Daily Archives: June 28, 2021

HHS report says nursing home deaths rose by 32 percent due to COVID-19 | TheHill – The Hill

Posted: June 28, 2021 at 10:06 pm

A new report underscores the devastating toll COVID-19 took on nursing home residents, outlining an overall increase in the mortality rate of nursing home residents by 32 percent in 2020 compared to year-over-year data.

Released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the report looks at 2020 data on the number of nursing home residents and Medicare beneficiaries who were either diagnosed with or likely had COVID-19, as well as those who died from causes related to the virus.

The results indicate that the overall mortality rate rose by 32 percent, and numerical death statistics showed that in April 2020 alone, as the pandemic peaked in the U.S., 81,484 Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes died.

This amounts to a 1,000-person increase in fatalities per day compared with April 2019 rates.

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Among those in nursing homes and on Medicare who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020, 51 percent were Black, compared to 41 percent who were white.

Hispanic and Asian residents also experienced a higher chance of testing positive for the virus than their white counterparts. This coincides with national data noting Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are more likely to suffer severe illnesses related to COVID-19, part of longstanding racist disparities in access to health care.

The authors noted that this data can help illustrate how to handle future outbreaks among nursing home residents and staff to better prevent high mortality rates.

We knew this was going to be bad, but I dont think even those of us who work in this area thought it was going to be this bad, David Grabowski, a Harvard health policy professor, told The Associated Press.

One of the first COVID-19 outbreaks to occur on U.S. soil was at the Kirkland Nursing Home outside of Seattle, Washington. There 35 people, workers and residents, died from COVID-19, and roughly 66 percent tested positive for the virus.

Inspector General Nancy Harrison, who helped author the report, said that the country needs to learn from the disproportionate impact COVID-19 had on nursing homes.

Hopefully, COVID will go away, she said to AP reporters. But once that happens, there will always be infectious diseases, and we all need to ask ourselves what we can do to protect vulnerable nursing home residents going forward.

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How To Stay Famous After You Die. AI Scientists Have An Answer – Forbes

Posted: at 10:06 pm

Michael Jackson's casket is brought out during public memorial service held at Staples Center on ... [+] July 7, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. Jackson, 50, the iconic pop star, died at UCLA Medical Center after going into cardiac arrest at his rented home on June 25 in Los Angeles, California. AFP PHOTO/ Kevork Djansezian / POOL (Photo credit should read KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/AFP via Getty Images)

If you are a young public figure, and will die an unnatural death, then I have good news for you! You will most likely be remembered for a long time after you die. Conversely, if you are older, are not a public figure, and will die of a natural cause, then the odds that you will be forgotten over time are strong.

Remembering those who have passed on from this life has been an important theme throughout human history. Our ancestors used to remember those who died by sharing their memories with the next generation in the form of stories and ballads. They would sit around a fire and exchange memories and hope they would be passed through generations after them. Later when the printing press was invented, humans began to store, collect and spread information on a massive scale. The printing press made it easier to collect and preserve memories of the deceased because it is easier to store written pieces of information. Today, the developments in communication technologies such as the internet have changed how we create, store and retain memories. The internet also allows us to analyze memory through large-scale data in a quantitative framework.

Being remembered after death has been such an important concern throughout history that civilizations such as the Romans considered damnatio memoriae, or being erased from the publics memory, as one of the severest punishments imaginable. At some point, many of us might have wondered how we will be remembered after passing on from this life too.

The h-index, the number of research papers with the same number of citations is one of the common ways to evaluate academic performance. It is a very important number in academia. The mean and median Hindex for all peer reviewed papers at the time of promotion to Professor in the JHU School of Medicineis 25 and 23 respectively. In computer science and math, scientists do not cite each other as often as in biomedicine and there are very few young computer scientists with the H-index of 100. So it is natural to follow them on Google Scholar and learn about their research. One of the scholars I follow is Jure Leskovec (h-index = 117) the co-author of the famous node2vec and an authority on graph neural networks (GNNs).

So imagine my surprise, when I saw the paper by Robert West, Jure Leskovec, and Christopher Potts titled Post-mortem memory of public figures in news and social media in my Scholar feed. I dont know any of the authors personally but based on their work, they are extremely credible, and productive. In this paper the authors identified trends and analyzed how people are remembered in news and social media one year before and after death. It technically answers a question how long will your name last in peoples memory after you die. We know what you needed to do in ancient Greece to make it last (hello, Achilles!) but what about today? So, if you ever wondered how you can stay famous after you die, then this paper is for you!

Robert is an assistant professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne where he also leads the data science lab. Jure is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University. He is also an investigator at nonprofit research organization Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Meanwhile, Christopher is professor and chair of the linguistics department at Stanford University.

Despite their varying backgrounds, the trio have a few things in common: they are experts in the field of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

In this short but fascinating paper, the three scientists tracked mentions of 2,362 public figures in English-language online news and social media (Twitter) one year before and after death. The tracked people died between 2009 and 2014. They then looked at the spike and decay of attention after death and modeled the two as the interplay of communicative memory, which is sustained by the oral transmission of information and cultural memory, which is sustained by the physical recording of information.

In order to track mentions, they combined the Freebase knowledge base with online news and social media compiled through Spinn3r, an online media aggregation service that tracks mentions from a complete set of all 6,608 English-language web domains indexed by Google News as well as media posts from Twitter. For each of the 2,362 people, the scientists tracked the frequency with which they were remembered in the two medias on a daily basis during the year before and the year after death. This allowed them to quantify the spikes and decay of attention that follow the death of public figures.

The analysis of mention frequencies revealed that for most public figures, a sharp increase of media attention followed immediately after death, whereby mention frequency increased by 9,400% in the news and by 28,000% on Twitter in the median. The average mention frequency then declined around one month after death and eventually decayed slowly to the pre-mortem level. These two stages are consistent with the two components of collective memory: communicative memory, which dominates early on and decays quickly, and cultural memory, which dominates starting around two weeks after death and decays slowly.

Based on the study, the researchers concluded that artists remain more present in the collective memory because they tend to leave a legacy that can long survive them, whereas leaders, athletes, etc who are noteworthy for the actions they take during their lifetime, are of decreased interest once they cannot replicate their actions anymore. This is most pronounced for leaders. Artists also stand out with respect to cultural memory, while no notability type stands out with respect to communicative memory. Ceteris paribus, an unnatural death, also increased the rank with respect to the short-term mention. The effect of age at death also was significant. For instance, on Twitter, the post-mortem boost was monotonically and negatively associated with age at death. Likewise, the increased short-term boost associated with unnatural deaths was more pronounced in the news than on Twitter.

Separately, the study also revealed that Twitter users pay less attention when an old public figure or leader died. Deaths of these poor souls were boosted more by the news both in the short and long-term. Additionally, the researchers noted that future studies may also add language, tone and attitude towards public figures one year before and after death to see if the study would come to a different conclusion.

To conclude, the researchers found that the largest post-mortem boost in English-language media attention can be described as an anglophone of any gender who was already well-known before death and died a young and unnatural death. So, try and get famous before you die if you want to be remembered for a long time!

And if you are interested in ways to avoid dying prematurely and gaining some time to become famous, consider finding more ways to live longer and attending the 8th Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference organized by University of Copenhagen and Columbia University. I am sure that one way to become famous in late life is to set a longevity record, currently held by Jeanne Calment (122.5).

aging process, young woman become old

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How the performing arts discovered a new channel during the pandemic – TRT World

Posted: at 10:06 pm

Covid-19 has reshaped the way actors express themselves and the way audiences experience and receive live performances.

What was thought to go away in a couple weeks, in the months of March and April 2020, an unheard of virus completely disrupted every rehearsal room and live show, which in turn grounded every performer and entertainment company to an unexpected halt.

After the blow of it all, creatives slowly found themselves gravitating towards technology to connect with their audiences, which unexpectedly came through for them in unique, and quite positive and enriching ways.

Whether it was to simply keep human contact alive, read plays together, brainstorm ideas (and once those ideas were sourced and deliberated on, they were executed and presented on the very same platform) for their audiences, family and friends, albeit predominantly from home due to restrictions and national lockdowns globally.

Over a year later, we now see theatres, creatives and performers slowly planning an in-person return this summer and autumn, with social distancing measures in place.

Last week, I was invited to see a first rehearsed reading on stage at Londons Almeida Theatre in Islington, and it was the most exhilarating experience, to say the least. To be in the room again and to take it all in as well as observe others take it all in, was certainly like a recalibrated, cleansed palate experiencing taste for the first time again.

An even more crucial point in the evening was the post-show discussion with the panel of artists and the socially-distanced audience questioning and discussing our humanity, and what the play meant to everyone individually. There were moments and minutes when the entire room just sat in silence taking in what was said. You could sense the unease of certain topics and subject matters, the shuffling of discomfort, as well as some feeling the relief and ease to express how they were digesting what they just had witnessed on stage.

When talking to audiences who have seen shows online this past year, some of the feedback of the digital experience included comments like, "It somehow lacked the eeriness of being in the physical presence of the art for me!".

Others shared, "I felt disconnected at moments because ultimately the screen reminded me it was a virtual experience and I wasn't in the room with the others to feel the tangible things you feel when you're in the room. But I must say in the stage productions that were filmed specifically for online viewers, the camera made me feel welcomed and in the room".

What we now know is that the uncertainty of the past year has changed the way creatives, performers and performance companies approach their craft. What is even more striking is the change in the way we all have had to relate to our audiences.

Take my very first performance of this year in January,Borders and Crossings, written by Nigerian playwright Inua Ellams and directed by Bijan Sheibani for Under The Radar Festival. Produced by the Public Theater New York and the UKs Fuel Theatre, it was technically brought to you through my laptop, the hand delivered ring light, studio and mic setup, in my shared sitting space within my small London flat in the midst of a harsh winter. We were given the freedom to choose our wardrobe and do our own hair and makeup, which was a fun experience in itself, given I got to dress my own character, for once.

My fellow actor, Sope Dirisu, in the Borders and Crossings performance was also in his flat on the other side of London; and yet the audiences around the globe experienced our unique rapport and story-telling, making them feel like they were right there, in the same room with us, sat right next to each other escaping from Eritrea by foot and then managing to get on a lorry through the Sudan desert to Libya, followed by another journey on a boat to Lampedusa, Italy.

If you saw the performance, you would have seen that our characters made new friends on their journey for a better life, friends from Cote dIvoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Syria. They also sadly lost some friends to the sea or as they called it, the blue desert.

Every night, after every performance, we held a live Q&A with audiences that hailed to be tuning in from New York, Medellin, London, Dublin, Glasgow, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Asmara, Lagos, Beirut, Dubai, Hanoi, Istanbul, Berlin, Madrid, among many more cities worldwide with such emotionally filled reactions, responses and feedback.

Who would have thought a performer can reach an audience from their home, in fact every continent? Is this what a digital platform can provide for the experience of the performance arts? No one had to book a flight and come to the US to watch our show, they only needed access to the internet with a free Zoom account to connect to the live-stream. How did that feel for the audience member, in place of an in-person attendance?

The overall sentiment appeared to be one of gratitude. Audience members were grateful for access but agreed it did not replace the visceral experience of a live performance.

What about the actor? The creative? The performer? What does it feel like not having their audience there with them in-person? Experiencing and feeling their energy, tics, and reactions?

After speaking with many fellow performers, writers, directors, and producers around the world, it appears that they agree the physical presence of a live show cannot be replaced. Yet it still has somehow provided a sharing of stories as well as a way of continued living with purpose, and making ends meet.

Many artists shared the curiosity of simply wanting to know to what extent new ways of performing will remain - for both performers and audiences - after the pandemic.

What enhanced it even more was artists continuously inspiring and supporting each other.

One wonderful artist I met (just after the second national lockdown was easing up again) was international award-winning, South African rising star Kgole Giggs. His poetic pieces of art really showed me the essence of the adversities we face right now around the world.

The world slowing down has allowed me to reflect more on where I come from in order to understand more where I would love to see myself and work this coming decade, he said.

Our serendipitous meeting happened thanks to Signature African Art gallery, which was exhibiting his work at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair and we are now in the works of putting an original collaboration together towards the end of the year.

One thing artistic directors and producers shared with me is that now a lot of time is saved not having to fly artists in, which additionally meant there were less scheduling conflicts. Many producers I spoke to really like the idea of now being able to extend access to everyone that may not be able to attend a show in-person and can then watch it online and also pay less for a ticket.

Technology is certainly here to stay and evolve. As a result of the global restrictions over the past year, there has been a push to think outside the box and try new things. However, does this new channel have longevity in the years to come?

These new forms of live shows and performances the pandemic has given birth to has allowed audiences to continue to engage with performers; however the majority agree if you can be in the room, go! The adrenaline, anticipation, affection, the community and engagement we all receive from being together in-flesh appears to be irreplaceable.

Either way, what is a performer without its audience? And is not the audience non-existent without the performer?

Hope is perhaps the ultimate resource of what keeps us all going during these strange times.

I leave you with Joy Williams beautiful words expressing the worlds never ending hunger for the performing arts:

Hungry, I come to you

For I know You satisfy

I am empty but I know

Your love does not run dry

So I wait for You

So I wait for You

I'm falling on my knees

Offering all of me

You're all this heart

Is living for

Broken, I run to You

For Your arms are open wide

I am weary but I know

Your touch restores my life.

Source: TRT World

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50 years of Greenpeace: Q&A with Rex Weyler – Greenpeace International

Posted: at 10:06 pm

With Greenpeaces 50th anniversary on the horizon, I was asked to host a series of virtual mailbag calls connecting activists across generations and regions. The outpouring of interest and questions from those at Greenpeace today was moving.

While I could not address all the great questions and comments in one article or one call, here is the first batch. These are my thoughts and ideas. Someone else might have different ideas. I make no claim to arriving at complete and definitive answers to these questions.

I was fortunate as a young child to live in natural settings, with rivers, forests, hills, and ocean to explore. However, as a child, I didnt know how vulnerable all this was. Later, I witnessed pristine natural settings obliterated for shopping malls, highways, and parking lots. Rachel Carsons Silent Spring taught me more about the crisis, and in 1969 when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught on fire from pollution, I realized the urgency of the crisis. From Gregory Bateson, Arne Naess, the Taoist writers, and my Indigenous friends, I began to learn a deeper respect for how to think and live the way nature works. I recently wrote about this for Greenpeace.

Sort of. In the 1970s, we set out to create a global ecology movement, which did not exist at the time, and we expected that the movement would expand around the world. In the beginning, I think most of us were more interested in a global movement than in a global organization. We wanted people to rise up everywhere and defend biodiversity and vulnerable ecosystems. Friends of the Earth and other organizations arose at the same time. As Greenpeace offices sprang up all over the world, to maintain clear communications about our work, we had to create a global structure, and thus we created Greenpeace International in Amsterdam in 1979. The movement is strong enough now, that it will continue with or without any single organization. Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are examples of how the movement evolves. This is more or less what I hoped would happen.

There are many fond memories, and most are linked to the camaraderie of working with people to achieve something larger, more important than ourselves: Sailing on the fish boat in 1975, at night under the stars as if adrift in the universe, playing music, learning maritime skills, the day we found the whalers, the shared euphoria, the shared heartbreak at witnessing the slaughter, the shared satisfaction when our pictures and story circled the globe, and the feeling that we had achieved something significant.

I felt most at risk the first time we actually maneuvered our Zodiacs between the whales and the whalers in 1975. During the previous two years of organizing this campaign, and two months at sea looking for the whaling fleets, I had not thought about the consequences of what we planned. However, once I stood in the bow of the Zodiac, with the whales in front of us and a harpoon boat behind, it occurred to me that if we were hit by one of these 200-pound exploding harpoons, we would be instantly killed. I suddenly felt a chilling tremor of fear, but with no alternative but to stay in place. That remains the most frightening moment of my Greenpeace experience.

I would advise my younger self to pay more attention to the relationships, internal and external, to be more aware of others motivations and intentions. I believe I was sometimes naive and perhaps too tolerant of big egos. I would also advise more modesty in the face of the challenge we set for ourselves. Confidence is helpful, but overconfidence is not. I was unaware of how easily our stated values and visions for an ecological society could be misunderstood and even subverted. I would also advise more boldness and less compromise in certain cases. We often made compromises to appease other factions in society and in the environmental movement. Sometimes those compromises might have been helpful, but in some cases, we may have allowed our message to be blunted.

The 1970s whale campaign was probably the most successful because it achieved two significant goals: It led to the 1982 whaling moratorium and many populations of whales began to recover. We also had the intention that this campaign would help launch an ecology movement, which it did.

One of my favorite campaign actions, however, was our test blockade of a supertanker. In 1981, as we were working in our Vancouver office, Rod Marining read in the newspaper that in three days, an oil tanker was going to enter the Salish Sea between Seattle and Vancouver, loaded with water, as a test to demonstrate how easily an oil tanker could maneuver in these inside waters, promoting an oil port. We were discussing what we might do when our office manager Julie McMaster said casually, You should do a test blockade.

This made us laugh, and we thought: This is perfect! We promptly announced to the media that we were going to do a test blockade of the oil tanker test run. We knew we were onto something when the reporters laughed. We phoned our friend Dennis Feroce, who agreed to pilot his boat, The Meander, to take us to the entrance of Juan de Fuca Strait, where the tanker would have to enter. Three days later, we sat ready in the water with our Zodiacs and a small flotilla of sailboats, as television camera crews flew overhead in helicopters. We stopped the tanker dead in the water, film and photographs went all over the US and Canada, and we got arrested by the US coast guard and taken to jail in Everett, north of Seattle. The media followed us, as we told the police that it was just a test. We made jokes about testing the handcuffs, testing the jail, and the police also laughed. Everyone was on our side. When an officer brought us our meal (fast food burgers), she dropped the bag on the table in the cell and said test this. The entire campaign was hilarious, and the oil port never got built. This is one of my favorite campaigns because we pulled it off in three days, everyone had fun, and the idea came not from a seasoned activist or a campaign committee, but from our unassuming office manager, Julie.

To shift the needle in social action, one has to be creative and do something that is not expected. When environmental groups do what everyone expects them to do, nothing changes. For example, regarding global warming, I would suggest dont do the predictable thing and go to the next climate conference. Flip the script. Boycott the climate conference. Explain why: Because the next conference in Glasgow in October will be the 34th international climate conference since the first one in 1979, and these conferences have achieved nothing significant.

Thirty-four climate conferences in 42 years, and during that time human carbon emissions have doubled. Atmospheric CO2 levels have gone from 337 parts per million (ppm) to 420 ppm; the oceans are choked with acidification, the coral beds are dying, forests are burning, and the worlds politicians are burning jet fuel to twiddle their thumbs at these climate meetings. I would suggest: Stop validating this nonsense. Boycott. Organize the ecology groups to boycott together, and state the reasons. Hold your own separate meetings regionally and on the internet. Denounce the phoney and hollow promises by governments. Go instead to every major seaside city on Earth and paint the future waterline on buildings to depict sea rise after the Antarctic and Greenland ice melts. Give people a new picture, not the failing routine.

The great social movements of history that have actually changed things have been able to find a way to do the unexpected, to blow up the prevailing paradigm, to make people think in new ways.

The pandemic is linked to human overshoot, our occupation of wild habitats, our destruction of biodiversity, our growth and consumption beyond the capacity and limits of the global ecosystems. So, yes, the conditions for the swift transmission of this pandemic are created by human activity. However, nature does not really fight back. Evolution does not appear to have goals or preferences, and does not hold grudges. Nevertheless, pandemics will likely continue to be one consequence of neglecting our ecological crisis.

I dont assume that Greenpeace can or should do everything that needs to be done. I know from experience that people project onto Greenpeace the responsibility for every environmental urgency, an impossible expectation for a single organization. Thus, I think of this question more as What do I wish the environmental movement would do that it isnt doing?

I wish the ecology/environmental movement was more realistic about our real, fundamental crisis: Ecological overshoot and the conditions that create it, namely: unfettered growth. Overshoot is natural. Most successful species overshoot their habitats, a pack of wolves will overshoot the capacity of a watershed, algae will overshoot the capacity of a lake, and we can see in our own gardens how everything grows into its neighbours, tangling and pushing the limits of space and resources. Natural evolution teaches all species how to grow, reproduce, and consume, but evolution does not teach species when to stop, when to restrain itself.

I wish the ecology movement would more directly address the fact that humanity has overshot Earths capacity. Calculated estimates range from about 50% overshoot (Footprint Network) to 100% or more. The significant point is that all pathways out of overshoot for any species anywhere, no exceptions involve contraction: The wolves die back until their game recovers; the algae die back to the limit of available nutrients; plants push back on each other until they reach a new dynamic homeostasis. We make a mistake if we behave as if humanity does not have to also get smaller in numbers and consumption, the two issues we tend to avoid. Government, industry, and even some environmental groups focus on new technologies and a presumed green growth, avoiding the inevitable contraction of human economic activity, numbers, and consumption.

Addressing the frivolous, wasteful consumption of the rich is a good place to start, but not the full story. To actually reverse overshoot, we also need to address the global economic system of capitalism, which requires unrealistic, endless growth; we need to address equitable ways to reverse human population growth (womens rights and accessible contraception); and we need to be realistic about what is required to clean up our technologies. I would like to see the environmental movement be more active and serious about all three of these necessary steps to reversing overshoot.

There is a huge difference between a movement and an organization. The movements for peace, civil rights, womens rights, and others have survived for centuries because they have a robust constituency and clear goals that have not yet been fully achieved. Similarly, the ecology movement will likely endure long into the future.

Organizations, on the other hand, can come and go. Social organizations gain support and prominence because they address an issue that people care about and they appear effective. I say appear because an organization may endure, through reputation and self-promotion, even if it becomes less effective than its supporters believe. For an effective social organization to endure, however, requires a constituency that believes the organization plays an essential role, that the leadership has integrity, and that it can achieve genuine change.

Typically, successful organizations arise because some group of people have a creative idea about how to address a problem about which the public is generally aware. Creativity is essential in the birth and growth of an organization. However, as an organization grows and becomes more structured, it is possible that creativity is stifled rather than encouraged. Maintaining creativity is a key quality of successful organizations. By definition, there is no formula for creativity. Rather than attempt to formalize creativity, successful organizations learn to create the conditions for creativity, to overcome bureaucratic roles, and allow new ideas to flourish at every level of the organization.

This is a popular question these days, I believe because so many of us feel the concern about humanitys future. We meet discouraging obstacles, resistance, subversion, and indifference, so we naturally seek hopefulness. Hope is a good frame of mind, because it opens paths to action, but hope is not a strategy. To solve problems, one must deeply understand the problem, the conditions, and appreciate the larger systems and forces at work. Delusional hope is definitely not helpful.

Humanity exists now in a tremendous bind. The powerful and wealthy have plundered the Earth to enrich a few, while billions live on the edge of starvation. Meanwhile, species diversity plummets, the atmosphere fills with carbon-dioxide, the oceans turn acidic and are choked with plastic, and we face myriad ecological tragedies. I do not find hope in political conferences, governments, corporations, nor in appeals to the general good of humanity. In my experience, most people are decent and fair, but greed, fear, and ignorance can create chaos and harm.

I find hope in nature itself, in the wild world, in the power of life to create new conditions, in the shared learning and co-evolution of all nature. This is where, I believe, humanity has to turn. We are not solving our problems with conferences, technologies, space travel, or economic growth. These delusions create more problems. I believe we have to rejoin the ecological community. We have to become apprentices to nature and learn how the natural world actually endures and survives as a living system. I believe we have to shed our human pride and re-align ourselves with all our relatives, with the systems and processes of the entire natural Earth. Im with the Taoists and certain Indigenous teachers on this: We have to learn to respect our Mother Earth, the source of all life.

Nothing survives alone. We only survive in relationship with the living matrix. That is where I look for hope.

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Decision to close HaMaqom ‘irreversible,’ leadership says J. – The Jewish News of Northern California

Posted: at 10:06 pm

The local Jewish community might have been shocked last week when HaMaqom | The Place, the Berkeley-based adult education organization known for decades as Lehrhaus Judaica, announced that it would be shutting its doors at the end of the summer session.

But the institutions leadership was not caught off guard. Financial woes had been growing at the nonprofit, although chief financial and operating officer Jaimie Baxter, speaking to J. on Monday, declined to say when the troubles began.

We were financially stable and secure for quite some time due to the generosity of several funders and donors mixed together, was all Baxter would say. Every year is different in the financial landscape of Jewish nonprofits. The funder landscape is ever shifting.

Founded in 1974, Lehrhaus/HaMaqom has served more than 100,000 students and offered more than 7,500 courses over the life of the organization in such topics as Talmud, Hebrew language and the basics of Judaism, as well as the arts, history, interfaith issues, social justice, cuisine and wine, death and mourning, and many other areas.

By this spring, leadership agreed they were no longer able to sustain the organization and its impressive roster of local educators.

Was the financial trouble related to what had become a revolving door at the top? Founding director Fred Rosenbaum retired in 2017, after more than 40 years steering the organization. He was replaced by Rabbi Jeremy Morrison, who stayed for three years before leaving to be senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills but not before he changed the organizations name to HaMaqom | The Place, a decision that had many in the community scratching their heads. (HaMaqom, pronounced ha-mah-comb, is Hebrew for the place.)

Morrison was replaced in May 2020 by Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, former head of school at Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto, who left in early 2021 after less than a year.

In March of this year, Rabbi Ruth Adar took over as executive director with a mission to try and save the bottom line. A board member for more than 10 years, she was also HaMaqoms single largest private donor, to the tune of half a million dollars, she pointed out. So, for her, It was a personal issue, she told J.

It was personal in other ways as well. In 1995, Adar took an Intro to Judaism class at Lehrhaus as part of her conversion process. Later she returned to study Hebrew in order to attend Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, where she was ordained a Reform rabbi. Lehrhaus has been, she says, a big part of her life.

I came on three months ago and took a deep dive into the question of sustainability, Adar said. We had made great strides over the last year, but I had serious questions. When I looked at it, I realized it was not financially sustainable.

The great strides during the Covid lockdown included a 137 percent jump in attendance, as courses went online and participants joined in from all over the globe. More than 1,800 students took advantage of some 80 learning opportunities this past year, according to the website.

But tuition fees cover only 18 to 20 percent of HaMaqoms overall budget, Baxter said. Again, not enough.

Operating during the pandemic was a mixed bag, Adar said. Attendance was up, but so were expenses; it cost a considerable amount to move everything online and to train the educators in the skills they needed to teach virtually.

Finally, the decision was made to shut down. We wanted to be sure, once it was clear this was going to be the decision, to do it with the greatest sense of responsibility we could, Adar said, and not wind up buried in debt or buried in scandal, or simply shutting the doors and leaving people to fend for themselves.

The organizations office space within the Berkeley Hillel building on Bancroft Avenue, including the outdoor patio, will be taken over by Hillel sometime before the start of UCs fall semester.

Now the leadership has committed itself to finding homes for HaMaqoms courses and educators every single one, if Adar has her way so the learning will continue, albeit not via the institution known as HaMaqom. Eight Talmud circles and 14 self-directed Kevah Jewish study groups need to be placed as well. Staff has been busy compiling lists of all of the educators on its roster and what they have to offer, and studying local Jewish organizations that might be good fits.

I want these classes to be available to other Jews and people curious about Judaism, I want these programs in a place where they can be sustained, and these wonderful teachers in a place where they can make decent parnassah, Adar said, using the Hebrew for making a living.

No placements have yet been arranged, she said.

Speaking from his home in New York, Rosenbaum, Lehrhaus founding director, told J. that he is not mourning the end of the educational institution he was instrumental in creating in 1974, along with philanthropist Seymour Fromer and Rabbi Steven Robbins, director of Berkeley Hillel at the time.

Rather, hes celebrating what it has given to the community.

Naturally Id have liked a different outcome, he said. But I focus on what we have accomplished, the impact we have made in our nearly half a century.

Rosenbaum was a graduate student at UC Berkeley when he brought to the Bay Area the seminar-centric, dialogue-focused style of Jewish learning that had been pioneered 55 years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, by Franz Rosenzweigs Free Jewish Learning Institute.

Rosenbaums faith in the power of the student-driven educational model remains strong. It is in the hands of the students and teachers, he said. Its not about the institution. And that style of learning is going to continue. The spirit of it will live on, just in another form.

Though dozens of supporters have posted to an online comments page set up by HaMaqom, the decision to close is irreversible, Baxter said.

And though some of those supporters are urging the Jewish community to rally behind HaMaqom and find last-minute donors to shore it up, that isnt going to happen, Baxter and Adar stated.

While we appreciate the rally of support, we want to be clear that the decision to wind up and dissolve the organization has been made and is not reversible, Baxter said. The best thing the community can do to help is to support us in finding new homes for the programs, educators and staff.

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6 weird animals that evolution came up with – Livescience.com

Posted: at 10:06 pm

1. Invisible frog

Most creatures hide their internal organs underneath multiple protective layers of skin, tissue and bone. But what if these layers were see-through?

Looking at a glass frog from above, you may not notice anything out of the ordinary. But if you were to flip it over, you would spy a tiny, fast-beating heart, a long, red vein, and a section of squirming intestines breaking down food. These amphibians have evolved to have extremely thin, translucent skin.

So why did these frogs evolve to be see-through? While these frogs' thin skin puts their entire internal anatomy on full display, when light shines on the frogs from above their silhouette becomes muddled to predators, according to a study published June 9 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These frogs live in the rainforests of Central and South America and spend much of their time perched on leaves. Because the frogs are surrounded by lush greenery, their vibrant-green topcoats are ideal for camouflage. Meanwhile, their more transparent legs blur the outlines of their bodies, making it tough for predators to recognize the frogs' shape, the study found.

Related: How many organs are in the human body?

Unlikely relationships are often formed in the wild. For instance, fig wasps have found an unusual home inside figs. The fig "fruit" is actually a bundle of tiny flowers, called an inflorescence, which relies on fig wasps for pollination. In turn, the fleshy inflorescence provides a comfy and safe home for the wasps during their very short lives.

When female fig wasps hatch into the world, they are primed to "sniff out" receptive fig trees, or those whose flowers are ready for pollination, according to The Netherlands Entomological Society. Instinctively, the wasps search out the particular aroma emitted by female fig flowers, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Once they find a fig-in-need, the wasps dig their way into the soft, sweet flower through an opening at the end of the fig "fruit." The hole is so small that many wasps lose their wings and parts of their antennas. Once inside the fig, the female wasps are protected and out of sight, and they are able to lay their eggs. According to the Journal of Nematology, the wasps will not see the outside world ever again. The females die just 24 hours after laying their eggs.

When the fig wasps hatch, the male hatchlings mate with the females, before digging escape routes out of the fig for the females. The male wasps spend their entire lives in the fig and die shortly after producing the tunnels.

This odd behavior has kept this wasp species alive for over 60 million years, according to an article published in 2005 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Figs have these insects to thank for their continued existence, as their movement from one fig to another spreads their pollen.

Mexican walking fish (Ambystoma mexicanum), also called axolotls, are quirky creatures: Not only do these "fish" sport a protruding, spiky hairdo, they can also "walk." When they approach the bottom of a lake or canal, they pull out four legs from their sides to crawl around their swampy habitat in Mexico City.

Although they look like overdeveloped fish, they are actually amphibians. Often amphibians begin their lives equipped with gills so they can breathe underwater until they mature and lose their gills, ready for life on land. But axolotls keep their juvenile gills and remain in the water a phenomenon called neoteny, according to an article in the journal Nature.

Never leaving the water, axolotls are found in the lakes of Xochimilco near Mexico City. Growing up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) long, they feed on small insects, worms, mollusks and crustaceans. Historically, these grinning creatures were at the top of the food chain, but invasive fish species such as tilapia and carp fish, which eat baby axolotls and pollution are now threatening their survival.

Females don't always have to bear the brunt of pregnancy. According to Scientific American, for seahorses, pipefish and sea dragons members of the Syngnathidae fish family it's the males that get pregnant. Seahorses and pipefish carry their young inside brood pouches, supplying nutrients such as energy-rich fats through the pouch tissue, while sea dragons' eggs simply stick to the outside of the males tail.

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Is there any benefit to this arrangement? Because the females can focus solely on egg-making (leaving other baby-rearing roles to the males), seahorses can give birth in the morning and be pregnant again by the evening, according to National Geographic. This helps the species' numbers increase for a higher chance of survival.

With the males carrying the babies, the females are also less likely to be drained of energy. Usually, the females expend more energy producing eggs than the males do producing sperm, according to Oxford Academic. By transferring egg-carrying duties to males, the energy demand is shared more evenly.

Male and female anglerfish are so varied in appearance that you might think they were different species at first glance. The females are up to 60 times longer and half a million times heavier than their male partners; as such, when scientists first observed the males with the female anglerfish, they thought that they were looking at a mom and her young, according to an article published in a journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

The most common images of anglerfish show the females. Found lurking mostly in the darkest depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans, female anglerfish look like the stuff of nightmares: Light rods hang from their faces and terrifyingly large fangs protrude from their mouths.

But the arrival of the males makes everything even more peculiar. When mating, a male anglerfish acts like a parasite, according to New Scientist. Biting into the side of his chosen female, the tiny male fuses his body with hers so he can steal her nutrients by sucking out her blood. Since the male has no need to swim or see, his eyes, fins and some major organs begin to deteriorate. He gets everything he requires for little effort, while his only responsibilities are to provide reproductive cells when the time is right. At that time, the male and female release their sperm and eggs, respectively, into the water for fertilization, Live Science previously reported.

Do you ever wish you could jump back in time to when you were young and start life again? As time passes, our bodies are designed to grow, age and eventually die. However, not all species follow this cycle. Meet the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii.

When injured or in the face of starvation, this jellyfish can push the "reset" button, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). With that reset, the jellyfish adults reverts back to an earlier developmental stage, in this case a polyp. That new polyp then continues the life cycle and spawns lots of genetically identical medusas, or the tentacled creatures we call jellyfish. Scientists think the immortal jellyfish use a process called transdifferentiation to pull off this rejuvenating feat. In this process, an adult cell that has become specialized for a certain tissue can transform into a different kind of specialized cell, AMNH said.

At their largest, adults of this jellyfish are still less than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) across. These jellyfish were first discovered in 1883 in the Mediterranean Sea, but they only gained the moniker of the immortal jellyfish in the mid-1990s. While a German student was studying them in a lab, he noticed the bizarre phenomenon. When the medusa stage of the jellyfish got stressed, it fell to the bottom of the holding jar and reverted straight into polyps, skipping any fertilization or larval stages, according to The Biologist, published by the Royal Society of Biology. The researchers liked it to "a butterfly transforming back into a caterpillar."

Next, researchers hope to figure out how the jellyfish accomplishes its everlasting life. "The genome ofTurritopsis dohrniiis being investigated and decoding it will be the first step towards the search for an 'immortality switch,'" according to The Biologist.

Explore how these jellyfish reverse maturity to relive the cycle. Click the numbers below to learn more.

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Getting the Joke: Exploring Jewish Comedy With Reb Moshe Waldoks – jewishboston.com

Posted: at 10:05 pm

To say that we all collectively could use a laugh is a vast understatement. Luckily, rabbi, humorist, author, interfaith leader, academic, community activist and disciple of joy Reb Moshe Waldoks joins us to lift our spirits.

The author of the classic and comprehensive The Big Book of Jewish Humor, Reb Moshe takes The Vibe of the Tribe mic (and doesnt let go) to share his story and philosophy.

Tune in and laugh along as he describes building a vibrant community at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline using the power of Yom Kippur jokes and meditation, his explanations of what is and is not Jewish humor and the importance of finding the joynot just the oyof Jewish life. You dont want to miss this hilarious episode as Reb Mosheand, to a lesser extent, Miriam and Dan cover everything from Bernie Sanders mittens memes to inadvertent Talmud hilarity, plus a vociferous disagreement about the merits (or lack thereof) of Larry David.

Produced by Miriam Anzovin and edited by Jesse Ulrich, with music by Ryan J. Sullivan.

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For the People The Sacred Act of Voting – jewishboston.com

Posted: at 10:05 pm

When I was growing up, voting was a sacred act. Schools were closed for the day. My mother made a special dinner, ready to be served the minute my dad returned from the office. We would eat quickly, go downstairs to meet my grandparents, and then take out the car for a short drive to the polling place in our local high school, where we were bound to meet a bevy of neighbors as we waited in line. And then came the moment when I was allowed to go into the voting booth with my mom and draw the heavy dark curtain so we could press the little levers and seal the deal with a push of the big handle that opened the curtain with a whoosh.

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Why, as Jews, do we care so passionately about voting rights for every eligible individual in our country? Just what is it that draws us to engage in elections in such overwhelming numbers, and make sure that others can exercise this right? What drove 1,250 JALSA volunteers to send postcards to 160,000 people in multiple states to make sure they were registered to vote? And what compelled me to speak on the Boston Common last weekend as part of the national rallies across the country in support of S.1, the For the People Act?

When we look at our Jewish values, we hear the voice of Rabbi Isaac Nappah in the Talmud saying that a ruler is not to be appointed unless the community is first consulted. It is the people who must choose their leadersboth in ancient times and today.

We also know that a fundamental underpinning of Judaism is that every individual must be accorded respect and dignity. Being able to cast a ballot, and knowing that ballot will be counted, is a sign of how our democracy respects the humanity of voters. This is what my parents knewthat by elevating Election Day in our household, never missing an opportunity to votewe were reaffirming that we counted as people who had a responsibility to this country to make our opinions known at the ballot box.

For these reasons, as a Jewish community, we must forcefully speak out in favor of the For the People Act. This legislation doesnt have anything particularly earth shattering in it. It would allow for easier and more time-friendly mechanisms to register to vote, making it possible for people who work and dont have flexible schedules to participate in our democracy. It would permit an expansion of voting by mail and early voting, which we proved in this pandemic can reliably be offered as options to the benefit of millions of voters. Simply, it would allow people to do what they are legally entitled to do anyway, just more conveniently.

We are pitched for a battle now in our country. The For the People Act would expand the vote, allowing Americans to elect leaders who will enact policies that bolster jobs, provide affordable health care, build more housing and support childcare. Yet, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, just in the 2021 legislative session, lawmakers in 48 states have introduced close to 400 laws which would restrict voting rights. The blatant effort to silence the voices of Black and brown people in our country makes these targeted attacks to suppress the vote even more repulsive, and particularly painful to those in the Jewish community who took to the streets and the buses during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

No matter what our political views, who we are or where we live, we all should support the freedom to vote. This is a turning point for our nation. Will we be a country in which voters can safely and freely cast their ballots, have their voices heard and elect leaders who deliver on the priorities of the people who elected them?

Our Jewish values are not meant to be buried in dusty books. They are living, breathing lessons from which we determine how we conduct our modern lives. In this case, they lead us to conclude that the time is now to contact your U.S. senators and tell them to find a path to pass S.1, the For the People Act.

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The Evolution of Commerce-Connected Content | Sponsored Feature | BoF – The Business of Fashion

Posted: at 10:05 pm

Today, retailers are laser focused on building customer-centric strategies, making their products available anywhere and anytime, in the channels their customers inhabit. As media consumption habits increase, shoppable media emerges as a critical channel for the engagement and conversion of customers, and a growth lever brands are investing in.

Global media companies are recognising the opportunity. YouTube announced in October 2020 that it would be making its videos more shoppable, while TikTok entered the market in December via fashion livestreams. Similarly, Instagram launched its Reels and Shop tab for users to connect with brands and creators and to discover products.

A leader in the content-driven commerce space, Tipser was founded on a simple premise: sell any product on any digital surface. It works with brands like H&M and Filippa K, retailers like Harvey Nichols and publications like Bustle, Elle and InStyle to monetise existing traffic flows with e-commerce.

In conversation with BoFs Robin Mellery-Pratt, Tipsers head of business development, Josep Nolla, shares extensive insight on the opportunities for growth within commerce-connected content alongside The Future Laboratorys foresight editor, Kathryn Bishop. BoF identifies the key insights below.

Shoppable Media Offers Opportunity at Scale

JN: Were no doubt ahead of the next big shift in commerce. Currently, we are seeing that every single media [platform] is becoming a store and each store is a [form of] media. Every single publisher, media company, everyone that has an audience influencers are essentially storefronts, too if they can build their e-commerce platform and build their retail logistics, the growth potential is massive. The scale [of opportunity] is tremendous.

The key question is how you scale the infrastructure around it. Consider Google it generates 1 billion+ shopping queries per day, and yet its product that facilitates transacting in those Google properties YouTube video, Google Shopping is still in its early stages. [The challenge is] how to leverage such a large audience.

KB: As more people are coming online and much younger consumers we can really think about the untapped market potential for this kind of content, commerce and service opportunity. [] Cybersecurity Ventures found that, by 2030, 90 percent of the human population [over the age of 6] will be online. Of course, we will see huge growth [in digital adoption] in the African continent, Latin America and Asia. I think right now in the Middle East and Latin America, roughly the average consumer spends three hours on social media. Thats likely potentially bigger in some regions, according to insights from Globalweb Index.

Relevancy and Trust Can Build Competitive Advantage

KB: Drivers around trust, convenience and education stood out to me as reasons why consumers are responding positively to content-driven commerce. There is a shift towards education and moving away from a one-way broadcast to content where there is more interaction to be had with commerce folded in. A recent report talked about this and phrased it as D4C, not D2C. Brands have crept into home interactions and become more personal and intimate.

Consumers are always looking for a way to find trust.

Trust is key especially if youre shopping online. Consumers are always looking for a way to find trust. As the retailer, if you are putting out content and it has a commerce aspect tied to it, you need to ensure that it doesnt come across as overly sales-focused.

JN: From a consumer standpoint, the media adds a layer of relevancy, a layer of context and a layer of trust. We go to the same sites everyday whether its hobbies, news etc and we do that because we have a trust relationship with those media partners and its created by the people that we follow. Thats essential in making content commerce successful.

Set Clear Goals and Keep Exploring Channels

JN: From a content commerce perspective, begin by establishing specific goals what you are trying to achieve and try to break those down. Most likely, [the focus] is sales for businesses, but customer acquisition is very important and it can be a subset of other goals. The next step is asking, how can I reach that? What is the expectation of my audience? Then, you can highlight opportunities in [...] different types of platforms.

From here, [you must] keep exploring because you will always have limited opportunities when you work with tech-giants. However, if you connect with a specific media group, you can tap into their audience and build something together thats very unique. In truly knowing who the audience is, you can align around the goals you have set.

KB: For me, its the peer aspect thats really huge. Anthropologist Grant McCracken said more than a decade ago that brands are behaving as networks of the unacquainted. Brands should consider all the places where they can bring together that network of the unacquainted and create content, or opportunities and ways of bringing those kinds of people together, creating the learnings and feedback you can garner from the content youre producing.

The Metaverse Opportunity

JN: If we think about e-commerce now, theres limitations. Its very two-dimensional from a certain [aspect]. Thats why physical retail still excites us with tactility touching and smelling. We are simply not there yet with e-commerce. Live video is the starting point, everything being transformed to moving images makes it more three-dimensional but we need a deeper experience.

KB: [With] the potential of the metaverse, especially for luxury brands, things like Roblox and Animal Crossing have come to the [forefront] within the last year. Brands are [beginning] to explore more of that immersive content in these metaverse spaces. Even the Boomer generation have become big gamers in the last year, and are spending time in these virtual spaces. They are an audience to watch, on that front.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Tipser as part of a BoF partnership.

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Consider leaving legacy with gift that keeps on giving – Cleveland Jewish News

Posted: at 10:05 pm

When someone asks me what I do, I answer, Im a fundraiser.

Almost every time, whether the person is my doctor, an acquaintance, neighbor or family member, I can predict that the response will be, I could never ask people for money. Its important work, but I could never do that. This question provides me with an opportunity to explain what I really do help people live forever.

In addition to securing current funding that sustains and grows Jewish Cleveland, I am privileged to help people create lasting legacy plans and assist them as they make commitments.

Legacy means something different to each of us. Some think of it as what they leave financially, feeling good that something they built will be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren. The legacy I am referring to says, I love my family and my community. My name may not be remembered, but my Jewish community will be better because I was here. Leaving this kind of legacy speaks loudly to your family and your community, saying, Our community is full of Jewish life and opportunities because those before me ensured it for us. I will continue that important work, even after am gone, and I hope you - my children and grandchildren will do the same.

As the Talmud says whoever saves one life saves the world entire. Legacy gifts improve and even save lives every day. These funds enable young adults to attend college and children to experience Camp Wise with scholarships. Isolated senior citizens receive healthy meals, and Jewish women and children safely sleep at the Hebrew Shelter Home.

Chances are you already support Jewish charitable organizations including your synagogue, but have you included one or more in your will or estate plan? Creating your Jewish legacy empowers you to further the work of your heart. What does the future look like for our Jewish community? What rituals, experiences and places influenced who you are today? How did living in Jewish Cleveland contribute to a vibrant Jewish life your family? The journey to a personal, permanent legacy plan is so meaningful and so satisfying for all who embrace it.

All of us, regardless of age or wealth, have the power to help sustain our vibrant Jewish community in some way. Most people will leave behind assets such as a retirement plan or insurance policy. Designating a portion, any amount, to the organizations that matter most during your lifetime, makes a difference. You can ensure that your own family is supported first, but maybe the Jewish community can be a member of your extended family a family that, with your help, will live forever.

Carol F. Wolf is assistant vice president, planned giving and endowments at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland in Beachwood.

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