Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Even as Omicron Wanes, New York City’s Teachers Are in a Holding Pattern - As absences persist, some schools are resigning themselves to remote learning. - link

• Making Love in the Land of Oil Rigs - In Tabitha Lasley’s memoir, a study of the insular world of offshore oil rigs becomes an exhibit of the power dynamics between the men who work on them and the women they love on land. - link

• The Senate’s Dangerous Inability to Protect Democracy - The struggles of Angus King reflect the rise of Trumpism over centrism. - link

• A Welcome Unfreedom in South Korea - Quarantining with my mother in her homeland, I questioned the U.S. approach to the pandemic and public health. - link

• Can “Partygate” Bring Down Boris Johnson? - The British Prime Minister has weathered many scandals, but his flouting of his own administration’s COVID restrictions may be a step too far. - link

From Vox

• One Good Thing: Nothing in Criminal Minds makes sense and it’s perfect -

  

  The crimes on Criminal Minds are wild, as are the ways the FBI solves them.

  On Criminal Minds, the criminal is usually a white man in his late 20s to early 30s. Except for that one time when it was a white woman who believes she is Cinderella. She kills men who don’t live up to her Prince Charming fantasies, leaving a phone in their mouths with an alarm set to midnight (you see the fairy tale reference here). She usually stabs them with garden shears, but she also gets them once each with a high-heeled shoe (again). Before killing one man, she rubs soot on her face (and again). One of the FBI agents pursuing her catches her by presenting her with a glass slipper and kissing her hand. They walk off arm in arm together — and eventually to her off-screen arrest, one would hope.

  If it sounds incredibly bizarre, it’s because it is.

  For those not familiar, Criminal Minds is a procedural drama that ran on CBS for 15 seasons, from 2005 to 2020. (There’s been chatter of a reboot on Paramount+, but it seems unlikely). It centers on the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, which, as the name suggests, tries to solve crimes by analyzing behavior. On the show, that translates to characters catching unknown subjects — or, as they say, unsubs — by delivering a profile, where they basically guess what the criminal (almost always a killer) is like.

  It feels a little dissonant to call a show that’s about horrific crimes delightful, but there is, indeed, something delightful about the extent to which reality is suspended. So many of the crimes make absolutely no sense. Much of this would never happen in real life.

  One lady drugs her victims to turn them into real-life dolls because her abusive father took away her doll set. One guy drowns people in their pools because when he was a kid he and a friend used to play pirates. Another guy kills young men and throws them into tornadoes because he’s trying to reassemble his dead brother. There’s a cult that freezes people. A lady who kills men to use them as fertilizer. A gambler who starts murdering for good luck.

  If I’m spoiling some things for you here, I’m sorry. In my defense, the show usually spoils itself halfway through and tells you who the unsub is anyway. We’ve got to learn about that criminal mind, after all.

  Beyond how unfathomable many of the crimes are, there’s another equally unbelievable layer: It’s genuinely confounding how the crimes are solved, too. The agents magically come up with random theories about someone’s life and personality, tell them to a technical analyst back at the headquarters — a colorfully dressed woman named Penelope Garcia (played by Kirsten Vangsness) — and she types those theories into a magical database. And poof! Suspect identified! The characters will be like, “Okay, look up a man in his early- to mid-20s who has a mean mom and a tattoo and lives in Ohio,” and what do you know, there’s just one guy who matches. (I’ve run into a conspiracy theory that Garcia is actually the only killer and goes around the country framing random men for crimes, which, honestly, could check out.)

  Take the Cinderella killer as an example. Initially, the team thinks the killer’s a man — because the killers are almost always men — and finally decide it’s a woman. They put together the midnight, soot, and shoe thing somehow and decide the suspect is fairy tale-inspired. One agent figures out the shoe thing because she says she decided to browse a Jimmy Choo catalog and saw a stiletto heel. Another agent spills on her dress and puts together that the suspect could work for a dry cleaner after remembering someone who saw the killer said her dress had a tag on it.

  The team comes up with a profile. They speculate that maybe the suspect is a stepchild or was in foster care. They also speculate that, in that scenario, her foster parents or stepparents favored their biological children. This would have upset her. The team tells this to Penelope, and among other items, she types this into her computer. I am by no means an expert on FBI databases, but I am a bit dubious that a database of “sad about foster care because parents liked biological children better than me” is actually a thing. Or maybe it is and I finally know what Palantir does. Whatever the case, this miracle database really streamlines things and speeds the plot up.

  I floated back toward Criminal Minds and this episode suggests there’s a database for everyone who has “bought the ingredients for acid”??? In Pennsylvania, which they can cross reference with the… identities of incels who comment …anonymously??? On a website???

  — Olivia Messer

  1. September 27, 2021

To be sure, Criminal Minds can strike a more serious tone, and some of what it deals in is quite disturbing and tragic. One of the main characters deals openly with being sexually abused as a child; another, with her sister’s suicide.

The show can be problematic in its treatment of women. There’s a lot of violence against women, so much so that one of the show’s early stars, Mandy Patinkin, exited after saying he realized “they were going to kill and rape all these women every night.” At one point, two of the show’s female leads — AJ Cook and Paget Brewster — were fired, only to relatively quickly be brought back after fans complained and the people over at CBS realized maybe this wasn’t a good look.

Criminal Minds got a little better on the lady front over the years. Cook’s character, Jennifer “JJ” Jareau, got to go from being a comms person to carrying a gun. The writers stopped killing off so many of the supporting female characters — who, as my colleague and fellow Criminal Minds fan Sara Morrison notes, were often portrayed as overbearing, incompetent bosses and nags. (Really, nothing gets you killed horribly faster than a woman on Criminal Minds than slightly getting in a male lead’s way.) Still, the misogyny in the show is reflective of the misogyny of real life: Violence against women is a pervasive problem in real life, not only on fictional crime TV.

Criminal Minds is not the perfect show, but in the realm of crime dramas, its slightly campy, often implausible, sometimes comical tone hits the spot. Like, I do want to watch Derek Morgan (played by the perfectly beautiful Shemar Moore) exchange over-the-top sexually charged jokes with Penelope the computer lady, who he refers to as “baby girl,” when he calls upon her to look up criminals in her magical database. I find the episode where Brewster’s Emily Prentiss shows up at a teammate’s house to drink wine by herself in a corner as everyone else helps assemble a crib to be relatable. Why is the FBI team assembling a fellow agent’s crib instead of, you know, the agent’s friends or family? Questions better left unasked.

There are a lot of scary things going on in the world, and maybe a little counterintuitively, Criminal Minds makes me feel a little less scared. My attention span is shot. Sometimes, all I want is to watch a 45-ish-minute show that solves a crime in that time frame, and to vaguely follow the plot, to the extent there is one.

I wrote this story with Criminal Minds on in the background (for inspiration) and at one point looked up to see which episode it was. It’s one where a guy kidnaps women and kind of tries to turn them into birds. A fantastically improbable scenario, but worth the watch.

Criminal Minds streams on Paramount+. Seasons one through 12 stream on Netflix, and seasons 13-15 are available on Amazon Prime.

• This new map shows where nature is, in fact, healing -

  

  Good news! Humans are restoring ecosystems all around the world.

  About 100 miles west of Chicago, Illinois, a tallgrass prairie teems with life. Here in this 3,800-acre piece of land, you can walk among brightly colored fields of wildflowers, hear the song of cerulean warblers and the hoot of short-eared owls, and, if you’re lucky, glimpse rare box turtles.

  It wasn’t always this way. Over the past two centuries, the Prairie State lost all but about 0.01 percent of its original prairie. This particular region, now known as the Nachusa Grasslands, was covered in part by neat rows of corn and soy, and that left little habitat for monarch butterflies, bison, or any of the thousands of plants and animals that depend on prairie ecosystems.

  That started to change in the 1980s, when a crew of volunteers and scientists began reviving the land — planting seeds, carrying out controlled burns, and reintroducing native species. The ecosystem bounced back, and today, the Nachusa Grasslands are home to 180 species of native birds, more than 700 species of plants, and a small herd of bison.

  Courtesy of Charles Larry/The Nature Conservancy

In an age of extinction and climate change, you don’t often hear this kind of success story. Yet the Nachusa Grasslands of the world can help people find hope that the Earth isn’t doomed.

Late last year, Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at ETH Zurich, launched Restor, a mapping tool that shows where in the world people are doing this sort of restoring or conserving of ecosystems. Think of it as the “nature is healing” meme from the early pandemic, but serious.

We should be angry about climate change and the destruction of ecosystems, Crowther told Vox. “But without optimism, that outrage goes nowhere,” he said. Examples of people restoring land give us all something to root for, and now there’s a spot to find a whole bunch of them — tens of thousands, actually.

Restor joins a trove of new environmental initiatives that focus on ecological “wins.” Last summer, for example, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — which oversees the official “red list” of threatened species — came up with a new set of standards to measure the recovery of species, like the California condor. Perhaps it’s a sign that people want to look beyond what we have to lose, especially when there’s so much to gain.

Where nature is really healing

There are more than 76,000 examples of restoration on Restor. In a former cattle ranch in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, for example, a nonprofit planted trees to revive an ecosystem that’s now home to more than 170 species of birds. In the Tanzanian savanna, members of local villages have helped restore acacia woodlands, which provide fuelwood and timber, as well as habitat for hyenas, jackals, and other animals. Restor is an open platform, so anyone can upload their own project if it involves conserving land, Crowther said.

“We’ve never known where all the conservation and restoration is happening on our planet,” Crowther said. “It’s the first time we can begin to visualize a global restoration movement.”

Restor’s aim to map restoration sites worldwide is “excellent,” but it comes with some limitations, said Karen Holl, a restoration expert at the University of California Santa Cruz who sits on Restor’s science advisory council. For one, a lot of information that feeds into the platform comes from global computer models that aren’t always accurate at a local level. Plus, there’s no verification process to make sure the projects that people enter accurately reflect what’s happening on the ground.

“The ambitions are right,” Holl said. “I am concerned about it being misused.”

How to use the map

Crowther built the website largely for organizations and people who are themselves conserving land. But if you just want to poke around to find neat projects, or see what kind of ecosystems are in your backyard, it’s pretty easy to use. It’s also home to an impressive collection of data sets that you can explore (though, once again, keep in mind that they’re not always accurate at a local level). Here’s how:

1. Go to restor.eco/map.
2. Click the pins on the map to learn about different landscapes that people are restoring.
3. Pull up a project and you’ll see all kinds of information, like who’s running it and what’s being done with the land.
4. Under the “global predictions” tab, you’ll see estimates for the amount of tree cover, diversity of wildlife, and carbon stored in the soil of any given area, based on global computer models. You can also view how the area has changed over time by pulling up super-high-resolution satellite imagery.
5. You can also draw your own area on the map to estimate, say, how many species of animals live in the forest behind your house, or how much carbon is in the soil. If you’ve got an ecosystem that you’re conserving, you can share it publicly.

There’s a more in-depth guide here if you want to learn more.

Over the next decade, Crowther says Restor will focus on adding more projects to the platform and making it useful to companies that want to give customers a look into their supply chains. He imagines a future in which a customer buying a T-shirt, for example, might be able to pinpoint on Restor’s map where the cotton came from.

The value of measuring what nature has regained

One problem with the onslaught of negative environmental news — extinctions, oil spills, and so on — is that people become numb to it, as Barney Long, senior director of conservation strategies at the nonprofit Re:wild, told Vox last fall.

“I’m a strong believer in flipping this on its head and really starting to talk about the positive stories,” said Long, who’s involved in IUCN’s new tools to measure recovery (but not the Restor map). We want to avoid extinction, he said, “but what do we want to achieve?”

Efforts to restore ecosystems don’t always work, of course, and it’s important to highlight failures and course corrections, Crowther said. His previous research into forest restoration helped inspire enormous tree-planting campaigns, for example, but these efforts often fail to restore forests and can even destroy native ecosystems. Restoration is also not going to stop climate change on its own, experts say.

Scientists have learned a lot from those failures about how to help a landscape heal; it’s important to consider the underlying conditions that fuel destruction in the first place, for example. Restor creates an opportunity to learn from the successes, too.

A renewed focus on achievements could have a big upside beyond just feeling better about the state of the planet. It could help us imagine the world we want to build. “If we start looking up the hill toward recovery,” Long said, “our ambition can almost be endless.”

• How to spot the signs of long Covid — and what to do next -

  

  If you’ve had (or currently have) Covid-19, here’s what you should know about long Covid symptoms and care.

  Stuart Katz, a cardiologist at NYU Langone, got Covid-19 in December 2020, right before he was able to receive the Covid-19 vaccine as a health care professional. When we spoke for this article, more than a year since his infection, he told me excitedly that he just discovered he was able to eat honey again without it tasting awful. His extreme fatigue and brain fog had subsided after about six months, he says. Some aren’t so lucky.

  Strange and sometimes debilitating symptoms lasting long past the original bout of sickness are presenting in many people who’ve had Covid-19. The patient-coined term for this is long Covid, though experts often refer to it as post-Covid condition or PASC (for Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection). Reports of how common long Covid is vary widely from study to study, but the WHO estimates that 10-20 percent of people are experiencing new or lingering symptoms three months after infection.

  When we consider just how many people have been infected with Covid-19, that amounts to millions of people dealing with persistent, ongoing symptoms. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information on why this is happening and why only some people seem to be affected, though a recent preprint study out of Israel suggests that vaccinated people may have a lower risk of developing long Covid symptoms.

  The good news is that most with long Covid do seem to get better over time without treatment, says Katz, the principal investigator of the NIH-funded Recover Initiative to study the long-term effects of Covid-19. But it can be hard to stay hopeful when you’ve been dealing with chronic, disruptive symptoms for months.

  “Many people who have had Covid and who haven’t recovered are starting to look very much like ME/CFS patients,” says Lucinda Bateman, founder and medical director of the Bateman Horne Center, and an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). As is often the case with long Covid, ME/CFS is characterized by chronic, debilitating symptoms such as fatigue, pain, and cognitive dysfunction — and ME/CFS often persists at least six months. The cause of ME/CFS is not well understood, but it’s thought to possibly be triggered by a virus or another kind of infection. Bateman and other experts have been studying the parallels between long Covid and ME/CFS, hoping that this will give them a better understanding of both conditions.

  While there’s still so much we don’t know about long Covid, it’s possible to look to other chronic illnesses and post-viral syndromes for clues when it comes to managing the condition. There may not be a known cure for long Covid, but there are ways you can advocate for yourself and get care for your symptoms. So if you’ve had (or currently have) Covid-19, here’s what you should know about long Covid.

  Know that symptoms can vary and may show up immediately after your infection … or a few months later

  One of the many frustrating realities of long Covid is that it doesn’t look the same in everyone. In October 2021, the WHO released the following definition, which illustrates just how complex and varied long Covid actually is:

  Post COVID-19 condition occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually 3 months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms that last for at least 2 months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis. Common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction but also others … which generally have an impact on everyday functioning. Symptoms may be new onset, following initial recovery from an acute COVID19 episode, or persist from the initial illness. Symptoms may also fluctuate or relapse over time. A separate definition may be applicable for children.

  Basically, symptoms can include pretty much anything, show up pretty much any time, and change or resolve pretty much whenever. “Literally dozens and dozens of symptoms have been described, virtually touching on every single part of the body,” Katz sayd. He also says that long Covid can crop up even in people who had a very mild case of the virus, so having a relatively easy bout of Covid-19 isn’t a reason to discount your symptoms.

  So, let’s talk about those symptoms. A systematic review published in November 2021 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine identified more than 100 possible symptoms that have been associated with long Covid. The most common ones noted in the research are those that are associated with the initial Covid-19 infection, such as loss of taste and smell, respiratory symptoms, chest pain, fever, and headaches. (The study authors did note that it’s possible these are overrepresented in the research simply because they’re the symptoms that were asked about most often.) Other common symptoms include cognitive dysfunction (like brain fog), nerve and muscle pain, sleep disturbances, mobility issues, and psychological symptoms like anxiety and depression.

  Carolyn Van Houten/Washington Post via Getty Images

Another major symptom is post-exertional malaise, which is a fancy way of saying that you are completely spent after doing even basic activities. “I personally experienced this where relatively minor things — things you would do without thinking, like run an errand to a store or do something that’s really not exertional — would wipe you out not just for the day but for the next day too,” says Katz.

These aren’t the only possible symptoms that you might experience with long Covid; they’re just the ones that have been mentioned most often in research. Ask around and you’ll probably hear everything from gastrointestinal problems to menstrual irregularities. The CDC also keeps a list of possible long Covid symptoms. In addition to these symptoms, experts are seeing various health conditions, such as heart problems and kidney disease, crop up in patients who had particularly severe disease or long hospitalizations.

Check in with a health care provider as soon as you can

While there’s no diagnostic test for long Covid, it’s still important to seek care if you’re experiencing symptoms like this. Also, it’s possible to be reinfected — especially with new variants popping up — so if you’re suddenly experiencing new Covid-like symptoms after you’ve recovered from the initial infection, your first step should be getting tested to make sure it’s not another round of Covid-19.

If you test negative, you’ll want to get your symptoms evaluated so that you can rule out any other major medical conditions. That will likely start with seeing your primary care provider, if you have one.

It can be tricky and intimidating to see any provider when you’re coming in with a whole list of issues that may or may not be related to each other. Fortunately, the CDC created a checklist to help folks prepare for appointments related to long Covid symptoms. One particularly helpful tip: Keep a journal of your symptoms for at least a week so that you feel prepared to share the full range, frequency, and severity of your symptoms, plus what a good day or bad day feels like. It’s also a good idea to come with a list of questions and a way of taking down information (like bringing a notepad or a buddy).

Managing long Covid comes down to identifying and treating your specific set of symptoms. Bateman suggests paying attention to how the condition is manifesting for you — whether that’s inflammation, headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms, allergic responses, sleep disturbances, etc. From there, you can look for providers and treatments based on those specific symptoms. That might mean seeing a pulmonologist for any lingering lung issues, going to a gastroenterologist for your GI issues, or seeing a mental health professional for the myriad psychological impacts of this condition.

Look into online support groups and studies

Connecting with people who know what you’re going through can be so helpful. It even was for Katz, who found reassurance in speaking with Recover’s patient representatives while he was still reeling from long Covid, too.

“There are really great patient advocacy groups that have given a voice to this and were a big part of the NIH paying attention and Congress providing appropriation of funds to study long Covid,” Katz says. “I think becoming part of that community is empowering and probably is the best thing that people should think about beyond talking with their doctors.” A few great places to start include Body Politic, Long Covid Alliance, and Survivor Corps.

Another way to gain some feeling of control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation is to get involved in the research being done. The NIH recently awarded nearly $470 million to support large-scale studies on long Covid. You can sign up to be a part of the Recover Initiative and learn more about their upcoming clinical trials here. You can also visit the NIH’s clinical trials database to search for studies that are currently or will soon be recruiting participants that may match your experience.

“From my personal experience, knowing that there are other people going through this helped me,” Katz says. “You’re not crazy and it’s not just in your head.”

Look for a post-Covid clinic in your area

Seeing several different specialists can be pricey, time-consuming, and exhausting, and is likely to be out of reach for millions of Americans. It’s endlessly frustrating that our medical system isn’t set up in a way that makes caring for complex chronic illnesses like this easier on the person already suffering.

    <img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-

Fortunately, some major medical facilities are attempting to bridge this gap with post-Covid clinics. The idea is that patients would have a centralized point of care and a multidisciplinary approach to their symptoms, explains Devang Sanghavi, director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. That said, accessibility and insurance status will still likely be a barrier for many.

At least 44 hospitals in the US have established post-Covid clinics as of August 2021, though there isn’t an exhaustive list of these facilities. To find one in your area, try searching for “post-Covid clinic near me” or visiting the website of any large teaching hospitals nearby, which may have one or can refer you to one.

Give yourself a break (both physically and metaphorically)

Bateman’s advice for long Covid patients is similar to the advice given to people with ME/CFS: “The first thing is to be very patient and give your body a chance to heal. Slow down. Don’t get in a push-crash cycle of pushing yourself, crashing, pushing, crashing. We tell people to pace their activity, meaning try to do the right amount of activity every day that doesn’t escalate your symptoms but keeps you moving.”

Pacing yourself is easier said than done for most people; still, making an effort to slow down and listen to your body while you’re healing can go a long way. Bateman notes that brain fog is a symptom that tends to get worse in ME/CFS patients when they’re pushed beyond their limits physically and mentally, so taking care of yourself as best as possible could help. Getting enough sleep is a crucial — yet often elusive — part of that.

Despite the overwhelming fatigue that many people with long Covid experience, sleep disturbances are also frustratingly common. It’s a vicious cycle in which the symptoms of long Covid can keep you up at night, and a lack of restorative sleep can make symptoms worse and healing harder. Not to mention that the pandemic itself is screwing with our sleep in many ways.

While it can be tempting to turn to sleep aids like melatonin or sleeping pills, Bateman suggests treating the specific cause, if possible. For instance, if you’re being kept up by chronic pain, anxious thoughts, or allergic responses like rashes or itching, those are all helpful details to bring up to a health care provider so you can explore solutions through medication and/or therapy. If your symptoms seem mostly managed but you’re still not getting restorative sleep, try focusing on the basics of good sleep hygiene: consistently going to bed and getting up at the same time, limiting caffeine and alcohol, staying away from screens before bed, and keeping your room dark, quiet, and cool. Finally, consider seeing a sleep specialist if you’re consistently not getting quality sleep.

Do what you can to take care of your mental health

The subject of mental health is a tricky one when it comes to long Covid because while it’s true that mental health resources can be helpful for patients, that fact can also be used to imply that the symptoms are psychosomatic.

John Paraskevas/Newsday RM via Getty Images

“It’s so easy to blame an illness like this on anxiety or depression or PTSD, which just isn’t appropriate: This is a devastating, physical, post-viral, inflammatory, and neurologic illness,” says Bateman. That said, it’s also true that mental health support — whether that’s in the form of psychotherapy, medication, counseling, or mindfulness approaches — can be invaluable for alleviating the psychological toll of living with a chronic condition. And it’s possible that managing stress can help to mitigate some of the long Covid symptoms if they are being exacerbated by your anxiety.

Managing stress and anxiety, though, can feel completely out of reach for many of us right now, whether or not you’re dealing with long Covid. No one is suggesting that self-care in a pandemic is easy, especially when you’re living with a chronic illness, but tending to the mental and emotional toll is just as important as treating your physical symptoms.

“It’s not like mental health support makes the illness go away, but it makes it easier to live with when you can get yourself into a place of emotional stability and resilience,” says Bateman.

Casey Gueren is an award-winning health journalist and author of the book It’s Probably Nothing: The Stress-Less Guide to Dealing with Health Anxiety, Wellness Fads, and Overhyped Headlines.

From The Hindu: Sports

• U-19 World Cup | Skipper Dhull among five players unavailable for Uganda game after returning positive RT-PCR tests - Out of the six players, who were isolated before the match against Ireland on Wednesday, only all-rounder Vasu Vats tested negative

• Australian Open 2022 | Anisimova upsets defending champion Naomi Osaka - Rafael Nadal was playing a late match against No. 28 Karen Khachanov, aiming to continue his bid for a record 21st Grand Slam title

• India to open 2022 T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on October 23 at MCG - India’s second Super 12 match in Group 2 will be on October 27 in Sydney against a qualifier (runner up of Group A) and will be followed by matches against South Africa (October 30 in Perth) and Bangladesh (Adelaide Oval on November 2).

• Grassroots competitions needed to take Indian football ahead: Antonio Cachaza - Talking about the growth of football In India, Mr. Antonio Cachaza expressed confidence with the way ISL is taking football to the right direction.

• SA vs Ind second ODI | India wins toss, opts to bat - India are playing an unchanged XI while South Africa made one change to its side.

From The Hindu: National News

• Covid-19: Karnataka stops weekend curfew, continues night curfew - Hospitalisation among Covid-19 patients not exceeding 5% cited as reason for relaxation

• Harak Singh Rawat, daughter-in-law join Congress - Harak Singh Rawat was expelled from the BJP and dismissed from the Uttarakhand Cabinet on Sunday.

• Kerala High Court to hear anticipatory bail pleas of actor Dileep, others on Satturday - Court will hold special sitting

• Forest staff brace for fire season at MM Hills in Karnataka - The conventional practice of clearing fire lines – creating a bald patch of land along delineated beat boundaries to act as a fire breaker – has been completed

• Brain dead youth in Mysuru could transform lives of five persons through organ donation - 24-year-old Darshan’s organs were harvested and donated to various hospitals for transplanting in needy patients

From BBC: Europe

• Ukraine tension: Urgent US-Russia talks in Geneva as invasion fears grow - The top US and Russian diplomats met in Geneva as fears of an invasion of Ukraine grow.

• Serbia revokes Rio Tinto lithium mine permits following protests - The country cancels the mining licence for the Anglo-Australian firm’s controversial $2.4bn project.

• French tourist Benjamin Briere goes on trial in Iran for espionage - Benjamin Brière was arrested in 2020 after flying a drone near the Iran-Turkmenistan border.

• French elections: Divided left fight doomed race of their own - For the first time in living memory there is no left-wing candidate challenging for the presidency.

• Coronavirus: Austrian parliament approves mandatory vaccination order - If the bill is signed into law, Austrians who refuse to take the shot will face fines of up to €3,600.

From Ars Technica

• Want a great PC mouse? Understand these terms - 9 phrases to know when buying a high-end PC mouse. - link

• Rocket Report: SpaceX lands rocket cargo funding, Virgin Galactic’s stock crash - “Everyone is safe and the team did an admirable job.” - link

• Physicists have created “everlasting bubbles” - One gas bubble lasted for a whopping 465 days, a world record for this type of object. - link

• Review: Fraggle Rock on Apple TV+ is the Muppet series Disney+ wishes it had - Irreverence, whimsy, radishes: series’ return includes Muppet-teering at its best. - link

• First details leak on Project Iris, Google’s next AR headset - The ski-goggles-like product is targeting a 2024 launch window. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A mail carrier is about to retire… -

  So he puts a note in all of his mailboxes letting people know that his last day would be at the end of the week.

  On his last day, neighbors were showering him with gifts and praise for his many years of faithful service.

  As he approaches a house in his route, he realizes that he’s never even met the people that live there. But as he lifts the little flap to drop the mail in the mailbox, the door opens up and standing in the door is this stunning blonde woman wearing nothing but a sheer robe. She welcomed the mail carrier in and leads him to her bedroom where they have sex for hours.

  Once the fun is over, she tells him to get dressed and to meet her in the kitchen. When he walks into the kitchen, he sees the table covered in delicious-looking food. The woman tells him to sit down as she made a plate of anything he wanted.

  As he finished his breakfast, he thanked the woman for her hospitality. She said, “Not so fast. Flip the plate over!”. He flips the plate over to find a dollar bill taped to the bottom. He finally says, “Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve done. The sex was amazing, the food was just fantastic, and now money. But why!? In all the years I’ve been your mailman, I’ve never met you, nor have you ever put out gifts for holidays or anything. Why all of this now!”.

  The blonde women explains, “I got your note saying you were retiring. I asked my husband if we should do anything for you. His answer was, ‘Fuck ‘em, give ‘em a dollar.’ Breakfast was my idea!”.

  submitted by /u/fdman75
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• (NSFW)I’m quitting my job to sell double sided dildos -

  I hear it’s a good way to make ends meet.

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• They say Prince Andrew can get off on a legal technicality -

  Is there anything this guy doesn’t find arousing?

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• An atheist dies and goes to hell… -

  …and notices he’s in a lush park with butterflies, his physical body has transformed back into its prime, and he’s then greeted by Satan who says “sup homie? Welcome to hell. Let me show you around, you’re gonna love it here mate.”

  Satan points to a nice house and says “what do you think of this house?” The atheist replies “It’s beautiful, I could never afford anything like that in my life.” Satan gave him a key ring and said “well it’s yours now. Free utilites, Netflix, Hulu, and there’s a PS5, Nintendo Switch, all your favorite John Hughes films, you name it! It’s all yours now, I like my residents to be cozy.” The atheist thanked Satan. Satan replied “your welcome. But before you get settled, I got more to show you. Follow me!”

  They walk further along the park. The sun is shining bright and there’s a nice fragrance in the air. Then Satan points to a parking garage and says “click the button on your key ring.” The atheist clicks it and notices a particular car flashing its lights. He says, “is that a silver Tesla?” Satan replied “I heard its your dream car, right? I just think that everyone deserves a reliable way of transportation. I don’t want anyone panting to get around in hell. That Tesla is all yours.” The atheist thanked him.

  He and Satan continue walking through the park and things still seem amicable. There are critters playing and flowers blooming. Then a beautiful woman rushed up to the two and says “what’s up Satan…heyyyy, aren’t you a handsome looking fellow”. Satan said, “everyone deserves the partner of their dreams so…” The woman gives the atheist her number and says “here’s my number, call me when the tour’s over and we’ll have fun.” The atheist is excited but continues walking with Satan.

  Then the atheist suddenly sees a fence. He gets a whiff of sulfur coming from the other side of the fence and hears some screaming. He looks through a hole in the fence and notices people getting tortured and impaled and pools of magma. The atheist is horrified and said “what is going on in there?” Satan said “oh, those are the Christians. I won’t pretend to understand why, but they seem to prefer it that way”

  submitted by /u/AntiHeroLBC
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• A guy goes to a party and meets a gorgeous girl on a wheel chair -

  They hit it off and by the end of the night they’re both really horny and she tells him to go to her place. When they arrive to the doorstep she grabs a duffel bag that was hidden behind a bush and instructs the guy to take her to the back of the house. The guy is a little weirded out, but he obligues. When they get there she starts undressing and pulls a harness out of the bag, instructing the guy to install it on the tree and help her to get “in position”. They have weird but awesome sex, and when they’re done he lifts her from the harness, sits her on the wheelchair and helps her get inside her home. As he is walking away the door opens again, and he sees the father of the girl calling him. He starts walking a little faster trying to get away from the angry dad, but he keeps calling him, and at the end he stops, bracing himself. The dad catches up to him, and tells him “Every Saturday morning I wake up to my naked daughter hanging from a tree, I just wanted to thank you for helping her get inside the house”

  submitted by /u/nublaii
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