Sadly that is as American as apple pie.

>In the 1950s and ’60s, as the American Indian boarding schools fell out of favor, a new wave of assimilation policy went into effect: adoption of Native children into white homes. The Indian Adoption Project, which ran from 1958-67, was a partnership between the federal government and the Child Welfare League of America and churches around the country whose stated goal was the adoption of Native children by white families. At the time, “matching” of adoptive children with their adoptive parents was a common practice, meant to allow adoptive parents to pass their children off as biologically related. “One little, two little, three little Indians — and 206 more — are brightening the homes and lives of 172 American families, mostly non-Indians, who have taken the Indian waifs as their own,” a 1966 Bureau of Indian Affairs press release boasted. > >By the 1970s, the removal of Native children to white families was so widespread that, when the BIA commissioned a federal task force to research the phenomenon, it found that 25% to 35% of Native children around the country were removed from their homes, and 85% of those children were adopted by white families. ICWA was created in response to the report, and Congress passed the law in 1978.

Lax gun safety like she's alleged to have demonstrated while working on The Old Way?

>While working as an armorer on “The Old Way,” a Nicolas Cage western shot in Montana, Gutierrez Reed sent Kenney a text message on Aug. 15 in which she asked the weapons provider if she could “shoot hot rounds out of the trap door,” the report stated. > >“Wtf is a hot round?” Kenney asked in response, to which Gutierrez Reed replied, “Like a pretty big load of actual ammunition,” according to the report. > >The report states that Kenney “tells her never to shoot live ammo out of tv/movie guns, and to only use blanks” and follows up by saying, “It’s a serious mistake, always ends in tears.” > >“Good to know, I’m still gonna shoot mine tho,” Gutierrez Reed responded, according to the report.

That's just the most eyebrow-raising behavior. She was also apparently just a general disaster as an armorer.

It was fucking stupid to hire a part-time armorer for a Western, but there's no reason to believe Gutierrez-Reed was a paragon of gun safety. Armorer on two sets with gun safety issues is pretty damning.

Whether the involuntary manslaughter charges are appropriate or not is a matter for the court to decide. Either way, her career in Hollywood should probably be over.

From the article:

>Fetterman's chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, and Communications Director Joe Calvello have been visiting him at Walter Reed daily this week, Calvello told NBC, saying “he’s in the zone” and “excited to get back to the Senate.” The Pennsylvania senator has been working from Walter Reed since checking in for treatment in mid-February, with staff citing challenges after a stroke.

In order to de-stigmatize mental health issues, this is exactly the sort of thing people need to see and support: a person accommodated in their professional life while also seeking appropriate treatment. It shouldn't have to be either/or because for many people it can't be.

Compassion isn't a statement; it's a question. Instead of saying, "People with X can't do Y," we should be asking "What can we do so you are successful at Y?"

But since they're mostly conservative white guys, we're going to call them "lone wolves" and pretend we don't see a pattern in their radicalization.

It's a little more complicated than that.

Orcas are socially complex animals, with each pod often having distinct behaviors and vocalizations. To use an anthropomorphic term, orca pods can be said to have distinct cultures. You can't introduce an animal from one pod into another and be assured it will seamlessly integrate; you have to find the animal's original pod.

The rehabilitators never found Keiko's original pod. Instead he was released near a random pod of wild orcas with hopes he would somehow integrate. It was the orca-equivalent of taking some WASP from the American suburbs, dropping them into rural Afghanistan, and hoping it would work out.

It didn't work, so Keiko remained solitary with respect to other orcas. It's no wonder he sought out human companionship; orcas are social animals, and he had years of positive reinforcement around people. Worse, John Q. Public sought him out, further strengthening that relationship.

If we wanted to try again, the best candidate (assuming she's healthy enough) would be Miami Seaquarium's Lolita. We know exactly which pod she came from and where they are--they're one of the best studied pods in the world--and when a vocalization study was conducted, IIRC, in the 90s, she still recognized their calls. Quite frankly, Miami Seaquarium could contribute more to orca behavioral research by supporting such a project than they ever have because it would give us a chance to see whether or not an animal separated from its pod for decades could successfully reintegrate. Would they accept her? Would they take care of her? Would they teach her to be a wild orca again? Answers to such questions would tell us a lot about their capabilities as animals.

(Source for information on Keiko: As an undergrad studying Animal Behavior, I attended a seminar on the effort and failure behind Keiko's rehabilitation, held by people involved in it.)

>...somehow our administration always knows about it in advance...

Regulators need to stop announcing their visits. I used to work for a facility (non-healthcare) that always knew when the Fire Marshal or Health Inspector was coming. Managers would have us rushing around to correct the deficits, like flammables in the electrical room or rat feces in the consumables, that were considered totally fine the other 364 days per year.

If you want to know what places are really like, show up unannounced and get a tour from either the lowest ranking employee or the one that appears the most pissed off.

Not to mention there's some evidence for the facial feedback hypothesis, meaning that her experience of emotions might be altered by her inability or ability to express them.

And I use an iPhone and don't have that problem. The only iPhone user I know who does has documented hearing loss. Personal experiences aren't exactly scientific studies or conclusive in any way. It's a possibility. It's not a certainty. Only OP can decide what to do with it.

It might be worth talking to your doctor or just seeing an audiologist. The experience you're describing was an early indicator that my grandmother was losing her hearing.

I'm saying he's premature. We aren't going to know if he's right or wrong until we see additional studies. This is how science works.

I think it's important to remember that professionals are just as prone to confusing what they want to be true with what is true as anyone else. When someone's entire career is oriented towards a certain goal, they're representative of an organization oriented towards a certain goal, and they're speaking to a reporter, I think that line can become even more blurry.

If you look at the entire quote, Oakley isn't even basing his statement in the research itself. He's basing it on what nebulous "people" and "everyone" are saying.

>“This is not a cure by any stretch of the imagination, but if it does slow cognitive decline, it means that for the first time we are modifying the disease,” says Dr Richard Oakley, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society. “We need to understand the real-world clinical benefit, but I’ve spoken to people and where there’s never been excitement, always hesitation, this does look like the real deal. We need to see the data, but everyone is now saying this is the beginning of disease-modifying treatments.”

If you have a strong study, you don't talk about how other people are telling you how exciting the study is. You talk about how exciting the study is. Furthermore, anywhere in that statement that he talks about the research, he talks about uncertainty. "We need to understand the real world clinical benefit, but..." meaning the study doesn't show that. "We need to see the data, but..." meaning it's not there yet.

If it was there, he would've said "The study shows..." or "The data shows..."

The effect this study found is so small it could very well evaporate in follow-up studies. It's not proof we can modify Alzheimer's at all. At best it's an indication of an avenue for further research. That's my point: We're celebrating before we're certain there's anything to celebrate.

Regarding the difference between dementia research and the novel coronavirus, we need to keep in mind that they are not remotely equivalent situations.

First, they don't have equivalent economic or social impacts. SARS-CoV-2 is killing and disabling far more people and wreaking havoc on global economic systems. Dementia is not.

Second, their research involves different levels of complexity. Identifying and developing treatments for a novel virus is a lot more straightforward (relatively speaking) than unlocking the secrets of the brain. Neuroscience on a whole is a field that is a slow slog.

Third, the research is occurring on different scales. Alzheimer's was first described in 1906, when scientific publishing was still quite young. All of the basic research, case studies, and clinical reports happened when there were very few places to publish, very few researchers, and there wasn't a ton of research specialization.

Covid, on the other hand, came along at what may be the height of academic publishing. There are tons of journals on every conceivable specialty--more than a few of dubious quality--and a "publish or perish" mindset that drives people to put anything out there whether or not it's decent work. Additionally, the medical research and scientific field is huge compared to what it was with specialists for everything you can think of.

And Covid, because of it's unique behavior as a virus that affects pretty much every organ system, touched all of those specialties simultaneously.

Instead of the basic research trickling out in the pages of The Lancet over months or years because that is how science worked in the early 20th century, everyone and his cousin published their observations and experiments at roughly the same time.

As horrifying as Covid was, watching the research explode virtually overnight was incredible. But, yeah, while Alzheimer's research is definitely underfunded, one can't draw any meaningful conclusions from a comparison with Covid research.

>The first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's has been heralded as momentous and historic. > >The research breakthrough ends decades of failure and shows a new era of drugs to treat Alzheimer's - the most common form of dementia - is possible. > >Yet the medicine, lecanemab, has only a small effect and its impact on people's daily lives is debated.

Way to walk back that opening.

I wish we could be a little more guarded in our optimism about these new drugs. We've seen more than a few that promised to move us forward in our effort to treat Alzheimer's only to watch them faceplant at the finish line. As someone who is watching a loved one die of this disease, it feels like a cynical and exploitative manipulation of our hopes for companies and researchers to tout their success before it's established.

As an aside, if anyone is looking for more information on Alzheimer's then Jason Karlawish's The Problem of Alzheimer's is an excellent book. I don't agree with him on some things that are a matter of personal values and beliefs, but his coverage of the history of Alzheimer's and the state of research up to the point the book was published is excellent.

If anyone is interested in how these companies promote climate denial, Naomi Oreskes' and Erik Conway's Merchants of Doubt lays it out. The tl;dr is they're running the playbook tobacco companies wrote...with many of the same players.