And today we go to the Richmond County Fair!

[conuly]

What medieval Europe did with its teenagers

Mouth clicks used in human echolocation captured in unprecedented detail

Staten Island landfill-turned-park shows nature's resilience

The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books

America's new dads are older than ever

Forbidden love: The WW2 letters between two men

New Nutrition Study Changes Nothing

Rare Skin Disease Ruined Gaza Man's Life — Until Israeli Doctors Stepped In

Ancient Rome: Sunken City Devastated by a Tsunami 1,600 Years Ago Discovered off Tunisian Coast

Medicaid fueling opioid epidemic? New theory is challenged

Why the German elections matter to the rest of the world

NAFTA envoys lay out proposals, try to block Trump noise

Young US immigrants mobilize effort to avoid deportation

Donald Trump urged not to scrap Daca policy for young immigrants (I can not get used to the British style of only capitalizing the first letter in initialisms.)

Trump Looks Likely to End Protections for Dreamers. Here’s What Would Happen Next.

Trump pulls back threat to shut down government over border wall — for now

White House blocks Obama-era rule expanding pay data from companies

Mattress store serves as cushy shelter for Harvey's victims

The Chemical Plant Explosion in Texas Is Not an Accident. It's the Result of Specific Choices.

Released from Jail with Nothing, In the Middle of Hurricane Harvey

US successfully tests shooting down ballistic missile

Iraq's Kirkuk province to vote in Kurdish independence referendum

Utah officer who arrested nurse over blood test put on leave (Good for that nurse! You can't just let cops make up laws in their own heads.)

Sri Lanka bans plastic after garbage crisis

I criticized Google. It got me fired. That’s how corporate power works.

Jails, justice system at breaking point as Philippine drugs war intensifies

Filipinos accused of links to Marawi siege ordered freed

Climate Change Already Impacting Wheat, Rice, Corn, Soybean Yields Worldwide

Russia gears up for major war games, neighbors watch with unease

United States to give Ethiopia $91 million in drought aid for food and medicine

Myanmar Rakhine: Rohingya refugees drown as exodus mounts

Rohingya Muslims flee as more than 2,600 houses burned in Myanmar's Rakhine

Comments

[kayim]

(I can not get used to the British style of only capitalizing the first letter in initialisms.)

I'd actually never heard of that before (I work in Comms in the UK). It seems to be some of the mainstream news organisations that use it, but it's definitely not something I would ever use!

From the BBC style guide: "Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."


Sorry, that was all rather off-topic!

[conuly]

Acronym, that's what I meant, not initialism, thanks :)

And I'm interested to hear that there's some in-country differences as to what to do here!

[marahmarie]

Isn't BBC-style English a phenomenon, too? I don't understand the pull of that news outlet. It'd be like a huge segment of the US speaking CBS-style English or using the CBS style guide (assuming there actually was either).

Commenting because acronyms I'm used to seeing capitalized over here have strangely enough been popping up lately in my reading capitalized, then lowercased - Nafta, Aclu - and I'm wondering if it's because the BBC style is drifting overseas, or if such usage has stayed confined to UK publications. I hadn't made note of each URL to check (but now I will).

[conuly]

Well, in the US many publications use the Chicago style guide or the AP style guide, and it's common to teach the to speak "Broadcaster's English".

[marahmarie]

True enough. Especially with the broadcaster's English, that accentless (or at best, Midwest-accented) form of speech (I was actually kind of good at it after teaching myself in my 20s. That's sort of faded, though: my NY accent is pretty much back).

[conuly]

Broadcaster's English is not "accentless" - it's a specific lect of its own. (And the Midwest, despite their claims, has a very distinctive dialect.)

[marahmarie]

Point taken (as someone who taught myself what passes for "accentless" speech, I have a perfectly bizarre interest in this topic). So based on your response I just googled, and this link backs up what you say: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-there-a-place-in-america-where-people-speak-without-accents

A Midwesterner trying to sound accent-less will speak differently than a Southerner trying to sound accent-less. And that fact, that the newscaster accent isn’t consistent, makes it less a single accent than a broad spectrum of related accents.

This after it goes into how the "General English" or "accentless" broadcaster's English is not really accentless at all, we're just bad in general at hearing accents. Good to know. :)

[marahmarie]

But my point stands: England, in its more middle and upper class echelons, speaks BBC English (if I recall correctly) while USians, regardless of class, have not yet made broadcaster's English into much of a thing.

[stormsong]

I did not know people could use echolocation. That is so cool!

[conuly]

Mostly it's only blind people, though I suppose anybody could learn if they wanted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw

Apparently, many blind children will spontaneously click or snap but (and this is so unsurprising) they're discouraged from doing it because it doesn't appear normal.

[stormsong]

That is so cool! Thanks for sharing!

[alchemia]

Google Ben Underwood, he'd probably the best known/ studied up to now. Lots of vids on youtube, some more sensational than others though :-/ But even ecolocation isn't the answer to everything; I recall an interview where he was resistant to learn from a (blind) instructor on how to use a cane, until it was pointed out to him, that despite his ecolocation, he managed to miss an unmarked drop near the sidewalk (I think it was a drainage ditch?) and that he could have fallen in and injured himself badly. After that, he was willing to learn the cane as an adjunct method

[alatefeline]

Thank you for excellent links, as usual.

[alchemia]

Medicare/medicaid fueling the so-called Opiode 'epidedemic' ... well there's a bunch of a propaganda/scapegoating!

who is on medicare/medicaid? THe poor and disabled, especially elderly. Who tends to be ill, in ways that cause chronic pain? The disabled and elderly. Who of these groups is most in need of state assistance to get their medication? The poor and the elderly(retire) Fentynal for ONE month costs close to, if not MORE than what these groups of people receive for their monthly SSD checks to live on. Do we eat, pay rent and utils, replace worn out cloths, pay dr copays.... or do we pay for the pain medications that would permit us to do those things if we were not in excruciating chronic pain that keeps us bedbound, writhing and screaming in pain, and pretty much unable to think a coherent sentence let alone read (and compreheand it) or have conversations etc.

The government realised their 'war on drugs', as could be expected (just look at how prohibition went), is failing... but american doctors have $$$$ and don't want to loose their licensing and livelyhood, so what a better target when all the others can slip away? Drs are always in the same place, can be tracked, etc- easy to find, keep tabs on, and threaten. So they are afraid to properly and effectivly treat the pain for those that they upheld to do no harm to- expect that denying treatment for a person to live a decent quality of life, to instead torture them, that IS doing harm. But hey, as long as they can keep their liscence and continue to earn $$$$, so what if some sick people get thrown under the bus- they weren't 'productuve' members of society in the Capitalist sense anyway.

So lots of innocent people, who due to genetics or unlucky circumstances/accidents end up even MORE disabled and unable to get themselves out of the state-dependant hole they are in, (if treated for pain properly, they might be able to go back to work, if not full time, part time; or at least keep house and do family things... without it, they cannot work, and may be unable to even care for themselves, requiring in home nursing care or even being placed in a nursing facility at the community's expense (and lemme tell you, the ones for those on medicaid- they aren't just 'not nice', they are negligent and abusive; suicide is common and easy enough cover up as a cause of their 'medical condition')

These people suck it up and instead of getting adequaint pain management to be able to live a full life, get subquality pain management, just enough to keep them out of the death trap nursing homes etc, waiting to die at home, in pain, spending most of their time in bed because of it, because they are too afraid to talk to their doctors for fear of being cut off from their meds completely. I know Drs that take advantage of this, sexually abusing their patients, becuase if the person doesn't agree, they will mark in their file they are a 'drug seeker' and then NO pain doctor in the country will treat them; If this pain wasn't so great, that other meds / treatments could take care of it, these so called dr's wouldn't get away with this, because the patient COULD just go get treatment elsewhere without stigma; its because of this idiotic war on drugs and the pressure the gov't (and the public that is foolishly following their propoganda) puts of them that they can do this.

These are people are deperate for pain relief and a normal life- they are last peopel to be 'selling their drugs' on the street... they wouldn't know WHO to sell to, if they could even get out of bed, get dressed and get out onto the street to do it.

The gov't wants a scapegoat, and pointing to patients, and thus their doctors (who have money and fear for their medical licenses) are the next best thing to going after the drug kingpins trafficking this stuff. THe patients and doctors are NOT the ones mixing the fentynal into heroine, I can guarentee you that. Fentynal in a form that that can be done with is pretty much impossible to get a hold of as a law abiding citisen unless you are literally on your death bed and catheradised, because the 10 ft to the bathroom is likely to send you crashing to the floor, splitting your head open. And even THEN, i doubt you could get it, as the last time I've seen that was almost 20 yrs ago, a lot has changed since them. More likelyl, today, they'd be asked their pain level, they'd say a 9, the nurse/dr writes down 5, and orders a pathetic amount of painkiller either in the form of a patch to place on the skin, or to inject into the IV.

And all this is not to say that they should be going after the people selling on the streets. If they legalied it, they could develop/grow/create the drugs here, choke out the cartels (thus reducing gang/street violence), require testing for purity (so that people expecting heroine weren't getting fentynal mixed in awares to them). They could charge taxes to support all kinds of government programmes and community needs.

But they'd much rather scapeghoat the most vulnerable of the population- the sick and the elderly- and claim that they are 'doing something' on theiur manufacured 'war on drugs'

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Excellent links as always; thanks! I hope the fair was fun!

[conuly]

It's a bit much for me so close after Coney Island, and this year it rained.

Gotta get out to Richmondtown sometime when it isn't the fair, see the buildings.