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☆ The NFL Draft’s Best Athlete Is Also Its Greatest Enigma
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Andrew Beaton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Kent Lee Platte is a former Navy cryptologist who also happens to be one of the most useful people decoding one of the NFL draft’s biggest puzzles: Why a quarterback named Anthony Richardson, who had a completely forgettable college career, is one of the hottest prospects in the sport. When Platte applied his coding wizardry to football, he invented a metric that crunches a host of pre-draft testing data into a single number for every player. His formula takes information like how fast a player runs and how high he jumps and distills it into what he calls a Relative Athletic Score, a nifty grade that’s popular among draft pundits and helpful for quantifying someone’s traits compared with his peers.

☆ In Jails and Prisons, the White House Sees a Chance to Curtail Opioid Overdoses
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Noah Weiland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Biden administration this week accelerated efforts to fund opioid addiction treatment in jails and prisons, a core part of its drug policy agenda, calling on states to adopt a novel Medicaid program that will cover health care for incarcerated people. Under new guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, states can ask the federal government to allow Medicaid to cover addiction treatment for up to 90 days ahead of someone’s release. Public health experts say that providing treatment during that critical period could help people survive the often harsh conditions of jails and prisons, then more easily transition back to the community. “That’s where most people are, and that’s where you’re going to get the most benefit,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, the director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, referring to the high concentration of incarcerated Americans with opioid use disorder. Neglecting to treat addiction in jails and prisons, he added, comes at the “highest cost to society, to taxpayers.”

☆ Recreational marijuana use: CNN medical analyst urges caution
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Katia Hetter | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Using marijuana can cause impaired thinking and interfere with someone’s ability to learn, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The trend toward legalizing marijuana must be accompanied by public education of the health risks, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen said. To be clear, there are many reasons to support policy changes of decriminalizing marijuana, including to rectify the decades-long injustices of disproportionately incarcerating minority individuals for marijuana possession. As many as 3 in 10 people who use marijuana have marijuana use disorder, according to the CDC. If an adult is using marijuana once in a while, and not while driving, it’s probably not going to have lasting consequences.

☆ Children cat-killing contest axed following backlash in New Zealand
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Heather Chen | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —A contest planned for children in New Zealand to hunt and kill feral cats as part of a drive to protect native species has been axed following backlash from the public and animal rights groups. In neighboring Australia, authorities say feral cats threaten the survival of more than 100 native species. Feral cats are blamed for killing millions of birds, reptiles, frogs and mammals, every day, prompting authorities to arrange regular culls. The New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it was “both pleased and relieved” that the cat-killing contest for children had been removed. Blackie, who has studied feral cats for two decades, said numbers had exploded in the last decade, and in some areas where pests were tracked by camera, feral cats outnumbered other species like possums.

Greene told CNN on Thursday she was “surprised and angered” over the incident and said she already spoke to McCarthy. “He agreed with me,” Greene said, indicating the speaker believed she shouldn’t have silenced. Greene told CNN later Thursday that she and Chairman Green had a chance to talk but that they disagreed about what happened at Wednesday’s committee meeting. Identifying or calling someone a liar is unacceptable in this committee and I make the ruling that we strike those words,” said Green, a Tennessee Republican. But the sooner we can get back to kind of civility amongst colleagues, the better for everybody,” he told CNN.

☆ Ralph Yarl shooting: Recovery of Black teen allegedly shot by White homeowner after ringing wrong doorbell is a miracle, attorney says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Nouran Salahieh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Saturday, he was released from the hospital,” Yarl family attorney Lee Merritt told CNN Tuesday night, calling Ralph’s recovery a miracle. The boy had gone to neighbors looking for help after he was shot, according to police. “I share the outrage and the concern of many in asking why,” Mayor Lucas told CNN Tuesday morning. While the teenager was still on the ground, the man then fired again, shooting him in the arm, Ralph told police. Merritt told CNN he doesn’t believe such a defense would apply, saying Ralph was never a threat.

☆ Ralph Yarl shooting: The White homeowner accused of shooting a Black teen who rang his doorbell turns himself in to face criminal charges
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Nouran Salahieh Taylor Romine Holly Yan | Nouran Salahieh | Taylor Romine | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

Andrew Lester faces two felony charges – assault in the first degree and armed criminal action – in the April 13 shooting of Ralph Yarl. While he was hospitalized, Ralph told police he did not pull on the door, according to the document. Charlie Riedel/APLester opened the interior door and “saw a black male approximately 6 feet tall pulling on the exterior storm door handle,” Lester told police. While the teenager was still on the ground, the man then fired again, shooting him in the arm, Ralph told police. Crump likened Ralph’s shooting to the shootings of 17-year-old Martin in Florida and 25-year-old Arbery in Georgia.

To report this story, Reuters contacted more than 300 former Tesla employees who had worked at the company over the past nine years and were involved in developing its self-driving system. The company requires car owners to grant permission on the cars’ touchscreens before Tesla collects their vehicles’ data. Reuters found that Tesla employees shared clips that captured sensitive and embarrassing personal moments. Tesla’s own data labelers initially worked in the San Francisco Bay area, including the office in San Mateo. According to several ex-employees, some labelers shared screenshots, sometimes marked up using Adobe Photoshop, in private group chats on Mattermost, Tesla’s internal messaging system.

☆ Couple who transformed an abandoned Japanese home into a guesthouse
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Tamara Hardingham-Gill | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

He also happened to have his heart set on a traditional Japanese house, typically known as kominka, which are usually passed down over generations. “I had a vision.”Guesthouse dreamDaisuke and Hila Kajiyama transformed an abandoned farming residence in Japan into a guesthouse. He saved money by collecting traditional wood from building companies who were in the process of breaking down traditional houses. “Usually, with traditional houses, some renovations are made to the walls, because the insulation is not so strong. After doing some research into Japanese guesthouse permits, he discovered that one of the simplest ways to acquire one would be to register the property as an agriculture guesthouse.

☆ For Women, Midlife Brain Fog Is Real. Here’s Why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Sumathi Reddy | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Blanking on someone’s name. Forgetting why you entered a room. Struggling to concentrate on a task. Women in their 40s and early 50s often notice declines in their memory, focus and ability to learn new things—symptoms sometimes called “brain fog.”

☆ Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Want to Be Everyone’s Bank, but It Has to Be Someone’s
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Telis Demos | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has admitted defeat in its ambitious plan to be the bank for everybody. Now it has to figure out how to be a bank for somebody. Chief Executive David Solomon told analysts and shareholders this week during an in-person investor day at its headquarters that the firm is scaling back on banking consumers and their checking accounts and credit cards. Instead, he said, growth will come from managing the wealth of institutions and the rich—a business that throws off steady fees when markets are up or down.

☆ Standard Deduction 2022-2023: How Much Is It and Should I Take It?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Laura Saunders | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

When it comes to filing your taxes, one of the first big decisions to make is whether you’ll be taking the standard deduction or itemizing your deductions. Taxpayers taking the standard deduction don’t get a specific tax break for having mortgage interest, state and local taxes, or making charitable donations. That likely affects someone’s decisions about making donations or owning a home, among other things during tax season and beyond.

☆ Tesla to Change Camera Settings in Europe Over Privacy Fears
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Catherine Stupp | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

Tesla Inc. agreed to change camera settings in its cars after complaints from European consumers and an investigation by the Dutch privacy regulator. The last 10 minutes of recorded footage will be saved under the new settings, instead of the hour of footage that was previously stored. The previous camera settings allowed serious privacy violations, the regulator said. PREVIEWWith the new software update, the headlights of Tesla cars will blink if the cameras are recording, and a message will be displayed on an internal touch screen, the Dutch regulator said. The regulator said it planned to investigate how data is transferred out of Tesla cars.

☆ Want your tax refund faster? Here’s what to do
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Jeanne Sahadi | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

The IRS says it typically issues federal refunds within 21 calendar days of accepting your tax return, assuming there are no issues. Tom O’Saben, director of tax content for the National Association of Tax Professionals, said some of his clients have received their refunds in as little as 10 days. “If you filed on paper and are expecting a refund, it could take four weeks or more to process your return,” the IRS notes on its website. This can be an issue if you got married recently and changed your last name but failed to inform the Social Security Administration of your name change. If the IRS finds you still owe tax on that unreported income, you may have to return some or all of your refund, plus interest, and possibly an underpayment penalty.

☆ Colorado supermarket shooting suspect remains unfit for trial, judge says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

BOULDER, Colo. — A man charged with killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket nearly two years ago remains mentally incompetent to stand trial, a judge said Friday. Bakke said the latest report from the hospital finding Alissa incompetent also said he has a “reasonable likelihood” of reaching competency, an outlook also expressed in previous reports. Concerns about Alissa’s mental health were raised by his defense immediately after the March 2021 shooting. Competency is a different legal issue than a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which involves whether someone’s mental health prevented them from understanding right from wrong when a crime was committed. They said Alissa passed a background check to legally buy a Ruger AR-556 pistol six days before the shooting.

☆ Fed up with facial recognition cameras monitoring your every move? Italian fashion may have the answer
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Elliott Gotkine | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Facial recognition software immediately identifies the man as … a giraffe? While there, she read about how tenants in Brooklyn had fought back against their landlord’s plans to install a facial recognition entry system for their building. “This was the first time I heard about facial recognition,” she says. Whichever route they took, they had to test the images on a well-known object detection system called YOLO, one of the most commonly-used algorithms in facial recognition software. At the recent World Cup in Qatar, creative agency Virtue Worldwide came up with flag-themed face paint for fans seeking to fool the emirate’s legion of facial recognition cameras.

☆ Strength of 'weak ties': How casual contacts can boost your career
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Chris Taylor | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

That is what researchers call “weak ties” - and they can be surprisingly critical to your career path. "Weak ties give you access to a lot more information.”Among New Year’s resolutions, finding a better job or career ranks high on many lists. Then set up informational interviews with new weak ties that result, and your job search will be cooking with gas. “Look for people who tend to run in a lot of circles, because they’re the ones who can introduce you to new weak ties,” said Augustine. REACH OUTOne barrier to leveraging weak ties is that people tend to feel uncomfortable about it.

☆ Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A. Celtics have a die-hard fan base that’s going to root hard for the Celtics. But when I’ve listened to it, it’s not as if you’re saying things that are all that far away from what pundits or analysts are saying. I don’t think it affected who I was, who I am, because my mom never allowed it to. So when I say what he said is irrelevant, I’m saying that from the standpoint of, Let me not deflect.

But too often, this behavior is an excuse for avoiding the mucky work of maintaining relationships, both personal and professional. Many managers and employees want to escape the unchecked animus they experience online, preferring the workplace feel like a safe cocoon. This year we should all work to reverse the trend and lean in to conflict — and conflict resolution — instead. Perfectionism affects and, in turn, limits the ways we feel safe communicating, which makes perfect sense. The pandemic, not surprisingly, is another culprit, exacerbating students’ experience of relational tension.

☆ Rapper who became the voice of the Iranian revolt is in danger of execution
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Sanam Mahoozi | Sanam Mahoozi Is A Freelance Writer Based In London. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

Fear for his safety have also grown after Salehi’s official Twitter account posted Friday that despite being in danger of losing his eyesight, he was being repeatedly beaten. Iranian mourners march towards Aichi cemetery in Saqez in Iranian Kurdistan to mark 40 days since Mahsa Amini's death on Oct. 26, 2022. ESN / AFP - Getty ImagesUsing his voice and lyrics, Salehi came out in support of the anti-government protesters from the beginning. At the heart of the protests, and Salehi’s lyrics, is the conviction that the government must go. “This is Toomaj Salehi,” he wrote, reposting a Salehi video supportive of the protesters.

However, in the age of Apaches and laptops, everything I did in the course of two tours of duty was recorded and time-stamped,” Harry writes. The disagreement came at a planned reconciliatory tea at Kensington Palace in June 2018, Harry writes. According to the book, Kate told Meghan: “You talked about my hormones. We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!”According to Harry, Meghan recalled the conversation but was perplexed at Kate's reaction. Harry writes: "What I do remember with stunning clarity is that I did not cry.

☆ A new test for autism hopes to help doctors diagnose before symptoms show
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Evan Bush | Evan Bush Is A Science Reporter For Nbc News. He Can Be Reached At Evan.Bush Nbcuni.Com. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

Researchers have discovered myriad risk factors associated with autism, including infections during pregnancy, air pollution and maternal stress. “We can detect the clear rhythm of autism with just about one centimeter of hair,” Arora said. Autism diagnosis timingArora and his team hope their technology could help young children, even newborns, receive early interventions for autism sooner than they can now. “We want to enable early intervention.”There is not yet a biological test for autism spectrum disorder. Perhaps eventually, that information could open up new pathways for the development of drugs or therapies for autism, he said.

☆ Faithless singer Maxi Jazz dies aged 65
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Maxi Jazz, the lead vocalist of British electronic music band Faithless and known as the voice in trance hits such as "God Is a DJ" and "Insomnia", has died aged 65, the band said on Saturday. He gave proper meaning and message to our music," the other two core members of Faithless, Rollo and Sister Bliss, said in a statement on Facebook. The band said on Twitter that Jazz had died peacefully in his sleep. He helped form Faithless in 1995, which then grew into one of the most popular dance bands in Britain and round the world. His words and performances touched so many of us," British DJ MistaJam wrote of Jazz on Twitter.

☆ The backlash against Megan Thee Stallion proves she's telling truth in Tory Lanez shooting, prosecutor says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

LOS ANGELES — A California prosecutor told jurors Wednesday that hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion would never have subjected herself to the torrent of public abuse she’s received if she wasn’t telling the truth about rapper Tory Lanez shooting her in the feet and wounding her in the summer of 2020. Bott said Megan’s testimony was in itself sufficient to convict, but it’s supported by layers of other evidence, including the accounts of other eyewitnesses and apologies from Lanez. Megan testified that she left a gathering at the Hollywood Hills home of Kylie Jenner in an SUV with Lanez, his bodyguard and Harris. Bott ended his presentation Wednesday with a quote from Megan’s testimony, in which she said there have been times that “I wish he would have just shot and killed me.”“Megan does matter,” Bott said. Hold him accountable for shooting Megan over nothing more than a bruised ego.”

Presumably, if you’re worried about the security of your laptop, you believe a stranger might steal it. But what’s to say the person you ask to watch your table isn’t a thief themselves? I’m in favor of social norms when they are rational and useful, but I implore cafe society: Please abandon the ones that are irrational and disruptive. Randomly selecting one person to trust — out of a room full of people you don’t know — is irrational. If you’re worried about losing your coveted table, leave something inexpensive behind, like a book or a scarf.

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