Monthly Archives: August 2021

The U.S. Navy is rebuilding the Littoral Combat Ship USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul (LCS-21) after a retrofit of a critical component in the ships propulsion system. The same issue that was repaired on the Minneapolis-Saint Paul affects the propulsion systems on all twelve of the other Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) that have been launched to date. The problem-prone ships are now facing a lengthy and costly design fix process in addition to some being decommissioned far earlier than projected. To make matters worse, the Navy announced this week that it will likely take years to make the planned fixes on the rest of the Freedom-class LCSs.

This week, LCS deputy program manager Howard Berkof told USNI News that the retrofit as currently planned could take years to implement throughout the fleet. The issue aboard the USS Minneapolis Saint-Paul and other LCS concerns the bearings of a critical combining gear between the ships gas turbines and their diesel engines. The turbines can be used to provide extra power for the ships water jet propulsion systems, allowing them to reach speeds of over 40 knots, a core requirement of the ships during development. The ships can only reach between 10 and 12 knots with their diesel engines alone.

The bearings aren't easy to replace due to the placement of the combining gear deep within the design's architecture. Its a very complex fix to replace the bearings on the combining gear. Its a very tight space, theres a lot of interferences that have to be removed, said Berkof this week, according to USNI News. The Navy, primary contractor Lockheed Martin, and the combining gears German manufacturer RENK AG have proposed three different methods of repairing the gear, one of which involves cutting through the hull in the middle of the ship.

The method used to repair the Minneapolis-Saint Paul involved dropping the gear into the ship's mission bay and removing it through a door in the aft of the hull. The ship will now undergo sea trials to determine the effectiveness of the design fix. The commissioning of the Minneapolis-Saint Paulhas been delayed due to the defect, and a date has still yet to be set for the occasion.

The Navy issued a statement earlier this year stating it would halt deliveries of Freedom-class ships until it solved the combining gear issue, and that it had already taken preventative measures to prevent damage to relevant LCSs already launched that are still awaiting the retrofit. Those measures seem to largely consist of restricting the ships to using only one of their two power systems, either the gas turbines or the diesel engines, but not both.

It also remains unclear who will ultimately bear the brunt of the costs associated with replacing the bearings in the combining gears aboard the LCSs. Discussions between Lockheed Martin and the Navy are ongoing to determine the exact amount the service will contribute. However, the Navys Howard Berkof told Defense News that there is a latent defect clause in the contracts with Lockheed Martin that states that the costs would be shared on such fixes. We are in discussions with Lockheed Martin about, heres what the contract says, heres what we believe is the situation, and were talking with them about how we come through that, Berkof said.

In the meantime, the issue has already become so severe that Navy has already laid out a timeline for decommissioning two relatively young Freedom-class ships, USS Detroit (LCS-7) and USS Little Rock (LCS-9), that have had particularly bad issues with their combining gears. The service plans to decommission the USS Freedom on September 30, 2021, while Fort Worth, Detroit, and Little Rock are slated for March 31, 2022.

Congress previously approved the decommissioning of USS Freedom (LCS-1) and USS Independence (LCS-2), but blocked the Navy's attempt to rid itself of USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) and USS Coronado (LCS-4). USS Independence was decommissioned on July 29, 2021, and the Navy is once again attempting to rid itself of LCS-3 and LCS-4 once again in addition to the troublesome Detroit and Little Rock. The first four LCSs do not share a common configuration with later ships, and the service is of the position that it is not worth the cost to bring them up to the latest standards. As a result, LCSs 1-4 have been relegated to training roles.

The comments made by the Navy's deputy LCS program manager this week are only the latest grief the service's troublesome Littoral Combat Ships have faced. The LCS program, as a whole, has so far failed to live up to the promises the Navy made when it began, and has only led to ships that are exorbitantly expensive to operate despite their relatively limited capability sets.

The upcoming sea trials for the USSMinneapolis-Saint Paul will likely help determine the fate of the beleaguered littoral combat ship as well as the rest of the Navy's ill-fated Freedom-class ships, which have yet to prove themselves worthy of their price tags or fulfill even a portion of their hoped-for potential.

Contact the author: Brett@TheDrive.com

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Critical Fix Will Take Years To Reach All Navy Freedom Class Littoral Combat Ships - The Drive

In a short conversation with a man Ive known for decades I mentioned how hard it can sometimes be to conjure up a topic for this column; he agreed by saying if such a task were left to him, hed probably get run out of town. While appreciating the humor of the remark, I also took it as a warning; there are subjects which when put forth to the body politic can cause intense emotions and responses. And at the present time in America emotional responses seem to rule the day.

Theories abound as to how much media influences our lives and guides the way we ultimately live our lives; and media has been around a long while in the United States. If one looks at the roots of American media, it must be said that the public newspaper is the granddaddy of all the venues to come, with radio, television and the internet to follow over the next 200 years. To say that early American newspapers maintained strict adherence to objectivity, truth and accuracy would be falling in line with the acceptance they did; they did not, not all of them, anyway.

As in other areas, the new Republic adopted ideas spawned by the French Revolution, notably the guarantees of liberty, freedom of speech and press, and self-governance. And while Americans reveled in this freedom of publication without censure, it was a Frenchman who warned about that freedom.

Alexis de Toqueville was a 26-year-old and well-educated, erudite French historian when in 1831 he traveled extensively throughout America. Four years later he published his observations in a two-volume tome entitled Democracy in America; still the most quoted book in the United States and a staple in studies of American history.

Of our media of that time he wrote: In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates, supporting the idea that a society is held together by a free press providing accurate description of current events and issues, but such freedom also had its perils. And when de Tocqueville cited that The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people, he understood that the human element would greatly influence the American landscape. He was correct.

In university communications studies, the human element with the most influence is known as gatekeepers; these are the people who, at different levels, make the final decisions as to what their respective media genres put out to the public. Gatekeepers are extremely influential, it is their choices of what, and how, current events will appear to that portion of the public that ascribes to their media outlets.

These choices, what the public takes in, leads us to another man known in the world of media, Marshall McLuhan. A Canadian philosopher and media pundit, McLuhan coined the adage the media is the message in the 1960s, while his overall work requires deep sociological and philosophical study, the base message is that we react to what our senses take in; and those reactions reverberate through societies and cultures.

This has been true in all phases of Americas past when media compelled the masses to some sort of action: revolt against an oppressive monarchy, enlist to aid allies at war, mobilize when attacked by a foreign power, march, rally or demonstrate both sides of issues, such as racial equality or participation in unpopular wars.

We are bombarded with rhetoric and images by myriad network and social media outlets on a continuous basis with current emphasis on political and public divisiveness regarding our democratic laws, processes and traditions. The political landscape of the past half decade saw media influence the body politic to acts of extreme measure; while I have no statistics to support this claim, I would venture to say that in the past 36 months there have been, per capita, more armed Americans in the streets than any time since the Civil War years. It was, and continues to be, a dangerous and decisive time in our history.

Five decades ago McLuhan wrote: The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation we tend to always attach ourselves to objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backward into the future. Suburbia lives imaginarily in Bonanza-land. His words support what we saw recently when the word again was used in a slogan supporting a political movement and planted the desire in many to somehow return American society to a past they viewed as the true nature of the country.

But globalization precludes any nation from going backward; the world is just too technically connected to allow any regress to those who wish to stay economically viable and socially and culturally secure.

How the present political dramas will play out is of course not ours to know, but I offer this scenario for consideration: take a group of 300 12-year-olds of all segments of American society (in a country of some 331 million people this would be quite doable), use an important current issue, well use the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and give them one hour of video and still images, with audio, of what took place in the U.S. Capitol Building on that day.

Then give them one hour of definition of the word insurrection with examples from history, both ours and foreign countries, and then give them one hour each of how both political parties view the events of that day.

Finally, at the end of the project ask them this question: Did the actions of Americans that day qualify as insurrection against their country? My bet is their answers would tell us a lot about how America will perform on the world stage in the next couple of decades.

Take care. Peace.

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Funny Papers Again Column | Let Freedom of the Press Reign, but Dont Let It Rule - King City Rustler

Amazon has quite a bunch of deals and offers for the Great Freedom Festival. It will offer smartphones and accessories with up to 40% off. You can also get electronics and accessories with up to 60% off during this sale. TVs and appliances will be available with up to 55% off, and home and kitchen appliances will also be discounted up to 70%. Theres a lot to look forward to so weve rounded up some of the best deals for the Amazon Great Freedom Festival sale.

Apple iPad Air 2020

The Apple iPad Air 2020 is also part of this sale with a discounted price of 47,900. This is for the base Wi-Fi-only model. The iPad Air 2020 comes in a Wi-Fi + cellular model as well. The iPad Air 2020 stands out for its refreshed design with sharp edges, and the Touch ID button. It features a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, A14 Bionic chip, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi 6.

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Fujifilm Instax Mini 11 Instant Camera (Lilac Purple) Gift BoxThe Fujifilm Instax Mini 11 gift box is available for 5,699 during the Great Freedom Festival. In this gift box you get the Instax Mini 11 in Lilac Purple, 10 Instax Mini films, Instax photo bunting which is a set of clips to hang the photos. It also comes with a photo album, batteries for the instant camera, and a camera strap.

Fire TV Stick

Amazon devices including Echo smart speakers, Fire TV and Kindle are available with up to 45% off. The latest Fire TV Stick is available at 2,799 after a discount from its original price of 4,999. The Fire TV Stick 4K has also been discounted to 4,799 from 5,999 for this sale.

Echo Show 5

The Echo Show 5 smart display that retails for 8,999 is available for 4,499 during the Great Freedom Festival sale. It has a 5.5-inch display with support for music streaming apps like Amazon Prime Music, Spotify, and Apple Music. The Echo Show 5 can also be used to watch movies and TV shows from Prime Video and Netflix.

Oppo Band Style

Oppos fitness band is available at 1,999 after a discount from its original price of 2,799. The Oppo Band Style comes with a SpO2 monitor to measure oxygen saturation. It is also claimed to last for up to 12 days on a single charge. The fitness tracker has a 1.1-inch AMOLED display and is water and dust resistant. It comes in two colour options of black and a vanilla style strap.

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Amazon says that Prime Day 2021 was the best sale for small businesess, 1.26 lakh sellers participatedAmazon brought in $2 billion less than analysts expected, even with a second-quarter Prime Day

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Amazon Great Freedom Festival: Top offers and deals to look forward to - Business Insider India

By Nandita Bose (Reuters) Vice President Kamala Harris will focus on defending international rules in the South China Sea, strengthening U.S. regional leadership,and expanding security cooperation during her trip to Vietnam and Singapore this month, a senior White House official told Reuters.

Harris will be the first U.S. vice president to visit Vietnam as Washington seeks to bolster international support to counter Chinas growing global influence.

The U.S. official said Washington saw both countries as critical partners given their locations, the size of their economies, trade ties, and security partnerships on issues such as the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety.

Former U.S. foe Vietnam has been a vocal opponent of Chinas South China Sea claims. Countries in the region largely welcome the U.S. military presence there in the face of Chinas militarization of the waterway and its vast coastguard and fishing fleet.

We do not want to see any country dominate that region or take advantage of the power situation to compromise the sovereignty of others, the White House official said.

The Vice President is going to underscore that there should be a free passage for trade, throughout the South China Sea, and no single country should disrespect the right of others.

The U.S. Navy has maintained a steady pattern of freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and near Taiwan but these appear to have done little to discourage Beijing.

Harris trip will follow one by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week to Hanoi, where he sought to nudge forward steadily deepening security ties.

It will also follow high-level talks between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and senior Chinese diplomats last month that did little to ease deeply strained ties.

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will seek to reinforce the U.S. message that it is serious about engaging with Southeast Asia to push back against China by joining a series of regional meetings held virtually.

Addressing a virtual session of the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said high-level U.S. visits were greatly valued as they showed Washington knew it had substantial interests to protect and advance in the region.

However, he expressed concern about deteriorating U.S.-China relations and said many countries hoped to see this checked because many U.S. friends and allies wish to preserve their extensive ties with both powers.

Its vital for the U.S. and China to strive to engage each other to head off a clash, which would be disastrous for both sides, and the world, he said.

The White House official said the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccinations, and quality of vaccines would also be a top priority for Harris.

Last month, Washingtonshipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam, bringing total donations to Hanoi to 5 million.

Harris is due in Singapore on Aug. 22. She arrives in Vietnam on Aug. 24 and departs on Aug. 26.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore, Editing by David Brunnstrom and Nick Zieminski, Reuters)

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Kamala Harris To Focus On Freedom Of Navigation At Sea - gcaptain.com

So far this year, freshman Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has outraised all of her GOP colleagues in the House, raking in $4.53 million in the first six months of 2021. (Among congressional Republicans, only Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have raised more.) Yes, Greene is paying quite a bit to raise those funds, but it remains a staggering amount for an incumbent in a safe red district, especially when most of it has come from small donors. What on earth do people think theyre buying with that money?

One thing her donors are definitely not buying is a coherent political message. Last week, after being suspended by Twitter for 12 hours for falsely claiming that there had been 6,000 vax-related deaths, she held a press conference in which she repeatedly contradicted herself, arguing at one point that the number was actually higher, while also appearing to agree with her colleague Steve Scalise that the vaccine is safe and effective.

Asked by reporters for her actual beliefs, Greene deflected, embracing instead the mantra of conspiracy theorists everywhere: Do your own research. I encourage people to make up their own mind, she said at one point, before echoing a few minutes later the old conspiracy theorists standard that someone should be looking into all of this: You see, theres a lot of things happening and I think we should analyze all of it before governments and schools and businesses say, Absolutely, you have to take this vaccine.

What Greene is offeringand what her supporters are buyingis not an alternative theory but rather freedom: the freedom to disregard acknowledged authorities like Anthony Fauci, and the freedom to come to your own conclusions. Although we tend to think of conspiracy theories as dark, paranoid, and unsettling, for the conspiracist they can be quite liberating, because they free you from having to accept things you dont want to believe.

Writing about rumor and urban legend in America, the sociologists Gary Alan Fine and Patricia A. Turner borrow a phrase from the French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, who has said that some ideas are simply good to think. That is, we subscribe to some ideas not necessarily because theyre true (or defensible) but because the simple act of believing them brings a kind of reassurance and pleasure. As Fine and Turner note, urban legends and conspiracy theories are good to think because they connect to a powerful cultural logic that makes sense to narrators and audiences. Plausibility is key. Rumor permits us to project our emotional fantasies on events that we can claim really did happen, protecting ourselves from the implications of our beliefs. By rejecting the dominant narrative without providing a substantive replacement, Greene offers her audience the freedom to cherry-pick sources and devise a narrative that best fits their biases, disregarding anything that collides with their worldview.

Read: America is getting unvaccinated people all wrong

The historian Philip Deloria once described Americanness as a particular working out of a desire to preserve stability and truth while enjoying absolute, anarchic freedom. It is this impulse for irresponsible freedomembedded within the framework of a stable social-service netthat Greene and her cohorts crave. They want the freedom to not wear a mask with the assurance that theyll be well taken care of at a hospital if they do get sick. And they want not only their access to the social safety net protected, but also their access to social media and the connection to American culture that comes with it. Greenes outrage over her Twitter suspension, beyond being an obvious publicity stunt, reflects a genuinely acute anxiety of a movement at a turning point.

One of the most consistent arguments Greene put forward in her press conference is the idea that people who choose not to wear masks or be vaccinated should not be socially ostracized for their beliefs. This gets to the core of the anxiety driving the anti-vax movement: They want all the rights, privileges, and benefits of human community without any sense of obligation to be responsible participants in that community. Im going to always be in the camp that it should be peoples choice, Greene said during her press conference. I just think were going down a really bad road when were telling people, You have to do this and if you dont do it youre excluded, youre treated like a second-class citizen, youre not allowed on campus, youre going to be fired from your job, were not going to let you in church, because you refuse to take this FDA-approved vaccine. I just think that its the wrong place for us to go as Americans.

If we can recognize that the real gift Greene is offering is not misinformation so much as it is freedom, we might be able to approach the problem of misinformation differently, particularly surrounding COVID-19 and vaccines. Researchers have known for years that shaming people to get vaccinated often ends up backfiring, and that much of this is because vaccine resistance is heavily correlated with notions of personal liberty. The people were trying to reach are not motivated to act on behalf of others, and they wont respond to exhortations of civic responsibility.

If Greenes supporters want freedom without repercussions, focusing on consequences for this freedom might give us more leverage than we might think, particularly if we can shift the focus from freedom versus obligationthe way conspiracists like Greene prefer to frame the issueto differing kinds of freedom. Vaccines offer us the freedom to participate, the freedom to circulate back in the world, the freedom to be human again. The Washington Post, for example, reported on one vaccine holdout who got her shot so she could attend New York Yankees games in person. When The Dallas Morning News asked prominent citizens of North Dallas why they got vaccinated, some spoke in terms of obligation and protecting others. But others spoke of the possibilities associated with the vaccines. Robert Jeffress, the pastor at First Baptist Church, echoed Greenes line at first, stating that we are not trying to force anyone to be vaccinatedthat is a personal choice, but he went on to say that vaccination is the quickest way for Christians to come back to church safely so that we can enjoy the encouragement we all need that comes from worshipping together. Its a tricky but promising rhetorical move: You can choose to do whatever you want, but the rest of the world is waiting for you if you choose to get vaccinated.

David Frum: Vaccinated America has had enough

Now, as the Delta variant threatens a fourth wave, more and more public figures have begun to focus on the other half of this equation: increasing the social pressure and repercussions that come with remaining unvaccinated. Disbelief and frustration that anyone would decline to be vaccinated are giving way to pure anger, and businesses, schools, and individuals have run out of patience accommodating those resisting inoculation. New York City has announced that all of its employees (including the vaccine-resistant ranks of the NYPD, only 43 percent of which have been fully vaccinated) must get vaccinated or face weekly tests. Californias statewide university systems have instituted similar mandates, and even the Biden administration is considering a vaccine mandate for all federal workers. Individuals can still opt out, but to do so may mean constant testing and screening, social-distancing and mask requirements, and travel restrictionsthe goal being, it seems, to put an increasing social burden on holdouts so long as they continue to endanger others.

Greene will continue to push the rhetorical move that Americans deserve not just freedom but freedom without consequence. On Sunday, she shifted from Holocaust analogies to Jim Crow analogies, tweeting out a photo of a sign reading NO VAX NO SERVICE with the comment This is called segregation. But its less clear how long this tactic will succeed. Even Alabama Governor Kay Ivey made a distinction not between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated but between vaccine holdouts and regular folks. Talking to reporters last Thursday, she lamented that folks are supposed to have common sense. But its time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. Its the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.

When Mobiles Fox 10 reporter Stephen Moody went in search of reactions to the governors comments, he mostly found agreement. I never thought I would agree with Kay Ivey, a woman named Sabrina Lewis told him, but I agree. I know its a personal choice, but so we can continue to enjoy things like this, people should give the vaccine a try. For Lewis, as with so many millions of other Americans, vaccines mean freedomnot just freedom to participate in the human community, but also freedom from social stigma. Meanwhile, the only person Moody could find who disagreed with Iveys comments would speak out against them only if she could remain anonymous.

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Freedom Is the Only Argument That Might Work With Vaccine Holdouts - The Atlantic

ESCONDIDO (KUSI)- The Koffie Co. in Escondido is veteran owned and operated. The owner, David Chiddick has peacefully protested his constitutional rights throughout the pandemic and stayed open throughout the government lockdowns.

The CDC has put out a recommendation that vaccinated individuals should wear a mask indoors and some businesses in San Diego are starting to require proof of vaccination for their employees and their customers.

KUSIs Kacey McKinnon spoke to Chiddick on Good Morning San Diego and got his opinion on the matter.

Chiddick says, Anytime the government or anybody in politics tries to come in and say, you know what, we know whats best for you and we think it should be mandatory for you to do this this and this. Anytime that happens to me, its a red flag.

Following that, Chiddick quotes Ronald Reagan, Some of the most dangerous words in the world are, Im from the government and Im here to help. Chiddick says, Thats what were hearing right now and its taking away peoples freedoms.

The Koffie Co. owner is involved with reopen San Diego and they encourage other business owners to fight for their freedoms and let the people choose whats best for them instead of listening to the politicians who are pushing their own agenda.

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The Koffie Co. owner stands up for freedom in opposition of Covid-19 restrictions - - KUSI

Helen Hoang, author of The Kiss Quotient. Eric Kieu hide caption

Helen Hoang, author of The Kiss Quotient.

This summer on Code Switch, we're talking to some of our favorite authors about books that taught us about the different dimensions of freedom. Earlier this week, we talked to Sandra Cisneros about her dream home. Today, we're featuring, a conversation with the romance writer Helen Hoang.

When Helen Hoang was writing her first book, The Kiss Quotient, she had recently been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. So, as she was trying to make sense of the diagnosis for herself, she pulled from her own life experiences and folded them into the romance novel, which chronicles the love life of Stella, a young woman on the autism spectrum.

And Stella isn't the only character in The Kiss Quotient that drew from Hoang's personal experiences. The other main character, Michael, is Asian American like Hoang, and has experienced some similarly challenging family dynamics, with a parent who doesn't always make the best decisions.

The book came out in 2018, but I discovered it during the height of the pandemic. I was excited to read something that took my mind off all the doom and gloom. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. It's pretty steamy I felt a little weird re-reading it for "work." But for the hours it took to read, it freed me from the panic of living in lockdown. So for a recent episode of the Code Switch podcast, I talked to Hoang about The Kiss Quotient, how reading it made me feel free, and how writing it made her feel free.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

For those who aren't familiar with the book, what is The Kiss Quotient about, and what makes it stand out from other romance novels?

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang Berkley Books hide caption

So this book is about a heroine, an autistic woman named Stella, who thinks she's bad at relationships and sex. In order to get better, she decides to hire a male escort, Matthew, to talk her through how to do things. And in the process, they accidentally fall in love. I think the book has some things going for it: Clearly, the autism angle is something that hasn't been done many times in romance. And I'm not the first, but I had never read a book with an Asian hero in it, or at least one that felt Asian.

This book definitely felt like an escape for me. As a romance writer, was it important for you to write a book that would feel like an escape for your readers?

I do believe that romance is about escape. It's about taking you out of your real life and letting you focus on different things and experience things that you don't in your real life. I think that that's the strength of romance and what makes it such a positive experience. Because it frees you from everything and it just gives you a chance to celebrate emotion and celebrate the human experience.

Many people have preconceived notions about people with autism and how they should be and act, which includes them having sex. Given that, can you tell me about writing sex scenes in your book?

I think that I had heard in the past that, you know, it was offensive to write autistic people having sex and in order to be respectful, you must "infantilize" them. I was horrified by that. But when I wrote the book, I didn't even know about those expectations around autism, because autism was still kind of new to me. I was only diagnosed with autism five years ago. But after I wrote the book, I was so glad that I did that. I wrote autistic people having sex and and I couldn't be prouder.

This summer, we're talking to authors about what it means to be free. How does the concept of freedom show up in your book?

I do think that the heroine, Stella, deals with a lot of insecurity about herself because she's on the spectrum. And that's also something that I personally live with. It was freeing to have her go through that journey where she confronts this issue and quits being ashamed of it. It felt really healthy for me to write that. I hope that other people, even if they're not on the spectrum, can come to that same self-realization and just free themselves from their own perception of what they need to be.

I noticed a theme of letting go of things that hold you back and not just with Stella. The hero, Michael, had deep resentment towards his father that got in the way of his opening up. Can you elaborate on that?

Michael keeps worrying that he's similar to his father or that his family trauma defines who he is. Or even that his father defines who he is. I think learning to let go of that and to say: I'm my own person, I can be more than my past, and I can be more than where I came from was important to me. My father has also made some bad decisions in his life and to accept that I love him, even though not everything he does is good, was also freeing in a way.

Staying on the topic of freedom: Was writing this book and being diagnosed with having Autism Spectrum Disorder personally freeing for you?

I definitely think that in my case, my diagnosis did set me free. Because I think that knowledge is power, and when we know what our issues are, we're better equipped to communicate our needs and to gain self-acceptance. I spent a lot of my life pretending to be something else because I wanted to fit in. I put so much work into trying to fit in. Sometimes it's so much that I get burnout, and I think it's just a really sad way to live your life. So learning that the way that I am underneath all of that is actually OK was extremely liberating.

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Author Helen Hoang Talks Sex, Autism And Freedom - NPR

Statistics suggest that very little seems to have changed since 19 July, when the government ended all restrictions on socialising in England.

In London, people travelled less after so-called freedom day than during the weeks before, according to Transport for London figures. Elsewhere in the UK, where restrictions vary, there appeared little change in public transport activity. Restaurants and pubs saw a slight increase, but are still a long way off pre-pandemic levels.

CGA, the hospitality research agency, found that some people who had been happy to go out after the third lockdown ended in April had been put off by the fear of busy venues after 19 July.

Over-35s were less confident about going to pubs, bars or restaurants. Only 53% of 35-to-54s felt confident, according to CGAs latest Consumer Pulse survey down by seven percentage points since May and just 39% of over-55s, a fall of nine points.

Jonathan Jones, CGAs managing director for UK and Ireland, said it was clear confidence remained fragile as Covid-19 cases remain high, especially among older age groups. Businesses will need to make it easy for hesitant consumers to plan their visits in advance, check availability and be sure they will have sufficient space, he said.

Gary Murphy had hoped that freedom day would be the salvation of his pub. But on Friday, after 13 years in charge of Ye Olde Mitre Inne in High Barnet, north London, Murphy handed back the keys.

Recovery is going to take years, he said. Trade has gone up a bit, but its still a slog. It became very clear that there are still a number of people who dont want to go out theyre still scared of the virus.

Murphy said he had decided to retire as a licensee because he did not believe the situation would change for at least a couple of years. When we had inside restrictions we were operating at about 60% to 70%, he said. Since we opened fully, weve gone up to 80%, but that 20% is going to be really hard.

I know loads of people who used to be in here every day or every evening but will now only come in on Mondays when its really quiet.

Theres a huge difference to last summer when people hadnt got used to having their own parties or building their own bars. This time its very clear that peoples habits have changed considerably.

Murphy listed rising prices of stock, staff shortages and the return of VAT on food, business rates and full rent demands from pub companies as major headaches for the trade.

Although legal restrictions have ended in much of the UK, 90% of adults wore face coverings when they were not at home, recent ONS figures revealed, and 88% thinking social distancing remains important.

Professor Stephen Reicher, who is part of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) subcommittee on behavioural science, said that the publics behaviour was crucial in stopping the spread of the virus.

The ONS data shows that people are still exercising caution in all areas and that is critically important, he said. But there is only so much people can do individually and people still need support in order to keep themselves safe.

What happens next is very largely a matter of whether behaviour changes and how fast. Two behaviours in particular are key. One is whether people self-isolate when infected and the other is how many contacts we have.

The CoMix social contact survey, a weekly study by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine for Sage, shows that most adults of working age had contact with an average of no more than four people a week. Contacts are far down from pre-pandemic and only slightly up on this winter and spring. If they were to go up to those of pre-pandemic levels it would have a huge consequence.

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Covid caution dampens the heady promises of freedom day - The Guardian

Written by Dhananjay Dhonchak

Recently, the petition filed before the Delhi High Court by Ashutosh Kaushik wherein he claims that he is suffering reputational harm due to old news stories on incidents from his past such as a drunk driving case in 2009 and a brawl in 2013 has been in the news. The legal basis on which he is demanding that these videos and stories be de-listed or taken down is the right to be forgotten (RTBF).

This has presented a unique opportunity for the court to engage in a detailed analysis of RTBF and evolve a mechanism for balancing the conflicting rights of privacy and freedom of expression.

Individuals in the European Union (EU) have the right to demand that search engines like Google delist certain types of personal information about them that is false, inaccurate, outdated, excessive, irrelevant, inadequate, or taken out of context after the Court of Justice of the European Unions (CJEU) decision in the landmark case of Google Spain v Costeja.

As to the discussion of RTBF in the Indian context, Justice Kishan Kauls opinion in Puttaswamy v. Union of India noted that the right to be forgotten was a part of the broader right of privacy.

However, this has not been enough. In recent years, without a data protection law to codify RTBF as is the case in the EU, India has seen some inconsistent and peculiar adjudication of the right by various high courts. Courts in India have repeatedly either accepted or rejected the application of RTBF while completely ignoring the wider constitutional questions associated with it.

The existence of RTBF in a given situation depends on its balancing with other conflicting rights such as the right to free expression or other publication rights. For example, person A may want to de-link information about his criminal records and make it difficult for people to access certain journalistic reports when they google him. This brings the persons right to be left alone, derived from Article 21, directly in conflict with the rights of the media to report on issues, flowing from Article 19. The court will have to carry out a detailed examination of the position of person A in society, the nature of the information sought to be taken down or de-linked, the publics interest in retaining that information, etc. Accordingly, the remedy may also differ: The court may ask the information to be expunged from the source or may order only de-linking the posts such that they dont appear on the search engine and continue to be available on the original sources page. Whichever way the court decides, at least two fundamental rights the right to privacy and the right to free speech and expression will be impacted.

In the absence of specific legislation, the RTBF emerges from the right to privacy under Article 21 and partly from the right to dignity under Article 14. This makes its application even more interesting and unclear at the same time. This is because the RTBF will normally be claimed against a private party (a media or news website).

This raises the question of whether fundamental rights which have traditionally only been enforceable vertically against the State can be enforced horizontally, that is, against private citizens? Gautam Bhatia notes that only Article 15(2), Article 17 and Article 23 have an element of direct horizontality where a private act of a private party is challenged based on its violation of the Constitution. Courts are currently relegating themselves to merely enforcing constitutional provisions against private parties indirectly by compelling the state to perform certain duties that prevent or prohibit a private act. However, a coherent jurisprudence on the RTBF by Indian Courts would entail the enforcement of Article 21 directly against private parties.

Curiously, our constitutional courts, which are infamous for overzealously writing hundreds of pages while deciding cases, have restricted themselves to one or two-page orders when it comes to the RTBF. This is not to suggest that the RTBF has been rejected by Indian courts. For example, in 2018, the Karnataka High Court accepted a petition for the removal of a womans name from the cause title of a criminal and civil matter. The Court, without engaging in any sort of analysis, accepted the contention that her name in the cause title was damaging to her reputation in society and mentioned that there was a similar trend to accept such claims in Western countries. At the time of writing this article, there is only one instance from the Odisha High Court where the Court conducted an assessment of the RTBF by citing European and Indian cases. However, since the Court was only hearing a bail petition, it did not address any wider constitutional questions or explore any balancing mechanism that could then be utilised as a valid reference for other high courts.

Referring to the claim of former Roadies and Bigg Boss winner Ashutosh Kaushik, it must be noted that the privacy rights of a person in public life are different than that of an average citizen. It is presumed that when someone enters public life, they voluntarily allow intrusion into their private life to some extent. However, there must also be a public interest in retaining the information to prevail over a persons RTBF. The answers to these questions are necessarily complex and demand a detailed assessment by the Court. This is because Kaushik is no longer a celebrity and any attention that his life garnered in the past has dwindled. Does this mean his privacy rights will be on par with that of an average citizen? It will be the methodology that the Court adopts in reaching its decision rather than the decision itself that will generate interest from scholars and practitioners.

The writer is a student research fellow at We, the Humans (NGO) and is a law student at National Law University, Hyderabad (NALSAR)

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Right to be Forgotten: Privacy vs Freedom - The Indian Express

When Alexis Nikole Nelson was a kindergartner, she counted a honeysuckle tree among her most cherished friends.

She named the tree Priscilla, after her great-aunt. I wasnt especially adept at climbing trees, she told me as we walked through the woods near her home in Columbus, Ohio. But this tree grew in this curved way that it was perfectly manageable for me to just scamper up, sit in the branches and snack on some honeysuckle flowers.

One might expect such an endearing origin story from Ms. Nelson, known to her 1.7 million TikTok followers as the Black Forager. An urban adventurer who roams everywhere from Central Park to areas closer to home, the 29-year-old makes short, exuberant videos about edible finds in the woods. She gathers unripe black walnuts for her version of the spiced Italian liqueur nocino and extols the virtues of milkweed, a favorite of monarch butterflies and the base of Ms. Nelsons recipe for air-fried fritters. And it all started in those early years with her inclination to view trees as kinfolk.

Though there are no definitive statistics, foragers have informally reported an increase in the practice during the pandemic. There are clearly new folks getting involved in the practice, and it seems to be for a variety of reasons, said Patrick Hurley, professor and chair of Environmental Studies at Ursinus College, speaking of his local community in Philadelphia.

Ms. Nelson represents one part of an increasingly visible community. While many younger Black people didnt grow up going to the woods to shop, they have learned about lesser-known fruits such as serviceberries and the common cold remedy burdock root through books or the internet.

Whether theyre herbalists, Great Migration grandbabies in search of Southern roots, shoppers slashing their food budgets, the only Black kid who went to 4-H camp back in the day, or home cooks who want to dazzle guests with a backyard-berry crostata, theyre often contending with conflicted histories of disconnection from the land and a present in which they dont always find nature a sanctuary.

The idea that Black people just dont do the outdoors developed over time and centuries of dispossession, said Justin Robinson. An ethnobotanist, farmer and cultural historian in Durham, N.C., he rejects the term foraging and its practice as anything new to Black Americans and humans in general. He believes the word separates the world into a disturbing cultivated-versus-wild binary that doesnt reflect reality.

Its just what we do, he said. Its life!

Mr. Robinson links his love of the land and his work to the warm childhood years he spent following his two farmer grandfathers and the adult years he spent unconsciously replicating one of their gardens. But he knows that Black American history is also a series of profound land-related ruptures, starting with enslavement and forced agricultural labor on territory inhabited by and taken from Native peoples. The slave masters meager rations turned the enslaved into naturalists out of both necessity and opportunity.

Slave narratives abound with references to tapping honey and finding food. In a 1937 Works Progress Administration interview, Charles Grandy of Norfolk, Va., spoke of his escape during the Civil War and how he subsisted on wild berries for days. Sharecropping and land loss by physical and legal violence followed. By the early 20th century, more Southern rural Black people were migrating to cities around the nation. Some swore never to look back or till the land again.

As Mr. Robinson said, Black American history is a combination of hood and country. And Larry Gholston is holding down part of that rural heritage.

Come each May, Mr. Gholston eyes the cattle-yard a short distance from his home in Toccoa, Ga. Hes searching for something very specific and, in its natural form, toxic: Phytolacca americana, the pokeweed plant native to the South and Appalachia. A 68-year-old retiree and community historian, Mr. Gholston is committed to preserving poke sallit, a dish made from pokeweed. For the past 30 years, he has been handpicking small, tender leaves for the Poke Sallit Festival that he holds every Memorial Day.

Hes trying to pass down his knowledge to younger people, including his 35-year-old son, Seth Gholston, who D.J.s the event while his father cooks: Seth can now easily spot the 10-foot tall plant.

The festival is meant to maintain our heritage, said Mr. Gholston. A lot of Black folk will tell you, I dont eat that mess, man. It has connotations of poorness and rural.

Although pokeweeds leaves, berries and roots are poisonous to varying degrees, many rural Americans once soaked, boiled and sauted their leaves into poke sallit (possibly a derivation of salad), akin to collard greens. The toothsome dish can send an eater to the hospital if its toxins arent neutralized. Few people know how to cook it correctly now, and fewer dare; Mr. Gholston, who perfected his technique by drawing from family tradition, is an exception.

My mom would wash it, cook it, he explained. Some relatives would serve it for Sunday meals. Others would take it as kind of a spring tonic. Older people back in the day used to take the berries and make wine. People have taken the stalk and fried it like okra.

His emphasis on Black self-reliance aligns with newer generations of Black explorers. I thought about his ingenuity when I met Ms. Nelson in Jeffrey Park, a Columbus estate turned public resource. Ms. Nelson is a virtuoso of the woods. A walking, talking compendium of botanical factoids and zany zingers, she encourages fans with her cheeky-but-serious prayer for foragers, Dont die! and her trademark gaptoothed smile.

What you dont see in her videos are how closely she looks at trees before she ever touches them, how gently she plucks their leaves and how often she doesnt take anything at all.

Two deer darted in front of us as she picked up black walnuts from a downed tree branch. It never hurts to follow and see what theyre looking at, she said. But I noticed that the animals were cavorting behind a colossal mansion that backs up to the woods. Thinking of the film Get Out and one characters early warning to not be alone in the woods with white people, I asked how comfortable she feels.

I do like dressing up and wearing full makeup. Because who doesnt want to prance through the woods and feel like a woman fairy? But some of it is definitely about looking super-approachable, she said. Hoodies are off the list of her approved foraging apparel, exchanged for staid cardigans, even in the chilly Midwest fall.

Imagining oneself as a wood nymph wearing a bold lip and loud peasant dress doesnt totally ward off unwanted attention. Ms. Nelson noted that she has been stopped semi-frequently by random white people and rangers.

This is a common complaint of Black people exploring in nature. Widely publicized incidents in 2020 a Black birder was falsely accused of threatening a white woman in Central Park, and a Black man was attacked while hiking in Indiana are extreme examples of the sorts of routine encounters foragers say they face.

Mr. Robinson said he once stopped his car to take a look at a stand of colic weed across the highway; minutes later, law enforcement arrived to investigate a theft. I dont know if that was made up or not, but I was literally in an open field, he said. I doubt anyone except biblical thieves are digging holes in a field to hide their goods. A short conversation later, he headed home safely.

Fushcia-Ann Hoover, a hydrologist who published A Black Girls Guide to Foraging, forages in her Annapolis, Md., neighborhood, where shes well-known and makes a point of taking her sisters adorable Shih Tzu dog with her. She cited cases in which Black campers were assaulted by white people in the outdoors. If its so dangerous or risky, then maybe it just becomes easier to say, Oh, thats just not something we do, she said. So then you dont feel the loss.

Similarly, Lady Danni Morinich, a 57-year-old former ad salesperson in Philadelphia (her title comes from a tiny parcel of Scottish land that friends gave her as a humorous gift), runs a business selling teas, tinctures and other products sometimes made with foraged herbs. She doesnt romanticize the fact that shes often the only Black person at a wild-foods meetup, or the possible consequences of carrying a folding knife into the field: I tell other folks, Sometime, you might not want to take that. Because you can get killed being Black while walking.

As I followed Ms. Nelson along a winding trail, her eyes darted around the ground, up to the canopy and down again. She pointed out an early pawpaw fruit, gleaming green 20 feet above us. It is one of very few things for which she would willingly tramp through poison ivy, she said.

The others are chicken of the woods and morel mushrooms; she laments she doesnt have the mycological Spidey sense to spot the latter. Her knowledge, though, does run deep. She is able to identify plants by the shape of their leaves, whether their berries are crowned, the smell of their roots.

At another fork in the path, we stopped at a leaning tree. For mushrooms, an ailing tree is pay dirt. Ms. Nelson plucked a few medium-size brownish-peach wood ear mushrooms. I joked that the hue would make a perfect neutral lipstick for us two Black women scouting the wilds. She scrunched one of them and held it to the side of her face. Folded that way, it did resemble a human ear, gruesomely sliced, Van Gogh-style.

My partner hates it when I do that, she said, giggling. He wasnt keen on sampling the mushrooms candied in simple syrup, either.

Cooking for others is a major motivation for Dr. Hoover, the Maryland scientist. She has used Ms. Nelsons magnolia flower experimentations to enhance a stir-fry (they taste like ginger) and flavored water with lemony wild sorrel. She even figured out how to soak acorns, a necessary part of the flour-making process, in her toilet tank.

Her family and friends sometimes roll their eyes good-naturedly at Fushcias projects, but for her, Black freedom is the larger, continuing project.

There is power in being able to name the things that are around you and knowing what they can be used for or cant be used for, she said. I do take a growing feeling of independence from that, especially as a Black person in this country. Theres a part of me that kind of rebels in knowing and being able to take things because the way we are told were not supposed to.

More:

How Black Foragers Find Freedom in the Natural World - The New York Times