special Olympics, at an organization he founded that helps police families with special needs, and at just about any Italian-American group that needed a lawyer. He was so proud of his Italian-American heritage. He loathed the mafioso caricatures and stereotypes found on TV -- he wrote countless op-eds attacking those -- but he revered the old-school virtues he associated with his Italian-American upbringing: loyalty, humility, hard work, dedication to family.
  • He was a Covid patient for 31 days. It was a painful experience, but ultimately unimportant. It doesn't matter how a man dies. It matters how he lives.
katherineharron

FBI arrests spotlight lessons learned after Charlottesville (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

  • On Thursday, the FBI arrested three men, Patrik J. Mathews, 27, Brian M. Lemley Jr., 33, and William G. Bilbrough IV, 19, with firearms charges, and they had plans, an official said, to attend a Virginia pro-gun rally. This followed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's declaration of a temporary state of emergency after authorities learned that extremists hoped to use the anti-gun control rally planned next Monday -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- to incite a violent clash.
  • These arrests add to mounting evidence that a decades-old and violent white-power movement is alive and well, perhaps even gaining strength. White power is a social movement that has united neo-Nazis, Klansmen, skinheads, and militiamen around a shared fear of racial annihilation and cultural change. Since 1983, when movement leaders declared war on the federal government, members of such groups have worked together to bring about a race war.
  • JUST WATCHEDOn GPS: What motivates white power activists?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH position: absol
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  • Silver linings aside, it will take many, many more instances of coordinated response to stop a movement generations in the making. In more than a decade of studying the earlier white power movement, I have become familiar with the themes of underground activity that are today clearly drawing from the earlier movement. In the absence of decisive action across multiple institutions, a rich record of criminal activity and violence will continue to provide these activists with a playbook for further chaos.
  • The Base, furthermore, is what experts call "accelerationist," meaning that its members hope to provoke what they see as an inevitable race war. They have conducted paramilitary training in the Pacific Northwest. Both of these strategies date back to the 1980s, when the Order trained in those forests with hopes of provoking the same race war.
  • One of the men arrested Thursday was formerly a reservist in the Canadian Army, where he received training in explosives and demolition, according to the New York Times. This kind of preparation, too, is common among extremists like these. To take just a few representative examples, in the 1960s, Bobby Frank Cherry, a former Marine trained in demolition, helped fellow members of the United Klans of America to bomb the 16th Street Birmingham Baptist Church, killing four black girls.
  • This news out of Virginia shows that there is a real social benefit when people direct their attention to these events -- and sustain the public conversation about the presence of a renewed white-power movement and what it means for our society.
manhefnawi

20 Cognitive Biases That Affect Your Decisions | Mental Floss - 0 views

  • You’ve always considered yourself a sound decision-maker. From that heavily researched car that you drove to work this morning to the carefully prepared meal you’ll cook up for dinner this evening, you put a lot of thought into every choice that you make—maybe too much thought. 
sanderk

What Makes a Good Scientist? | American Scientist - 0 views

  • Those looking for practical advice about the job market would be better served seeking counsel from those who have more recently experienced it. Instead, he builds his book around a more fundamental and timeless career question: What makes a good scientist?
  • he encourages the reader to daydream, work hard, and mess around. Wilson relates several examples of “messing around” in his own career. Some led to major discoveries—for example, developing a new “chilling and mixing” method for swapping ant queens of different species to determine whether trait differences are genetically determined.
  • Most young scientists are not prepared for the level and number of setbacks they are likely to encounter in their early careers. As scientific funding has been cut and tenure-track jobs have grown scarce, today’s young scientists will be rejected more than any scientists of equal caliber in the past century.
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  • Graduate students will inevitably encounter failed experiments, failed teachable moments in the classroom, and time spent on research that never gets funded or never comes to fruition. Wilson counsels patience: “A strong work ethic is absolutely essential. There must be an ability to pass long hours in study and research with pleasure even though some of the effort will inevitably lead to dead ends.”
  • Scientists, he claims, tend to be introverted and prone to daydreaming. They reject authority and therefore dislike being told what to do. Their attention wanders. This pigeonholing made me uncomfortable, because I think science benefits from incorporating a diversity of personalities
johnsonel7

Chief Justice John Roberts warns about dangers of fake news - POLITICO - 0 views

  • Chief Justice John Roberts — who’s on the verge of an extraordinarily high-profile balancing act presiding over the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump — issued a warning on Tuesday about the dangers of misinformation in the internet era.
  • “In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital,” Roberts declared
  • “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
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  • He pointed to a 1788 attack on founder John Jay, who was struck in the head with a rock while trying to quell a lawless mob whipped up by talk that medical students were robbing graves to experiment on corpses. The episode appears to have limited Jay’s contributions to the Federalist Papers, leaving most of those writings to be prepared by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Roberts observed. “It is sadly ironic that John Jay’s efforts to educate his fellow citizens about the Framers’ plan of government fell victim to a rock thrown by a rioter motivated by a rumor,”
katherineharron

New York may be weeks away from reaching a peak in coronavirus cases. Now other states are preparing for surges - CNN - 0 views

  • Several states are reporting spikes in coronavirus cases, raising fears more hot spots will emerge in the US beyond New York as soon as next week.
  • The state's health care system is already overwhelmed. One hospital was forced to create a makeshift morgue, and another reported 13 patient deaths in 24 hours. New York and its National Guard are now assembling four 1,000-bed temporary, overflow hospitals in existing buildings.
  • In Los Angeles County, cases more than tripled in six days, and one official says numbers will keep going up. Health Director Barbara Ferrer says she expects to see case counts in Los Angeles double every four days for the next two to three weeks.
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  • But there is a shortage of lab technicians able to analyze coronavirus tests, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said, adding that even if he were able to obtain more machines for testing analysis, they wouldn't have enough people to operate them.
  • "This is going to be the disaster that defines our generation," said Collin Arnold
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