As Gabriela de Hoyos is transporting a gunshot victim on a stretcher back to the trauma bay, she tells the victim that they are going to live and everything will be OK. She tells them this no matter what.

“No one wants their last thought on Earth to be, I’m not going to make it,” de Hoyos, who worked as a trauma nurse at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center from 2016 to 2021, told BuzzFeed News.

De Hoyos is just one of the 100-plus people a gunshot victim may see from the time they are shot until they are fully recovered — part of the vast but largely hidden economic and psychological cost of gun violence. A single bullet wound sets in motion a long, labor-intensive process to try to save a life, a chain of support that includes police officers, security guards, trauma nurses, doctors, surgeons, therapists, more nurses, social workers, pharmacists, paramedics, and chaplains.

It’s a process that has become more frequent in recent years, especially since the start of the pandemic. In 2020, 45,000 people died from gun-related injuries in the US — the highest mark on record, a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from 2015, and a 43% increase from 2010, according to the CDC. In Philadelphia, there were 562 homicides in 2021, 62 more than the previous single-year high-point, set in 1990, when murder rates across the country reached record levels. That means there is a homicide in Philadelphia every 16 hours, and at the University of Pennsylvania Presbyterian Medical Center, gunshot victims have consumed the trauma bay: 18% of the hospital’s trauma cases are gunshot patients.

Twelve medical workers at Penn Presbyterian who spoke to BuzzFeed News described gun violence as a daily reality that leaves a deep emotional impact on them.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paigeskinner/gun-violence-medical-labor-photos
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I suppose now the gun humpers will argue that guns are good because they keep so many people employed! Read the article. It's sobering.

Personalized license plates, aka "vanity plates" are incredibly cheap in Virginia--just $25 when you renew your plate or sticker, which isn't that often or that much either. I have said ever since I moved here that since they're so cheap, anyone not having them is either lazy or suffers from a lack of imagination.

Mine says GYPC QN, which is a play on a comment someone made many years ago on one of my favorite pictures of me, that it "looked like an Appalachian gypsy queen." Husband's is EADGBE, the tuning sequence for a six-string guitar. I've seen some that are very creative and some that just make me wonder. I saw one at the shelter that said GOODOG and another one that said HEEL. And I haven't figured out whether it's our manager or the vet that comes in, both of South Asian extraction, who has the plate that reads BIRYANI. I had a car pass me once on the interstate with a plate that said WHOOSH and another one I gave a wide berth to because their plate said KNIVES. And there's a little blue Smart car that tools around town with one that says TARDIS 2.

Anyone got some to add?

About 5 million honeybees bound for Alaska last weekend got waylaid when Delta Air Lines routed them through Atlanta, where most of the bees died after being left for hours in crates on the ground during hot weather.

The bees were the first of two shipments ordered by Alaska beekeeper Sarah McElrea from a distributor in California. The bees were to be used to pollinate apple orchards and nurseries in Alaska, where they are not native.

But the bees were bumped from their original route to Anchorage, Alaska, and instead put on a flight to Atlanta, where they were to be transferred to an Anchorage-bound plane, according to published reports.

McElrea said she worried when the 800-pound shipment didn’t arrive in Atlanta in time to make the connecting flight. The next day, she said, Delta told her some bees had escaped, so airline workers put the crates holding the bees outside a Delta cargo bay.

In a panic, McElrea reached a beekeeper in Atlanta, who rushed to the airport and discovered that many of the bees had died from heat and starvation, according to The New York Times.

Delta called it an “unfortunate situation.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/millions-alaska-bound-bees-die-flight-rerouted-rcna26799
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Nice shot, Delta. Pay up.

There's a Japanese show on Netflix called "Old Enough" that's causing a lot of buzz. It shows little kids running errands for their parents. It seems that in this country kids are barely allowed to breathe by themselves, while in other countries they're not only allowed, but expected to do many things on their own without adult supervision.

What do you let your kids do by themselves, and how old is old enough?

Here's an article for reference:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/04/30/1094677166/we-asked-you-answered-have-you-taught-your-children-to-run-errands-on-their-own

Conservative speaker and television personality Tomi Lahren took to Twitter Monday to accuse University of Tennessee students of “gorging themselves on watermelon and refried beans in an attempt to barf on conservative speakers.” University of Tennessee Police officials disagree, however.

https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/04/29/tomi-lahren-accuses-ut-students-barfing-conservative-speakers-no-instances-reported/
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This will make her as welcome on Rocky Top as a family of rabid skunks wearing Bama gear

About two weeks ago we acquired a special needs dog in our shelter on a court case. She is a sweet Lab mix who is paralyzed in her back end. No idea how long she's been that way. She was found living in a car with her owner, who is homeless. Now if that was all, and the owner was doing the best she could for poor Zion, I would feel differently, and I did reserve judgment until more came out when the case was heard. Zion was found lying in several days' worth of her own excrement on the floorboard of the car, being fed grapes because "Zion is a vegetarian"--not because that was all they had. She was terribly underweight and is still getting to the weight she should be at. We were able to obtain a wheelchair for her from Charlottesville, and puppy (we think she's about a year old) was so excited she took off running and took the shelter employee with her. It was a day or two before she figured out she could also walk. Everyone loves Zion; she is the sweetest girl imaginable who rarely barks and never complains. The court case has been heard, the owner got her 10 days to appeal, which was denied on grounds of gross neglect, and parental rights were stripped. Zion will most likely end up in Charlottesville, where they have a vet on staff who can deal with her situation and a population that may contain someone who will be able to care for her needs. We'll all miss her sweet nature and her puppy kisses.

"I GARDEN BECAUSE PUNCHING PEOPLE IS FROWNED ON"

Sorry I didn't have my phone with me to get a picture.

Inside a cavernous stone fortress in downtown Pittsburgh, attorney Robin Frank defends parents at one of their lowest points – when they are at risk of losing their children.

The job is never easy, but in the past she knew what she was up against when squaring off against child protective services in family court. Now, she worries she’s fighting something she can’t see: an opaque algorithm whose statistical calculations help social workers decide which families will have to endure the rigors of the child welfare system, and which will not.

“A lot of people don’t know that it’s even being used,” Frank said. “Families should have the right to have all of the information in their file.”

From Los Angeles to Colorado and throughout Oregon, as child welfare agencies use or consider tools similar to the one in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, an Associated Press review has identified a number of concerns about the technology, including questions about its reliability and its potential to harden racial disparities in the child welfare system. Related issues have already torpedoed some jurisdictions’ plans to use predictive models, such as the tool notably dropped by the state of Illinois.

According to new research from a Carnegie Mellon University team obtained exclusively by AP, Allegheny’s algorithm in its first years of operation showed a pattern of flagging a disproportionate number of Black children for a “mandatory” neglect investigation, when compared with white children. The independent researchers, who received data from the county, also found that social workers disagreed with the risk scores the algorithm produced about one-third of the time.

https://apnews.com/article/child-welfare-algorithm-investigation-9497ee937e0053ad4144a86c68241ef1
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PLEASE read the linked article. The whole thing. To paraphrase "Shane", an algorithm is a tool; it's as good or as bad as the person using it. It also should not be kept secret, nor should the "results".

When Kevin Harris got a second job as a housekeeper at an assisted living facility, he was pretty happy. Not only would the additional income be a boost, but the job in Petersburg would be at the same place where his girlfriend had just started working, too.

His joyful feelings soured within his first hours working at Fillmore Place.

Less than a month after his last day there, Harris met 8News a block away to recall what working there was like. He flipped through photos he’d sent to us — recalling the unsanitary conditions he said he found elderly and disabled residents living in.

“If their families came here, I’m pretty sure all these residents would have been removed already because of how nasty it is,” he said.

In many rooms, Harris said he saw bedding, including bed bug covers, ripped and soiled beyond the help of his girlfriend’s laundering abilities during her brief stint at Fillmore.

Harris and his girlfriend sent pictures, videos and claims of horrifying conditions to several state agencies. But state records indicate the photos weren’t showing the state anything they didn’t already know.

A Department of Social Services inspection report from Dec. 14 lists and shows 26 different types of violations at Fillmore Place.

https://www.wric.com/news/taking-action/living-in-filth-decay-garbage-bed-bugs-at-petersburg-assisted-living-facility/
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Read on. It is much, much worse.

As a teenager, Victoria Emma was one of the top junior tennis players in the country. Colleges were recruiting her. She got to travel the world for matches. With her tennis career going so well, no one, including Emma’s parents, had any clue that she had tried to end her life — until they found suicide notes stashed away in her bedroom.

“They had no idea anything was going on,” Emma, now 22 and playing professionally, said. “I don’t blame them. I was very good at hiding it. There’s plenty of times when I’m on the court and I have to do that.”

Switched into homeschool full-time in high school so she could focus on tennis, she started feeling disconnected from her friends and overwhelmed by the demands of her sport. It had taken over her identity.

“When tennis wasn’t going well, I didn’t have a way of handling that,” Emma, of Delray Beach, Florida, said. “Even when it was going well, there were people where all they talked about with me was tennis.”

Since the beginning of March, three high-profile college student-athletes have died by suicide across the United States. On their fields of play, the three young women projected indestructibility: Katie Meyer as a star goalkeeper on Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze as a top runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Lauren Bernett as a standout softball player for James Madison University.

But off the field, all three were secretly struggling.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/suicides-put-spotlight-hard-can-student-athletes-ask-help-rcna26266