Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's Journal13-year-old dies from suspected fentanyl overdose in Connecticut, police say
A 13-year-old who was hospitalized Thursday following apparent exposure to fentanyl at a Connecticut middle school died Saturday, authorities said.
Hartford police indicated "proximity" to and "contact with" synthetic opioid fentanyl by the unidentified teenager and two others triggered overdose reactions, although experts have long expressed doubt about such a scenario.
Hartford police said the student's death was the result of an overdose, and that it that was under investigation.
"The 13-year-old male juvenile succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased," the department said in a statement.
The victim became unconscious Thursday morning at the Sport and Medical Sciences Academy, a public prep and magnet school, authorities said. CPR was administered and he was hospitalized in what police described as "guarded condition."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/13-year-old-dies-suspected-fentanyl-overdose-connecticut-police-say-rcna12385y
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And the school did not have Narcan available? WHY NOT?
Love meat too much for Veganuary? Try Regenuary instead
With Veganuary expected to reach more than 2 million sign-ups globally since its launch in 2014, the 31-day plant-based pledge is once again making headlines this January as food manufacturers, supermarkets and restaurants cater to the movement. But for people wanting to eat more sustainably, yet not willing to cut out meat completely, there is another consumer challenge to try: Regenuary.
The idea for people to source as much food as possible from producers who use regenerative farming methods was hatched three years ago by Glen Burrows, co-founder of the Ethical Butcher, who was a vegetarian for 25 years because he didn’t like the way meat was produced. “Back in 1989, being a vegetarian was basically like being a Martian,” he says. “I became that awkward guy at dinner parties and slightly enjoyed that moral smugness, but then after a long period of time, I wasn’t that well. It wasn’t suiting me.”
So he started eating meat again. “It was like a life-force had been switched back on … I was going for my second black belt in martial arts.” He particularly likes offal. “For me, it’s almost like doing drugs.”
Burrows’ aim with Regenuary is to get people thinking more about how their food is produced. “The whole point of the movement is to think more about the impact of their food choices, and stop the oversimplified narrative that all plant-based foods are better than animal-based,” he says.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/15/regenuary-regenerative-farming-veganuary-meat-aoe
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Please read the whole article before responding. Note: I don't "Veganuary"; I'm Orthodox and do Great Lent, which is longer and harder.
Look around you. The way we live explains why we are increasingly polarized
“The border’s like our back door,” a concrete salesman named Chris told me in January 2017. “You leave it open, and anyone can walk right in.” It was the day of Trump’s presidential inauguration, and we were chatting on the exhibition floor of a trade show in Las Vegas, called World of Concrete. Circular saws, cement mixers, gleaming new trucks – it was an unusual place to talk about the politics of immigration.
But the simple promise of a concrete wall between the US and Mexico had flung a business tycoon into the White House, and I wanted to understand what this was about.
Chris was a millennial from a small town in western Ohio. With a trim beard and short, sandy hair, he projected an air of casual self-sufficiency. “I don’t really like neighbors,” he quipped, speaking with a dose of wry humor about how far he chose to live from other people.
I was struck by the mismatch between the salesman’s genial manner and his suspiciousness, his sense of anyone beyond his home or country as a potential threat. I wondered, as we talked amid a sea of construction equipment, what it would take to build genuine warmth and concern for outsiders, rather than such walls.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/16/look-around-you-why-increasingly-polarized
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Makes me not want to live here any more.
Glenn Youngkin attempts to ban critical race theory on day one as Virginia governor
Virginia’s newly elected Republican governor has immediately passed a swath of conservative orders – ranging from attempts to alter local school curriculums to loosening public health mandates during the pandemic – after being sworn into office on Saturday.
Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity CEO who has never served in public office before, became the state’s first Republican governor since 2010 after a closely watched gubernatorial election last year.
The 55 year-old placed the issue of critical race theory (CRT) at the centre of his campaign, capitalizing on a conservative backlash against the discipline and pledging to ban teaching of it in Virginia’s schools. Critical race theory is an academic practice that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society.
On Saturday, after taking the oath of office, Youngkin unveiled a list of nine executive orders and two executive directives, with the first on the list described as a directive to “restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education”.
The order lists 13 instructions, many directed to the state’s school superintendent, who has been tasked with reviewing the state’s curriculum and policies within the department of education, to identify “inherently divisive concepts”. The order also bans an executive employee from “directing or otherwise compelling students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to inherently divisive concepts”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/16/virginia-governor-glenn-youngkin-sworn-into-office-critical-race-theory
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As Virginia circles the drain.....
There is life after addiction. Most people recover
The U.S. faces an unprecedented surge of drug deaths, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting another grim milestone this week.
In a single 12-month period, fatal overdoses claimed 101,623 lives.
But researchers and drug policy experts say the grim toll obscures an important and hopeful fact: Most Americans who experience alcohol and drug addiction survive.
They recover and go on to live full and healthy lives.
"This is really good news I think and something to share and be hopeful about," said Dr. John Kelly, who teaches addiction medicine at Harvard Medical School and heads the Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1071282194/addiction-substance-recovery-treatment
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My adopted daughter and her partner are two. They should not be penalized for recovering!
Reframed' revisits Marilyn Monroe's life and legacy, from an all-women point of view
The year 2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, one of cinema's most iconic, examined and enduring sex symbols. To commemorate the occasion, CNN is rolling out the new four-part documentary series, Reframed: Marilyn Monroe, which takes a very different, and original, approach to its subject.
During her career, and for decades after her death, Marilyn was objectified, scrutinized and judged — mostly by male writers, biographers and historians. The 1973 book, Marilyn: A Biography, paired a skeevy, sexist essay by Norman Mailer with pictures of the actress taken by photographer Lawrence Schiller.
Schiller does appear in Reframed, but here he's talking about Monroe's acute awareness of the camera — how she posed, what images she selected and how she used them to enhance and leverage her own celebrity status.
But most of the time, the voices we hear in this new documentary are female. Actor Jessica Chastain narrates, and an all-women editorial team headed by Sam Starbuck reexamines Marilyn's movies, marriages and career moves from her point of view. And we hear from women film critics and historians, including the always informative Alicia Malone from Turner Classic Movies.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/14/1072768298/reframed-marilyn-monroes-documentary-review
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Cannot wait for this. The older I get, the more I appreciate her. She was smarter than people gave her credit for, and way savvy. And I don't think most men got her at all.
School District That Suspended Rape Accuser Has Dark History
When news broke that a 15-year-old student at Hawthorne Academy in North Carolina had been suspended after reporting an alleged sexual assault to her school, the country was shocked. Other students in her school district were not.
For years, students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District have brought forward horrifying allegations of sexual assault—being assaulted in the woods, raped in school bathrooms, groped on school buses—and claimed administrators and resource officers discouraged them from reporting the attacks. They have filed lawsuits, hosted town halls, and initiated federal investigations. Now they are taking to the street.
“[The district is] more focused on their reputation and money and how people perceive them… than they are about the actual students,” said Serena Evans, a former CMS student who claims she was sexually assaulted at school in 2016.
“We’re hoping that this becomes… an actual movement where it goes nationwide, where other schools and other school districts start talking about this stuff and taking it seriously.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, CMS Superintendent Earnest Winston said the district “takes allegations of misconduct seriously and all school-based staff are required to take annual training on how to report such allegations.” He said the school could not comment on specific allegations involving alleged misconduct, personnel matters, or student discipline.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/north-carolina-school-district-that-suspended-a-15-year-old-rape-accuser-has-a-disturbing-history?ref=home
Pro-Trump Media Is in Meltdown Mode Over New Oath Keeper Indictments
Pro-Trump media and lawmakers have, for months, been faithfully regurgitating the line that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol can’t have been an attempted coup or insurrection, because none of the hundreds of people arrested had been charged with sedition or insurrection.
But a federal indictment unsealed Thursday put a pin in that narrative—or at least, you’d think it would. Ten members of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia, and their leader Stewart Rhodes, were hit with a stunning sedition conspiracy indictment alleging that they stockpiled weapons, engaged in paramilitary training, and even discussed a plot to transport high-powered guns across from their hotel in Virginia across the Potomac for Jan. 6, all with the goal of blocking then President-elect Joe Biden from taking office.
Pro-Trump media and lawmakers have, for months, been faithfully regurgitating the line that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol can’t have been an attempted coup or insurrection, because none of the hundreds of people arrested had been charged with sedition or insurrection.
But a federal indictment unsealed Thursday put a pin in that narrative—or at least, you’d think it would. Ten members of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia, and their leader Stewart Rhodes, were hit with a stunning sedition conspiracy indictment alleging that they stockpiled weapons, engaged in paramilitary training, and even discussed a plot to transport high-powered guns across from their hotel in Virginia across the Potomac for Jan. 6, all with the goal of blocking then President-elect Joe Biden from taking office.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdayj/oath-keeper-stewart-rhodes-sedition-conspiracy-indictment
Sweden's parents paid to watch ill kids
With three children in preschool, branding manager Jeremy Cothran was prepared for colds, bugs or Covid-19 to affect his family at some point over the winter. But the run-up to Christmas was even worse than he expected.
“We had a rotating carousel of sick kids who had either fever or norovirus,” says the 41-year-old, who works for a recruitment tech company in Stockholm. “The illness eventually culminated in night-time vomiting and early trips to our building’s laundry facilities to wash clothes and linens.”
However, some of the pressure on his family was eased thanks to a policy called Vård av Barn (usually shortened to ‘VAB’). It loosely translates to “care of child”, and gives parents the right to take paid time off to look after their children if they get sick. This means that Swedish parents, unlike many around the world, don’t have to scramble to find relatives or friends to help, take holiday or unpaid leave or simply try and carry on working from home while their children are ill.
“It’s a huge safety net,” says Cothran, who’s originally from the US. He and his wife, a chief marketing officer, took nine VAB days between them during their children’s latest sickness spell. “We have no other family support whatsoever in Sweden, [so] we have a hard time dealing with shocks to our family system. Without VAB there’s no way we would both be able to manage career, family life and our own mental health simultaneously.”
Alongside Sweden’s more famous family-friendly policies such as parental leave and subsidised childcare, VAB is increasingly being used by Swedish businesses as a tool for attracting and retaining international talent like Cothran. But, similarly to other employee wellbeing initiatives such as unlimited holiday or mandatory exercise slots, VAB brings challenges as well as benefits, including concerns it could stunt parents’ careers if they take it too often.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220107-vard-av-barn-the-swedish-parents-paid-to-care-for-sick-kids
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American companies (and RepubliQans) are too cheesy to even think of this!
Fucke This: Swedish Village Decides to change its name
The residents of the Swedish village of 'Fucke' have decided to change its name after they became fed up with being censored when writing about their lives of Facebook.
Found on Sweden's High Coast, the small hamlet is made up of just 11 properties.
It sits on the banks of Fuckesjön ('Fucke Lake') and is within walking distance of another small settlement - 'Hump' - found on the banks of Humpsjön ('Hump Lake').
According to the Institute for Language and Folklore, the earliest records of Fucke date back to 1547, where it is described as being 'by a lake, situated very high up on a hillside with very steep fields'.
But despite its historic roots, homeowners in Fucke are fed up - especially with their posts being censored by Facebook when they try to write about their village on social media, or when they try to sell things online.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10402925/Fucke-Swedish-village-decides-change-name.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
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