After a very public courtship and marriage, Kim Kardashian West filed for divorce from rapper Kanye West (legally known as Ye) in mid-February. In the wake of that filing, West—who shares four children with Kardashian—has exhibited behavior that ranges from bizarre to downright scary, and the media aren’t taking them seriously enough.

Kardashian, for her part, has attempted to keep the dissolution of her and West’s relationship behind closed doors, in the hands of lawyers and mediators. West—who openly pined for Kardashian for years before they got together and has since been seen out with Kim lookalikes—has other plans.

For the past six months, West has posted about the pair’s custody fight (including an accusation that Kardashian withheld the location of their child’s birthday party); made a song about how he wants to beat up Kardashian’s new boyfriend, Pete Davidson; publicly asked her to come back to him while performing at a benefit concert; sent a truck emblazoned with the phrase “MY VISION IS KRYSTAL KLEAR” with a bed full of flowers to Kardashian’s home for Valentine’s Day; posted and deleted paparazzi photos of Kardashian and Davidson, again threatening him; repeatedly shared screenshots of his private communication with Kardashian; and talked about the dissolving marriage publicly, while volunteering at a charity event benefiting the unhoused.

This is not normal, and it should not be passed off as romantic or okay or fodder for our entertainment. “This situation is being treated as celebrity spectacle or like your typical Kardashian drama, but the behaviors are really familiar to us because of how much it mirrors real-life examples that we deal with in our law practice all of the time,” Annie Seifullah, an associate attorney with C.A. Goldberg Law, told Jezebel by phone. “Targets of this type of abuse know that once they physically separate themselves, they’re still going to be the subject and target of the ex partner’s obsession. And when the abusive ex partner no longer has like a physical or emotional control of the victim because they have left the situation, the ex partner often resorts to causing havoc around their target in order to maintain power and control even after they’ve left their relationship.”

https://jezebel.com/kanye-wests-actions-are-stalking-behaviors-1848543148
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Not romantic behavior, CRIMINAL behavior.

After a very public courtship and marriage, Kim Kardashian West filed for divorce from rapper Kanye West (legally known as Ye) in mid-February. In the wake of that filing, West—who shares four children with Kardashian—has exhibited behavior that ranges from bizarre to downright scary, and the media aren’t taking them seriously enough.

Kardashian, for her part, has attempted to keep the dissolution of her and West’s relationship behind closed doors, in the hands of lawyers and mediators. West—who openly pined for Kardashian for years before they got together and has since been seen out with Kim lookalikes—has other plans.

For the past six months, West has posted about the pair’s custody fight (including an accusation that Kardashian withheld the location of their child’s birthday party); made a song about how he wants to beat up Kardashian’s new boyfriend, Pete Davidson; publicly asked her to come back to him while performing at a benefit concert; sent a truck emblazoned with the phrase “MY VISION IS KRYSTAL KLEAR” with a bed full of flowers to Kardashian’s home for Valentine’s Day; posted and deleted paparazzi photos of Kardashian and Davidson, again threatening him; repeatedly shared screenshots of his private communication with Kardashian; and talked about the dissolving marriage publicly, while volunteering at a charity event benefiting the unhoused.

This is not normal, and it should not be passed off as romantic or okay or fodder for our entertainment. “This situation is being treated as celebrity spectacle or like your typical Kardashian drama, but the behaviors are really familiar to us because of how much it mirrors real-life examples that we deal with in our law practice all of the time,” Annie Seifullah, an associate attorney with C.A. Goldberg Law, told Jezebel by phone. “Targets of this type of abuse know that once they physically separate themselves, they’re still going to be the subject and target of the ex partner’s obsession. And when the abusive ex partner no longer has like a physical or emotional control of the victim because they have left the situation, the ex partner often resorts to causing havoc around their target in order to maintain power and control even after they’ve left their relationship.”

https://jezebel.com/kanye-wests-actions-are-stalking-behaviors-1848543148
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If you have been stalked, you know this. If you haven't, recognize it NOW, before you are.

An Englewood woman has been indicted on more than 20 sex charges after investigators say she traded items for sexual encounters with male students who attend McMinn Central High School.

Melissa Blair, 38, is charged with 18 counts of aggravated statutory rape, four counts of human trafficking by patronizing prostitution and one count of solicitation. She turned herself in Tuesday and was booked into the McMinn County Jail on a $100,000 bond. She is not, nor has she ever been, a school employee.

McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy said in a Tuesday press conference that Blair traded items for sexual encounters from spring 2020 through late 2021. Guy said the encounters began through communication on social media.

McMinn County Director of Schools Lee Parkison said the investigation began after an anonymous letter was left in his office.

“Without them this could still be going on,” Parkison said, thanking whomever wrote the letter.

Parkinson said Blair was not employed by the school but was involved with school clubs, “… like other parents are.”

https://www.wate.com/news/local-news/mcminn-county-woman-indicted-on-18-child-rape-charges/
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I remind you that McMinn County is where the school board banned "Maus". Methinks they have bigger problems.......

When Tore Ovrebo, head of Norway's vaunted national athlete development program known as Olympia toppen, arrived in Beijing, he predicted exactly how many medals his country would win.

"The medal aim is 32 — three, two," Ovrebo said at a press conference, making the number crystal clear for anyone not listening closely.

That is an astonishingly high bar, sort of like a Major League Baseball manager promising his pitcher will throw a no-hitter.

Ovrebo proceeded to map out his game plan, predicting Norway would medal repeatedly in three core disciplines: alpine skiing, biathlon and cross-country skiing.

With the Winter Olympics entering the final days of competition, his country's athletes are actually well ahead of schedule. The U.S. with its vastly larger population lags by half a dozen medals.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081039454/why-does-norway-dominate-the-winter-olympics-medal-count

Millions of people around the world are in need of a major organ transplant, but very few are likely to find a viable donor. Over 106,000 Americans await a new organ, and 17 people die each day as they wait for a transplant. This is especially true during COVID, where the disease has decimated the respiratory health of thousands and left their lungs ravaged. A growing number of people are in need of a lung transplant—but there are simply too few lungs to go around to save everyone.

One of the biggest hurdles to transplantation is also a deceptively simple one: matching blood type. This is especially true for the heart and lungs, which are more sensitive than other organs to mismatched blood type, said Dr. Alexander Krupnick, a lung transplant surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

But new research out of Canada promises to solve this incompatibility obstacle by doing something quite extraordinary: converting the native blood type of an organ to a universal blood type.

In a new study published on Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine, Toronto researchers were able to take donated lungs and strip them of the antigens that identify them as blood type A, making the lungs appear as if they originated from an individual with blood type O donor—famously known as the universal donor blood type. (Though technically, O-negative is the true universal donor type.)

The research team behind the new paper achieved this breakthrough by flooding the donated blood type A lungs with two enzymes that can remove blood type A antigens from cells lining the organ’s blood vessels, where most of the troublesome blood type incompatibilities manifest. Within about four hours, the enzymes—called FpGalNac deacetylase and FpGalactosaminidase, and naturally produced by our bodies—removed more than 97 percent of type A antigens from the donated organs.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/blood-type-conversion-breakthrough-could-make-universal-lung-transplants-possible?ref=home

The city of Ottawa is under siege for the third week in a row, as anti-vaccine protesters continue to paralyze the downtown business district. Last week, I wrote about how white nationalist organizers in Southern California are planning similar protests in the United States, and how their followers appear to be mostly parents. There were moms offering to bring Girl Scout cookies to sustain convoy members—some joked about putting fliers advertising the convoys into their kids’ school valentines.

In response to my piece, some readers expressed disbelief. How could so many parents get mixed up with an extremist movement? Others characterized group members as “soccer moms” who were bored, or dumb, or maybe both. But the online spread of misinformation in parent communities isn’t born of boredom or stupidity. I’ve written before about how moms turn to online groups for support and identity:

Many mothers, and perhaps especially the ones who spend a lot of time in Facebook groups, can feel vulnerable, lonely, and overwhelmed. They may have scant family leave and little help at home. Sometimes, their real concerns about their own health and their babies’ wellbeing have been dismissed by doctors.

For years, purveyors of misinformation about alternative health have exploited these forums to promote theories and practices that aren’t backed by science and can be dangerous.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/ottawa-convoy-protest-promoters-elite-medical-credentials-financial-incentives-astroturf-libertarian/

The state of New Jersey has suspended new admissions at a nursing home where 17 bodies were found stacked in a morgue in 2020, citing the results of recent inspections in which staff members allegedly failed to do CPR or call 911 for unresponsive patients or provide lifesaving medicine for Covid patients.

According to state officials, 16 residents at the facility have died from Covid since September.

On Thursday, the facility, once known as Andover Subacute II but now known as Woodland Behavioral Health, was given 72 hours to respond to the report and address allegations of shortcomings or the state would revoke its license. The facility has now responded, a spokesperson for the state said, and the state is reviewing its response. As of Monday, the facility’s license had not been revoked.

According to state inspectors:

Staff members failed to do CPR or call 911 for two residents who were found unresponsive, one of whom was 55 years old. Both residents died.
A doctor ordered immediate monoclonal antibodies for a resident who had Covid, but although the facility got the drugs, the lifesaving medicine was never given to the resident, who later died.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/state-takes-new-jersey-nursing-home-17-bodies-stacked-morgue-rcna16208
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These guys again. And it gets worse. Why the license is not revoked is beyond me.

When Kahla Williams first learned her sixth grade daughter was going to read 'Dragonwings' in class, she was excited.

"It's a historical fiction. It's an excellent book... It's a Newbery Award winner," Williams said. "I think it's important for them to learn everything that they can about every culture."

The 1975 novel by Laurence Yep explores the "struggles and dreams of Chinese immigrants navigating opportunity and prejudice in San Francisco," according to its description.

"If something makes you uncomfortable, it's likely that you should be reading it or that you should learn it," Williams said. "We live in a predominantly white culture and so this was an opportunity for her to learn something different."

But after some parents expressed concerns over the novel's content, Union Grove Middle School Principal John Webb told parents they would no longer be teaching it.

A petition circulating online calls for the district to remove the novel from its curriculum because of racism, foul language, underage drinking, violence, drugs, prostitution and alcohol. It had about 130 signatures as of Monday evening.

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/education/blount-county-middle-school-removes-dragonwings-from-curriculum-after-parents-express-concerns/51-6c40df29-2a72-43dd-b5ca-93baa3083dcc
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"Oh no, it makes ME uncomfortable, therefore my child can't read it!"

Samantha Custer and her husband Dave were faced with one of life’s greatest obstacles and then one of life’s greatest gifts just weeks apart.

In an article published by the Cleveland Clinic’s Newsroom, Mrs. Custer explains she was 25 weeks pregnant, nearly two months away from her due date, when doctors informed her she would have to undergo surgery to save her unborn baby’s life.

The Custers were frantic as everything up until that point had gone smoothly with the pregnancy.

In speaking to Newsroom, Dr. Darrell Cass, Director of the clinic’s Fetal Surgery and Fetal Care Center explained: “What we saw was a very large tumor, and this tumor was sitting exactly in the wrong area, where it was squishing the left side of the heart.”

According to Cass, the Custers needed to move quickly to save their son.

“We felt probably the best treatment – if we were going to do anything – would be to try open fetal resection of this tumor,” Cass told Newsroom. Days later, he found himself prepping Mrs. Custer for surgery with the help of his team.

https://www.wate.com/news/watercooler/unborn-baby-undergoes-heart-surgery-in-womb-after-doctors-detect-tumor/
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Stuff utterly unheard of when I had my kids......

I'm bingeing this on Hulu and absolutely loving it. I'm right near what I hope is, but I bet is not, the end of the part about medical device fraud, which I find rather fascinating as I used to work in cardiology and alongside electrocardiologists and surgeons who put in artificial valves and stuff. I know a good bit about some of the other things (artificial hip joints, neuro-stimulators, etc.) either because friends have gotten them or because I've done a lot of reading. It's fascinating stuff, and I do know there's been fraud in the business. This whole part of the series is amazing. The series has also not hesitated to take on the American healthcare system, insurance, and some other hot button issues. I don't know why I didn't discover it before except that I don't watch network TV at all.