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End-of-Life Dreams | Commonweal Magazine

“In a high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it was a dream that led a physician to conclude that my wife was dying. How was that possible?”

Click to view the original at commonwealmagazine.org

Hasnain says:

Moving and enlightening piece. Gave me a lot to think about.

“ “Medically,” Dr. D said, “Lisa is much better. Her vital signs are strong, and she is not experiencing any nausea. This is the good news. The bad news,” he continued, “is that your wife called the nurses in the middle of the night to say that she saw her parents on a boat outside the window beckoning her to come. I know this may not make sense,” he went on, “but we see this repeatedly in our patients. When patients report a vision like this, they almost always die within a day or two. I’m so sorry.” My wife died a little more than twenty-four hours later.

I have spent a lot of time since my wife’s death trying to make sense of this paradox. In the high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it was a dream that led a physician to conclude that my wife was dying. How was that possible?”

Posted on 2023-04-24T04:23:50+0000

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The Amazing Story of How Cheesesteaks Became Huge in Lahore, Pakistan

Immigration patterns, global politics, and a bit of serendipity intertwined to make Philly's iconic sandwich a hit in the 13-million-resident megalopolis.

Click to view the original at phillymag.com

Hasnain says:

“Pakistan’s fast-food boom of the 1990s and 2000s overlapped with a rise in Pakistanis traveling to the U.S. for study, work, business and immigration. As a result, many of the food establishments launched in Pakistan at the turn of the millennium were brimming with ideas that those visiting the U.S. brought back with them. The cheesesteak was one of these.

All three of Lahore’s oldest continental cafes — Café Zouk, Freddy’s and CTC — have cheesesteaks on their menus. (And, just like in Philly, each claims to have been the driving force behind the growing popularity of the sandwich.) The cheesesteak at CTC, which opened as a bakery-deli in 2003, was especially popular in the 2000s. Freddy’s, opened two years earlier, in 2001, has featured its Philly steak sandwich from the onset. But Café Zouk, launched in 1995, says it introduced the cheesesteak to Lahore.”

Posted on 2023-04-24T03:36:01+0000

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Hasnain says:

“But turning back the clock and chaining the box shut is no longer an option. Whether America's chest-thumping CEOs like it or not, a new normal has been established. Women working from home are no longer the aberration — tradition-bound executives are. Steven Rattner, in his Times op-ed article, even went so far as to praise China — where many workers are expected to toil from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — for its "extraordinary" work ethic. The old white men who lead corporate America may long for the good old days when every employee had to show up, in person, to toil in the mines for 72 hours a week. But the pandemic has disproved the myth that work and home function best as separate, gender-divided domains.

"The ideal worker in most industries has changed from 'full-time onsite plus overtime' to hybrid," Williams says. "That's a huge change. It's better for women. It's better for men who actually want to show up at home. It's better for people of color." It's better, in short, for everyone — even, ultimately, the corporate executives who are desperately trying to force their employees back to the office. Perhaps it would help if they knew that Pandora's box, in the earliest telling, was full not of evil plagues, but of gifts bestowed on her by the gods, at the order of Zeus himself. The more America's CEOs can unlock the gift of remote work, however "soft" or insufficiently "hardcore" it may feel to them, the stronger and more profitable their companies will be.”

Posted on 2023-04-23T21:16:48+0000

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The Age of the Crisis of Work, by Erik Baker

Illustrations by Grace J. Kim Something has gone wrong with work. On this, everyone seems to agree. Less clear is the precise nature of the problem, let alone who or what is to blame. For some time we’ve been told that we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. Workers are quitting their jobs en...

Click to view the original at harpers.org

Hasnain says:

"The malaise is easy to mistake for a motivation deficit, but it’s more a matter of shifting priorities. For better or worse, people are still happy to work when it seems to be in their best interest. It’s the extra demands of the institution that have begun to grate—the pressure to go “above and beyond” now rejected by the proverbial quiet quitters. Hence the divergent manifestations of the crisis among different groups of workers. For low-wage service workers, currently faced with relatively abundant job openings but a desolate labor-organization landscape, it makes sense to jockey around the job market in search of better pay and conditions. For overproduced professionals in sectors like academia, yoked by their credentials to a narrower (if usually more desirable) job pool, that’s less of an option. Instead they—we—turn at best to unionization, and at worst to quiet despair.

A legitimation crisis occurs, Habermas argued, when the state “lags behind programmatic demands that it has placed on itself.” Legitimacy evaporates when promises are broken. Here I think we can find the roots of work’s legitimation crisis as well. No less than the state, work makes promises to its subjects. Our culture has scripts about what makes work worthwhile, not just necessary; not a burden to be endured but an important component of a flourishing life. And increasingly these scripts do not play out as written."

Posted on 2023-04-19T05:04:50+0000

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Hasnain says:

Sigh.

"XBB.1.16, which reached reportable levels in the U.S. last week, could be behind an uptick of conjunctivitis, especially in children, reports from India suggest, alongside the more common symptoms of fever, cough and fatigue."

Posted on 2023-04-17T22:48:08+0000

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Harlan Crow Bought Property from Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.

The transaction is the first known instance of money flowing from Crow to the Supreme Court justice. The sale netted the GOP megadonor two vacant lots and the house where Thomas’ mother was living.

Click to view the original at propublica.org

Hasnain says:

Of course.

“In 2014, the Thomas family sold the vacant lots and the remaining East 32nd Street house to one of Crow’s companies. The justice signed the paperwork personally. His signature was notarized by an administrator at the Supreme Court, ​​Perry Thompson, who did not respond to a request for comment. (The deed was signed on the 23rd anniversary of Thomas’ Oct. 15 confirmation to the Supreme Court. Crow has a Senate roll call sheet from the confirmation vote in his private library.)

Thomas’ financial disclosure for that year is detailed, listing everything from a “stained glass medallion” he received from Yale to a life insurance policy. But he failed to report his sale to Crow.”

Posted on 2023-04-14T01:18:11+0000

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Twitter Circle tweets are not that private anymore

PSA: Do not post your deepest darkest secrets on your Twitter Circle. It might surface on your Followers' For You timeline.

Click to view the original at techcrunch.com

Hasnain says:

Holy privacy violations, Batman.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to ask Twitter for confirmation, since its public relations team was laid off, and now the press email auto-responds with a poop emoji. But based on Twitter’s track record under Musk’s ownership, it would be surprising if this bug were fixed sooner rather than later — and the “Chief Twit” seems to have focused his attention on other more pressing endeavors.”

Posted on 2023-04-10T23:10:03+0000

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Texas judge suspends FDA approval of abortion pill; second judge protects access

The decision will probably be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and the case could make its way to the Supreme Court.

Click to view the original at washingtonpost.com

Hasnain says:

I don’t even know where to begin.

“The highly anticipated ruling from Texas puts on hold the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a medication first cleared for use in the United States in 2000. It was the first time a court ordered the FDA to remove a medication from the market despite opposition from the agency and the drug’s manufacturer. The ruling will not go into effect for seven days to give the government time to appeal.”

Posted on 2023-04-08T00:38:39+0000

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Tennessee GOP expels 2 Black Democratic lawmakers for anti-gun violence protests. A white legislator survived her vote.

Republicans voted on whether to remove the Democratic legislators for participating in an unauthorized gun safety protest on the House floor last week.

Click to view the original at nbcnews.com

Hasnain says:

This is so openly fascist and racist I don’t know where to begin. TN lawmakers peacefully protested inaction on gun violence and got expelled for lack of decorum (calling it an insurrection worse than Jan 6). They expelled the two black men and let the white woman stay. The speeches (will link in the comments) are a must watch - he calls out how they didn’t bother expelling a child molester or someone who peed on another member’s seat. But, if you protest peacefully while Black… (insert Peter griffin meme)

“More than 250 Democratic state legislators across the U.S. signed on to a letter organized by the State Innovation Exchange, a progressive legislation advocacy group, that accused Tennessee Republicans of racist motives.

“The attempts to expel Reps. Jones, Johnson, and Pearson show a dark truth in the light of day: there’s a robust and racist connection between fighting against gun safety and dismantling our democracy,” the letter says.”

Posted on 2023-04-07T04:05:38+0000

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COVID caused brain damage in 2 infants infected during pregnancy -US study

Researchers at the University of Miami reported on Thursday what they believe are the first two confirmed cases in which the SARS-CoV-2 virus crossed a mother's placenta and caused brain damage in the infants they were carrying.

Click to view the original at reuters.com

Hasnain says:

Really wish we’d stop minimizing covid.

“The newborns had seizures from the first day of life. However, unlike Zika, the babies were not born with microcephaly, a condition marked by small head size. Instead, microcephaly developed over time as their brains stopped growing at a normal rate, the team said.”

Posted on 2023-04-06T21:03:27+0000