Here is yet another report on research that shows fostering wellbeing is always the best option to choose — in this case providing workers with child care benefits. You would think this had become obvious, given all the studies that prove this, but it has not. Greed always seems to blind those who make the decisions, particularly in the United States which has become a culture that places profit above all other considerations. The weirdness of this is that fostering wellbeing is actually the more profitable choice, as this paper describes.
The cost of providing child care benefits to employees — like stipends and onsite day care — is an investment with outsized returns, finds an intriguing new study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and nonprofit Moms First.
Why it matters: The increasing cost of child care in the U.S., along with a shortage of providers, keeps parents out of the workforce — a drag on the economy overall and a hit to employers in a tight labor market.
The big picture: These benefits are gaining more attention, particularly in the wake of the pullback of pandemic-era child care funding — but they’re still pretty rare.
12% of workers in the U.S. have access to child care benefits from an employer — a number that falls to 6% for part-timers and those in the lowest income quartile, per BCG.
Yet those are the workers who typically lose out on pay because of a child care emergency.
What they found: For every $1 spent on child care benefits, employers saw a net gain of between $0.90 and $4.25 through reduced absenteeism, less lateness, and lower rates of attrition.
The study debunks the idea that child care is a cost center. “These benefits pay for themselves,” the […]
In a way, I see this as good news, because institutions like the Brennan Center are beginning to realize and talk about how AI-generated fake videos and audio tapes can and are being used to influence voters. I just don’t think voters, particularly the bulk of voters who don’t really have any understanding of the actual issues involved or what politicians actually are trying to do. You have to always keep in mind that millions of Americans can’t even name the three branches of U.S. government, so how could they recognize a deepfake video or audio?
Illustration by Maksim Tkachenko / Getty
There’s something scary online involving Kari Lake — and it’s not what you might expect.
The nonprofit journalism site Arizona Agenda has a minute-long video from the TV news anchor turned GOP candidate, praising the site’s work . . . and then halfway through, revealing that it is all a deepfake. Watch it here. Especially, watch it on a phone, where the glitches are less noticeable. This is new, and unnerving, and ominous.
It is now less than two years since ChatGPT was released, and the world began to debate how much change advances in generative artificial intelligence would bring. Are they like Gutenberg’s Bible, made possible by the new technology of the printing press? Or are they yet another techno-fad, more hype than impact? Over the coming years, all this will unfold with massive repercussions for our work, healthcare, and lives. (A guarantee: The Briefing is written by a live person, and always will be!)
When it comes to elections, it is becoming increasingly clear that the biggest new threat in 2024 comes from the impact of generative AI on the information ecosystem, including through deepfakes like the one starring […]
Here is what is potentially major good news. According to the World Health Organization, “Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, 85.6 million [65.0–113.0 million] people have been infected with the HIV virus and about 40.4 million [32.9–51.3 million] people have died of HIV. Globally, 39.0 million [33.1–45.7 million] people were living with HIV at the end of 2022.”
This may be the solution.
HIV-1 virus particles under electron micrograph with H9 T-cells (in blue) Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
A new study has unveiled a likely future cure for HIV which uses molecular scissors to ‘cut out’ HIV DNA from infected cells.
To cut out this virus, the team used CRISPR-Cas gene editing technology—a groundbreaking method that allows for precise alterations to a patient’s genome, for which its inventors won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.
One of the significant challenges in HIV treatment is the virus’s ability to integrate its genome into the host’s DNA, making it extremely difficult to eliminate—but the CRISPR-Cas tool provides a new means to isolate and target HIV DNA.
Because HIV can infect different types of cells and tissues in the body, each with its own unique environment and characteristics, the researchers are searching for a way to target HIV in all of these situations.
Have you noticed that criminal Trump is treated by the courts differently than anyone you know or have ever heard of? Thom Hartmann makes it clear with the facts that oligarchs live in different world than middle-class Americans. This has happened because poor and middle-class Americans have voted Trump Christofacist Party (TCPs) into office. Do you think these people will wake up to what they have done by the time of the November election? Tragically, I don’t think they will. That means there have to be many more of us who support Democracy vote, many more I say, because the TCPs are going to do everything they can to rig the election to the benefit of the TCPs.
In America today, if you can afford at least $50 million in lawyers fees, you can get away with rape, massive financial fraud over decades, ripping off people who just wanted to go to college, stealing from children’s Cancer charities, paying off porn stars to influence an election, and leading a treasonous insurrection against your own country that results in the death of at least six people plus 3 police officers (with over 100 police officers ending up in the hospital, many with life altering injuries) without ever spending a night in jail.
Michael Cohen was sent to New York’s notorious Riker’s Island prison for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy centerfold Karen MacDougal to keep them quiet in the weeks before the 2016 election about their affairs with Donald Trump.
Having the affairs wasn’t Cohen’s idea, and he never slept with either woman. It wasn’t even his idea to pay them off: that came from Donald Trump and David Pecker, who called it “catch and kill” as in, “pay off the women to kill the story.”
But Michael Cohen went to prison for this crime: a crime designed to get Donald Trump […]
Monica L. Wang, ScD, MS, and Cristina M. Gago, PhD, MPH, - JAMA Pedoatrics
Stephan:
The average American diet is so bad that childhood obesity has become a crisis with all manner of negative side effects as described in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Credit: First Cry Parenting
As COVID-19 captured the world’s attention, a more silent epidemic grew in its wake. Pediatric obesity rates in the US rose from 19.3% in August 2019 to 22.4% in August 2020.1 The rate of child body mass index growth (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared per unit of time) nearly doubled during this time, from 0.052/mo prepandemic to 0.100/mo midpandemic, despite a relative stabilization in previous years.1 The recent rise in obesity and body mass index disproportionately affected youths with preexisting overweight, those of color, and those from low-income households, exacerbating existing health inequities. The increase in obesity reflects a deterioration of health behaviors,2 fueled by pandemic disruptions (eg, physical distancing; remote school, work, and socializing) that worsened existing systemic inequities. In this article, we examine recent behavioral shifts in children’s diet, physical activity, sleep, and screen time from a health equity perspective and provide upstream interventions to support overall child health.
System-level disruptions in food economies along with rising inflation critically hindered healthy food availability, accessibility, and affordability, resulting in nearly 33.8 million people experiencing food insecurity in 2021, according to the […]
