And another day of audio recordings, dissolutions, anxiously watching, free speech for some, ‘prohibited topics,’ hostile testimony, firearms deaths, masks, Gen Z and labor, Special Ed teachers, and trichotillomania (repetitively plucking your hair out) comes to a close:
“What a year we've had this week.” -- Shauna
Deaths
US: 1,018,154 (+545)
World: 6,240,391 (+3994)
Cases
US: 82,628,089 (+75,031)
World: 508,573,308 (+768,879)
Republican Kevin McCarthy under fire after audio shows he discussed urging Trump to resign. McCarthy told Cheney he planned to call Trump to discuss a mechanism for invoking the 25th Amendment, under which then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Cabinet could have removed the Republican president from office.
“God these tapes are so infuriating. Kevin McCarthy is casually discussing 25th Amendment, telling Trump to resign, and making sure Pence won’t pardon him…WITH LIZ CHENEY. Only to, weeks later, kick Cheney out of leadership for saying the same things he did.” -- Sarah Longwell
Disney government dissolution bill signed by DeSantis. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Friday to dissolve the private government Walt Disney World controls on its property in the state, punishing the entertainment giant for opposing a new law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.” -- If they can punish Disney simply for speaking out against inequity, then they can certainly punish you for something you may do in the future. Speaking against the state is now no longer tolerated from some government officials.
“Just because it happens in the open doesn’t make abusing government power to punish your perceived political enemies any less unethical.” -- Judd Legum
France is about to vote for its president. The West is watching anxiously. Making her third bid for power, the far-right nationalist Le Pen has never been closer to becoming the first woman to occupy the Élysée Palace, the official residence of French presidents since 1848. It’s an outcome that seemed unthinkable until recently and would send shockwaves across the West, handing Russian President Vladimir Putin a major victory in his campaign to recast the balance of power in Europe even as his military struggles on the ground in Ukraine.
The main hospital in Ethiopia's war-ravaged region of Tigray has sent home 240 patients after food supplies ran out last week, officials said…Those who had to leave included babies with meningitis and tuberculosis and a 14-year-old boy with HIV.
Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee. The American right has lost the plot on free speech…As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing the tactics that it once opposed…The right is now in the process of unlearning liberty. After decades of litigation and legislation, it largely gained what it wanted: a much more free marketplace of ideas. But it is difficult for a commitment to liberty to survive partisan animosity. If you hate or fear your opponents enough, it is hard to resist the siren song of using raw state power to silence their voices. Yet censorship is inconsistent with American pluralism. Speech codes and book bans undermine one of the core purposes of American education. We send our kids to school not just to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to learn how to be citizens in a liberal democracy, and a core value of that democracy is a commitment to free speech—for me and for thee.
'What? Me? Racist?': Florida releases examples of 'prohibited topics' from rejected math books. Another rejected book portion lists a lesson objective as: “Students build proficiency with social awareness as they practice with empathizing with classmates.” Another rejected portion mentions focusing on “students’ social and emotional learning.” The department said last week that 28 of the books were rejected specifically because they “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.” Lists of the submitted and accepted books that were made available did not say how the rejected books referred to critical race theory. -- Republicans do shit like this because they do not fear not getting reelected. They know they will. And until they don’t get reelected, we will all suffer their incessant bullshit.
“Encouraging students to ‘work together’ and ‘listen to our friends and teachers’ is not indoctrination or CRT.” -- Judd Legum
“And even beyond that, the seeming arbitrariness of the textbook rejections is in a way the point. It's a message from the radical right that it can use the power of the state to punish any business, no matter what it does.” — Paul Krugman
Marjorie Taylor Greene hostile in testimony over eligibility. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was hostile during testimony Friday in a hearing on her eligibility to run for reelection, saying she did not remember liking and making various social media posts surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year and accusing an opposing lawyer of using chopped videos and twisting her words. -- Greene’s general disposition is perpetual hostility.
“If you can't recall your own tweets, can't recall your own TV appearances, can't recall your own speeches, can't recall your own phone calls, and can't recall trying to organize an illegal effort to overturn an election, then maybe you should be recalled from Congress.” -- Tristan Snell
“I don't care that Madison Cawthorn likes to wear lingerie in his free time. It doesn't bother me, and it doesn't affect me. If he wants to be playful with gender expression, it's his life. I do care that Madison Cawthorn attacks trans people and shames us for living our lives.” -- Charlotte Clymer
In a first, firearms were leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens in 2020. Guns became the leading cause of death among children and teens in 2020, killing more people ages 1 to 19 in the U.S. than vehicle crashes, drugs overdoses or cancer.
US police have killed nearly 600 people in traffic stops since 2017, data shows. Encounters with police during traffic stops, including minor infractions, disproportionately harm people of color, according to data collected by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, which argues that armed police should not be involved in many of these cases. About 10% of the roughly 1,100 people killed by police each year involve traffic violations, the group found.
Masking while traveling protects you even if others don't wear them, experts say. Wearing a mask reduces your risk of catching Covid from fellow passengers on subways, buses and planes, regardless of what other people do. A February study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that wearing a cloth mask in indoor public settings lowered a person’s odds of testing positive for Covid by 56 percent. Surgical and N95 masks lowered those odds by 66 percent and 83 percent, respectively. The study took place in 2021, though, before the omicron variant's rise, and the researchers did not control for how often masks were worn by other people. -- Hmmm. So we still really don’t know.
Mask mandates return to US college campuses as cases rise. The final weeks of the college school year have been disrupted yet again by COVID-19 as universities bring back mask mandates, switch to online classes and scale back large gatherings in response to upticks in coronavirus infections. Colleges in Washington, D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Texas have reimposed a range of virus measures, with Howard University moving to remote learning amid a surge in cases in the nation’s capital.
Republicans Are Gung Ho for Musk's Version of Twitter in New Poll. Echoing concerns voiced by Musk, slightly more than half (51%) of Republican social media users say they don’t feel like they can freely express themselves on social media, compared to just 19% of Democrats who say so, according to a new Morning Consult survey. Those already sizable gaps expanded even further when surveyors asked respondents about so-called “censorship,” a convoluted term which has become a bloody arena of debate dividing social media critics. Nearly two thirds (63%) of ideological conservatives said they believed censorship was a “major threat” in the U.S. compared to just 28% of liberals.
Gen Z does not dream of labor. On TikTok and online, the youngest workers are rejecting work as we know it. How will that play out IRL? Many have taken to declaring how they don’t have dream jobs since they “don’t dream of labor.” This buzzy phrase, popularized on social media in the pandemic, rejects work as a basis for identity, framing it instead as an act to pursue out of financial necessity. To quote the billionaire Kim Kardashian, it does seem like nobody wants to work these days. Nobody wants to work in jobs where they are underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked — especially not young people. The reality is much more complicated. American workers across various ages, industries, and income brackets have experienced heightened levels of fatigue, burnout, and general dissatisfaction toward their jobs since the pandemic’s start. The difference is, more young people are airing these indignations and jaded attitudes on the internet, often to viral acclaim…What sets zoomers apart, according to common narratives, is their determination to be fulfilled and defined by other aspects of life. They expect employers to recognize that and promote policies and benefits that encourage work-life balance. For decades, if not centuries, this was not the case. Work has been — and continues to be — a major aspect of the American identity. The pandemic changed that for everyone, not just the youngest workers. In addition to reassessing their relationship to work, people are reflecting upon their greater life purpose. One human resources manager called it the “Great Reflection,” wherein people are “taking stock of what they want out of a job, what they want out of employment, and what they want out of their life.” More often than not, workers are not content with labor that is unsatisfying, low-paying, and potentially harmful. And Gen Z has not been shy about detailing these expectations to employers and on social media…“It’s not about people not working,” she said. “It’s about not settling for a job that diminishes their quality of life. I’m lucky to have realized that early on.”
Schools are struggling to hire special education teachers. Hawaii may have found a fix. Students with disabilities are entitled to a free, appropriate education under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The federal government is supposed to cover 40% of the extra cost of providing special education services, but it has never fulfilled that promise. In fiscal year 2020, the federal government only contributed about 13%, according to the National Education Association…Higher pay is just one piece of the puzzle. Experts say states also need strong pipelines for training new educators, and, in order to keep retention high, teachers need support from school administrators.
Amy Schumer Opened Up About Having Trichotillomania. Here’s What People With The Condition Think About That. People with trichotillomania repetitively pluck out hair anywhere on the body, including the scalp, eyelashes, and eyebrows…Trichotillomania is part of a cluster of self-grooming actions called body-focused repetitive behaviors that are known for seriously disrupting people’s daily lives and causing significant embarrassment. Skin picking and nail biting are other common examples of BFRBs…People with trichotillomania often can’t get the help they need because of misconceptions about the disorder — it’s not a mental illness, OCD, or a type of deliberate self-harm — and general lack of awareness among medical providers. More public discussion, advocates say, will help clear confusion and destigmatize the disorder…Still, experts don’t know why people with trichotillomania cannot stop themselves from pulling despite desperately not wanting to and fearing what they may look like afterward. In reality, people may pull their hair because it feels satisfying or they want to soothe internal discomfort…Keuthen said doctors need to know just enough so they can tell patients “there’s a name for this, there's treatment for it, and there's hope that you can learn how to manage this so that it's less distressing and less impactful in your life.”
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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