Review: The Joni Mitchell-James Taylor saga makes for a potent novel that stands on its own

Chris Vognar
Tue, June 22, 2021

It’s a tricky business, basing a novel on a real-life relationship between two people. Obsessives will demand facts rather than fiction. Hew too closely to the record, however, and you choke off the imagination.

Emma Brodie toes this line with zest and balance in her debut novel, “Songs in Ursa Major.” The book is very much based on the love affair and mutual muse-hood of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, leading lights of the folk-rock world and onetime residents of L.A.’s Edenic Laurel Canyon. But from the very start, it stretches out and becomes its own thing. Brodie works with big themes — individuation, mental illness, legacy, self-destruction and redemption — but her touch is lighter than an onshore breeze. Little surprise that Village Roadshow has scooped the novel up for development as a movie.

Jane Quinn lives on a sleepy Northeastern island, “a stone’s throw off the coast of Massachusetts,” with her extended family. It’s 1969 and she leads a band, the Breakers, that performs in relative anonymity. That changes fast when budding superstar Jesse Reid wrecks his motorcycle en route to the Island Folk Fest. In a jam, festival organizers pluck the Breakers from the amateur stage down the hill. An A&R guy catches the set. And, as in the movies, a star is born.


“What a range,” thinks (fictional) Rolling Stone reporter Curtis Wilks as he watches the show. “A soprano, in the school of Joan Baez and Judy Collins, though not nearly as patrician-sounding as Collins, or as embattled as Baez. There was an untrained edge in her voice, an almost Appalachian coarseness, that raised the hair on Curtis’s neck. Just gorgeous.”

Brodie, formerly an editor at Little, Brown, has a wicked knack for locating the tone of various music types: journalists, producers, A&R scouts and, of course, prodigiously talented singer-songwriters. Except Jane, as they say, is different. Bold but vulnerable, whip-smart and earthy, she’s easy to root for from the moment she takes the stage at that first big show.

Excited to get a shot, she’s also wary of what the music industry might do to her. Jane is especially hesitant as she’s drawn into the orbit of Jesse, who is recovering from the motorcycle crash on the island. Jane wants success on her terms, and as she falls hard for Jesse, she also wants to keep some emotional distance from a man who always seems just out of reach.

You can tell when a novelist truly loves her heroes and despises her villains. As Jane fights to get her due in a man’s, man’s, man’s world, navigating the experiences that eventually inform her equivalent of Mitchell’s breakthrough album, “Blue” (whose 50th anniversary falls on the day of this book’s release), you can feel Brodie pulling to lift her above the crowd.

But “Ursa Major” is plotted so tightly, its characters so vividly rendered, that you barely notice the author’s thumb on the scale. Jane, with all her insecurities and appetites, is no more perfect than any other character here; one extended sequence finds her seducing a photographer and throwing him away. Yet Brodie lets you know that in her essence, she is special. As that Rolling Stone scribe puts it, “Her loveliness felt personal — it was impossible to look at her and not take flight in some small part of you.”

Of course, every hero needs a villain. Brodie’s is Vincent Ray, an allegedly visionary producer who can’t stomach the idea of a female artist having her own ideas. He lays as many traps for Jane as he can, always looking for a way to derail her career. You feel a cold blast every time he enters a scene and asserts himself with alpha male mind games. His presence makes you cheer for Jane even harder.

As the Breakers hit the road for a cross-country bus tour with Jesse and his band, Jane’s character arc and irony-rich dilemma come into sharp focus. Her A&R rep, Willie, wants her to play the fame game and tantalize the press with are-they-or-aren’t-they clues about her and Jesse. He wants her to sell albums. He also wants her to play security blanket for the established star.

Jesse is a heroin addict, as Taylor was — a secret he’s grown adept at keeping. It seems that to advance her career, Jane must suppress her art and her soul. Brodie never has to come out and explain this dynamic, because she so deftly dramatizes it.

“Songs in Ursa Major” also weaves in a deep understanding of the connection between creativity and madness. Jesse was (also like Taylor) a patient at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.; he wrote a song, “Sylvie Smiles,” about fellow patient Sylvia Plath (“She’ll be Venus if you’ll be Mars/Catch her in a glass bell jar”). More pertinent to the story, Jane’s mother, Charlotte, suffered a psychotic break years ago; a fellow songwriter, she was broken partly by another musician who stole her best song. This sounds like a minefield of clichés; in Brodie’s hands, it’s a rich crop of lived-in details that link one character to another over multiple generations.

Taylor and Mitchell in a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1971. (Jim McCrary/Redferns)

There’s something about “Ursa Major” that suggests a mythology, a hero’s journey in which the hero is a woman with immense musical gifts and the music business is a beast to overcome and master. Jane isn’t just a rising rock star; she’s also a sort of superhero, and this is her origin story. If anything, that story ends too quickly. By the time it jumps ahead in time for an epilogue of sorts, it feels like there’s still unfinished business — between Jane and Jesse, between Jane and her art, between Jane and the world.

If you want to play a game of “Where’s Joni” with the novel, you can always pick up David Yaffe’s 2017 biography, “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell.” But “Songs in Ursa Major” deserves to be enjoyed as is, without connecting the dots. Fiction, after all, is fiction. Brodie is very good at it, and — like Joni and like Jane — a voice well worth listening to.

Vognar is a freelance writer based in Houston.

Rolling Stone
Joni Mitchell Talks ‘Blue’ With Cameron Crowe in Rare New Interview
Singer-songwriter discusses recording her 1971 masterpiece, the album's legacy and the state of her singing voice

Quincy Jones Hosts As The Jazz Foundation Honors Joni Mitchell And Wayne Shorter In Los Angeles - Credit: WireImage

Daniel Kreps
Sun, June 20, 2021


Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Blue, Joni Mitchell discussed her 1971 masterpiece, the album’s enduring legacy and the state of her singing voice in a rare new interview conducted by Cameron Crowe for the Los Angeles Times.

“Like all of my albums, Blue came out of the chute with a whimper. It didn’t really take off until later. Now there’s a lot of fuss being made over it, but there wasn’t initially,” Mitchell told Crowe.

More from Rolling Stone

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“The most feedback that I got was that I had gone too far and was exposing too much of myself. I couldn’t tell what I had created, really. The initial response I got was critical, mostly from the male singer-songwriters. It was kind of like Dylan going electric. They were afraid. Is this contagious?”

Prior to the interview, Crowe opens with an anecdote about one of “Joni’s Jams,” private, all-star jam sessions that occur occasionally at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home. At a recent gathering, Mitchell — who hasn’t perform publicly since 2013, two years before she suffered a brain aneurysm that impacted her ability to speak and walk — sang Blue’s “All I Want” alongside Brandi Carlile, one of that jam session’s guests.

“It was a fun evening,” Mitchell told Crowe. “I wasn’t sure I would be able to sing. I have no soprano left, just a low alto. The spirit moved me. I forgave myself for my lack of talent.”

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles Times interview, Mitchell talked about the “real” Laurel Canyon — as opposed to the community depicted in recent documentaries — as well as recording Blue, the real-life inspiration behind the album’s “Carey,” and her breakup with Graham Nash that inspired much of the LP.

“I thought with Graham and I, our relationship was very strong. I thought that it was the last one I’d have,” Mitchell told Crowe. “And so I disappointed myself when that wasn’t so, and that’s why I was so sad at that time.”

In May, Mitchell made a rare appearance at Clive Davis’ virtual Grammy party to talk about her early career, songwriting, and her legacy.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Blue this week, Mitchell will release her The Reprise Albums (1968-1971), the next installment of her Archives series, with this set focusing on Blue, Song to a Seagull, Clouds, and Ladies of the Canyon. The liner notes for the latest collection were penned by Carlile, while Crowe wrote the notes for the Archives series’ first volume.

LA Times
Joni Mitchell asked this L.A. drummer for help on 'Blue.' The rest is music history
L.A. session drummer extraordinaire Russ Kunkel on working with his friend "Joan" and what people don't realize about her musical chops.


The Independent
Joni Mitchell’s Blue: What critics have said about one of the greatest albums of all time
‘She mixed shades of sadness and wisdom into a palette of nerves and melody that does not feel unreasonable to call sacred’


LA Times
In 1971, nothing sounded like Joni Mitchell's 'Blue.' 50 years later, it's still a miracle
On "Blue"'s "All I Want," Joni Mitchell asked "Looking for something, what can it be?" The answer was Joni Mitchell.

52% of Americans want all student-loan borrowers to have their debt forgiven, new survey finds

Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, June 21, 2021

Protestors wearing signs with the amount of student debt they owe. Reuters/Andrew Burton


A GoBankingRates survey found 52% of Americans support blanket student loan forgiveness.


It also found 20% of respondents think the government should stay out of debt cancellation.


Democrats are keeping the pressure on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per person.


Democratic lawmakers are keeping the pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. While he has not yet done so, there's evidence that a large number of Americans - maybe even a majority - support an even bigger debt wipeout.

A survey released last week from GoBankingRates - a personal finance portal - found that of the 3,600 Americans surveyed, 52% supported blanket student-loan forgiveness, meaning loan forgiveness for everyone with student-loan debt. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents supported loan forgiveness for those with low income and high debt, 11% supported forgiveness for those in public service, and 4% supported temporary loan forgiveness through the pandemic.

The survey collected responses from April 16 to May 18 and asked respondents which approach to student loan forgiveness they think the US should adopt.


The survey's findings align with a study by The Harris Poll in January that found 55% of Americans supported forgiveness of all student debt.

Responses in the GoBankingRates survey from older Americans are "particularly interesting," as the survey noted, given that student-loan forgiveness would significantly benefit older Americans. According to an estimate from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) released in March, 8.4 million borrowers ages 50 and older hold 22%, or $336.1 billion, of the total federal debt load, with what could be as much as 10% interest charged annually adding to the growing pile.

Insider reported last month that many older Americans fear they will die with their student debt.

"I feel like I've actually been responsible, and I've paid a considerable amount of money on my student loans," David Wise, 59, told Insider. "But it really is a debtor's prison."

Student loan payments have been on pause for the duration of the pandemic, and while they are set to resume in October, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has hinted at the possibility of extending the pause even further.

And during the pause, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been calling on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower to provide immediate aid once the pause lifts, and a recent study from the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute found the lawmakers' plan would help low-income borrowers the most.

Biden has yet to comment on whether he will act on the blanket student-loan forgiveness. He so far has cancelled student debt for some borrowers with disabilities and defrauded borrowers, and he has asked the Education and Justice Departments to review his ability to use executive action to cancel $50,000 in student debt.

According to Schumer, Biden wants Democrats to keep the pressure on to forgive student debt.

"We said, 'We're going to keep at it until you do this,' and to his [Biden's] credit, he said, 'Go ahead.' He's talked about 10 thousand - that's not enough," Schumer said during a student debt forgiveness town hall. "We're keeping the pressure on him."

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that the GoBankingRates survey was not a poll, as the initial headline indicated, and to relate the findings to a Harris Poll study in January.]

Biden's housing secretary calls student-loan debt a barrier to Black homeownership

Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, June 21, 2021

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge told Axios student debt is limiting Black homeownership.


She said it's partly down to failures to enforce the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination.


Black homeownership has been on the decline and Black people pay more for housing than white people.

Black Americans hold a disproportionate burden of the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis, and it's limiting their abilities to own a home.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge told Axios in a Sunday interview that student debt is hindering homeownership for Black people. On Friday, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced in a press release it is updating its student loan monthly payment calculations in an effort to "remove barriers and provide more access to affordable single family FHA-insured mortgage financing for creditworthy individuals with student loan debt, which has a disproportionate impact on people of color."

Fudge said the disproportionately low rate of Black homeownership had driven HUD to reassess student loan calculation policies when determining homeowner assistance, which will increase homeownership access for communities of color.

"Who has student debt? Poor people, Black people, brown people," Fudge told Axios. "We're the people who carry most debt. And so the system's already skewed toward us not being creditworthy."

Fudge said part of the problem comes down to failures in enforcing the Fair Housing Act. The Act, which passed in 1968, says discrimination against people "because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability" when dealing with housing-related activities is illegal.

And yet, Black Americans are still falling significantly behind white Americans when it comes to homeownership. For example, the Indianapolis Star reported that the value of a Black woman's home shot up by $149,000 when a white friend stood in for her, and Insider reported last year that Black families pay over $60,000 more in homeownership costs than white families.

The student debt crisis isn't helping this problem. Thirty-six civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released civil rights principles for student debt cancellation that "will help Black and brown borrowers build wealth and enable our economy to move forward as millions of Americans are able to start families, buy homes, and set up small businesses."

They noted that upon graduation, Black borrowers typically owe 50% more than white borrowers, and after four years, Black borrowers owe 100% more. And while President Joe Biden outlined plans on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre to end racial discrimination in the housing market, he failed to address student debt cancellation. Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said Biden's plans missed the mark.

"Student loan debt continues to suppress the economic prosperity of Black Americans across the nation," Johnson said in a statement. "You cannot begin to address the racial wealth gap without addressing the student loan debt crisis. You just can't address one without the other. Plain and simple."

"For people of color, especially Black people, homeownership is wealth," Fudge said. "It's not only wealth to us, but it's generational wealth."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Women starved themselves to reach Victoria's Secret 'virtually inhuman' standard of beauty; now the iconic Angels are gone


JUNE 17th 2021: Victoria's Secret officially abandons the Victoria's Secret Angels and the Angel Wings as part of a major re-branding campaign. - File Photo by: zz/DP/AAD/STAR MAX/IPx 2016 11/30/16 Alessandra Ambrosio on the runway during the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show held on November 30, 2016 at The Grand Palais in Paris, France

Caroline Kitchener
Sun, June 20, 2021

Shiny hair. Big breasts. Flat stomachs. Protruding collarbones. Long, tanned legs.

Jazmine Moreno would examine their bodies on her lunch break at work, watching them catwalk across the stage in thongs and bras made of Swarovski crystals. At age 17, in Moore, Okla., she tortured herself with one question: "Why can't I look like a Victoria's Secret Angel?"

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Moreno, now 26, did everything she could to make her body more like theirs. She looked up their diets online. She ate three nuts when she wanted a handful. She worked out every day, sometimes twice. But no matter what she tried, she said, she was still too muscular. Too curvy. The little pouch at the bottom of her stomach - the thing she hated most about her body - wouldn't go away.

"You imagine yourself looking like that. You're sparkling, you're glowing, you're everything. That was the fantasy in my head."

Victoria's Secret announced a major rebranding effort Wednesday that included an end to the "Angels," the store's signature group of models, known for taking the catwalk in lingerie, jewels and feathered wings. The platform that launched supermodels like Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks will be replaced with a more diverse set of models who have built successful careers that extend outside of the industry, including soccer star Megan Rapinoe, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and LGBTQ model and activist Valentina Sampaio.

The Angels are no longer "culturally relevant," Victoria's Secret chief executive Martin Waters told the New York Times.

Since the late 1990s, the Victoria's Secret Angels have been a cultural icon, idolized by people around the world. They promoted a standard of beauty that was "virtually inhuman," said Renee Engeln, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. In her classes on the psychology of beauty, Engeln uses the Angels as the "classic example" of the narrow range of body types often put forward in the media, causing women, and especially young women, to feel like they'll never be enough.

"Victoria's Secret has always had this hold over young women," said Erin Dyer, 23, based in Doonbeg, Ireland. "You look at these tanned bronzed women and you think, 'I should have this as a goal, then I'll feel like these women look.'"

Of course, Dyer said, it was a goal you'd never reach.

When Jennifer Osting was 14, she and her friends would gather around the television in Louisville to watch the famous Victoria's Secret fashion show. "These women are perfect," Osting would think to herself. At her all-girls school, many of her friends tried the "Victoria's Secret Model Diet." She would see them at lunch, eating celery and peanut butter, she said. They could only eat 1,200 calories a day.

Osting, now 21, didn't think she was like those girls, she said. She was comfortable with her body. Whenever her school served loaded tater tots for lunch, she helped herself to a heaping portion.

But then she noticed how many compliments the Model Diet girls seemed to be collecting.

And she'd think to herself: "Maybe I should do that, too."

Through the Angels, Victoria's Secret linked their brand to sex appeal, Engeln said. The message was clear, she said: Men want women who look like this. If you didn't look like an Angel, Engeln added, you might come away thinking you weren't desirable.

As a teenager, Moreno said, she liked Victoria's Secret because it was "kind of scandalous." If she wore this kind of lingerie and tried to embody the Angel aesthetic, she said, she thought boys would like her.

Eventually, she said, she started to get skeptical.

"It took me a while to realize: Why do I want to be this fantasy for guys and not be this fantasy for myself?"

Over the last few years, more and more people have been speaking out against the unrealistic beauty norms perpetuated by brands like Victoria's Secret, Engeln said. Several of the company's competitors, like Fenty by Rihanna, have embraced a more inclusive concept of beauty.

"Victoria's Secret isn't doing this because they care about women," Engeln said about the shift to inclusivity. "They're doing this because the old way wasn't making them as much money."

In making this decision, the company listened to its consumers, chief marketing officer Martha Pease wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. "Women have told us what they want. We know what they want from us in their lives. They want us to acknowledge and embrace diversity."

Osting imagines there are a lot of women like her, in their 20s and 30s, who grew up with Victoria's Secret - but are now starting to question the company's definition of beauty.

Dyer, who wears plus sizes, has tailored her social media feeds to leave out pictures of stick-thin models. When those kinds of models pop up on her social media, she'll scroll right past them or click "not interested." After a while, she said, the algorithm picked up on what she didn't want to see.

Dyer is deeply skeptical of Victoria's Secret's rebranding decision. She doesn't believe their new, inclusive message, she said. While Victoria's Secret executives may say they want to promote all body types, she said, "I think they will always value socially accepted beautiful people more."

Still, she said, she was happy to see the change. For many women, she said, Victoria's Secret is still the "poster child for femininity." If they change everything about their brand, she added, other companies will follow.

After she learned about the rebranding with Rapinoe and others, Moreno thought about her 17-year-old self.

"These are real people, chosen based on what they've accomplished." If she had seen the new model lineup when she was 17, she said, "it would have saved me so much trouble and heartache."

Even with all the changes, Moreno isn't quite sure how she feels about the store.

She would maybe take her future daughter there one day, she said - but "only if she asked."

- - -

This story first appeared in The Washington Post's The Lily publication.

Tyra Banks reacts to Victoria’s Secret phasing out Angels

DANIELLE LONG
Mon, June 21, 2021,

Tyra Banks is weighing in on Victoria's Secret's latest change.

Last week, the lingerie company announced it would be getting rid of the iconic VS Angels and launching the "VS Collective," a new partnership platform to help "shape the future of Victoria’s Secret."

Founding members of this new initiative include actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, soccer star Megan Rapinoe, mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, equality activist Amanda de Cadenet, skier and youth and women's sports advocate Eileen Gu, body advocate Paloma Elsesser and LGBTQ activist and model Valentina Sampaio.

Taking to Instagram to share her thoughts on Victoria's Secret's latest rebrand effort, Banks shared a photo of herself from her last walk at the iconic VS Fashion Show in 2005, writing, "First is hard. First is lonely. But first is necessary."

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.Update your settings here to see it.

"First is crucial so that a door can be opened for others to fit through," she continued before reflecting on her past with the company. "Within a 10 year span starting in 1995, I was the first Black @VictoriasSecret contract model ever. The first Black Victoria's Secret Cover model. The first Black VS model to do so many other groundbreaking things with the brand - as well as other brands."

"But after a first, must come a flow of more. A flow of different. A flow of unique. A flow so strong, a flow of so many that we LOSE COUNT," she went on. "I retired from the runway 16 years ago - and I'm proud that in my lifetime, I’m witnessing a beauty revolution. To the new collective of bada** ROLE models, I may have cracked that door open, but y’all are charging through."

MORE: Victoria's Secret rebrands featuring diverse, inclusive message for new generation

"Keep on keepin' on until we all LOSE COUNT of how many are breaking through behind you," she concluded, adding the yellow heart and strong arm emojis and #LetsLoseCount.

Tyra Banks reacts to Victoria’s Secret phasing out Angels originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

Thousands sign petitions to keep Bezos in space

Harold Maass, Contributing editor
Mon, June 21, 2021


Jeff Bezos. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for barring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos from returning to Earth after his planned flight into space on July 20, NPR reports. Bezos announced earlier this month that he and his brother, Mark Bezos, would be on board when the New Shepard suborbital rocket system built by his space exploration company, Blue Origin, makes its first flight carrying people.

There are several petitions targeting Bezos. The leading one, "Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth," had 42,000 signatures as of early Monday. "Billionaires should not exist," the petition says. "On Earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there." Bezos said in an Instagram post that seeing Earth from space "changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity."

JUSTIFIABLE HOMOCIDE

French woman goes on trial for killing stepfather who repeatedly raped her

By Monday afternoon around 588,000 people had signed a petition demanding that Ms Bacot, who risks life in prison for murder, be cleared of the charge.

Mon, June 21, 2021

Valerie Bacot arrives in court flanked by her family and surrounded by journalists - JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images

A French woman went on trial on Monday for killing the man who raped her for years as her stepfather before becoming her husband and pimp.

The story of Valerie Bacot has moved campaigners against domestic violence, with hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition for her release.

“I had to put an end to it,” Ms Bacot, 40, wrote in a book published last month called “Everybody Knew”, adding: “I was afraid, all the time.”


The trial, which opened in Chalon-sur-Saone in France's central Burgundy region, is due to run through Friday.

Ms Bacot was 12 when her mother's partner, Daniel Polette, who was 25 years her senior, raped her for the first time.

He was sent to prison, but after his release returned and resumed the serial rapes.

“He told my mother that he wouldn't start again. But he did,” she told the court.

At 17, Ms Bacot became pregnant, was thrown out of the house by her alcoholic mother, and went to live with Polette.

“I wanted to keep my child. I had nobody. Where could I go?,” she told the court.

Valrie Bactot - JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images

Polette, also a heavy drinker, became increasingly violent, attacking her with a hammer at one point.

“At first he would slap me, later that became kicking, then punches and then choking,” she said, describing her life as an “extreme hell”.

Polette ordered her to work as a prostitute for truck drivers, using the back of a Peugeot people carrier, and gave her instructions through an earpiece he forced her to wear to make sure she complied with the demands of clients whom he charged between €20-50 (£17-43).

Investigators established that Polette threatened to kill her if she refused, pointing a gun at her many times.

When Polette started questioning their 14-year-old daughter Karline about her sexuality, Ms Bacot said she decided that “this has to stop”.

On March 2016, after Polette ordered his wife to undergo yet another sexual humiliation by a client, she used the pistol that he kept in the car to kill him with a single bullet to the back of the neck while he was in the driver's seat.

Ms Bacot said she wanted to make sure her daughter wouldn't suffer the same fate that she had. “I wanted to save her,” she said.

The circumstances of the shooting rule out any possible claim of legitimate self-defence.

Her lawyers said ahead of the trial that “the extreme violence that she suffered for 25 years and the fear that her daughter would be next” pushed her to kill Polette.

By Monday afternoon around 588,000 people had signed a petition demanding that Ms Bacot, who risks life in prison for murder, be cleared of the charge.

Bird songs may help people with speech loss regain their voice, study says. Here’s how



Katie Camero
Mon, June 21, 2021

Spending time in nature and listening to birds sing can be a relaxing way to enjoy free time. But for researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the hobby means business.

In a proof-of-concept study, a team of engineers and neuroscientists implanted silicon electrodes into zebra finches’ brains that recorded neural activity as they chirped away. With the help of artificial intelligence, the researchers were able to reproduce the pitch, volume and quality of the birds’ songs by translating their brain activity.

The computer-generated copies of the melodies may help inspire new types of vocal prosthetics that could translate the brain activity of people who have lost the ability to speak into any sound or word they think of, “freeing them to communicate whatever they wish,” according to a statement from Timothy Gentner, senior author of the study and a professor of psychology and neurobiology at UC San Diego.


Now, the team has to work on showing its translation system can do the job in real-time to prove it can accommodate the complexity of human speech. The study was published June 16 in the journal Current Biology.

“In many people’s minds, going from a songbird model to a system that will eventually go into humans is a pretty big evolutionary jump,” study co-author Vikash Gilja, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego, said in the statement. “But it’s a model that gives us a complex behavior that we don’t have access to in typical primate models that are commonly used for neural prosthesis research.”

UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering · Researchers re-create a bird's song by reading its brain activity

The system was able to reproduce zebra finches’ songs with the help of mathematical equations that modeled the physical changes, such as pressure and tension, that occur in the birds’ vocal organ when they sing. The researchers then trained machine learning algorithms to connect the neural activity recorded with electrodes to these “representations” of the songs, instead of the actual songs themselves.

“If you need to model every little nuance, every little detail of the underlying sound, then the mapping problem becomes a lot more challenging,” Gilja said. “By having this simple representation of the songbirds’ complex vocal behavior, our system can learn mappings that are more robust and more generalizable to a wider range of conditions and behaviors.”

Some of the most advanced communication prosthetics for those who have lost their ability to speak include implantable devices that can use people’s brain activity to generate “textual output, writing up to 20 words per minute,” Gentner said.

Other more common prosthetics are valves placed in small openings between the trachea and esophagus that allow people to make sounds by pushing air through it and up into their mouth.

But a more successful device would need to be fast and intricate enough to keep up with people’s constant changes in speech and thinking that occurs while communicating.

“Imagine a vocal prosthesis that enables you to communicate naturally with speech, saying out loud what you’re thinking nearly as you’re thinking it,” Gentner said. “That is our ultimate goal, and it is the next frontier in functional recovery.”

The device could help the roughly 1 million Americans who have aphasia — the loss of ability to speak or understand speech because of brain damage — and the up to 10% with communication disorders.

NO EVICTIONS!

California to pay off unpaid rent accrued during COVID-19 pandemic



Ivana Saric
Mon, June 21, 2021

California will pay off the accumulated unpaid rent that has piled up during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AP reports.

Why it matters: The move would fulfill a promise to landlords to help them to break even, while giving renters relief, the AP writes.

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The big picture: A little over 2% of people in California who have applied for rent relief during the pandemic have received it, KQED reports.


The state has accrued $5.2 billion from various federal aid packages to pay off people's rent, which should be enough to get the job done, Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on housing and homelessness, told AP.


California has been slow to distribute the funds. The state has received $490 million in rental aid requests through May 31, but only $32 million has been paid out, when not including the 12 cities and 10 counties that run independent rental assistance programs, per AP.

But, but, but: State officials also haven't yet decided whether they'll extend California's eviction moratorium, which is set to expire on June 30.


Newsom and lawmakers are "meeting privately" about the issue, but there are disagreements as to how long the moratorium should last, AP reports.


Extending the moratorium would give the state enough time to distribute the funds to pay off unpaid rents, which might not be possible to do by June 30, the AP notes.

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Associated Press
California weighs extending eviction protections past June

Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation's most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate. Left unsettled is whether California will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30, a pandemic-related order that was meant to be temporary but is proving difficult to undo. Federal eviction protections also are set to expire on June 30.
1d ago.


Los Angeles Times Opinion
Editorial: Now is not the time for California's landlords to resume evictions
We shouldn't let tenants get evicted while the state sits on billions of dollars in federal rental assistance. A moratorium on evictions needs to be extended.
1d ago

Nuclear bomb sensor exposes hidden population of blue whales



Embedded content: https://players.brightcove.net/1942203455001/B1CSR9sVf_default/index.html?videoId=6259740278001

Blue whales are known for their massive size, but somehow a new population of pygmies went undetected in the Indian Ocean for nearly 20 years.

How were they discovered? Scientists combing through acoustic data obtained by an underwater nuclear bomb detection array, according to a study published earlier this year. The data collected also included sound recordings that revealed a never-before-heard song dating back almost two decades.

The new group of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) is considered to be a smaller subspecies of blue whale that can grow to a maximum length of 79 feet (24 metres). They are known as the Chagos population, named after a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean near the group's home.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkNuclear bomb sensor exposes hidden population of blue whales(YouTube/Todd Chandler, Oregon State University)

"We are still discovering missing populations of the largest animal that has ever lived," senior author Tracey Rogers, a marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, told Live Science. "It's a testament to the difficulty of studying life in the ocean."

Because there are a finite number of scientific acoustic arrays established in the Indian Ocean, a group of scientists utilized underwater nuclear bomb detectors that belong to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Researchers were then able to access a long-term database of noises encompassing the Indian Ocean.

"The CTBTO data is an important international asset," Rogers said. "I think it's cool that the same system that keeps the world safe from nuclear bombs is available to researchers, and allows a host of scientists, including us, to do marine science that would not be possible without such sophisticated hydroacoustic arrays."
EACH SUBSPECIES HAS UNIQUE SONG TYPE

Once the data was examined, scientists found a specific blue whale song that hadn't been heard before. Typically, blue whale songs are lengthy, consist of a low frequency, sometimes below the range that humans can hear (under 20 hertz), are of high intensity and replicated at regular intervals.

However, different groups of whales have calls that deviate in duration, structure and the quantity of defined sections.

Embedded content: https://twitter.com/WhaleTalesOrg/status/1218219946959953920?s=20

"Blue whale songs are very simple in the way that they are the repetition of the same pattern," lead author Emmanuelle Leroy, a post-doctoral fellow at UNSW, told Live Science. "But each blue whale subspecies and population has a different song type."

The song that is from the new pygmy population contains three sections. The first is the most complex, with two basic parts that follow it.

"This new whale song has been a dominant part of the soundscape in the Central Equatorial Indian Ocean for the past nearly 18 years," Rogers said.

Due to the song's abundance, scientists are certain it belongs to an entirely new population and not just a few single individuals. But the precise size of the group is still unknown.

Visual identification is still needed to confirm their presence, but scientists believe it’s only a matter of time before it is.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, there are approximately 5,000 to 10,000 blue whales currently in the Southern Hemisphere -- considerably lower than the pre-whaling population of about 350,000 there.

The study was published in April in the journal Scientific Reports.

The US’s greatest danger isn’t China. It’s much closer to home


Robert Reich
Sun, June 20, 2021

THE GUARDIAN



Photograph: AP

China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. That’s fine if it leads to more public investment in basic research, education, and infrastructure – as did the Sputnik shock of the late 1950s. But it poses dangers as well.

More than 60 years ago, the sudden and palpable fear that the Soviet Union was lurching ahead of us shook America out of a postwar complacency and caused the nation to do what it should have been doing for many years. Even though we did it under the pretext of national defense – we called it the National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Highway Act and relied on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration for basic research leading to semiconductors, satellite technology, and the Internet – the result was to boost US productivity and American wages for a generation.

When the Soviet Union began to implode, America found its next foil in Japan. Japanese-made cars were taking market share away from the Big Three automakers. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi bought a substantial interest in the Rockefeller Center, Sony purchased Columbia Pictures, and Nintendo considered buying the Seattle Mariners. By the late 1980s and start of the 1990s, countless congressional hearings were held on the Japanese “challenge” to American competitiveness and the Japanese “threat” to American jobs.


A tide of books demonized Japan – Pat Choate’s Agents of Influence alleged Tokyo’s alleged payoffs to influential Americans were designed to achieve “effective political domination over the United States”. Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places argued that because of our failure to respond adequately to the Japanese challenge “the power of the United States and the quality of American life is diminishing rapidly in every respect”. William S Dietrich’s In the Shadow of the Rising Sun claimed Japan “threatens our way of life and ultimately our freedoms as much as past dangers from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union”.

Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway’s Unequal Equities argued that Japan rigged its capital markets to undermine American corporations. Daniel Burstein’s Yen! Japan’s New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America asserted that Japan’s growing power put the United States at risk of falling prey to a “hostile Japanese ... world order”.

And on it went: The Japanese Power Game,The Coming War with Japan, Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms are Colonizing Vital US Industries, The Silent War, Trade Wars.

But there was no vicious plot. We failed to notice that Japan had invested heavily in its own education and infrastructure – which enabled it to make high-quality products that American consumers wanted to buy. We didn’t see that our own financial system resembled a casino and demanded immediate profits. We overlooked that our educational system left almost 80% of our young people unable to comprehend a news magazine and many others unprepared for work. And our infrastructure of unsafe bridges and potholed roads were draining our productivity.

In the present case of China, the geopolitical rivalry is palpable. Yet at the same time, American corporations and investors are quietly making bundles by running low-wage factories there and selling technology to their Chinese “partners”. And American banks and venture capitalists are busily underwriting deals in China.

I don’t mean to downplay the challenge China represents to the United States. But throughout America’s postwar history it has been easier to blame others than to blame ourselves.

The greatest danger we face today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must be careful not to demonize China so much that we encourage a new paranoia that further distorts our priorities, encourages nativism and xenophobia, and leads to larger military outlays rather than public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic research on which America’s future prosperity and security critically depend.

The central question for America – an ever more diverse America, whose economy and culture are rapidly fusing with the economies and cultures of the rest of the globe – is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and our mutual responsibility without creating another enemy.

PUTIN'S HOMOPHOBIC LAWS SPREAD

'Grotesque': EU countries condemn Hungary over anti-LGBTQ law

By Sabine Siebold and Gabriela Baczynska

© Reuters/MARTON MONUS Protest against latest anti-LGBTQ law in Budapest

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Ireland were among European Union countries condemning their peer Hungary on Tuesday for a new anti-LGBTQ law as the bloc zeroed in again on democratic failings in Budapest and its nationalist ally Warsaw.

The new law banning the "display and promotion of homosexuality" among under-18s clearly violates European Union values, Germany's European affairs minister said ahead of talks with his 27 EU counterparts about deep concerns that Hungary and Poland violate the rule of law by trampling the freedoms of courts, academics and media, as well as restricting the rights of women, migrants and minorities.

© Reuters/POOL FILE PHOTO: European Affairs ministers meet in Brussels

"The European Union is not primarily a single market or a currency union. We are a community of values, these values bind us all," Roth told reporters ahead of the meeting in Luxembourg.

"There should be absolutely no doubt that minorities, sexual minorities too, must be treated respectfully."

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg authored a joint declaration condemning the latest legal changes under Prime Minister Viktor Orban as violating the right to freedom of expression and a "flagrant form of discrimination based on sexual orientation."

The Swedish minister said the Hungarian law was "grotesque", his Dutch colleague called on Budapest to undo it while their Irish counterpart said the bloc's executive should sue it at the top EU court. Austria said it was wrong to park the anti-LGBTQ provisions in a bill penalising paedophilia.

"I am very concerned... It is wrong what has happened there and has to stop," said Ireland's Thomas Byrne. " It's a very very dangerous moment for Hungary, and for the EU as well."

Facing an election next year, Orban has grown increasingly radical on social policy in a self-proclaimed fight to safeguard what he says are traditional Christian values from the Western liberalism.

Arriving to the same meeting on Tuesday, Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the law was only aimed at paedophiles.

"The law protects the children in a way that it makes it an exclusive right of the parents to educate their kids regarding sexual orientation until the age of 18," he said. "This law doesn't say anything about sexual orientation of adults."

The other ministers also spoke of worries about media freedom in Hungary, as well as concerns over Poland's ongoing overhaul of the judiciary.

Saying that Polish courts need reforming, the ruling Law and Justice party has pushed out many critical judges across the judiciary, introduced more pliant replacements.

It most recently ignored an order from the top EU court to halt mining at its Turow plant on the Czech border for as long as a case Prague brought about it against Warsaw is not settled.

"We have to get assurances from Poland and Hungary that they are really going to follow what the EU court says in the future," said Sweden's Hans Dahlgren.

(Additional reporting by Marine Strauss, Philip Blenkinsop and Simon Johnson, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)