Fostering wellbeing aids both the person fostering and the person/people who are the recipients. It's why the 8 laws work, as I describe in the book. Here is real data making this point.
Credit: Maskot / Getty
Nearly 10% of U.S. adults experience at least one depressive episode each year, and nearly 20% have an anxiety disorder, making depression and anxiety two of the most common mental illnesses in the U.S. For those living with either, finding relief from symptoms can be difficult. But a new research study finds that people can get some relief by doing one simple thing: an act of kindness.
For the study, the research team recruited a group of 122 people from central Ohio who all reported symptoms of stress, depression, or anxiety. They split the participants into three groups; two groups underwent a type of cognitive behavioral therapy each — planning social outings and cognitive reappraisal — and the third performed acts of kindness. Members of the first group planned social activities for two days per week, the cognitive reappraisal group journaled for at least two days per week to recognize and address negative thought patterns, and the third group performed three acts of kindness for two days per week. The intervention […]
Adam Serwer, - Reader Supported News / The Atlantic
Stephan:
Think about this for a minute. This is what we have become in the United States.
Child holding gun Credit: Shutterstock
A school superintendent in Rising Star, Texas is taking criticism from some local residents after he left his gun in a school bathroom, where it was found minutes later by a third-grade student.
Local news station KTXS reports that Rising Star Independent School District Superintendent Robby Stuteville got called out at a school board meeting for leaving his firearm in an elementary school bathroom stall, where it was later found by a student who reported it to his teacher.
“For our kids’ protection, we need someone who is more responsible with a gun,” said local resident Elizabeth Lee, whom KTXS reports has two grandchildren in the school system. “Mr. Stuteville is a good man. But that was irresponsible.”
According to local station KTAB, local police are now investigating the incident, which occurred last month but was not disclosed until last week.
In an interview with KTAB, Stuteville insisted that there was “never a danger other than the obvious” to the student who found his gun in the […]
MIRANDA GREEN and MICHAEL COPLEY, - npr / Floodlight Environmental News
Stephan:
I have been looking at the anti-solar movement, and my takeaway from this research is that rural Americans, overwhelmingly White, low income, low education level, frightened, and resentful, are being easily manipulated by far-right corporate interests like Koch, that are tied to the continuation of carbon energy. Farmers don't seem to get the opportunity being offered them. I grew up on a farm in Tidewater Virginia, and my father and I ran a registered Angus herd. If I was still on that land and someone came to me and said give us access to a few acres and we will double your income I would take it up in a moment. But that is not what is happening. This article lays out the issues pretty well, and it is a very sad story.
Houser says Page County residents who fought solar development were driven by a not-in-my-back-yard mentality. “It’s pretty. It’s open ground,” Houser says of his property. “But it’s like, you know, some panels on it, that’s not going to change it.” Credit:Ryan Kellman/NPR
Roger Houser’s ranching business was getting squeezed. The calves he raises in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley were selling for about the same price they had a few years earlier, while costs for essentials like fuel and fertilizer kept going up. But Houser found another use for his 500 acres.
An energy company offered to lease Houser’s property in rural Page County to build a solar plant that could power about 25,000 homes. It was a good offer, Houser says. More money than he could make growing hay and selling cattle.
“The idea of being able to keep the land as one parcel and not have it split up was very attractive,” Houser says. “To have some passive income for retirement was good. And then the main thing was the electricity it would generate and the good […]
“For 17 of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide, drugmakers made more money from U.S. sales than from sales to all other countries in the rest of the world combined.
“For 11 of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide, U.S. sales revenue was double or more the revenue for sales in the rest of the world.”
Here we see exactly how the pharmaceutical industry milks you financially like a Guernsey cow, and how they rent corrupt Congress members, like Kyrsten Sinema, to do their bidding.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema during a 2019 event. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
In his State of the Union address, President Biden called out insulin, a treatment for diabetes that was developed over 100 years ago and, he said, costs about $10 a vial to make. Americans can pay over $1,000 for that $10 vial.
While he was successful at getting insulin costs capped at $35 per month for Medicare recipients, “Problem Solver” corporate sellout Democrats in the House and Kirsten Sinema in the Senate — along with every single Republican — blocked his efforts to extend that to all Americans with diabetes.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Molnupiravir is the new pill that’s been all over the news recently because it can cut hospitalizations and deaths of unvaccinated Covid-infected people by as much as half and doesn’t require folks to go to the hospital or an infusion center, like the monoclonal antibody treatment. Just take four pills every day for five days and you’re good.
We've had 79 mass killings in the first 50 days of this year, more than one a day. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world, and the most dangerous and violent police. And basically the solution the MAGAt world has for all of this is to not talk about it. We are a very sick culture and getting sicker.
Protesters raise their fists as they march through the I AM A MAN Plaza in downtown Memphis, Tenn. on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, one day after the city of Memphis released video of several police officers beating Tyre Nichols. Credit: Brad Vest / The New York Times / Redux
I did not want to watch.
As a people, we have witnessed the horrors of police violence again and again—so much so, that some of us are now immune, desensitized against the trauma. Others of us look away because, frankly, we are not. In the end, I could not turn away.
My own son, Joshua, is but a couple of years older and—but for time and a slight crossing of the stars—it could have been him on that pavement. Several years ago, my middle child was handcuffed in Atlanta with a weapon pressed against his back, after officers falsely accused him of stealing his own MacBook. He is alive today. But, I know things could’ve turned out much differently.
There can be no debate about the brutality that led to […]
