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Simplify Healthcare supports Maker’s Merci in partnering with Loaves & Fishes Community Services to help those impacted by COVID-19 – Business…

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

AURORA, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Simplify Healthcare is proud to support its not-for-profit affiliate, Makers Merci, in donating $10k towards COVID-19 relief efforts. Partnering with Loaves & Fishes Community Services, Makers Merci aims to provide food and other necessities to those who are most impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, including hourly workers, the homeless, and the elderly.

Backed by Simplify Healthcare, Makers Merci is a non-profit organization that primarily focuses on food assistance, education support and training, healthcare services support, and filling gaps in elderly and orphan care.

Given the health and economic crises created by the COVID-19 pandemic, more of our neighbors need support than ever before.

Loaves & Fishes is a leading community service committed to providing food and support to those in need. Makers Merci has partnered with the NGO to ensure the struggling families have access to all the necessities and resources they need to overcome the hunger and other problems during these unprecedented times.

Given the fortunate position we are in, we feel an obligation to support those who have experienced personal tragedy as a result of this pandemic. We are delighted to partner with Loaves & Fishes Community Services. This is a terrific organization who works hard every day and has such a meaningful impact supporting those most in need in our local community. - Mohammed Vaid, Founding Patron, Makers Merci

We appreciate the support we have received recently from a number of people in our community. We are grateful for your generosity. Mike Havala, CEO, Loaves & Fishes Community Services

ABOUT SIMPLIFY HEALTHCARE

Simplify Healthcare is a rapidly growing technology solutions provider that addresses the toughest challenges faced by Health Plans in todays competitive marketplace. Simplify Healthcare was awarded the Deloitte 2018 Technology Fast 500, recognized in the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of Americas fastest-growing private companies, listed as a sample vendor in 2018 Gartner Hype Cycle for value-based reconciliation solutions, won the 2018 Corp! Magazine Michigans Bright Spot award and Corp! 2016 Technology Innovation award, was named the sole leader in IDCs Health Plan Product/Plan Benefit Configuration Solutions Vendor Assessment in 2016 and voted the Best Newcomer for 2014 at the Healthcare IT Summit.

For more information, please visit simplifyhealthcare.com.

ABOUT MAKERS MERCI

Driven by values and fueled by a passion for creating a better and sustainable world, Makers Merci is an initiative that alleviates poverty and delivers vital services, relief, and support to those in crisis.

The organization helps via donations or collaborates with volunteers and partners to spread smiles and help those in need. Its initiatives primarily focus on food assistance, education support and training, healthcare services support, and filling gaps in elderly and orphan care.

For more information, please visit makersmerci.org.

Follow Makers Merci on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

ABOUT LOAVES & FISHES COMMUNITY SERVICES

Loaves & Fishes Community Services began in a church closet serving eight families. Thirty-six years later, the organization is helping nearly 20,000 individuals each year, providing healthy food and impactful programs for self-sufficiency. Clients receive a good variety of food, including fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, and eggs.

The Loaves & Fishes CARES programs help clients become self-sufficient through a variety of opportunities including resource meetings, public benefits, emergency assistance, car donations, Vita tax preparation, job readiness, computer classes, budget and credit classes, and Moving Up, a 16-session intensive to help clients overcome barriers so they can become self-sufficient.

Loaves & Fishes Community Services serves DuPage County and parts of Will County. They also have a satellite location at the Compass Church in Bolingbrook, IL.

For more information, please visit http://www.loaves-fishes.org.

Overnight Health Care: Fauci says ‘bizarre’ efforts to discredit him only hurt the White House | Alabama to require face masks | House panel probes…

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Getty Images Overnight Health Care: Fauci says 'bizarre' efforts to discredit him only hurt the White House | Alabama to require face masks | House panel probes 'problematic' government contracts

Welcome to Wednesday's Overnight health care.

Anthony Fauci spoke out on attacks against him from the White House, the Alabama governor is requiring face masks and the Oklahoma governor has coronavirus himself.

We'll start with Fauci.

Fauci says 'bizarre' efforts to discredit him only hurt the White House

Anthony Fauci said the efforts to discredit him from some in the Trump administration are "bizarre" and a poor reflection on the president.

In an interview with The Atlantic published Wednesday, the nation's top infectious diseases expert responded to news that the White House sent out a memo over the weekend detailing "wrong" statements he had made about the pandemic.

"I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that," Fauci said. "I think they realize now that that was not a prudent thing to do, because it's only reflecting negatively on them."

Context: The White House press shop sent some media outlets a list of "wrong" statements Fauci has made on the pandemic, and President Trump's top trade adviser Peter Navarro published an op-ed in USA Today claiming Fauci has been wrong about "everything."

"I stand by everything I said," Fauci told The Atlantic. "Contextually, at the time I said it, it was absolutely true."

Read more here.

Alabama to require face masks

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) announced a mandatory statewide mask order Wednesday, citing a 50 percent increase in new COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks.

"Despite all our best efforts, we're seeing increases in cases every day still occurring and we're almost to the point where hospital ICUs are overwhelmed," Ivey said at a press conference.

Alabama reported 2,141 new cases overnight, bringing the state's total number of confirmed cases to more than 58,000.

Ivey, who was reluctant to issue a mask order earlier in the pandemic, said she believes it will be hard to enforce.

Context: More than 20 states now require masks in public. Ivey's order expires July 31, but experts note that mask-wearing needs to be a long-term measure while the virus is still spreading.

Read more here.

House panel probes 'problematic' government contracts for COVID-19 supplies

Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis are asking Trump officials to explain contracts for personal protective equipment, testing supplies and other materials that they say went to companies with political ties to the administration or that were unprepared to fill the orders.

Examples they point to:

The significance: Democrats on the committee, led by Chairman James Clyburn (S.C.), said the contracting practices could be "contributing to shortages" of protective equipment and other supplies, if contracts are going to unqualified companies unable to properly fill the orders.

Read more here.

WHO warns COVID-19 pandemic lowering childhood vaccination rates worldwide

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a major plunge in childhood vaccination rates worldwide, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning the effects of children missing routine immunizations could become even worse than the pandemic itself.

The emergence of COVID-19 threatens to reverse "hard-won progress to reach more children and adolescents with a wider range of vaccines," the WHO said.

A WHO survey - conducted in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health - found three-quarters of responding countries reported COVID-19 related disruptions in their vaccine programs as of May.

One example: Preliminary data for the first four months of 2020 points to a substantial drop in the number of children completing three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3). According to WHO, this is the first time in 28 years that the world could see a reduction in DTP3 coverage.

Read more here.

Oklahoma governor tests positive for COVID-19

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) announced Wednesday that he has tested positive for COVID-19.

The governor made the announcement during a press conference, according to a local ABC affiliate is reporting. His test came back positive Tuesday afternoon.

Stitt, 48, said he believes he is the first governor in the nation to test positive for the virus. In March, one of his Cabinet members, David Ostrowe, also tested positive.

The governor said he "feels fine" and that his wife and children have tested negative.

Stitt advocated for President Trump's in-person campaign rally in Tulsa last month. He attended the rally himself and was seen in images of the event not wearing a face mask.

Read more here.

What we're reading

As the coronavirus crisis spins out of control, Trump issues directives - but still no clear plan (Washington Post)

New coronavirus treatments are expected this fall. But how powerful will they be? (McClatchy)

Ben Carson on second coronavirus economic shutdown: 'You do that again, and you completely destroy the financial infrastructure' (Yahoo Finance)

State by state

Why Arizona wasn't ready for its coronavirus surge (The Wall Street Journal)

Investigation uncovers missteps in Washington, D.C.'s coronavirus response (NPR)

'Things ain't going back to normal': Californians reel as shutdown hits again (Guardian)

The Hill op-eds

Provider bias in health care

Listening to Trump gave Sunbelt governors a new COVID-19 headache

Video: White House officials working to undermine Faucis credibility (NBC News)

UP NEXT

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Overnight Health Care: Fauci says 'bizarre' efforts to discredit him only hurt the White House | Alabama to require face masks | House panel probes...

COVID-19 and its impact on rural broadband, healthcare – brownfieldagnews.com

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

News

COVID-19 and its impact on rural broadband, healthcare

Rural broadband and healthcare providers continue to face challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Catherine Moyer, CEO of Kansas-based Pioneer Communications, says many schools and businesses moved online in a short amount of time and broadband providers had to adjust to meet the needs of the community.

We increased broadband speeds across the board, we increased capacity on our network both in our internal transport network but also to the outside world, we added additional Wi-Fi hotspots that we opened up to the public, and we also worked with our customers as they faced unexpected financial issues, she says.

Rick Breuer, CEO of Minnesota-based Community Memorial Hospital, says they were going to spend a year preparing a telehealth platform for the community and instead had it ready in two weeks because of COVID-19.

A lot of rural facilities were in the exact same boat because you just had to if you were going to maintain viable service, he says. So, we did it and we had a great team that got it up and running and we had very patient providers willing to work through all the bugs, he says.

He says telehealth services will remain in place long after the country recovers from the pandemic.

Breuer and Moyersay assistance from the administration has helped, but more must be done in thefuture.

Breuer says there are some rural clinics that havent been eligible for assistance, but he hopes they will be soon. Moyer says shes hopeful Congress will address universal service and the Keeping Critical Connections Act.

Breuer and Moyer made these comments during a from the farm gate webinar by Farm Credit.

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COVID-19 and its impact on rural broadband, healthcare - brownfieldagnews.com

COVID-19 taking a toll on Spartanburg healthcare workers – Spartanburg Herald Journal

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

South Carolina, the Upstate and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System are seeing a continued surge in COVID-19 cases that is starting to take a toll on staff members, the chief medical officer said Wednesday.

"There is no doubt this is one of the worst hot spots in the country and we have a serious crisis on our hands," Dr. Christopher Lombardozzi told SRHS trustees at their monthly meeting.

"As the cases continue to rise, it affects not just patients, not just the community, but also takes a toll on the physical and mental health of our team."

He said departments continue to work with doctors, nurses, therapists, lab technicians and administrators who have children at home.

"Some of our associates have had to leave because of day-cares closing," he said, adding that if schools stay closed the staffing adjustments will continue to be needed.

"As of (Wednesday), SRHS doesn't have a staffing shortage. However, our staff is strained and we are very concerned for the future," Lombardozzi said.

Through Memorial Day, he said the hospital might routinely see 10 hospitalizations for those with COVID-19 symptoms.

Since then, it's grown to about 60 positive COVID-19 hospitalizations, and this week 75, he said. On top of that, there are nearly 30 hospitalizations for those under investigation for the coronavirus, he said.

The hospital system still has more than enough critical care beds to handle the current and expected caseload of COVID patients, he said.

With hospitals in Spartanburg, Cherokee and Union counties, "we are in relatively good position due to our ability to move patients throughout the system," he said.

Wednesday, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control reported 97 new positive COVID-19 cases in Spartanburg County, bringing the county's total to 2,745 cases and 57 deaths. Saturday, the county saw its highest daily total to date, 126 new cases.

Just a couple weeks earlier, the county was averaging a little more than 50 new daily cases.

In other words, health officials don't know when the rising numbers will end, he said.

One reason for the high numbers is, more people are getting tested, he said.

"We're currently running 400 a day through those (three SRHS testing) sites," Lombardozzi said. "I imagine that will continue to increase."

Further, as the number of those tested continues to rise, so does the rate of those who test positive, he said. Roughly 22 percent of those tested are positive, he said, compared to before Memorial Day when the rate was as low as 4 or 5 percent.

Further, the average age of those who test positive has been dropping, from the 50s to about 41 years old, he said.

Statewide, he said DHEC has reported 46 percent of those who tested positive were white and 32 percent black.

"If there's any good news in this, the percent positive fell from 40 to 32 percent for blacks," he said. "It's still not reflective in the overall population of the state. Unfortunately, the minority population is over-represented when it comes to COVID."

Lombardozzi said the best advice is the same advice he's been giving since the start of the pandemic in early March.

"If there's one message for the community -- wear masks, wear masks, wear masks. They do work," he said. "The older age group is not testing positive in as high a degree as previously. They are adhering to our recommendations -- staying at home, wearing masks, washing their hands, maintaining physical distance and avoiding large congregations of people."

Meanwhile, the hospital system is seeing how big a hit financially caused by COVID-19 and postponement of elective surgeries.

Chief Financial Officer Bruce Davis said in May, net revenue was down $17 million. For the year, there has been a $24 million revenue gain, versus a $39 million gain that was budgeted.

"We're in great shape compared to other hospital systems out there," Davis said. "It's been a rough couple of months financially, but we remain strong."

Free coronavirus coverage: This story is free to all as a public service of The Spartanburg Herald-Journal during the coronavirus outbreak. You can support the Upstate reporters and photographers who are providing this coverage and other outstanding local journalism by becoming a subscriber.

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COVID-19 taking a toll on Spartanburg healthcare workers - Spartanburg Herald Journal

Kevin Donnelly: Political Correctness and the distortion of language – The Catholic Weekly

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Reading Time: 4 minutes

One of the most successful strategies used by the cultural-left to radically reshape society in its utopian image is redefining language to suit its agenda. As noted by George Orwell if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought; allowing words to be altered to enforce politically correct group think.

The word gay is an obvious example as activists have long since changed the meaning from being happy and carefree to describing homosexual men. Such has been the gay lobbys success that when school children sing the song Kookaburra Sits on the Old Gumtree the line Gay your life must be is altered to Fun your life must be.

Rainbow provides another example where the word and the symbol have long been co-opted by the cultural-left to refer to a broad range of environmental, neo-Marxist and LGBTIQ+ activists grouped under the heading Rainbow Alliance. The way the word gender has been redefined represents one of the more egregious examples of language control.

According to The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary the word is a grammatical term used to denote whether nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter according to whether the objects they denote are male, female or of neither sex. Based on the research carried out by the psychologist John Money while at John Hopkins University during the 1950s the word was radically redefined to refer to an individuals sexual identity.

Instead of biology and Gods law determining whether a person was female or male, Money introduced the description of gender on the basis sexuality was a fluid and dynamic social construct. Moneys obituary in The New York Times describes this ground-breaking research as follows He was the first scientist to provide a language to describe the psychological dimensions of human sexual identity: no such language had existed before.

Such has been the success of transgender activists in their campaign to normalise gender dysphoria that instead of chromosomes determining a persons sexuality the prevailing orthodoxy is that there is nothing fixed or absolute. The Safe Schools Coalition booklet All of Us, found on the Commonwealth Governments Student Wellbeing Hub, defines sexual diversity as a continuum and tells students gender identity does not necessarily relate to the sex a person is assigned at birth.

The booklet Safe Schools do Better, erroneously arguing 15.7 per cent of students are same sex attracted, intersex or gender diverse or trans when the figure is closer to approximately 5 per cent, suggests a person may identify as neither male nor female, or as both.

As highlighted in George Orwells novel 1984 language determines how we think and act and controlling language is a key strategy employed by totalitarian regimes to manipulate people and enforce groupthink. In Orwells dystopian novel what is described as Newspeak leads to a situation where thoughtcrime is impossible as there will be no words in which to express it. The slogan War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength best illustrates how Big Brother subjugates citizens by radically altering the meaning of words and, as a result, controlling their ability to think rationally and independently.

Such is the insidious evil of distorting language and imposing group think

Such is the insidious evil of distorting language and imposing group think that Orwell writes The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past If he says that two and two are five well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.

Universities and government bureaucracies instead of defending rationality and reason have long since become champions of cultural-left language control and group think.University Diversity Toolkits tell staff to use gender neutral pronouns, to describe the early convict settlement as an invasion and that it is wrong to describe pre-European Aboriginal culture as primitive.

The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services organises days where staff are told gender specific nouns like man and woman or pronouns like she and he are heteronormative, homophobic and transphobic. While the cultural-lefts use of politically correct language is widespread and now dominates public and private discourse there is nothing new in using language to persuade and convince.

What is described as rhetoric has been evident since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers and sophists and includes devices such as using emotive language and euphemisms and shifting the meaning of words to suit ones purpose and shut down debate.

Where the cultural-lefts use of language is dangerous and insidious is that it is calculated to dominate and control and to overthrow what is seen as an unjust, inequitable society riven with white supremacism, structural racism, sexism and transphobia. And anyone who disagrees is condemned and vilified as Eurocentric, misogynist, heteronormative, xenophobic and worst of all Christian. So much for reasoned debate.

The most overused words in the English language today are racist and racism. – Calaveras Enterprise

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

The most overused words in the English language today are racist and racism. Most rational adults would apply the word racist to someone who continually or habitually makes statements or prompts action that is clearly meant to demean or disgrace those of a different ethnic persuasion. Todays racist is any person, Black or White, that makes a public statement that could be construed to be anything but complimentary to African Americans. Moderate intellectuals and others who could make a compelling argument against the forces that maintain racism are afraid to speak for fear of being labelled racist. In the interim our attention seems to be riveted on vocal entertainers and sports figures, most of whom havent a clue on how to develop an appropriate strategy for racial harmony.

The entire civil rights movement has been corrupted by political correctness and the media to the point that many have lost sight of the original objective of the movement, which was to simply promote tolerance of the separate races while the necessary healing took place. The BLM movement for instance has become a hiding place for looters and rioters none of whom care if the races ever find common ground.

America has a lot of work to do if true equality is ever to be realized. Some rather uncomfortable acknowledgements must be made. Myth and conjecture must be removed from much of current policy. This work, however, cannot even begin until the rioting and looting has stopped and commitment to a sincere effort is made by all principal ethnic groups.

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The most overused words in the English language today are racist and racism. - Calaveras Enterprise

Forum, July 15: The ironies and the inconsistencies – Valley News

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

The ironies and the inconsistencies

Now that former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee, its time to hold him and other Democratic leaders accountable for some of their outlandish statements.

First, Biden said he fears President Donald Trump will try to steal the election. This is clearly a case of the kettle calling the pot black (no racial innuendo intended), since Republicans suspected Democrats of using loopholes in California election law they crafted as a means of stealing seven House seats in 2018. Biden also expressed fears that Trump wouldnt accept the outcome of the election if unfavorable to him and would have to be ousted by military force. Since when did America become a banana republic where the Constitution is written on a dry-erase board and coups are commonplace? I would remind Biden that his base still hasnt accepted the outcome of the 2016 election.

Biden stated that 15%-20% of Americans are not very good people. Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables all over again? He also tried to delineate peoples race based on how they vote: If you vote for Donald Trump, you aint Black.

And Clinton recently said she couldnt understand why anyone with a working mind and a beating heart still supports Trump. Maybe because myriad preborn children with working minds and beating hearts, many of them Black, are aborted. The Democrats pledge to make America more inclusive applies only to those who are already born. Planned Parenthood is inherently racist, as to both its history and its impact on reducing our nations Black population.

And about this purge of statues, symbols and names associated with the Confederacy and Christopher Columbus? Weve seen it before in Russia, China and Nazi Germany when a culture is erased to make room for a new one. Whats next, renaming the nations capital the District of Political Correctness, along with the capitals of at least two states? Karl Marx took a dim view of traditions of dead generations, calling them a nightmare on the brains of the living and presumably to be abolished. Its happening!

WILLIAM A. WITTIK

Hartford

The goal of the Haverhill Entrepreneurial Encouragement Committee is to have fiber-optic network technology, the most reliable long-term option, accessible on every road and highway in town. Expanding high-speed internet is critical for Haverhill to be a more attractive community for families and businesses and to retain our youth. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced its importance for telehealth, education and working from home.

The North Country Council, our nonprofit regional planning organization, has launched a survey to gather information on the quality of broadband services in all towns in Northern New Hampshire. Currently available data is not precise enough to give us the information we need, so this survey is important. Please spend five minutes to take the survey at http://www.nccouncil.org/broadband/. If you dont have internet, you can call 603-444-6303, ext. 2014, to request a paper survey or to provide your information verbally. You can also request a paper survey by emailing mmoren@nccouncil.org.

The Haverhill Entrepreneurial Encouragement Committee, formed after the April 2018 Better Haverhill forum, conducted a business survey that identified the need for improved cellphone and broadband service, and we organized a public meeting last November at Haverhill Cooperative Middle School. The committee then proposed the creation of a town cellphone/broadband reserve fund and, at the March Town Meeting, Haverhill citizens voted to appropriate $50,000 to address this need.

Since Town Meeting, we committee members have been exploring the best options for success. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers in rural areas such as ours. Based on funding availability, the committee is focusing first on broadband while also recognizing that expanded broadband access can also benefit cell access.

Please share this message with all of your friends, especially those who live in Haverhill. The Haverhill Entrepreneurial Encouragement Committee meets monthly, usually the fourth Wednesday, at 6 p.m., and we welcome new participants.

KEVIN SHELTON and WAYNE FORTIER

Woodsville

DOUG TESCHNER

Pike

JEFF STIMSON and STEPHANIE MARSTON

North Haverhill

On Sept. 8, New Hampshire Republicans have a choice to make. We can choose a native son of our state, a former Laconia police officer who joined the Army and rose through the ranks from private to brigadier general, a decorated Special Forces commander who fought for our country and wishes to continue his legacy of selfless service as our United States senator. That man is Don Bolduc.

Or we can choose a man of considerable means who has built a law office empire in his home state of Colorado. A man who is supported by the Washington establishment. A man who has had only a vacation home in the Granite State, only moving here full-time in 2018. That man is Corky Messner.

Consider the times we are living in. Our police are under constant attack, we are experiencing civil unrest in many of our cities, our history is being defamed and the very rights that we as Americans hold sacred are being threatened.

We need to send a strong leader to Washington. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has shown herself time and time again to be little more than a sock puppet of the Democratic Party, the same Democratic Party that supports and rewards those who seek to transform our noble country into an unrecognizable socialist empire that is theirs alone to control. Republicans and clear-thinking independents need to send a fighter to defeat Shaheen and return honor and selfless service to our congressional delegation. Retired Gen. Don Bolduc is that man. The mission is critical and the time is now. Stand up for our state and our nation. Send a message of American pride and vote for Don Bolduc in the Republican Party primary on Sept. 8.

JOHN YOUNG

Sutton

I have come to the conclusion that the present-day Republican Party is a menace both to the practice of a truly democratic political process and to competent governance. I find this to be the case despite individual, often courageous, exceptions. I do not wish nor does space permit to take this occasion to present a bill of particulars. Suffice it to say that I find the words racist, corrupt and plutocratic describe this party more accurately than does the honorable term conservative. Therefore I pledge to vote for no Republican for state or national office in November 2020, nor for an indefinite period going forward.

Vermonts late senator, James Jeffords, understood the nihilistic tendencies of the Republican Party almost 20 years ago. Accordingly, he declared his independence from said party. I have come to have respect for Vermonts present governor, Phil Scott. In past election years, his efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic could have earned my vote this November, though I do not usually vote for Republicans. But, in my judgment, the menace posed by the Republican Party generally is too great to justify a vote for any Republican. If Gov. Scott were to declare his independence from the Republican Party, then he would have my vote in November.

BORIS G. von YORK

Springfield, Vt.

Lets take back our stolen democracy. The only way to do this is by voting for a new president who has at least some integrity and political experience. Also, we must vote out as many of the lying, robotic Republican senators as we can.

I fear that it will take years to clean up the financial mess that President Donald Trump has made. But we must start somewhere. We truly dont know all of the problems created and hidden in the White House by Trump and his puppets. But trust me, they will come out in time. And they will affect every one of us. Just remember, in the 2016 presidential election, about 100 million eligible voters did not even bother to vote. Shame on us. So lets make American great again, by getting all Americans to vote.

Do not listen to his campaign ads. They are full of false promises. And do not take his online surveys. Out of curiosity, I answered one just to let him know just how inadequate I thought he was as a leader. At the end it asked me for money, it and would not let my survey go through unless I pledged to donate. I tried to enter $0.00, which is exactly what I thought he was worth, but the survey form would not accept a zero. Needless to say, I quickly left the survey. To add insult to injury, he keeps sending me surveys addressing me as a supporter. I believe this is called attempting a con job.

He is also having his supporters sign waivers saying that if they catch COVID-19 at one of his campaign rallies they will not hold him, or his affiliates, liable. Please, Trump supporters, just think about his intentions here.

Its definitely time to get rid of him. Vote, vote, vote! As Americans, it is our duty.

LINDA BROWN

Springfield, Vt.

I offer the following seemingly simple math problem: Look 2 Listen plus Listen 2 Hear equals Love 4 Life.

My question is, why is it so difficult?

DIANE ROGERS

Plainfield

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Forum, July 15: The ironies and the inconsistencies - Valley News

What’s hard to understand about ‘I can’t breathe?’ – Minot Daily News

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Leave aside the political correctness that has resulted in universal condemnation of all law enforcement personnel, for a moment. In the interest of saving lives, let us return at least briefly to using our common sense.

As The Associated Press reports, a significant number of officers, deputies, troopers and agents may not understand the seriousness of making it difficult for someone to breathe. Really.

Under no circumstances can what happened to George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis be rationalized, of course. After being arrested on a relatively minor, non-violent charge, he was forced to the pavement, where a police officer pressed his knee into Floyds neck for more than eight minutes. Floyd was killed, after pleading several times that, I cant breathe.

Five Minneapolis officers have been charged in Floyds death.

Outrage over their behavior is justified. It has prompted a nationwide discussion among those involved in law enforcement, let it be noted about treatment of people in confrontations with police.

Correcting a misperception among some law officers needs to a priority in that discussion.

Apparently, according to the AP, some people think that if a person in distress can talk to say, for example, I cant breathe he or she is not in danger.

Derek Chauvin, the policeman charged with murdering Floyd, responded to his pleas with, Then stop talking, stop yelling. It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk. Another officer at the scene remarked, Hes talking, so he can breathe.

Health care professionals agree that even people able to beg for their lives can be in severe, life-threatening distress. Clearly, Floyd was.

Again, there is no excuse whatsoever for what happened to Floyd.

But just as clearly, many law enforcement personnel need better education on how to handle such situations. Local, state and federal officials need to ensure it is provided and the guidance is followed. No one should die because a law officer misreads the meaning of, I cant breathe.

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What's hard to understand about 'I can't breathe?' - Minot Daily News

Nation On The Brink | Opinion | coronadonewsca.com – Coronado Eagle and Journal

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

A vengeful mob is a fearsome thing but the true monsters are its teachers.

Cynthia Ozick

Author, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics and Other Literary Essays

For those old enough to remember the riots of the 1960s following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and the 1992 riots after the verdict in the Rodney King beating trial, the riots following the killing of George Floyd by police brought back painful memories. There were differences, however. The earlier riots occurred mostly in cities with large black minorities and targeted mostly black neighborhoods. The recent ones took place over a larger swath of America and included affluent, white neighborhoods and this time the rioters included large numbers of young whites.

Another notable difference was the apparent support for and rationalization of much of the violence from a large cross-section of the population including white academics and other white elites as well as the mainstream media. Some have described the civic unrest as a movement or a revolution. The description seems apt, with mobs taking over sections of cities like Seattle, New York and Washington, D.C., erecting barricades to keep police from entering and, in Seattles CHOP, declaring sovereignty. A unifying objective, on the surface at least, was defunding the police and drastically restructuring law enforcement.

To Northwestern Universitys Gary Saul Morson, a professor of Russian literature, there are striking similarities between what is going on now in America and what occurred in Russia just prior to the Communist revolution that overthrew the Czarist government. In that revolution, the Marxists openly endorsed terrorism as a necessary means to an end. The opposition liberal party, known as the Constitutional Democrats, did not condone terrorism but steadfastly refused to condemn it, believing it would be political suicide to do so, according to Prof. Morson. In fact, he says, they actually called for the release of imprisoned terrorists.

In an interview published recently in the Wall Street Journal, Morson said that the lessons from this are highly relevant today. People may know that acts of violence and destruction of property are wrong but feel that it might be political suicide or subject them to criticism (or worse) to say so and so they go along supporting or remaining silent about things they know are wrong. And unless some moral force emerges to stop it, the slide toward chaos accelerates. That moral force seems lacking in America today as it was in Russia then. Morson notes another analogy, saying that many of todays revolutionaries are wildly successful and privileged, citing, as examples, Colinford Mattis and Uroog Rahman, charged with attempting to firebomb a police vehicle. Both are New York attorneys, educated at, respectively, Princeton and New York University.

If we are, in fact, witnessing a revolution today, it seems important to understand what its about and where it began. Many believe that Its about much more than just black lives matter, defunding the police and restructuring law enforcement. Its about redistributing wealth and power. Its significant in this regard that many of the demonstrations now are targeting the homes of those with power and wealth. Intimidation is a powerful weapon. Its also about re-defining free speech. Revolutions cannot tolerate insightful criticism and require both a sympathetic news media and a passive policing policy that will monitor, but not prevent, violence incident to their demonstrations. Dissent must be crushed if it threatens to impede the revolution. Therefore, if you dare to criticize the actions of the demonstrators or rioters, you are not listening or you dont get it. You are on the wrong side of history and just part of the problem or not qualified to criticize because you are privileged. Revolutionaries insist that they support free speech of course, but, in practice, they do only if it supports their narrative. Otherwise, its branded a lie and needs to be suppressed.

How did this all begin? For starters, consider the widespread embrace of political correctness. And where did all that begin? It was born and nurtured on college campuses all over America where leftist ideology prevails almost unchallenged, supported by overwhelmingly liberal faculties. The rare conservative voices are often suppressed and shamed or banished from campus. Our universities have produced a generation of young socialists taught to see only the flaws and not the greatness of our nation. Most of them supported Bernie Sanders and are not enamored with the choices we have for president in November. (In the latter matter at least, I share their distress.)

If this is a revolution, will it ultimately succeed? That, of course, is squarely up to the American people. But if they are too fearful to speak their minds, it really doesnt matter what they think or want. Silence is surrender. As Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, A republic, if you can keep it. Weve kept it for nearly two and a half centuries but could we be on the brink of losing it?

Dr. Kelly is a freelance writer and a retired Navy Captain who commanded three San Diego-based ships and a personnel research and development center and taught ship handling, seamanship and navigation at Naval Base San Diego. He earned his doctorate in education at USD, taught graduate students and was a senior vice-president and director of training and development at Great American Bank. He has written over 1500 newspaper and journal articles and has been a regular contributor to the Eagle&Journal since 2001.

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Nation On The Brink | Opinion | coronadonewsca.com - Coronado Eagle and Journal

Cyberpunk 2077: where to buy the collectors editions and other cool merch deals – VG247

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

With the Cyberpunk 2077 release date getting closer by the day, we thought wed take a look at the vast amount of gear, novelties, figurines and other merch available for CD Projekt REDs upcoming sci-fi role-playing game.Because nothing says I wanna live in a corpo-controlled world and hand over my hard earned bucks in exchange for needless plastic, baby better than shopping at an online retailer. Seriously though, who doesnt want a cute pocket-sized Keanu to talk to when your partner has left you because you collect too many Funko Pops? Not me, and frankly, Ive got more shelf space for tat now I live alone. So alone.

Lets take a look at some screamin hot merch deals to distract us from the 2020 hellscape.

First up, where to buy Cyberpunk 2077? Literally anywhere, but theres a few variations depending on how much you want to spend, and if you want to go the whole hog and buy a Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox or controller to go with it. Heres the basics, buster.

In the US, you can get the basic Cyberpunk 2077 game on PS4, PC or Xbox One on Amazon. Theres a Special Edition available too with all sorts of cool shit including an amazing statue of V in action, but thats currently sold out. You can add it to your list though, and get a notification if it comes back in stock before release.

In the UK, Amazon is selling Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4, Xbox One and PC for 49.99 with three Night City postcards. It also has the Limited Edition 1TB Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox One X for a whopping 440 if you really want to pay through the nose. You can buy that now and youll get your game code when its released on November 19.

If you want to get something Cyberpunk 2077 in your hands right now you can grab the official Xbox One X controller in the US, or PS4 owners can whack the Cyberpunk 2077 SteelSeries wireless headset on their domes. You can get those headsets in the UK for PS4, PC and Switch, but the Xbox versions are currently out of stock.

If you want to overdose on the world that CD Projekt is creating, you can pick up the World of Cyberpunk 2077, a deluxe book that comes with postcards and tattoos. Or why not pick up Cyberpunk 2020, the original pen and paper role-playing game that inspired the video game? That flies in an out of stock quickly so you might want to grab it while you can.

All of the above is pretty standard stuff though. What are you going to do with those disposable credits youve got cluttering up your neon-hued apartment? Buy something ridiculous, thats what.

The biggie is this Johnny Silverhand 12 inch Deluxe Figure from MacFarlane Toys. You can pop little Keanu Reeves on your desk and tell him how breathtaking he is, or just quietly speculate on how bad Bill & Ted 3 is going to be.

It comes in at under $35 on Amazon US, or just over 36 in the United of Kingdom.

While were here, theres a bunch more Cyberpunk 2077 figures you might want to look at;

Cyberpunk 2077 is out on November 19. We recently went hands-on with it, and its shaping up to be something very special. Watch the latest gameplay above.

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Cyberpunk 2077: where to buy the collectors editions and other cool merch deals - VG247

CD Projekt Red shows off more areas of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City – KitGuru

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

CD Projekt Red is continuing to release little teasers for Cyberpunk 2077 to tide us over until the games new release date in November. This week, the studio is returning to concept art again, this time giving us a view of Santo Domingo, one of Night Citys oldest districts.

Concept art isnt normally the most exciting thing, but CD Projekt Red has been releasing lore tidbits alongside these images, building up the world and giving us an idea of what were in for when we first step foot in Night City.

In this instance, we are looking at several shots of Santo Domingo, an area of Night City that the corporations use as a testing ground for industrial projects. The residents of this district are said to be making a desperate living with many living in crowded megabuildings.

Last week, CD Projekt Red also gave us a look at Night Citys centre, full of sleek skyscrapers owned by the corporations. This section of the city is the most fortified and protected.

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KitGuru Says: Well be getting a much better look at Night City in November but in the meantime, Im happy to be learning more about the world and how it is all set up. Are many of you looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077?

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CD Projekt Red shows off more areas of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City - KitGuru

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Speaks About The Importance Of Diversity And Inclusion – GameSpot

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has shared new insight and commentary around what diversity and inclusion means to the studio and for the upcoming much-anticipated RPG.

In an Polish interview translated by CDPR on its website, executive Adam Kicinski started off by mentioning that CDPR's development team comprises people from across political and social spectrums. "Our team comprises all sorts of people, leaning left or right on legal, economic, and worldview issues--not to mention several dozen nationalities, multiple ethnic groups and many LGBT individuals," Kicinski said. "We pride ourselves on our diversity, but we also realize that efficient operation requires active measures promoting mutual respect and tolerance."

Another CDPR executive, Adam Badowski, said it's important for the company to embrace and support diversity and inclusion, in will lead to better products.

"In an environment where you can simply be yourself it becomes easier to have frank discussions, share ideas, and express opinions--and that provides a starting point for many interesting activities," he said. "When a revolution in RPGs takes place, it is because a team of bold women and men has had the audacity to express its ideas."

Badowski went on to say that, for Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR is attempting to give players the freedom to express themselves with the character they create. The story, meanwhile, aims to be "bold, mature, and astute," Badowski said.

"Our game is quite liberal when it comes to gender modification," Badowski said. "The whole issue is regarded as relatively minor compared to the need to express ones personal style--and this provides for much greater fluidity. I truly hope that, much like in the case of The Witcher games, Cyberpunk 2077 will surprise everyone with how many bold, mature, and astute narratives can be conveyed by the video game medium. I will gladly come back to this issue after the November release once I'm at liberty to share more information."

Finally, Kicinski said the wider entertainment industry generally supports and welcomes diversity, even if this wasn't always the case in the past. However, Kicinski observed that the video game business specifically is more agile than film, TV, and music.

"We learn a lot from the shortcomings and accomplishments of our colleagues from the motion picture, literature, and music industries, and I suppose we may be faster at implementing certain novel mechanisms," he said. "Way back in the 20th century the superb writer Andre Norton (born Alice Mary Norton) chose to publish under a male pseudonym because her publisher believed that the masculinized readership demographic would not take interest in fantasy authored by a woman. There is no such issue with video games."

Kicinski acknowledged that the video game industry still has problems, including the sexualization of female characters. But he contends that these issues are now being spoken about and addressed "in the open" in an effort to change them. "Sexual orientation is in a similar position. What had long been taboo in mainstream motion pictures is now turning what it should have been from the outset: stories of human romance rather than accounts of the struggle for the right to be accepted," he said.

You can read the full interview here on CDPR's website.

Cyberpunk 2077 will release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 19. Next-gen upgrades for PS5 and Xbox Series X will be available for free.

GameSpot's Play For All--a celebration of all things gaming--is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer's hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Speaks About The Importance Of Diversity And Inclusion - GameSpot

Wyrd Games Goes Retro With 80s Cyberpunk Themed Nightmare Edition – TheGamer

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

The new minis from Wyrd are just about ready to jack into GenCon, in a Cyberpunk 1988 themed limited edition set for Malifaux.

Malifaux, now in its third edition, is a tabletop miniature combat game that sees small groups fight it out in skirmish battles. Originally launched in 2009 at GenCon, it last received the update treatment in June 2019, with a streamlined edition that gave easier games to play. The Nightmare Edition releases are a limited edition set of themed miniatures that can be used in Malifaux and usually launched in conjunction with GenCon. This year sees the second set for the third edition, following the popular pirate-themed set from last year.

RELATED: Despite Speculation, Cyberpunk 2077 Will Not Be On Game Pass

The 1980s was a strange time indeed, and it is easy to see how it would fit in with Malifaux's alternative history version. Looking back we shudder at the fashion faux-pas, the leg warmers, shoulder pads, parachute pants, spandex, and well... hair! It also bore some of the greatest movies of all time:The Goonies, Back to the Future, Ferris Beuller's Day Off, and of course Bladerunner.

While Bladerunner didn't start cyberpunk, it has had a big influence on the genre ever since it's release in 1982. It's no wonder then that it would be up there with the choices for this year's limited edition minis. Factor in that CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be out by now, the deal was in the bag. The set of six minis pull on all the right heartstrings, with a unique aesthetic right out of the era. Ittaking influence not just from Bladerunner, but other 80s movies like Mad Max. The art style also fits in with the 80s game culture sparked by the British games studio Games Workshop with titles like Dark Future and Chainsaw Warrior.

The Six minis are direct replacements for the Mei Feng Core Box. Gumdrop replaces Mei Feng; Mean Streak replaces Kang; King Crybaby, MadMop, and Tag Line replace the Railworkers and Spritz a robotic crab-like goldfish thing classed as a Forgeling. You also get stylized crew cards!

Malifaux Nightmare Edition Cyberpunk 1988 will be available from the Wyrd Games web store for a limited time only during the GenCon Virtual event.

NEXT: While You Wait For Cyberpunk 2077, Shadowrun Returns

Source: Wyrd Games

Ghost of Tsushima Review Roundup

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Wyrd Games Goes Retro With 80s Cyberpunk Themed Nightmare Edition - TheGamer

The Sun Only Shines Because Of Quantum Physics – Forbes

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

The Sun is the source of the overwhelming majority of light, heat, and energy on Earth's surface, ... [+] and is powered by nuclear fusion. But without the quantum rules that govern the Universe at a fundamental level, fusion wouldn't be possible at all.

Earth, as we know it, is only teeming with life because of the influence of our Sun. Its light and heat provides every square meter of Earth when its in direct sunlight with a constant ~1500 W of power, enough to keep our planet at a comfortable temperature for liquid water to continuously exist on its surface. Just like the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy amidst the trillions of galaxies in the Universe, our Sun shines continuously, varying only slightly over time.

But without quantum physics, the Sun wouldnt shine at all. Even in the extreme conditions found in the core of a massive star like our Sun, the nuclear reactions that power it could not occur without the bizarre properties that our quantum Universe demands. Thankfully, our Universe is quantum in nature, enabling the Sun and all the other stars to shine as they do. Heres the science of how it works.

A stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This new, ... [+] nearby system that's rich in star-formation gives us a region with a wide variety of star colors and masses, yet all of them are undergoing nuclear fusion reactions in their core.

Starlight is the single greatest source of energy in the Universe throughout its entire 13.8 billion year history, subsequent to the hot Big Bang. These large, massive concentrations of hydrogen and helium contract under their own gravity when they first form, causing their cores to become denser and denser all while heating up. Eventually, a critical threshold is reached at temperatures of ~4 million kelvin and densities exceeding that of solid lead where nuclear fusion begins in the stars core.

But heres the puzzle: you can determine exactly how much energy the particles in the Sun must have, and calculate how those energies are distributed. You can calculate what types of collisions occur between protons in the Suns core, and compare that with how much energy is required to actually bring two protons into physical contact with one another: overcoming the electric repulsion between them.

And when you do your calculations, you find a shocking conclusion: there are zero collisions happening there with enough energy to lead to nuclear fusion. Zero. None at all.

A solar flare from our Sun, which ejects matter out away from our parent star and into the Solar ... [+] System, is dwarfed in terms of 'mass loss' by nuclear fusion, which has reduced the Sun's mass by a total of 0.03% of its starting value: a loss equivalent to the mass of Saturn. E=mc^2, when you think about it, showcases how energetic this is, as the mass of Saturn multiplied by the speed of light (a large constant) squared leads to a tremendous amount of energy produced.

At first glance, this would appear to make nuclear fusion and hence, the ability of the Sun to shine completely impossible. And yet, based on the energy we observe coming from the Sun, we know that it does, in fact, shine.

Deep inside the Sun, in the innermost regions where the temperature ranges between 4 million all the way up to 15 million kelvin, the nucleus of four initial hydrogen atoms (i.e., individual protons) will fuse together in a chain reaction, with the end result producing a helium nucleus (made of two protons and two neutrons), along with the release of a significant amount of energy.

That energy is carried away in the form of both neutrinos and photons, and while the photons might spend over 100,000 years before they make it to the Suns photosphere and radiate into space, the neutrinos exit the Sun in mere seconds, where weve been detecting them on Earth since the 1960s.

Experiments such as Super-Kamiokande, which contain enormous tanks of (proton-rich) water surrounded ... [+] by arrays of detectors, are the most sensitive tools humanity has to detect neutrinos from the Sun. As of the start of 2020, we only have constraints on potential proton decay, but we are continuously detecting solar neutrinos, day or night.

You might think about this scenario and be a bit puzzled, since it isnt obvious how energy is released from these reactions. Neutrons, you see, are ever so slightly more massive than protons are: by about 0.1%. When you fuse four protons into a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons, you might think that reaction would require energy instead of emitting it.

If all of those particles were free and unbound, that would be true. But when neutrons and protons are bound together into a nucleus such as helium, they wound up being bound together so tightly that theyre actually significantly less massive than their individual, unbound constituents. While two neutrons have about 2 MeV (where an MeV is one million electron-volts, a measure of energy) more energy than two protons are via Einsteins E = mc a helium nucleus is the equivalent of 28 MeV lighter than four unbound protons.

In other words, the process of nuclear fusion releases energy: about 0.7% of whatever protons fuse together gets converted into energy, carried by both neutrinos and photons.

The most straightforward and lowest-energy version of the proton-proton chain, which produces ... [+] helium-4 from initial hydrogen fuel. Note that only the fusion of deuterium and a proton produces helium from hydrogen; all other reactions either produce hydrogen or make helium from other isotopes of helium.

We observe the Sun emitting, over its entire surface, a continuous power output of 4 1026Watts. That amount of energy translates into an enormous number of protons somewhere upwards of 1038 of them fusing together in this chain reaction every second. This is spread out over an enormous volume of space, of course, since the interior of the Sun is enormous; the average human being metabolizing their daily food produces more energy than an equivalent human-sized volume of the Sun.

But with all of those reactions occurring in the interior of the Sun, you might start to wonder how efficient these reactions are. Do we really get enough of them to generate all the power that the Sun creates? Can this really lead to such an enormous energy output, and explain how the Sun shines?

Its a complex question, and if you start to think about it quantitatively, here are the numbers you arrive at.

The anatomy of the Sun, including the inner core, which is the only place where fusion occurs. Even ... [+] at the incredible temperatures of 15 million K, the maximum achieved in the Sun, the Sun produces less energy-per-unit-volume than a typical human body. The Sun's volume, however, is large enough to contain over 10^28 full-grown humans, which is why even a low rate of energy production can lead to such an astronomical total energy output.

The Sun is far larger and more massive than anything weve experienced in our lives. If you were to take the entire planet Earth and line up a series of them across the Suns diameter, it would take 109 Earths to make it all the way across. If you were to take all the mass contained within planet Earth, youd have to accumulate more than 300,000 of them to equal the mass of our Sun.

All told, there are some 1057 particles making up the Sun, with right around 10% of those particles present in the fusion region that defines the Suns core. Inside the core, heres whats happening:

This cutaway showcases the various regions of the surface and interior of the Sun, including the ... [+] core, which is the only location where nuclear fusion occurs. As time goes on, the helium-containing region in the core expands and the maximum temperature increases, causing the Sun's energy output to increase.

This sounds reasonable, right? Surely, given the enormous number of proton collisions that occur, how fast theyre moving, and the fact that only a tiny, almost imperceptible fraction of them would need to actually fuse, this could be achievable.

So we do the math. We calculate, based on how particles behave and move when you have a whole lot of them under a given set of energies and velocities, how many proton-proton collisions have enough energy to initiate nuclear fusion in those reactions.

To get there, all two protons have to do is get close enough to physically touch, overcoming the fact that they both have positive electric charges, and that like charges repel.

So how many, of the ~1056 protons in the Suns core, colliding billions of times per second, actually have enough energy to cause a fusion reaction to occur?

Exactly zero.

When two protons overlap, it's possible that they can fuse together into a composite state dependent ... [+] on their properties. The most common, stable possibility is to produce a deuteron, made of a proton and a neutron, which requires the emission of a neutrino, a positron, and possibly a photon as well.

And yet, somehow, it happens. Not only does nuclear fusion successfully power the Sun, but stars far less massive and with far lower core temperatures than our own. Hydrogen gets converted to helium; fusion occurs; starlight gets created; planets become potentially habitable.

So whats the secret?

This is the key place where quantum physics comes into play. Down at a subatomic level, atomic nuclei dont actually behave as particles alone, but rather as waves. Sure, you can measure the physical size of a proton, but doing so makes its momentum inherently uncertain. You can also measure the momentum of a proton essentially what we did when we calculated what its velocity is but doing so makes its position more inherently uncertain.

Each proton, instead, is a quantum particle, where its physical location is better described by a probability function than a pinned-down position.

An illustration between the inherent uncertainty between position and momentum at the quantum level. ... [+] The better you know or measure a particle's position, the less well you know its momentum, as well as vice versa. Both position and momentum are better described by a probabilistic wavefunction than by a single value.

Because of the quantum nature of these protons, the wavefunctions of two protons can overlap. Even protons which dont have enough energy to overcome the repulsive electric force between them can see their wavefunctions overlap, and that overlapping means they have a finite probability of experiencing quantum tunneling: where they can end up in a more stable bound state than their initial, free state.

Once you form deuterium from two protons the hard part the rest of the chain reaction can proceed quite quickly, leading to the formation of helium-4 in short order.

But the probability of forming deuterium is very small. In fact, for any particular proton-proton interaction that occurs in the Suns core, practically all of them will have the simplest result imaginable: their wavefunctions temporarily overlap, then they stop overlapping, and all you wind up with is two protons, the same as what you started with. But a very small fraction of the time, about 1 in every 1028 collisions (remember that number from earlier?), two protons wind up fusing together, creating a deuteron, as well as a positron and a neutrino, and possibly also a photon.

When two protons meet each other in the Sun, their wavefunctions overlap, allowing the temporary ... [+] creation of helium-2: a diproton. Almost always, it simply splits back into two protons, but on very rare occasions, a stable deuteron (hydrogen-2) is produced, due to both quantum tunneling and the weak interaction.

When the wavefunction of two protons in the Suns core overlap, theres only a minuscule chance that theyll do anything other than return to being two protons. The odds of them fusing together to make a deuterium nucleus are about the same as winning the Powerball lottery three times in a row: astronomically small. And yet, there are so many protons inside the Sun that this successfully occurs so often that it powers not only our Sun, but practically all of the stars in the Universe.

Over the past 4.5 billion years, this has happened enough time in our Sun that it has lost approximately the mass of Saturn due to nuclear fusion and Einsteins most famous equation: E = mc. If it werent for the quantum nature of the Universe, however, nuclear fusion wouldnt occur in the Sun at all, and Earth would simply be a cold, lifeless rock floating in the abyss of space. Its only because of the uncertainty inherent to position, momentum, energy, and time, that our existence is possible at all. Without quantum physics, the Sun wouldnt be able to shine. In a very real sense, we really did win the cosmic lottery.

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The Sun Only Shines Because Of Quantum Physics - Forbes

How Much Time Actually Passes in the ‘Palm Springs’ Time Loop? – Decider

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

By now, youve seen the uproarious time loop comedy Palm Springs on Hulu (or youre OK reading a lot of spoilers) and are wondering to yourself, Wait, how much time actually passed in the movie? The films 90-minute runtime covers a deceptively lengthy period of time in the experiences of Andy Sambergs Nyles and Cristin Miliotis Sarah, two jaded wedding guests who must learn that the hardest part of living the same day infinitely is learning to live with yourself. The boundless repetition recalls the best of Groundhog Day without ever becoming subservient to Harold Ramis classic.

Inspired by a tenacious piece of journalism by Simon Gallagher in 2011 that attempted to pinpoint the precise number of days that Bill Murrays Phil Connor must relive Groundhog Day, I set out to apply a similarly rigorous methodology to determine how long passes within the Palm Springs time loop. Armed with a Google spreadsheet, a search engine and a helpful phone-a-friend to director Max Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara, I pored over Palm Springs like it was the Zapruder film to come to my closest approximation of how many times Nyles and Sarah relive November 9.

(By the way, does that date sound familiar? According to the filmmakers, Im the first person to identify the reason they chose this given day on the calendar was because it was the day after the 2016 election. Maybe that just means Im caught in a loop of that days jumble of feelings myself)

The simplest measure of the time in Palm Springs are the days we see unfold as part of the main narrative. We meet up with Nyles when hes already well-situated within the framework of the time loop, idling the day away and numbing his senses with poolside brews. Like the alarm clock hitting 6:00 A.M. and the radio blaring I Got You Babe in Groundhog Day, we have a strong visual cue that a new version of November 9 is starting with an extreme close-up of Nyles and Sarahs eyes.

In a few instances, particularly with montages, I made the logical leap based on the time of day in which two events take place to determine that it would not be possible for them to coincide within the same loop. With the exception of assorted flashbacks, the following days proceed in chronological order:

Day 1: Sarah goes into the cave and gets pulled into the loop.Day 2: Sarahs first repeated day.Day 3: Sarah drives back to Austin.Day 4: Nyles explains the time loop in Sarahs car.Day 5: Nyles and Sarah discuss sex at the bar, Sarah tries to end the loop with good karma.Day 6: Sarah wakes up again in the loop, goes to waste day with Nyles at the safehouse.Days 7-14: Montage of Sarah and Nyles embracing meaningless of life with assorted hijinks culminating in desert campout where Sarah and Nyles have sex for the first time*

(*I originally assumed the campout was a separate day, but thanks to a tip from Cristin Milioti interviewed inVulture, I learned that it actually follows the evening where they plant the bomb in the wedding cake. Per Milioti, Sarahs hook is hidden in her coat but issues with coverage prevented them from showing it more explicitly. This also tracks given that we dont have any shots of them waking up preceding the scene.)

Day 15: Nyles reveals hes slept with Sarah before she entered the loop.Day 16: Sarah wakes up and goes to start studying physics, Nyles unable to find her at resort.

Unlike Groundhog Day, which stays laser-focused on Carl, Palm Springs splits its two characters up here. By my count, we see the same amount of days Nyles and Sarahs sequences apart. (More on how long these sequences actually last in a bit.) But for the purposes of simply enumerating the days we actually see in the film, the section of the film where Sarah educates herself and Nyles realizes his love for her in that absence constitutes Days 17-22. Also during this time, Sarah tests out her quantum physics theory by blowing up a goat in the cave to see if it breaks out of the time loop, and Nyles makes peace with Roy at his home in Irvine.

That makes the day in which Sarah arrives to let Nyles in on her plan to blow herself up in the cave to break the time loop Day 23.

After the detonation, the film has one final scene where they float in the safehouse pool, presumably on November 10 and a mid-credits stinger where J.K. Simmons Roy, an unwitting participant pulled into the loop who mostly channels his rage into torturing Nyles, has apparently received a voice message we see Sarah leaving on Day 23and has come back to the wedding to discuss it. (Nyles, clad in a suit rather than his casual pool gear, appears not to recognize him.)

Well set aside these last two scenes for now and say that, for the sake of setting a preliminary baseline, we irrefutably see 23 days unfold within the time loop of Palm Springs.

Now things start getting a little trickier. Especially as Nyles explains the rules and limitations of the time loop to Sarah, the film cuts away to glimpses of scenes from his life prior to her getting stuck.

The first major flashback sequence comes whenever Sarah fully processes that on the night she gets pulled into the loop, Roy shoots Nyles with a bow-and-arrow. This prompts Nyles to explain how, when the two of them embark on a cocaine-fueled bender, he semi-consciously encourages Roy to enter the cave and enter the loop after an off-handed remark about wanting to live out in the desert forever. We then see five different scenarios that play out of Roy taking revenge: shooting a fleeing naked Nyles with an arrow, electrocuting him, waterboarding him, whipping him and filling Nyles safehouse pool with flammable liquid so he can immolate his enemy. Simply what we see adds 5 days to the total.

(Its possible that the whipping and the electrocution could be the same setup as the setting does look the same. Whether thats due to the indie budget and shooting schedule not allowing another location, or this is just someplace like Roys garage that he would have easy access to, its not a stretch to presume these were different days.)

Nyles mentions that Roy comes around every few daysor weeks? Considering the elaborate nature of the revenge schemes we see, its likely that the gaps between Roys reappearances are due to him planning, procuring the necessary supplies or observing Nyles habits so he can plot when and where to wreak havoc. Lets operate that his attacks happen at a frequency on the longer end of Nyles estimation, and Ill use the smallest definition of few as three. Theres also only so much he can accomplish in a day given that he wakes up in Irvine every morning, at best an hour and twenty minutes away. Well add twenty days of prep time to each of Roys revenge schemes and also account for the lead-up to the incident Sarah witnesses. That adds 125 days.

Then theres Nyles talking about the various sexual escapades hes had while trapped in the loop. We see a dispiriting hand-job from wedding barkeep Daisy, a hookup with barfly Darla, an unsuccessful attempt to woo the bride Tala and experimenting with groomsman Jerry. Simply what we see adds 4 days to the total.

When Sarah asks if Nyles has been having sex in the loop, he answers, I have [had sex with other people], but it takes a lot of work and I try to live my life with as little effort as possible. So, in addition to the day in which he succeeds, we have to take into account the fact that Nyles needs to work his way up to learning how to win over his conquests. Lets start with the baseline that it takes him 14 days to sleep with Sarah when hes not overtly manipulating her with accumulated knowledge (and is generally pretty lackadaisical about life). Ill be generous and say it takes 10 days, with effort, when he turns the charm on to bed each of these people. Im tempted to give him more for trying to get with Tala, the bride, but the jokiness of the attempt we see makes me think he didnt take the quest too seriously. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, but we can safely assume that the real time frame of what we see in the sex montage is more akin to 40 days.

I also contemplated that what I originally labeled Days 7-14, the montage of Sarah and Nyles nihilistically enjoying their shared fate in the loop, might have some hidden days associated with it. In particular, the scene in Day 10 where the duo bursts into the bar and does an elaborate choreography routine feels like it might have taken some time to learn. But the combination of seeing start practicing it before (on Day 7), Nyles skillful dance prowess seen on Day 1 and Max Barbakow pointing out that Sarah teaching him some moves implies that perhaps she has some pre-existing talent leads me to believe this is not too elaborately planned. For once, I wont overthink this one.

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 188 days (just over 6 months)

The scene lasts two minutes and spans six days that we see, but Sarah educating herself enough to come up with a quantum physics-based theory to escape the loop clearly lasts much, much longer. According to Andy Siara, one draft of the screenplay originally inserted a title card at the end of the montage to spell out just how long it takes her to accumulate the knowledge and show up ready to share with Nyles. This was ultimately jettisoned so early in the process that Siara was unable to recall how long they had said.

She gets probably multiple PhDs in that time, he speculated. How long does it take with someone with not even a passion or an interest, really, in quantum physics to get a PhD, or to force themselves to get multiple PhDs?

At the very least, Sarah has eclipsed the knowledge of Dr. Clifford V. Johnson, a USC physics professor who she video chats with to discuss her theory about how her plan would allow access to the indeterministic universe on the other side of the Cauchy horizon. Stumped, his reply is that it sounds like Sarah doesnt even need his help. Per Johnsons faculty page at USC, his educational background is only single PhD in addition to his BSc. If Wikipedia is correct, that education likely took him seven years to complete presuming his undergraduate education took four years. (This does not even factor in that Dr. Johnson has nearly three decades of teaching and research experience since completing his PhD in 1992.)

So, at the bare minimum, Sarah needs at least seven years worth of education in quantum physics to go toe-to-toe with Dr. Johnson. We can probably knock off a little bit of time because shes going to be laser-focused on physics and not spending time on general education credits that take up semesters worth a students college tenure. Sarah is also going to be on a bit of an accelerated trajectory since were led to believe this is all she is doing; its almost as if shes doing a degree in compressed summer school-like mode. When she wakes up at 9:40 A.M., per the time on her phone on Day 2, she quickly flees the resort grounds to evade Nyles detection and begins her studies at a restaurant off the premises until at least sundown (which would be roughly 4:46 P.M. on November 9). Lets say shes putting in 6-to-7 hour days of class every day, consecutively, and then doing any coursework

On Day 16, Sarah pulls up edX and surveys a row of four classes: Quantum Mechanics for Everyone, Plasmonics: From Fundamentals to Modern Applications, Applications of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Cryptography. Lets assume she takes all of these and takes the most time possible (which is still generous) as suggested in the course descriptions. That would be 454 hours, which would be at least 65 days of Sarahs time. So, lets extrapolate from there that every undergraduate class will be roughly 16 days of Sarahs life, knowing that some will take more and others will require less. To get a B.S. in Physics with a concentration in Applied Physics at Rice University, from whom she takes PHY 202, Sarah would need to take 15 classes. Therefore, to get her undergraduate degree, I reason it would take 240 days.

As for the PhD, it gets a little trickier given how much that degree is based on research, guided study and the production of a dissertation. But per Rice, it takes 90 credit hours to earn their PhD in Physics, roughly 33% more of a courseload. And since the level of complexity has jumped up, I think it would take her 20 days for each of her 20 classes. For her PhD to at least be somewhere in the ballpark of Dr. Johnson, Sarah spends 400 days earning her PhD in Physics.

Physics isnt the only thing Sarah learns in her extended vacation from Nyles, though. When she shows up to unveil her theory to him, she boasts an increased emotional intelligence as well. Siara suggested, You could factor that in as well, how long it would take to achieve some sense of enlightenment to not be bogged down by the petty shit? Barbakow compared her Zen state to the story of Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree, a Buddhist text in which the Buddha meditates under a tree to achieve a state of enlightenment. This took him 49 days, which Id say would be the bare minimum shed need separate from her academic pursuits to arrive where she is.

That brings the total time between Sarah snapping and Sarah being at peace to 689 days at the very least, just shy of two years.

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 877 days (almost 2.5 years)

Alright, now comes the toughest part of this task. Unlike Groundhog Day, theres a whole world of events in the time loop that happen well before the audience joins in. Nyles, whether its because of his alcoholism, his fatalism, or some combination of both, has long given up on marking accomplishments or time spent. When I asked the filmmakers if they, or Andy Samberg, approached the pre-Sarah period in the loop with any notions of how much time had passed, they said there was no agreed-upon number. So, what we have to go on are the clues we get from Nyles which are vague at best, fuzzy at worst.

For instance, on Day 1, Nyles cruises through the dance floor to make his way through Sarah with a precise finesse that implies he knows everyones exact positions and moves. I counted eight calibrated maneuvers; given his alcohol consumption and general lackadaisical attitude toward life, I think each of them take a day for him to learn and retain. So add 8 days.

Later on Day 1, Nyles leads Sarah to a window outside the room where his girlfriend Misty is receiving oral sex from the wedding officiant. Nyles professes, Theres not a world where they dont end up together, which would imply he knows from extensive experience that theres no way to stop her from getting with him. While we dont have much of a baseline of where their relationship was prior to the loop, Id say his indifference towards her that we see would suggest he tried for 30 days before realizing that their union was fated. (Ive luckily never faced the inevitability of a cheating partner, so if anyone wants to correct me here, feel free!)

On that same day, Nyles brilliantly times a pun to Sarah, telling her you dont need a leg up right as Misty moans hold my leg up! Its tough to tell in the moment whether its a joke played for her or an irony only perceptible to the audience, but Barbakow confirmed it was very much calculated. Hes the master of that universe, the director explained. He uses it to achieve whatever means that are going to get him off, either literally or figuratively. I dont think this adds another day, though, as he likely has the unimpeded version of their tryst memorized from the period in which he was more actively trying to thwart it.

On Day 2, Nyles knows the exact time of the earthquake that opens up the cave in which they enter the loop. He has no watch, phone or clock that will tell him the time he knows it intuitively. Id say that level of knowledge implies at least a year of pinpointing the quake and adapting to its daily shock.

On Day 3, Nyles mentions to Sarahs parents when she goes missing that she could be scared of melanoma, nanotech, round-the-clock surveillance, sauce. These are highly specific references, which leads me to think its too random to dismiss as a throwaway line. Maybe they are ways that Roy has targeted him? (I dont know about melanoma) Either way, lets add 4 days.

Nyles makes reference on Day 4 to his attempts to get out of the loop by taking his own life, saying Ive done a lot of suicides so many We dont get any concrete sense of how many times hes tried. Nyles knows to put his head in front of the airbag for an immediate death when Sarah attempts a vehicular death, and he makes reference twice to there being nothing worse than slowly dying in the ICU. Lets take those instances as at least three suicides and add on double the Groundhog Day total of nine suicides to add 21 days to the count. Its probably still an undercount, but given that Niles asks Misty to kill him (somewhat in jest) during the opening scene, it leads me to believe the impulse for suicidal ideation has not been entirely squelched.

On Day 5, Nyles makes memorable reference to a failed escape: One time I smoked a lot of crystal and made it all the way to Equatorial Guinea it was a huge waste of time. Given the effort and time this would take, rendering it impossible to combine with any other events, add 1 day.

When Nyles plays darts in the bar on Day 5, hes able to hit two bullseyes in darts flawlessly and only misses the mark on his third throw because Sarah interjects with her recollection of Roy. Its tempting to go the full Malcolm Gladwell/10,000 hours and assume Nyles has become a master of darts, but I think thats too generous. He doesnt need to be a master of an entire craft, just figure out the exact right spot from which to throw the darts and be able to replicate it flawlessly. Id say given Nyles predilection for alcohol, hes probably spent enough time playing darts in a bar that he wouldnt be as knew to the skill as Sarah is to physics. Lets add 60 days to the count, during which time hed become so familiar with the patrons and their positioning that he would know hes able to swipe a hat off the guy sitting near the pool table on his way out.

While Nyles is sick of Abe and Talas wedding by the time we meet him in the loop, its clearly because hes spent a ton of time there. When describing the day he brought Roy into the loop, Nyles mentions that this occurred before Id really acquainted myself with everyone at the wedding. This would imply that, to some extent, he gets to know all the guests to some extent. Based on wide shots of the wedding crowd, there appear to be 64 other people attending: 56 in the crowd, 3 groomsmen and bridesmaids, the couple and the officiant. Subtract Nyles from that count as well as his girlfriend Misty, and that makes 62 opportunities for acquaintance. While he might have known some of them before, Nyles does seem to be craving the socialization at least by the time he gets to know Roy since he bothers to wear a nice suit on that particular day. Lets be generous here and give him five days to know each person, adding 320 days to the count. (This would also explain how he knows all the words to the officiants homily during a cutaway shot on Day 5.)

On Day 6, Nyles is able to cycle through an entire argument with Misty where he can recite what shes going to say as shes saying it including her reaction to his being able to copy her. There are eight different lines, which I think hed have to pick up over the course of 8 days as he learns each consecutive response.

Later that day, he takes Sarah to his safehouse pool for the first time, mentioning that he knows the family who owns the home doesnt come back on November 9. That would mean hes spent a full day there and knows for a fact they wont return, adding 1 day to the count.

On Day 16, Nyles angrily reveals something big hes been hiding from Sarah: prior to her joining in the loop, they had in fact had sex. Oh, please, youve fucked me a thousand times, he mutters under his breath. All I had to do was bail you out with that ridiculous speech at the wedding, he says in reference to the speech we see him give on Day 1 and has likely given many times before. (I would say this is maybe the best version of it hes given, Barbakow said.) Its hard to imagine taking either of those statements too literally given his frustration in the moment. But what if we apply the American Pie 2 rule of three where you assume men exaggerate their sexual conquests by a factor of three? Thats 333 days where they have sex, plus you add 5 days for him figuring out how to crack the seduction element (5 days where he gets to know her like any other guest at the wedding have already been included in the count).

On Day 23, Nyles must crucially lean on a piece of personal information hes learned from shooting range operator Spuds in order to gain access to a mode of transportation that will get him to Sarah before she enters the cave to blow herself up. Its possible Nyles could have gleaned this from Day 6 when he and Sarah aim their fire at the picture posted on the target: the man who stole Spuds wife. But given the level of personal, precise detail hes able to give, Im inclined to believe this stems from a longer relationship where Spuds felt he could open up a little bit more. Lets give it 10 days.

And in the scene following the explosion in the cave, Nyles makes a mention that shocks Sarah: prior to the loop, he had a shaggy dog. I refuse to believe hes the kind of person who didnt try to bring a good boy back, so Im going to add 5 days for some attempts to get the canine companionship.

From these little nuggets, often little more than just a line or a gesture from Nyles, I think we can safely point to at least 1,171 days that he spends in the time loop over three years prior to Sarah entering the loop. None of this takes into account what are likely numerous days in which he contents himself entirely by doing nothing by the pool, but alas, theres nothing in the text of Palm Springs that would provide any basis for estimation. (There are no meaning-altering deleted scenes, either I asked!)

Id be tempted to leave it there, but theres one element that Barbakow and Siara highlighted for me that overrides all these moments

In a crucial scene of emotional rapport between Nyles and Sarah on Day 15, she asks what he did for work before getting stuck in the loop. He pauses, stares blankly for an uncomfortable beat and confesses that hes honestly forgotten. Given his frequent inaccessibility, its tough to tell if hes being sincere in this moment or stonewalling. But according to Siara, Nyles is not lying. He has to have been in there long enough for him not to remember what his life was like prior to this, he told me.

While age and time is likely a big part of this, I think another component that cannot be overlooked is the potential effect that Nyles drinking has. Not to get on a soapbox here, but there is some research showing some links between excessive alcohol consumption and memory loss. A 2017 study by Massachusetts General Hospital found that in general, drinking to excessmore than 21 drinks in a week for four or five yearsis bad for brain health in most individuals, with potential symptoms including memory loss. Forgetting your job is a pretty big one, even though it might not be too much of a stretch if you havent thought about what it was in years, so I wont err as conservatively as I usually do in my estimates. The overarching time encompassing all of Nyles loop life is at least 1,826 days. (I guess I could have just led with this, but wheres the fun in that?)

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 2,703 days (almost 7.5 years)

You might have noticed that I declined to weigh in on whether the final two scenes in the films chronology add to the total. Here is the part where I punt: I dont know.

In my conversation with Barbakow and Siara, they planted a seed of doubt in my head that maybe we shouldnt take those scenes quite at face value. Its easy to assume that since the family returns to the safehouse, it must be November 10. But do we know if Sarah actually got the goat to break the loop? As they enter the cave, Nyles asks her if she was bluffing about testing on the goat, and her response of too late, youve already committed does not inspire full confidence. There are just enough wrinkles to raise my suspicions that everything might not be as seamless as it appears. (And its also possible, given the innuendo of her final line to Sarah, that June Squibbs Nana might be somehow involved in the loop herself I cannot be dragged down that rabbit hole as well!)

This uncertainty is not meant to imply laziness on the part of the filmmakers, to be clear. Max and I exhausted ourselves talking about it, Siara said when discussing how they built the framework for the films time loop structure. We know the rules of this world like the back of our hands because I really did not want anyone to be able to poke holes in it.

This isnt a post speculating about the science of the ending of Palm Springs because thats a different question and post entirely. I suspect it might have something to do with the concept raised by Sarah, the Cauchy horizon the spot where determinism breaks down, where the past no longer determines the future, per a UC Berkley blog post but dont take it from the guy who couldnt handle a month of high school honors physics. And even if my bearings of interpreting it are off by a bit, whats a day or twos difference after such extensive guesstimation?

It comes to the final question of did the cave work or not, but we always wanted to get to that point where it doesnt matter, Siara said of the ending. Because what matters most is when they [Nyles and Sarah] walk into that cave hand in hand and decide to take that plunge together. MY FINAL COUNT REMAINS AT 2,703 DAYS for the loop, less because I trust the sketchy science and more because I believe in the power of people to change themselves and each other. Without this emotional pull, there would have been no inspiration for me to put such obsessive devotion into cataloguing Palm Springs in the first place.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

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How Much Time Actually Passes in the 'Palm Springs' Time Loop? - Decider

The Diversity and Greatness of Manhattan Project Alumni – Inside Science News Service

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

A selection of women and people of color who achieved remarkable things in science after working on the Manhattan Project.

(Inside Science) -- The Manhattan Project wasnt only an endeavor of white men. Women and people of color played pivotal roles, despite discrimination and systematic barriers. Many members of these marginalized groups held nonresearch positions such as clerical work, construction, and maintaining and operating facilities. Some became renowned scientists -- both during and after World War II.

There is no record of any Black employees working at Los Alamos during the war. Other sites such as Oak Ridge only hired Black workers for low-level positions and forced them to live under far worse conditions than their white counterparts. Only a few Black people -- all of them men -- were ever hired to work on the Manhattan Project as scientists or technicians. Several other racial groups were also conspicuously absent.

White women had more opportunities. At that time, most research institutions had nepotism rules that forbade hiring both members of a married couple. Scientists often married other scientists, and the husbands career almost always took precedence, so such rules were a major barrier keeping women out of academia. But faced with labor shortages and an urgent need for scientific talent, many Manhattan Project sites actively recruited female scientists along with their husbands, resulting in a female scientific labor force hundreds strong.

After the war, the diverse Manhattan Project alumni went on to many and varied achievements, from making Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about the nature of atoms to developing new medicines for deadly diseases.

Isabella Karle was a chemist who worked to purify plutonium at the University of Chicagos Metallurgical Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project. Karle and her husband Jerome left the Met Lab before the war was over to conduct their own research.

Karle invented and built an improved electron diffraction apparatus for identifying the molecular structure of gaseous chemicals. But not all molecules could be vaporized. To analyze chemicals in solid states, Karle developed improved methods of X-ray crystallography. Her methods confirmed her husbands theoretical work and solved the structures of biological molecules such as proteins -- an essential part of drug development.

When Karles husband won the 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry for work they did together, he was upset that she was not included. She had to convince him to accept the prize, according to her New York Times obituary. But Karle won many awards of her own, including the National Medal of Science.

Mathematics prodigy J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. started college at age 13 and earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago at age 19. He was one of the few Black scientists to work on the Manhattan Project, studying fissionable materials at the Metallurgical Laboratory. He wasnt told the purpose of his research until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

When the rest of his team was transferred to Oak Ridge, Jim Crow laws prevented Wilkins Jr. from joining them, so he took a post with Eugene Wigner working on nuclear reactors. After the war, he conducted research on optics and nuclear energy, and developed mathematical models and shielding techniques for gamma radiation.

Later, Wilkins Jr. launched Howard Universitys mathematics doctoral program. He received many awards and honors, including the U.S. Armys Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. He also served as president of the American Nuclear Society and as a council member for the American Mathematical Society.

Floy Agnes "Aggie" Lee was the daughter of a Pueblo Indian man and a German American woman. She learned to fly planes in college in hopes of joining the Womens Airforce Service Pilots. After graduating with a biology degree, she took a job at the Los Alamos drawing blood from researchers for testing. She witnessed the effects of radiation poisoning firsthand when two of the researchers she worked with were exposed during an accident.

She became friends and tennis partners with Enrico Fermi. His identity was kept secret from her for security reasons, and she was astonished when she finally learned who he was. "I said, 'Oh, I cant believe that,'" she recalled in an interview for Voices of the Manhattan Project. "I was beating him in tennis every time."

After the war, she worked at Argonne National Lab and earned a doctorate in zoology. She then spent many years studying the effects of radiation on living cells and chromosomes. She advocated for science education and helped found the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Legendary physicist Chien-Shiung Wu was nicknamed "the first lady of physics" and "the queen of nuclear research." She emigrated to the U.S. from China in 1936 and completed her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1944 she went to Columbia University in New York to work on uranium enrichment for the Manhattan Project. Her contributions included improving the design for Geiger counters.

When the first large-scale plutonium reactor at Hanford shut down shortly after researchers tried to fire it up, Wu traced the problem to the presence of the xenon isotope Xe-135.

Wu later made many important advances in nuclear physics and even contributed to the understanding of sickle-cell anemia. She devised the experiment that disproved a supposed natural law known as conservation of parity, confirming theoretical work by Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. Lee and Yang received a Nobel Prize for the discovery, but Wus role was not recognized. She did win many other honors, including the National Medal of Science, and became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society.

Samuel Massie Jr. faced many hurdles of discrimination, but he didnt let it stop him from making lifesaving discoveries. He studied chemistry in part because he wanted to find a cure for his fathers asthma, and during his career, he worked on treatments for malaria, herpes, gonorrhea, meningitis, schizophrenia and cancer. He also developed foams to protect people from nerve gas.

When the University of Arkansas denied him admittance as an undergraduate due to his race, he attended Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College, graduating summa cum laude at age 18. Iowa State University accepted him as a doctoral student but forbade him from living on campus or using the same lab as white students.

While Massie was working on his doctorate, a member of the draft board in Arkansas refused to renew his draft deferment because of his race. Massie asked for help from Henry Gilman, who recruited him into the Manhattan Project converting uranium isotopes into usable liquids.

After the war, Massie Jr. became the first Black president of the Oklahoma Academy of Science and the first Black professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and later won an award from the White House.

Maria Goeppert Mayer was descended from six consecutive generations of university professors; she made it seven. She emigrated to the U.S. from Germany after completing her doctorate in quantum mechanics in 1930.

She was forced to take unpaid research positions for years due to nepotism rules that prevented her from being hired by the same institutions where her husband, chemist Joseph Edward Mayer, worked. That finally changed in 1942 when Mayer accepted a part-time job at Columbia University working on the Manhattan Project. She soon became the leader of a team of 20 researchers and technicians working to separate uranium isotopes.

After the bombs dropped in Japan, she worked part time at the University of Chicago, continuing research she started with Edward Teller during the war. She also held a part-time position at Argonne National Laboratory. She finally became a full-time paid professor at the University of California, San Diego in 1960.

Mayer is most famous for her shell model of atomic nuclei, which explains why atoms with certain "magic numbers" of protons or neutrons are especially stable. The discovery earned her part of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics.

Inside Science would like to thank Alex Wellerstein, Vincent Intondi and Ruth Howes for providing information used in this article. For further reading about the people featured and other women and people of color who worked on the Manhattan Project, please see:

"Their Day in the Sun" by Ruth H. Howes & Caroline L. HerzenbergThe Atomic Heritage Foundation and Voices of the Manhattan ProjectBlackpast.orgThe Maria Goeppert Mayer biographical memoir at the National Academy of SciencesThe obituary for Samuel Massie by Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb in the Washington PostThe obituary of J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. by Ronald E. Mickens in Physics TodayThe obituary of Isabella Karle by Kenneth Chang in the New York TimesThe biography of Chien-Shiung Wu at the Manhattan Project National Historic Park

For more stories, videos and infographics related to Inside Science's coverage of the far-reaching ways that the Manhattan Project influenced science and society, visit our page: Seventy-Five Years After Trinity.

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No Time? The Universe Follows a Clock of Its Own, Find Scientists – News18

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Image for representation. Credits: Dark/Netflix.

For a human, the smallest unit of time is a second.

However, it seems like the same does not stand true for the universe. According to a new study, scientists believe that the smallest length of time might be as tiny as a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. It has been suggested that the universe might have a fundamental clock that might be ticking faster than expected.

According to a team of physicists, time might be the result of a physical process. The study was published in the Physics Review Letters on June 19, 2020.

When asked about what exactly can be defined as time, Martin Bojowald, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, told Live Science, We don't know. We know that things change, and we describe that change in terms of time.

In physics, time is described by two clashing theories. While quantum mechanics describes it as, Time is just there. Its fixed. Its a background, according to physicist Flaminia Giacomini of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. However, the general theory of relativity describes time in a different way altogether.

The scientists believe that studying different mechanisms and combining them all together, including fundamental clocks, might prove helpful in formulating a new theory about the concept of time.

Bojowald and his team have claimed that the ticks of two identically built atomic clocks would never be completely similar. This allows researchers to establish that time has a fundamental nature.

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No Time? The Universe Follows a Clock of Its Own, Find Scientists - News18

The Fed’s Independence Helped It Save the US Economy in 2008 the CDC Needs the Same Authority Today – Nextgov

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

The image of scientists standing beside governors, mayors or the president has become common during the pandemic. Even the most cynical politician knows this public health emergency cannot be properly addressed without relying on the scientific knowledge possessed by these experts.

Yet, ultimately, U.S. government health experts have limited power. They work at the discretion of the White House, leaving their guidance subject to the whims of politicians and them less able to take urgent action to contain the pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines only to later revise them after the White House intervened. The administration has also undermined its top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, over his blunt warnings that the pandemic is getting worse a view that contradicts White House talking points. And most recently, the White House stripped the CDC of control of coronavirus data, alarming health experts who fear it will be politicized or withheld.

In the realm of monetary policy, however, there is an agency with experts trusted to make decisions on their own in the best interests of the U.S. economy: the Federal Reserve. As I describe in my recent book, Stewards of the Market, the Feds independence allowed it to take politically risky actions that helped rescue the economy during the financial crisis of 2008.

Thats why I believe we should give the CDC the same type of authority as the Fed so that it can effectively guide the public through health emergencies without fear of running afoul of politicians.

The Paradox of Expertise

There is a paradox inherent in the relationship between political leaders and technical experts in government.

Experts have the training and skill to apply scientific knowledge in complex biological and economic systems, yet democratically elected political leaders may overrule or ignore their advice for ill or good.

This happened in May when the CDC, the federal agency charged with controlling the spread of disease, removed advice regarding the dangers of singing in church choirs from its website. It did not do so because of new evidence. Rather, it was because of political pressure from the White House to water down the guidance for religious groups. Similarly, the White House undermined the CDCs guidance on school reopenings and has pressured it to revise them. So far, it seems the CDC has rebuffed the request.

The ability of elected leaders to ignore scientists or the scientists acquiescence to policies they believe are detrimental to public welfare is facilitated by many politicians penchant for confident assertion of knowledge and the scientists trained reluctance to do so.

Compare Faucis repeated comment that there is much we dont know about the virus with President Donald Trumps confident assertion that we have it totally under control.

Experts with Independence

Given these constraints on technical expertise, the performance of the Fed in the financial crisis of 2008 offers an informative example that may be usefully applied to the CDC today.

The Federal Reserve is not an executive agency under the president, though it is chartered and overseen by Congress. It was created in 1913 to provide economic stability, and its powers have expanded to guard against both depression and crippling inflation.

At its founding, the structure of the Fed was a political compromise designed make it independent within the government in order to de-politicize its economic policy decisions. Today its decisions are made by a seven-member board of governors and a 12-member Federal Open Market Committee. The members, almost all Ph.D. economists, have had careers in academia, business and government. They come together to analyze economic data, develop a common understanding of what they believe is happening and create policy that matches their shared analysis. This group policymaking is optimal when circumstances are highly uncertain, such as in 2008 when the global financial system was melting down.

The Fed was the lead actor in preventing the systems collapse and spent several trillion dollars buying risky financial assets and lending to foreign central banks decisions that were pivotal in calming financial markets but would have been much harder or may not have happened at all without its independent authority.

The Feds independence is sufficiently ingrained in our political culture that its chair can have a running disagreement with the president yet keep his job and authority.

Putting Experts at the Wheel

A health crisis needs trusted experts to guide decision-making no less than an economic one does. This suggests the CDC or some re-imagined version of it should be made into an independent agency.

Like the Fed, the CDC is run by technical experts who are often among the best minds in their fields. Like the Fed, the CDC is responsible for both analysis and crisis response. Like the Fed, the domain of the CDC is prone to politicization that may interfere with rational response. And like the Fed, the CDC is responsible for decisions that affect fundamental aspects of the quality of life in the United States.

Were the CDC independent right now, we would likely see a centralized crisis management effort that relies on the best science, as opposed to the current patchwork approach that has failed to contain the outbreak nationally. We would also likely see stronger and consistent recommendations on masks, social distancing and the safest way to reopen the economy and schools.

Independence will not eliminate the paradox of technical expertise in government. The Fed itself has at times succumbed to political pressure. And Trump would likely try to undermine an independent CDCs legitimacy if its policies conflicted with his political agenda as he has tried to do with the central bank.

But independence provides a strong shield that would make it much more likely that when political calculations are at odds with science, science wins.

Mitchel Y. Abolafia is aprofessor of public affairs and policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Fed's Independence Helped It Save the US Economy in 2008 the CDC Needs the Same Authority Today - Nextgov

Heres Your Personalised July 2020 Tarot Reading by the VICE Fortuneteller – VICE

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

This article originally appeared on VICE ASIA.

Pick-A-Card is a monthly interactive tarot reading by the VICE Fortuneteller. There's really not much to it. Look at the cards, pick one, and find out where life could take you this month. Ready?

Don't go beyond the line before picking.

Resistance Is Futile

You may be in a period in your life where you feel trapped due to the circumstances happening around you. The Universe is waiting for you to make a major shift in your life but you must first acknowledge the trapped emotion you currently have. This trapped emotion needs to be released and forgiving yourself is the very first step for major transformations.

You may be in a hurry to make the necessary changes in your life. Understand that it will happen in Divine Timing. It may be fast and drastic or it might happen slowly. Just know that changes are happening at the right time and that how you respond to these changes will create a series of new karmic cycles.

Its time to stop holding on to things that no longer serve you. Your resistance is futile and its time to close that major chapter in your life you so desperately cling on to and start a new one. How will you react to this shift? Will you deny these changes or will you welcome it with open arms?

Be sure to be grateful for your past experiences. Look forward and approach changes as gracefully as you can.

Middle: Three of Pentacles reversed and Validation

Lead With Kindness

The energies around you may not be as cooperative as you hope for them to be, leading you to micromanage your team. The environment may be susceptible to disrespect due to chaotic events that are happening.

Oftentimes, there are misunderstandings that cause more irritation between people. Avoid the need to control and allow trust to be the foundation of a good team. This is a sign that if things arent working out, its time to reassess and change certain systems so that it can benefit everyone involved.

This is not the time to think every man for himself. Approach the situation with a more collaborative spirit. You must first seek to understand, then to be understood.

Be the first to send out love when someone on your team is doing well. Leading with kindness will motivate the people around you more. Whether you are the leader or the follower, you can help validate people about their roles. Be generous in giving out compliments and be more frugal when giving out criticisms. You will never regret being kind.

Right: Queen of Pentacles and Rest

Celebrating Through Rest

You have worked very hard towards your personal growth and are now ready to harvest the fruits of your labour. Your material wealth is increasing and, naturally, your general lifestyle is also elevating. Even so, now, more than ever, you are being asked to make more practical choices to continue your path towards independence.

Just because you are now reaching a higher level in terms of your financial independence, that doesnt mean you need to take on more burdens right away. Remember that you still deserve to rest. Resting can be in the form of taking a break or setting aside time for things you want to do.

When you are able to nurture yourself, you are also able to nurture the people around you. Make sure that before helping others, your needs are met first.

This is a timeless general reading for the collective conscious. Take the bits and pieces that make sense for you. If this reading does not resonate, simply let it go.

Decks: Rider-Waite Smith Deck and Inklings

Lois Veloso, also known as the Millennial Manghuhula (Millennial Fortuneteller), has been practising tarot reading since 2016. She believes that the tarot is a tool used for understanding things beyond the surface and promotes self-awareness. Shes based in Manila and loves topics on angels, spiritual healing, and self-development.

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Heres Your Personalised July 2020 Tarot Reading by the VICE Fortuneteller - VICE

Instead of saving a total sum for retirement, I started thinking about how much I want to ‘earn’ monthly and it made me reassess the way I invest -…

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Danzig

Personal Finance Insider writes about products, strategies, and tips to help you make smart decisions with your money. We may receive a small commission from our partners, like American Express, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

March 2020 is a month most of us will never forget. That was the month when the reality of the coronavirus set in across the United States and millions of Americans were ordered to stay home. As tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and nearly every American was somehow affected by the pandemic, the stock market experienced its worst drop in decades.

I have plenty of emergency savings and don't plan to tap into my retirement portfolio for at least 30 years, so a short-term drop didn't shake my long-term investment plan. However, it did have me thinking about the best ways to build a resilient portfolio that will meet my cash flow needs during my golden years.

Here's how I'm thinking about building a portfolio focused on cash flow before and during retirement.

If you've read enough investment books and articles, you've likely come across the statistic that the S&P 500 goes up about 10% every year on average. But it doesn't feel like that on days when you see your investment account drop by hundreds or thousands of dollars at once.

It's important to avoid the urge to sell when the markets fall, as you've already experienced a major loss and would likely miss out on a subsequent upswing. The investors who tend to get the best performance over time are the ones who follow a steady investment plan and add to their portfolio on a regular schedule over time.

But that doesn't mean a jolt in your portfolio shouldn't stop you from assessing your current investment strategy and if you should make any small tweaks to meet your long-term goals.

Most people set a target savings level for retirement. A goal of $500,000, $1 million, $2 million or more might be a reasonable goal for you to reach your desired level of financial independence.

While these types of goals can be valuable, they are not the only way to think about your retirement goal. Instead of a fixed asset value, consider a goal around your monthly retirement cash flow. Perhaps you want to bring in $3,000, $5,000, or another amount per month.

If you know how much you want to "earn" every month in retirement, you can work on a plan for multiple income sources to fund your retirement needs.

Investments come in many forms. Here are some ways you can build income sources for retirement that produce a steady and reliable cash flow:

If you want to earn $100,000 per year in retirement without tapping into the principal balance, you would need a $2 million portfolio that pays you 5% per year. Depending on how much you want to earn and your expected rate of return over time, you can calculate exactly how much you would have to save and invest to meet your goal.

There's no need to let a temporary economic situation derail your long-term plans. But it is OK to review your plan and make any needed updates to make sure you're still in line with your retirement cash flow goals.

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Instead of saving a total sum for retirement, I started thinking about how much I want to 'earn' monthly and it made me reassess the way I invest -...

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