Who To Call Instead Of The Police During An Emergency

Lydia Wang 

4/21/2021


On April 20, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd in 2020. But Chauvin is only one part of the problem, and America’s broken police system isn’t changed by his conviction: While Chauvin’s trial was underway, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed during a traffic stop. And moments before Chauvin was announced guilty, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was shot and killed by a Columbus, OH officer whom she had reportedly called for help.

 

© Provided by Refinery29

Last year, 1,127 people — disproportionately Black men — were killed by the U.S. police, according to data from the Police Violence Report. It’s clear that our current system is racist, harmful, and violent. But there’s still disagreement on what America would look like with no police at all.


Part of the problem is that we’re conditioned to call the cops during tense situations. Even those who support abolition may not know what other resources are available. But very often, there are other solutions that could better de-escalate a situation. The website Don’t Call The Police is a great place to start. This comprehensive directory, sorted by city and emergency, offers numbers for local hotlines and crisis centers.

For example, DCTP includes resources for local and national domestic violence hotlines. This information can be incredibly useful, as many people dealing with domestic violence report feeling reluctant to call the police, and one in three people who did call the police felt less safe after doing so, a 2015 survey by the National Domestic Violence Hotline found.

DCTP also has resources and hotline numbers for dealing with mental health crises. Evidence indicates that mental health professionals and nurses are more effective at helping in these kinds of situations: Eugene, OR has a system in place that sends both a medic and a crisis worker to homes upon receiving a report of erratic behavior. In one year, the team responded to around 24,000 calls, and backup was only required around 150 times. The police, however, are less adept and trained at handling such incidents: In 2020, 97 people were killed by the cops in response to reports of erratic behavior or mental health-related crises, the Police Violence Report states.

If you’re in New York, formerly incarcerated software engineers also created an alternative to 911, aptly titled Not911. According to the app’s website, Not911 is designed to direct people in crisis to “New York City-based organizations that offer counseling, mediation and intervention services” that don’t involve police intervention.

Numbers show that in many cities, police primarily receive calls about nonviolent or life-threatening offenses. It might seem harmless to call a cop for help breaking up a neighbor’s party, but the majority of police killings begin with traffic stops, reports of mental health checks, and low-level offenses, according to Mapping Police Violence. Alternatives to the police don’t just solve problems; they potentially save lives.

The options listed here aren’t perfect solutions. Not911 only operates in New York City and DCTP currently displays resources for a limited list of locations. If your city isn’t included, it may be worth doing some prep work to find similar hotlines and resources that are local to you, so you have them on hand if you were ever to need them.

“In this long transition process [to a world without police], we may need a small, specialized class of public servants whose job it is to respond to violent crimes. But part of what we’re talking about here is what role police play in our society,” writes Minneapolis-based collective MPD150. “Right now, cops don’t just respond to violent crimes; they make needless traffic stops, arrest petty drug users, harass Black and Brown people, and engage in a wide range of ‘broken windows policing’ behaviors that only serve to keep more people under the thumb of the criminal justice system.” Changing this will take widespread, intentional action — and that can start with you.

Credit Suisse had more than $20 billion exposure to Archegos investments - WSJ


(Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group had more than $20 billion of exposure to investments related to Archegos Capital Management and struggled to monitor them before the fund had to liquidate many large positions, the Wall Street Journal reported.

© Reuters/ARND WIEGMANN FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at a branch office in Zurich

Parts of the bank had not fully implemented systems to keep pace with Archegos' fast growth when Archegos bets on a collection of stocks swelled leading up to its March collapse, the report said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.


Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein and Lara Warner, the bank's recently departed chief risk officer, became aware of the Archegos exposure in the days leading up to the forced liquidation of the fund, the report said. Neither Gottstein nor Warner had been aware of the fund as a major client before, it said.

Credit Suisse declined to comment on the WSJ report.

Switzerland's second-biggest bank has been reeling from its exposure to the collapse first of British fund Greensill Capital and then U.S. investment fund Archegos within the course of one month.

Huge losses at Archegos last month prompted Credit Suisse to replace its heads of investment banking and of compliance and risk after it said it would book a $4.7 billion first-quarter charge from exposure to the stricken firm.

(Reporting by Sabahatjahan Contractor and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

SNC-Lavalin chief executive gets $8.02M in compensation in first full year at helm

MONTREAL — SNC-Lavalin's chief executive received a big pay raise in his first full year at the helm of the engineering firm as his total compensation surpassed $8 million, according to a regulatory filing.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ian Edwards's total compensation rose to $8.02 million from $3.74 million in 2019 largely due to a big boost in share-based awards and a doubling of his annual bonus, which he converted to stock.

Edwards's salary increased 8.3 per cent to $1.03 million and rose again in 2021 to $1.4 million. Share-based awards last year were valued at $5.6 million, up from nearly $2 million a year earlier.

SNC said $1.8 million of the stock awards came from a one-time grant in March that was deferred from 2019 because of restrictions in its insider-trading policy. It will vest over three years.

He also received a $1.07-million bonus, $216,462 pension value and $90,179 in other compensation, according to the proxy circular filed ahead of its annual meeting on May 14.

Edwards became CEO on Oct. 31, 2019, several months after he was appointed interim head upon the departure of Neil Bruce. He joined the company in 2014 as vice-president of infrastructure construction.

Chief financial officer Jeff Bell's total compensation was $3.17 million while his predecessor, Sylvain Girard, saw his total compensation nearly double to $4.86 million.

Most of the increase for Girard, who left the company on Aug. 31, was the result of $2.4 million in other compensation.

This report by Th e Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SNC)

The Canadian Press

Some Amazon delivery drivers say new surveillance cameras in their trucks can offer protection, despite concerns over constant monitoring

ahartmans@businessinsider.com (Avery Hartmans,Kate Taylor)  

4/22/2021

© Provided by Business Insider Amazon drivers say the new cameras bring new challenges, along with protection. Keith Srakocic/AP

Amazon delivery drivers say new cameras inside their vans can encourage safer driving.
One driver who initially bristled at the cameras told Insider that he now sees them as an "insurance policy."

AI surveillance cameras are becoming more common across the delivery industr

Some Amazon delivery drivers are chafing at a new camera system that watches them inside their vans. But the driver-facing cameras are becoming more common across the industry - and drivers also say there are some key advantages to the new monitoring system.

Insider spoke with five drivers who described what it's like working under the watchful eye of the cameras. They said they felt "micromanaged" and slowed down by the cameras, which ding them for infractions like speeding or distracted driving.

But workers also highlighted several benefits, saying the cameras encourage safer driving and could protect them - as well as protect Amazon and the companies it hires to make package deliveries - in cases of traffic accidents or other dangerous situations. Many of the drivers asked that their names be withheld for fear that their jobs would be affected, but Insider verified their identities.

A representative for Amazon told Insider that the cameras are used to keep "drivers and the communities where we deliver safe."

"Don't believe the self-interested critics who claim these cameras are intended for anything other than safety," a representative said in a statement.
Drivers say that the cameras can improve safety and provide a record of traffic accidents

The camera system, called Driveri, was created by a transportation company called Netradyne, which uses artificial intelligence to monitor drivers.

Amazon told Insider that it saw improvements in driver safety during a pilot test of the Netradyne cameras from April to October 2020: Accidents decreased 48%, stop-sign violations decreased 20%, incidents of workers driving without a seatbelt decreased 60%, and distracted driving decreased 45%.

Some drivers who spoke with Insider said they agreed that the cameras could improve safety on the road. Bronwyn Brigham, a driver based in Houston, told Insider that the cameras could provide critical evidence in dangerous situations.

"If someone has an accident or somebody comes up to the van, that's the only upsides I can see - if somebody tries to rob the van," she said.

A California driver told Insider that the cameras encourage workers to focus more on safe driving.

"They do force the drivers to think more about safety and traffic laws because they will be called out for violations," the driver said. "No more 'secret sin' so to speak."

Drivers also said the cameras could be helpful in the case of traffic accidents. A driver who delivers near the Twin Cities told Insider that he could see how the cameras could prove beneficial in cases where another vehicle hits his van, because he would have the camera footage to prove that the collision wasn't his fault.

An Oklahoma-based driver echoed that the cameras offer a level of protection for drivers if there's an accident.

"You can prove to them, 'Yes, I was paying attention and I just got hit.' And, conversely, if you're screwing around, it's going to prove that too," he said.
Drivers have also criticized the cameras

© AP Cameras rolled out across the US for Amazon drivers in March. AP

The camera system is mounted on the inside of the delivery vehicle windshield and contains four cameras: a road-facing camera, two side-facing cameras, and one camera that faces inward toward the driver.

The cameras record 100% of the time when the ignition is turned on, but only upload footage when they detect one of 16 issues, such as hard braking or a seatbelt lapse, Karolina Haraldsdottir, a senior manager for last-mile safety at Amazon, said in a training video about the cameras.

The system began rolling out to drivers nationwide last month, and initially sparked a backlash among some drivers. A driver named Vic told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the cameras were the final straw, leading him to quit his job.

A driver named Angel Rajal told Insider last month that he thought the new cameras were "annoying" and made him feel as if he were always being watched.

In interviews with Insider, five drivers whose vans have the cameras installed highlighted a slew of concerns over the devices, including a lack of privacy, an obstructed view due to the system's placement on the windshield, "rage-inducing" verbal alerts when drivers make a misstep, and a negative impact on their efficiency.
Companies are increasingly using cameras to monitor drivers

Provided by Business Insider Amazon drivers are not the only ones on camera on the job. Jim Young/Reuters

Matt Camden, a senior research associate at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, recently told Insider that in-vehicle alerts like the ones the Driveri system provides help address risky driving behavior. But he also noted that Amazon may have to make a trade-off when it comes to efficiency.

"If a fleet wants to reduce risky driving behaviors, it's critical to look at why the drivers are doing that in the first place, and usually, it's because there's other consequences that are driving that behavior," which could include "unrealistic delivery times," Camden said.

The most effective approach, he said, is for delivery fleets to build a strong "safety culture" that doesn't pressure employees to keep going if they feel tired or have to use the bathroom.

While the cameras are new for Amazon delivery drivers, they're becoming more common across the industry. Last fall, UPS installed a similar AI surveillance system called Lytx Drivecam inside vans in Texas and Oklahoma. FedEx and Walmart have also started installing Lytx driver-facing cameras in recent years. (Lytx confirmed to Insider that Walmart is a client and the brand is a vendor for FedEx VEDR, saying in a statement that the "service is used by fleets to improve everything from driver safety to vehicle location, compliance, and fuel management.")

One truck driver who hauls Amazon trailers told Insider that - after initial resistance - he now feels that driver-facing cameras are in drivers' and employers' best interest.

"I told myself I would never work for anyone with a camera in my truck," he said. "But … people drive with such disregard, it's almost like an insurance policy."

When he first started working for an Amazon contractor, the driver said he would wave at the camera, saying "Hey, Jeff Bezos, here you go," in a reference to Amazon's chief executive. Now, he said he has become oblivious to the camera.

If more companies are going to require driver-facing cameras throughout the supply chain, the driver said, he is willing to tolerate the surveillance. According to the driver, high-tech tracking has become an inescapable part of the job.

"It's a sign of the times," the driver said.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Province unveils new wild pig strategy


WATERLOO REGION — The province is rooting out the wild pig problem before they get a hoof-hold in the province.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is asking for public input into a new strategy to deal with wild pigs, and accompanying updates to the Invasive Species Act.

Ontario’s strategy to address the threat of invasive wild pigs is meant to proactively address the threat before wild pigs establish stable populations in the province.

“Based on experiences from other jurisdictions, it is clear that the least costly and most effective approach for managing wild pigs is to act early,” the province writes in the strategy.

The United States Department of Agriculture estimates more than $1.5 billion is lost each year to wild pigs either through damage or lost farming produce. Pigs love to eat agricultural crops and trample the plants and dig up the ground in the process. They also cause significant environmental and water quality damage by rooting up landscapes. They also prey on and compete with native species.

The province’s strategy has four main objectives:

prevent the introduction of pigs into the natural environment

address the risk posed by Eurasian wild boar in Ontario

use a co-ordinated approach to remove wild pigs from the natural environment

leverage expertise and resources by collaborating across ministries, with federal agencies, other jurisdictions, and industry stakeholders, and partners

Much of the strategy is focused on the first objective: preventing the introduction of pigs into the natural environment.

A key centrepiece is to add wild pigs to the Invasive Species Act. This will make intentionally introducing pigs to the environment illegal and give owners clear actions if a pig is accidentally released. It will also give enforcement officers the authority to address any issues of illegal pig releases.

Other activities include developing and distributing guidelines for the best management practices for keeping pigs outdoors. The province says keeping pigs outdoors poses a much higher risk of pigs escaping.

The strategy also proposes outreach about the dangers of keeping pigs as pets, and also letting pig keepers and producers know their legal responsibilities if a pig escapes.

The province says that in other jurisdictions, there is evidence that humans have intentionally released pigs into the wild. For example, in the United States, “wild pig populations increased in 2008 and 2009 when the hog market crashed.”

According to the strategy, hunting wild pigs will become illegal, and the province will phase out possession of Eurasian wild boar species.

The full draft strategy can be seen on the Environmental Registry of Ontario listing #019-3468 and comments will be accepted until June 7 2021.

Leah Gerber’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows her to report on stories about the Grand River Watershed. Email lgerber@therecord.com

Leah Gerber, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Waterloo Region Record

A farmer to chefs reveals his deep vegetable knowledge

NEW YORK — Despite thousands of years of humans working the soil, there are still things to learn. Just ask Farmer Lee Jones about the beet leaves.

The Ohio-based farmer had planted too many beets and the surplus was dumped in a pile in a cooler. He returned later to find that when he dug below the first layer, to where the beets got no light exposure, beautiful leaves were growing out of the vegetable in the dark.

“It’s a yellow leaf with red veins. And it’s one of the sexiest things that you can imagine,” he says. “We’re like, ‘Holy smokes, this is nicer than anything we grew on purpose!'”

You might not find plants particularly sexy until you speak to Jones and catch his infectious enthusiasm for farming. He's a relentless experimenter, willing to try new techniques, new ideas and new flavours.

“There are literally thousands of plants and vegetables to be explored,” he says. “We have a saying that we try and work in harmony with Mother Nature rather than trying to outsmart her.”

Jones' deep knowledge about vegetables and growing them is soon available via “The Chef’s Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables — with Recipes.” The 640-page handsome book is equal parts vegetable reference bible, family memoir and recipe collection. It comes out April 27.

“We try in the book to really look for different ways to be able to utilize plants in America. We kind of think one-dimensionally,” he says. "We do bone marrow. Why can’t we do vegetable marrow?”

Jones is the face of The Chef’s Garden, a sustainable, 350-acre family farm in Huron that provides chefs worldwide with seasonal specialty vegetables, microgreens, herbs and edible flowers.

Name a starry chef and there's a good chance they've done business with The Chef’s Garden: José Andrés, Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià, among them. With his welcoming air and signature denim bib overalls and red bow tie, Jones has become something of a celebrity, too.

The Chef’s Garden grows 700 kinds of vegetables, with 150 to 200 more in trials. There's a lab where scientists analyze the soil and seeds, and there's also the Culinary Vegetable Institute, which attracts 600 visiting chefs a year to share their knowledge and cook together.

Readers of the book will find new ways to prepare vegetables, from celery root to cauliflower, and learn about more unusual ingredients like carrot seeds, knotweed and radish seed pods.

“For several thousand years, we always ate only the top of the carrot plant. It’s only been in the last few hundred years that we started eating the bottom of the carrot. Now nobody eats the top,” Jones says.

Jones' farm is surrounded by 5,000-acre commercial farms, and he does things differently: Instead of chemicals, he uses 15 species of cover crop to replenish the soil. He argues that American farmers have lost their way regarding food and health.

“I don’t knock the other farmers. They’re following the model that exists and that’s to keep the costs as low as possible and the tons per acre as high as possible. It’s not about the integrity of the plant. It’s about the tons per acre,” he says. “We’re a bunch of odd ducks out here, for sure.”

Above all, Jones emphasizes taste and minimizing waste. He looks to Europeans, who learned over centuries of struggle with food insecurity to use every part of their animals.

Take oxtail, a peasant food for years. “They figured out great ways to make good dishes with the flavour of the oxtail. And then Thomas Keller comes over here and puts an oxtail on a plate and it’s 90 bucks.”

Jones wants to showcase vegetables, and the book offers attractive and tasty options, from Butter-Poached Squash with Hemp Seed and Coriander to Potato Pierogi with Caramelized Onion Chips.

The book has a forward written by Andres and is co-written with Kristin Donnelly, with recipes by Jamie Simpson. Lucia Watson, the book's editor for Avery, says it is timely.

“Vegetables are the centre of our plate more and more. And it is kind of where all of the exciting cooking is coming from — experimenting with vegetables," she says.

"This gives home cooks an incredible window into that and an incredible resource. It introduces them to vegetables that they may not have heard of before, but they see at their farmer’s market and think, 'What if I brought that home? What would I do with it?' And it also makes them look at vegetables that they’ve taken for granted.”

Jones got his love of farming from his dad and keeps a foot in the past — he admires what farmers before him accomplished and reveres old farm machinery — as well as embracing modern technology for things like crop analysis and distribution.

“My dad had a saying that the only thing we’re trying to do is get as good as the growers were 100 years ago. It was pre-chemical, pre-synthetic fertilizer, rotating the land, rebuilding the soil,” he says.

COVID-19 was a wake-up call for Jones to diversify since The Chef's Kitchen found its links to chefs and cruise lines severed when those business shuttered. The farm has since pivoted to nationwide home delivery and opened a farmer's market while it waits for restaurants to rebound.

But Jones, ever the optimist, sees a silver lining even in a pandemic: There has been a surge of people interested in growing their own food and planting vegetables.

“Kids emulate parents behaviour. And guess what? Parents planted gardens and kids wanted to go help. And when a kid grows a carrot and they pull it out, even if they didn’t like it before, they’re more interested in trying a carrot," he says. "So I think out of the ashes of this we have to find those good things.”

___

Online: https://www.farmerjonesfarm.com/pages/book

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press

4/21/2021

MAGIC MUSHROOM THERAPY IN CANADA

In February of 2018, Laurie Brooks, a 51-year-old nurse in Abbotsford, B.C., learned she had colon cancer. Next came radiation, chemotherapy and a surgery that removed an eight-centimetre-long tumour. But at her one-year surgery follow-up, her oncologist found that the cancer had metastasized. She had anywhere between six months and a year to live

.

© Photo: Jackie Dives Laurie Brooks claims magic mushrooms helped with her anxiety.

Brooks and her husband, Glenn, who runs a home-renovation business, have four kids in their 20s. After the check-up news, she couldn’t sleep and cried constantly. She became withdrawn and felt anger at both the situation and at herself. At times she was gripped by an unshakable feeling that she had personally done something wrong. She feared having to inform her kids, for the second time, that their mother was dying. Soon she found that she couldn’t move her left arm—a psychosomatic side effect of her emotional distress. “I didn’t deal with any of the emotional stuff,” she says. “I just shoved that down inside while I got through the physical challenges of cancer.”


Then a family friend suggested a way she could find a measure of peace and deal with all that emotional stuff: take magic mushrooms.

In the last few years, an underground network of Canadian psychotherapists and medical practitioners, inspired by successful clinical trials, has helped patients gain access to psychedelics such as magic mushrooms, the gnarled fungi containing the naturally occurring chemical psilocybin. Many of those patients are terminally ill or are suffering from chronic depression or anxiety. They believe that psychedelics alleviate their suffering and help them get more in touch with their emotions. Psychedelics have been called the new cannabis—at least in Canada.

Brooks contacted a B.C. therapist who has helped other cancer patients experience magic-mushroom trips. Although she had never dabbled in mind-expanding drugs before, and was nervous, she wanted to spend what may be her final months living “authentically,” finding the self that was so often lost in her identification as a wife and mother and cancer patient.

Lying in a comfy bed and flanked by the therapist and a close friend, Laurie took three grams of magic mushrooms—a high dose guaranteed to send her on a trip. She’d prepared a mantra to guide her through the psychedelic experience. “Trust, be open and let go,” she told herself.

Before long, her mind opened into a realm of kaleidoscopic colours that she first found entertaining and then just a bit annoying. She next found herself pitched into a cold darkness. As she wrote in the notes she compiled post-trip, “It was like I was floating around in space but there weren’t any stars. It was just pitch black.”

At one point during her trip, while her hallucinations were peaking, Laurie visualized herself as a prisoner. “I saw myself in jail, with shackles on my wrists, and the shackles fell off, and the jail door slid open.” Brooks was free.

As the hallucinations subsided and she settled back into our shared, everyday reality, she realized she could move her left arm again. She swung it in wide circles.

In the recreational culture of psychedelics, users often talk about the “afterglow.” It’s a feeling of clarity or emotional well-being that persists after the drugs themselves have worn off. It’s like the opposite of a hangover. The sun seems warmer. You notice dew on each blade of grass glistening anew. Many patients only need to experience a magic-mushroom trip once to feel like the treatment was a success.

A year after her trip, Brooks was still glowing. “Everybody looks at me and says, ‘You don’t look sick at all!’” she reflects. “I don’t have all the fear and anxiety anymore.”
A long and controversial history

Before psychedelics like magic mushrooms gained notoriety in the 1960s as the preferred drugs of the Woodstock generation, ancient and Indigenous cultures prized them for millennia for the experiences they produced. Psychedelics induced states of consciousness with deep mystical and spiritual dimensions.

So-called “classical psychedelics”—a category that includes psilocybin, LSD, mescaline and a few configurations of dimethyltryptamine, or DMT—are psychologically powerful and spiritually potent. At the same time, they pose no real risk of addiction. Medical researchers believe that these drugs function by affecting the serotonin, a neurotransmitter that affects everything from mood to memory. The ceremonial and prehistorical use of these compounds has much to do with them being readily available in nature. That includes the bulbous and prickly peyote cactus, to DMT-containing “pink carpet” perennials native to South Africa, to the formidable Psilocybe azurescens mushrooms that peek up from the fertile soil of Oregon’s Columbia River Delta. LSD, meanwhile, is a chemical derivative of ergot, itself a fungal growth common on rye plants.

Scientists are now reassessing psychedelics as a promising therapeutic. In 2006, a team at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University led by neuropharmacologist Roland Griffiths demonstrated that psilocybin stimulated spiritual and deeply emotional experiences (comparable to the birth of a child or the death of a parent) in 30 volunteers. The resulting paper gave scientific heft to what generations of recreational users already knew: that psychedelics could facilitate profound (or “mystical-type”) experiences and lead to a shift in a user’s perception of themselves and their place in the world.

The therapeutic potential of such a revelation seemed limitless. Subsequent Hopkins research revealed that psilocybin could produce “substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer.”

This research spurred a psychedelic renaissance: a period of renewed clinical and recreational interest in these compounds. Writer Michael Pollan, prompted both by the Hopkins research and a nagging sense of emptiness in his own life, experimented with a range of psychedelics, which he wrote about in his 2018 bestseller How to Change Your Mind.

In the first episode of her Netflix series The Goop Lab, actor and wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow dispatched her staff to a magic-mushroom ceremony at a Jamaican beach resort. And in late 2019, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary announced his investment in MindMed, a start-up using psychedelics to treat addiction. It’s one of several Canadian businesses trying to capitalize on the hype.
Therapy and bad trips

Canada has long played a central role in psychedelics research. The field of psychedelic therapy was pioneered at Weyburn Mental Hospital in the 1950s, under Dr. Humphry Osmond and Dr. Abram Hoffer. It was Osmond who, in a correspondence with novelist and mind-expansion aficionado Aldous Huxley, coined the word psychedelic, meaning, roughly, “mind-manifesting.”

In their earliest medical applications, psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD were used to induce states of temporary psychosis—in order to observe and understand those states.

These applications were not always well-intentioned, or even consensual. In the 1950s and ’60s, Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute was the site of countless psychedelic trials that were overseen by Scottish psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, funded by the CIA and partially underwritten by the Canadian government as a means of exploring the potential of mind control.

In one case, the wife of a Manitoba MP sought Cameron’s help in treating postpartum depression, only to be unwittingly dosed with LSD and subjected to brainwashing tapes. (A group of these victims sued the CIA in the 1980s and won.)

Osmond and Hoffer’s work led to the idea that these potent hallucinogens could also be powerful therapeutic tools. Clinicians analyzed the effects of psychedelic drugs in treating everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia and arrived at a crucial conclusion: that a positive psychedelic experience, one that facilitated a profound and lasting change in the patient, relied significantly on a positive mental outlook and an encouraging environment. Treat patients like they’re mad and they’ll behave accordingly. Treat them like they’re sick, in need of healing, and that healing is more likely to occur.

Much of the ’60s-era panic around these substances centred on “bad trips,” in which a powerful drug produced a state of mental frenzy resembling psychosis. In one famous 1969 case, Saskatchewan-born radio host Art Linkletter’s 20-year-old daughter, Diane, jumped out a window—a death her dad attributed to LSD.

The association of psychedelics with the ’60s counterculture had a blowback effect on serious-minded clinical research. Erika Dyck, Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, notes in her book Psychedelic Psychiatry how, as mind expansion moved from the clinic to the campus, “Medical authorities promoting psychedelic psychiatry were perceived as indirectly endorsing a cultural revolution.”

In 1968, LSD was added to Canada’s Narcotic Control Act, rendering both recreational and medical use illegal. In 1974, psilocybin was outlawed. Both LSD and psilocybin are now listed under Schedule III of Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The doctor who believes magic mushrooms can help

More than anyone, Dr. Bruce Tobin is responsible for legitimizing psychedelics therapy in Canada today. He’s worked as a private psychotherapist for the last 35 years and is a former professor of child and youth care at the University of Victoria. He’s 73 years old, lanky and friendly, with a white beard and a wide smile framed by a messy mop of hair.

© Photo: Nik West Psychotherapist Bruce Tobin is leading experiments with psychedelic therapy in Canada.

Tobin was drawn to the field by the results of studies and clinical trials, especially those at Johns Hopkins. He struck up an informal alliance—a friendship, really—with some of the top researchers at the university. In January 2017, he filed a class-action exemption application with Health Canada for access to psilocybin for people who met specific criteria, in order to provide therapeutic treatments. He founded TheraPsil—a non-profit with five employees—in the fall of 2019 while waiting for that application’s results.

After that first application was denied, Tobin and his staff focused on bulking up scientific, evidence-based arguments for psilocybin. Then, they reapplied with individual applications focused on granting compassionate access to specific patients suffering from intractable end-of-life anxiety. Tobin was ready to take the case to the Supreme Court, and failing that, practise a little civil disobedience himself by joining the ranks of on-the-sly psychedelic therapists.

Then, to his surprise, the government approved the first batch of his patient applications last August. “My sense is that, initially, Health Canada hoped that by more or less ignoring my application, I’d go away,” Tobin says, speaking from his home just north of Victoria, in North Saanich. “I’m not going away.”

Tobin’s mission is personal. In his career, he’s watched as various pharmaceutical cure-alls passed in and out of fashion. He also saw his own mother struggle with depression and anxiety—pharmaceuticals only numbed or exacerbated the root causes of her pain. He calls psilocybin an “existential threat” to Big Pharma and daily regimens of prescription drugs. The treatment is safe, relatively inexpensive (versus a lifetime of pricey prescription drug renewals), the outcomes are better, and, in many cases, it need only be undertaken once. New studies from Johns Hopkins show that patients who took the treatment four years ago are still reporting the positive effects—the benefits of a long, long afterglow.

Tobin recommends psilocybin should only be taken after establishing a rapport between the patient and the therapist. “This isn’t an easy process, where you simply take a pill and the heavens open and you’ll have transcendent, mystical experiences,” he says. “In many sessions there is difficult emotional work to be done.”

Like any therapy, these sessions hinge on confronting repressed, buried or otherwise uncomfortable feelings. The hallucinations, in many cases, function as metaphorical mini-movies. Imagine being confronted by some terrifying monster, then defeating it. Or think of Laurie Brooks busting herself out of the prison of her own inhibitions.

While fanciful and conjured in the mind, such experiences feel deeply real to the patient. And with proper therapeutic guidance (often termed “integration”), these profound lessons can be carried over into waking life when the drug’s effect subsides.

The power of the experience is further attributed to its ability to stir these feelings in a relatively compact session. Psychedelic enthusiasts describe the experience as being like years of therapy condensed into six or eight hours. Tobin is quick to dismiss such hyperbole, but he admits there is a measure of truth in such proclamations. “The effect of the medicine,” he explains, “makes it such that a person is able to process a lot more material than is normally accessible to them in any ordinary state of consciousness.”

The exemptions granted by Health Canada allow select patients to possess and consume psilocybin. As with cannabis—which began its route to medical decriminalization and, eventually, legality, with a similar exemption—these end-of-life therapy applications are the thin end of the wedge.

Other research companies in Canada are already squeezing through the door Tobin cracked open, seeking exemptions to study the effects of psychedelics in treating everything from obesity to cluster headaches to treatment-resistant depression. Health Canada has recently granted further exemptions to clinical researchers and biotechnology companies, plus 17 licences to psilocybin producers that supply clinics and researchers. Therapists are also seeking exemptions to take the drug in their training, in order to gain a more robust understanding of the psychedelic experience they hope to one day administer.

“The science is swiftly moving,” says Tobin. “The therapeutic merits of psilocybin don’t just pertain to end-of-life issues.”

Tobin believes his scientific credibility helped his application in the eyes of the government. And it’s the continued provability of psilocybin’s benefits that seems likely to shape its expanded legal framework. For now, however, psychedelics are primarily used for one noble end: easing the fear of death in people with terminal diagnoses.
Making the last days better

On August 12, 2020, in Saskatoon, about a four-hour drive from the now-demolished Weyburn Mental Hospital, Thomas Hartle became the first Canadian since 1974 to legally consume magic mushrooms.

Hartle, a 52 year-old father of two who works as an IT technician, was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in 2016. Treatments put the cancer in remission for a couple years, but it returned in the summer of 2019, along with emotional distress, anxiety and crippling panic attacks.

The chemotherapy also led to neuropathy, a form of nerve damage that can cause numbness and weakness in the extremities. Researching Hericium erinaceus, a stringy mushroom used in some Eastern medicine practices to treat nerve damage, Hartle stumbled across the Johns Hopkins research on psilocybin and end-of-life distress. His interest was piqued, though he remained a little incredulous. “My experience with psychedelics was strictly through books and the media,” he explains. “To me, psychedelics were a party drug that people used in the ’60s.”

Hartle’s exploratory googling also led him to TheraPsil. Last spring, he reached out, and they added him to their exemption applications. After a few lengthy phone calls and some introductory screening, Tobin flew to Saskatoon to spend some time with Hartle and his family and build the sort of trusting relationship that is integral to the success of any therapeutic process. While Hartle tripped behind an eye mask, safely ensconced in his bed and listening to calming music, Tobin kept watch, making sure everything was going smoothly and offering words of encouragement.

“Less is kind of more,” Tobin explains. “We don’t want to put ourselves into the picture. The more invisible I become, the better, so the patient can focus exclusively on their inner experience.”

I spoke to Hartle a few weeks after the trip, and just a day after he began a new round of chemotherapy. He remained irrepressibly chipper. Before Hartle’s psilocybin trip, Tobin administered a Hamilton assessment—a scale that rates anxiety. A score of 25 to 30 would mean moderate to severe anxiety. Hartle ranked 36. During the treatment, Tobin asked him to rate his anxiety again. Hartle reported a zero. No anxiety. The day after the trip, he scored a mere six points: mild anxiety, verging on nonexistence.

Hartle hasn’t suffered a panic attack since the treatment. He has become more open with people around him and even learned to view his chemo treatments with grace. “To be fair,” he confesses, “everything about chemotherapy does kind of suck. But as opposed to dwelling on it, I have just experienced it and let it go.”

It’s too soon to speculate on how the rush of investors will shape the next phase of this psychedelic renaissance. What’s becoming clear, through all the hype and hallucinatory reveries, is that for patients suffering from acute anxiety and end-of-life distress, psilocybin offers serious, long-lasting relief, making those last days more livable. For patients like Brooks and Hartle, there are still bad days. But, as Hartle himself puts it, in what could stand as a tag line for a whole new wave in psychiatric medicines, “The bad days are better.”

The post Magic Mushrooms May Help People with Terminal Cancer appeared first on Reader's Digest.

Half of Americans want a major overhaul to the US economy, Pew says

bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck)

EARTH DAY 2021

© Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

Half of Americans believe the US economy needs "major changes" or to be "completely reformed."

People largely backed job training but were less supportive of universal basic income, Pew said.

Support for economic reform was far more common among liberals than conservatives, Pew added.

As the US enters a new normal, half of its population is ready for an economy that's starkly different from that which came before.

About 40% of surveyed Americans believe the economy "needs major changes" as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Pew Research report published Thursday. One in 10 Americans said they saw a need for the country's economic systems to be "completely reformed."© Pew Research Center Source: Pew Research Center Pew Research Center

Conversely, only 12% of the US sees no need for economic change. Roughly 38% said the country's economy needs only "minor" changes.

Pew conducted a survey across the US, UK, France, and Germany from November 10 to December 23. More than 4,000 adults across the four countries responded.



Gallery: The minimum wage in every state and DC ranked (Lovemoney)


When asked which potential economic policies should be instituted, three-quarters of surveyed Americans said it's "very important" that the government provide more job and skills training for workers. Nearly half of respondents deemed an increase of government benefits to the poor as "very important," and 44% said it's critical the government contribute to affordable housing.


About 45% said it's very important for lawmakers to lift taxes on the wealthy. President Joe Biden proposed such tax hikes to cover the costs of his upcoming American Families Plan, which includes funds for universal pre-K, paid family and medical leave, and an extended child tax credit. The White House has said it won't lift taxes on households earning less than $400,000 per year.

Only 31% of Americans characterized universal basic income as "very important," making it the least supported of the five potential policies. Still, that marks a shift from discussions a decade ago, when universal basic income lingered on the fringes of progressive economic policy.

Support for economic reform was far more common among left-leaning respondents. More than three-quarters of US adults on the left said the country needs a complete overhaul or major changes, according to Pew. That compares to just 32% of right-leaning respondents and 46% from moderates.

Support of stricter government regulation received a more mixed response. Half of surveyed Americans said it's generally bad for society if the government regulates business, while 46% said such regulation is good. That differs from responses in Europe, where the majority of residents in the UK, France, and Germany supported business regulation.

Even if major economic changes remain years away, Americans are largely optimistic as the country rebounds. Roughly 78% of US respondents said they have either "somewhat good" or "very good" chances at improving their standard of living. Only 7% said they have "very bad" chances, and 11% said their odds are "somewhat bad."
Read the original article on Business Insider

AI for good: Tech company and nonprofits protect forests, track river pollution and deliver clean water

Veronica Combs 

 TechRepublic

EARTH DAY 2021
 Image: GettyImages/Christopher Kimmel

© Image: GettyImages/Christopher Kimmel

Volunteering for a day to help a nonprofit with a tech project is nice. Teaching the organization's team members to build and manage their own tech solutions in the long term is sustainable. That's the approach DataRobot took with its AI for Good program.


The artificial intelligence company started the program in July 2019 after working with the Global Water Challenge in 2018. DataRobot team members analyzed more than 500,000 data points to predict future waterpoint breaks in rural communities in Africa.

Chandler McCann, general manager and data science practice lead for the public sector and head of AI for Good at DataRobot, said the company wanted to offer nonprofits more than a one-time event like a hackathon or a difficult-to-maintain custom-code solution. The goal of the program is to help organizations create meaningful AI systems that are easy to use and self-sustaining.

"After formalizing the program, we partnered with GlobalGiving to tap their extensive history and expertise in working with networks of NGOs and nonprofits to help us facilitate the design of the application process and vet applicants," he said.

The first cohort in the AI for Good program worked on these two projects:
Entel Ocean: The digital unit of Entel, a telco in Chile and Peru, developed IoT sensors to detect and predict when forest fires are likely to occur. The data collected by these devices is paired with DataRobot's platform, allowing the organization to detect a fire 12 minutes earlier than the previous monitoring systems.
Anacostia Riverkeeper: The group built a system to predict E. coli levels in the waterways in one of the first times AI has been used to predict water quality across the whole Chesapeake Bay region.

McCann said each solution was developed collaboratively between the team at DataRobot and the non-governmental organizations and nonprofits.

"DataRobot subject matter experts work closely with AI for Good beneficiaries to evaluate the problem they're trying to solve, ensure it's appropriate for AI, and then begin to train employees and build models to work toward a solution," he said. "Subject matter experts are always on hand to help, guide, and refine the process of getting the models up and running, as well as how the organization can optimize results and expand the deployment."

DataRobot team members also train the teams who will use the platform to ensure they have the skills they need to maintain the project over time. McCann said the program has been a real proof point that AI can have a positive impact on the world.

"These are use cases that we as a company may have never experienced if we didn't create this program to help nonprofits and NGOs," he said.

Nonprofits apply to participate in the program and applications are open now for the second cohort. The application has four sections: Organization summary, project description, implementation and optional supporting information. The deadline to apply is April 30.

The AI for Good team at DataRobot evaluates applications on three dimensions:
Impact: 

How will a proposed project impact a community and the people who live in it?

Framing: Does the project take on a compelling challenge and what data supports the solution?

Readiness: Does the organization have the capacity and support from leadership to make the project successful?

Nikola shares surge on hydrogen fuel station plans and battery truck production

Michael Wayland 

EARTH DAY 2021

Nikola announced plans Thursday of a limited collaboration for hydrogen fueling stations with TravelCenters of America.

The plans include the installation of hydrogen fueling stations for heavy-duty trucks at two sites in California as "a first step" to exploring a nationwide network.

Shares of Nikola were up by as much as 20% during trading Thursday morning.

© Provided by CNBC Nikola Motor Company Hydrogen fuel

Shares of embattled electric truck manufacturer Nikola surged during early trading Thursday after the company reconfirmed production targets and announced a limited collaboration on hydrogen fueling stations with TravelCenters of America.

The plans include installing hydrogen fueling stations for heavy-duty trucks at two sites in California for TravelCenters of America, which is the largest publicly traded company that runs full-service travel centers in the U.S. The initial stations are "a first step for the parties to explore the mutual development of a nationwide network," according to Nikola.

Shares of Nikola seesawed in Thursday morning trading, soaring by more than 21% after board member Jeffrey Ubben told CNBC the company is "pretty much on target" regarding its production plans.

Most notably, customer production of its first semitruck, a battery-electric vehicle called the Nikola Tre, beginning in Europe in the fourth quarter, followed by a plant in Arizona coming online to produce the vehicle in 2022.

"We're checking boxes," he said on "Squawk on the Street." "There's tremendous momentum here. The team is head down here. That's all I can say."

Nikola stock was trading at at $12.20 a share as of 10:55 a.m., up about 18%. The shares, which once traded as high as $93.99, fell below $10 earlier in the week for the first time since the company went public through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in June. Nikola, which was briefly valued higher than Ford Motor last year, now has a market value of less than $4 billion.

Green hydrogen could help us cut our carbon footprint, if it overcomes some big hurdles

The collaboration between Nikola and TravelCenters of America is subject to negotiations and execution of a definitive deal agreed upon by both companies, according to a press release.

"The key here really is to have this integrated solution," Ubben said. "The hydrogen stations and the fuel cell truck."

Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles are viewed as a long-range solution for the trucking industry, which is attempting to move away from diesel-powered trucks. They operate much like battery-electric vehicles but are powered by electricity generated from hydrogen and oxygen instead of pure batteries.

FCEVs also are quicker to fuel than battery-electric vehicles, which the automotive and trucking industries also are exploring for shorter trips. But they also feature many of the same hurdles such as higher costs and charging/fueling infrastructure.

In a separate vote of confidence for hydrogen fuel cell technology, global auto supplier Bosch announced plans Thursday to invest 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in the technology through 2024. The Germany-based company believes the market for hydrogen in Europe will be worth almost 40 billion euros ($48.2 billion) by 2030 – with annual growth rates of 65%.