I saw ‘ants are everywhere’ and thought it was going to be a nature story about the secret lives of ants – something like this: https://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/02/24/weekend-diversion-down-the-ant-hole
The actual story was a much sadder read. :-(
Is the statement at the bottom of the article new or did the earlier posters simply miss it?
… One of Best Friends’ recommendations for due diligence within the adoption process was to focus on the shelter’s existing system, Chameleon, which pulls information related to animal welfare cases. This includes animal abuse and animal cruelty cases. Checking MyCase was discouraged, as its use was problematic and could lead to biased, inequitable vetting of potential adoptees.
This story does not have enough detail, so I looked for more.
First, I looked up Best Friends and they are firmly no-kill to the exclusion of all else. I am guessing the ‘Chameleon’ referenced is this CMS, but I could be wrong. If that is the software, it looks like there is a way for people to add notes about specific animals, but it isn’t clear if you can enter notes about specific people. It certainly doesn’t look like it has a way of automatically checking police records for criminal records. It does suggest you can enter these types of ‘field’ data:
I’m guessing MyCase is this free Indiana-specific portal.
Now: if they aren’t talking about the free MyCase link I found, then perhaps they are using software that charges the Animal Shelter for each search. I can see getting fired for incurring costs that aren’t in the budget. Alternately, perhaps ‘Best Friends’ is giving them funding based on the shelter NOT rejecting any adopter ever for any reason – or at least thinking that is a condition based on this statement from the Best Friends ‘who we are’ page:
We’re making sure that everyone has the same access to loving pets and that every adoptable pet has access to the comfort of a foster home instead of a kennel in a shelter.
– note that the above is meant to foster diversity and its links to their diversity page (which seems focused on income disparity), but that quoted bit COULD be read to mean ‘everyone gets a pet, no matter what’.
I would think it incumbent on all employees to create notes/warnings about known abusers and have that be a flag if they come back to adopt, but I do see a case for allowing people to re-adopt an animal they voluntarily gave to the shelter because they had gone through a patch where they couldn’t afford to feed it, but now they can. Others might argue that this is abuse or that the owners don’t deserve a pet, but it is clear that Best Friends thinks that refusing such people is discriminatory.
That doesn’t mean that the particular abuse getting uncovered with MyCase was simply surrendering a pet until people got on their feet. Mostly, it just feels like there’s a bunch of stuff going on that no one reported.
We already had the Expanded Access Program (thank you ACT UP) and we don’t want a repeat of thalidomide babies like we had before there were strong protections on how drugs get tested.
So now we have Expanded Access (EAP) with FDA oversite and Right to Try (RTT) without that oversight. Having both is confusing for everyone and most people don’t know which covers what. From Journal of Law and the Biosciences (they only sampled 17 neuro-oncologists from 15 different academic medical centers):
Many physicians described having difficulty in distinguishing between RTT and EAP or demonstrated misconceptions in their responses. A physician with knowledge of both pathways spoke about his colleagues generally: ‘I don’t think a lot of people understand the difference between expanded access and Right-To-Try’ [Participant 1]. The confusion resulted in conflation with the different features between EAP and RTT including structure, intent, and processes of these pathways. In response to our question ‘Have you provided a drug through Right-to-Try?’ one clinician erroneously replied, ‘I think most compassionate use is under that category’ [Participant 2]. Another drew a rough equivalence between the two despite the absence of FDA oversight for RTT: ‘I guess the way I try to think about Right-to-Try is like compassionate use.
The U.S. uses sanctions all the damn time. Biden lifted SOME sanctions for a bit, then put them back and now there are calls for yet MORE sanctions. Sanctions all around! IMO, this hasn’t worked, won’t work, hurts the populace more than the leaders, leads to dangerous migrations that end up turning the U.S. more authoritarian as it freaks out about these refugees seeking relief from the policies the U.S. itself put in place, encourages a coalition of dictators who are all facing U.S. sanctions to trade with one another since we won’t trade with them, and is bad for so many more reasons.
From Washington Post (archive):
U.S. sanctions have surged in the past two decades and are in effect in some form in almost a third of all countries. In the case of Venezuela, U.S. officials were — and remain — sharply torn over the financial fusillade.
The Biden administration temporarily lifted key sanctions on Venezuela last year in exchange for promises from Maduro to allow a competitive presidential election, … But because Maduro has failed to follow through on most of his commitments, the Biden administration reimposed the sanctions.
If you prefer Al Jazeera:
Since 2014, output has contracted by 70 percent, more than twice the hit the United States suffered during the Great Depression…Over that period, some 7.7 million Venezuelans – a quarter of the population – have left the country in search of work.
Biden inherited a strategy of maximum pressure on Venezuela from President Trump. But despite applied pressure, consecutive rounds of sanctions failed to dislodge Maduro.
Biden, meanwhile, pursued a different approach. Under the 2023 Barbados Agreement, he eased some sanctions – notably on oil and debt – for political guarantees, namely free and fair elections and the release of detained US citizens.
The deal allowed Venezuela to earn an additional $740m in oil sales from last October to March. But after Maduro blocked Machado from running, and following the revival of a territorial dispute with Guyana, Biden re-imposed US sanctions in April.
Quick Post election status: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/30/biden-gop-sanction-venezuela-election-maduro
Congressional Republicans are pressing the Biden administration to impose harsh sanctions on Venezuela’s government for allegedly “subverting” the results of the country’s presidential election on Sunday.
Decades ago, before the internet, when your local radio stations and newspapers paid for service to a special machine that constantly churned out stories from stringers and main branches, there was a saying that I no longer remember but went something like, “Associated Press gets the story first; United Press gets it right.”
We never doubted that AP/UP/Reu/(etc.) were feeding most the news. The sources were right there in print.
It is good to remind people that while there are an endless number of websites, most news still comes from a handful of sources. I will even agree that our sources are all biased.
That said there are some stories where bias should be expected; where there aren’t really two sides. Example: “Locals outraged by villian’s kicking puppies!” Good reporting might include the reasoning, but the public is not going to side with the puppy-kicker. Surely there was a better way to handle the situation before it got to that.
The public does not side with Hitler, either. Personally, I am thankful that the larger public has been ‘brainwashed’ into thinking Hitler was ‘bad’. It saddens me that there are Nazis (or neo-Nazis) in countries that fought to end that vile cause. The citizenry should know better. More than that, the citizenry should know that all autocrats are bad. Any benevolent dictator is still mortal and will cede the position to someone else, and it won’t be long before the ‘someone else’ is not benevolent.
So: thank you for posting the link reminding everyone to be critical of all news sources, but also remember that some things are fairly reported. Sometimes a point of view is valid. Sometimes there is an actual solid truth that is being told. Yes, sometimes that truth is getting sensationalized, but that doesn’t it make it less true.
For this particular case, I will re-iterate that I am worried about potential strife. If my family was living in Venezuela, I would want a stable and well funded government without corruption and without dictatorship. I don’t think the people had that as a ballot option, and I don’t trust any of the players. I do miss Chavez, though. The U.S. gave him a raw deal.
I just love it when someone posts propaganda and then goes into their own thread attempting to discredit everyone else as propaganda.
Quote from María Corina Machado (opposition leader kept off ballot) per CNN:
We definitely need to open markets in order to take advantage of that huge potential and turn Venezuela into truly the energy hub of the Americas.
How the how the country will benefit from that? We will have fiscal flows, and other resources, mechanisms through which the state will get taxes.
She seems to like money.
I’m anticipating strife and reporting from additional sources. This could get ugly and people should be aware of it.
Note that al-jazeera itself reported this in the article you linked:
“Everything we have seen so far indicates the results of the government are just produced,” Phil Gunson, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Venezuela, told Al Jazeera. He claimed the tallies announced by the government-controlled electoral authority did not correspond to the votes cast.
“The result that the opposition claims is the correct one … corresponds very closely to what opinion polls have been saying for the last several months,” Gunson said. “All the partial results we have seen so far indicate the opposition got something like three-fifths of the vote.”
Maybe. APnews says:
Authorities delayed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours,” hampering attempts to verify the results.
After finally claiming to have won, Maduro accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.
Per bbc:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among those expressing his scepticism after the result was announced by the National Electoral Council, a body which is dominated by government loyalists.
The UK Foreign Office also expressed concern over the results
The Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, also said he found the result “hard to believe”.
Uruguay’s president said of the Maduro government: “They were going to ‘win’ regardless of the actual results.”
In a congratulatory message, President Vladimir Putin told Mr Maduro: “Remember, you are always a welcome guest on Russian soil.”
That said, I didn’t really want Maria Machado “—derided by the Chavista leadership for her pro-market views and her upper-class background“ — to lead a puppet government after getting kicked off the ballot.
I had never heard the particular sentence, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” as a phrase, but seeing the video, there did not seem to be any hostility in her voice nor actions. The article says:
In the church, he said, to rebuke is to cast out a demon, or keep a demon from using a person to do something bad. The phrase can be said casually, though, in response to someone’s misbehavior. When Massey says it, her voice is louder and clearer than it has been before, but she doesn’t sound angry. It’s the tone of voice that you might use while saying: For goodness’ sake, this is really getting ridiculous.
That fits with her actions: totally non-confrontational, but with the mildest of chastisements.
The U.S. admission followed a June 14 Reuters investigation that revealed how the Pentagon launched a secret psychological operation to discredit Chinese vaccines and other COVID aid in 2020 and 2021, at the height of the pandemic. As a result of the Reuters investigation, the Philippine Senate Foreign Relations Committee launched a hearing into the matter and sought a response from the U.S.
According to the June 25 document, Pentagon officials concluded its anti-vax campaign was “misaligned with our priorities.” It says the U.S. military told Filipino officials that operatives “ceased COVID-related messaging related to COVID-19 origins and COVID-19 vaccines in August 2021.”
… so Trump?
I imagine Biden had a lot of fires to put out once he became President in January 2021, but it would have been nice if this scheme ended sooner.
Saved you a click (I added the bold):
Also, holding a college degree doesn’t necessarily translate to success in the workplace, Nguyen added, particularly in rapidly evolving fields like technology, where information and skills learned in school can quickly become outdated.
Other industries in which companies are loosening degree requirements for job candidates include finance and insurance, health care and social services, education, and information services and data, according to Intelligent’s report.
Some states have even passed legislation to open up job opportunities to applicants without a college degree. In January, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order eliminating college degree requirements for more than 90% of state jobs.
Nearly 60% of business leaders said they removed degree requirements for entry-level positions, while 54% said they did so for mid-level roles and 18% said they did for senior-level roles, according to the survey.
Personally, I favor requiring a degree for most education jobs – specifically for teaching k-12. First: teachers need to learn how brains develop over time and what the developmental markers are. Second, teacher should learn different methods of learning and teaching to better reach all students. Third, teachers should learn how to create useful tests and what IS a useful test at different age levels. A 2nd grader is not going to write an essay that displays synergistic understanding of two unrelated fields, but a 2nd grader CAN display synergistic learning in other ways. I’ve gone on too long, but you get the idea.
Thank you!
Maybe someone can look for it since I’m being lazy, but I coulda sworn I saw a piece around a decade ago about how sky burials were falling out of fashion in India/Nepal and it was impacting the vulture populations that partially depended on dead humans as a food source. Now I’m wondering if the issue was sky burials in decline or if it was poison in cattle – or both.
He heard you!
Axios doesn’t mention Gaza, no, but here’s some other reporting:
From the Jerusalem Post:
Ben-Ami said Harris has consistently supported a two-state solution while being clear on Israel’s right to defend itself.
She has also been a powerful voice calling for greater protection of Palestinian civilians in the wake of October 7, speaking out about the humanitarian crisis, and pressing for an urgent ceasefire to free the hostages and end the devastation, Ben-Ami added.
He’s already been considering this for at least a week or more.
He and his team have considered it, but I doubt Trump is capable of preparing for it. His team will try, but – like Biden – he is an old man past his prime. Voters do not want Project 2025, so Trump’s team CAN’T talk about it with anything but denial, and that is the only ‘plan’ they have. The rest is a few insults that Trump repeat over and over, to which Harris can say, “I’ll take the insults if it keeps necessary abortions legal. I’ll take it to keep schools open. To improve them. To make sure [insert message here] is expanded, not abolished.”
let’s see how this goes down: https://www.thedailybeast.com/bob-menendez-rumors-of-my-resignation-greatly-exaggerated
True, but I’d still rather infrastructure to be publicly held utilities. Energy suppliers are a strange case because any company can become part of the grid, but the power lines to our homes are generally controlled by one entity. I want at least that entity to be responsive to the public, but I also don’t want random suppliers taking down the grid.
Does this archive version render any better for you? https://archive.ph/xIOUo