Sure, Captain America and Thanos (and their superpowers) break some laws of physics. But let's see if they obey the momentum principle in *Avengers: Endgame*.
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Wednesday, August 7, 2019
North Carolina gun store owner replaces billboard targeting ‘The Squad’ congresswomen
The owner of the Cherokee Guns store in North Carolina has replaced billboards that targeted “The Squad” congresswomen due to complaints but he will not apologize.
On the billboard, the four Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar were illustrated as the “4 Horsemen” of the apocalypse opposed to lawmakers. The billboard was described as “inciting violence” by members of the House and the owner of the store, Doc Wacholz, has revealed he has received threats.
“I don’t care if it was four white women or four white guys that had their view — they’d be on the billboard,” Wacholz told WTVC-TV.
The replacement of the billboard was confirmed by Allison Outdoor Advertising says they requested the change after the back-to-back tragedies in Texas and Ohio. Wacholz says he did not remove them in response to the mass shootings; instead it was for his safety. He would also add that he will not “apologize to anyone.”
According to Newsweek, in addition to referring to the congresswomen as the four horsemen, the billboard also called them “idiots.” The replacement ad now states, “First Amendment. Enough said.”
“We had more support than hate and continue to receive lots of positive feedback on the board nationwide,” Wacholz said.
—Rep. Ilhan Omar uses Africa visit to troll Trump on Twitter—
Tlaib spoke out against the billboard for promoting violence but also blasting President Donald Trump for his role in fostering the environment of America.
“#Racist rhetoric from the occupant of the @WhiteHouse has made hate our new normal. We are still vulnerable,” Tlaib tweeted.
In support of Wacholz, another local gun store owner reached out to a local television station to state the necessity of providing arms to citizens. After the events of last week, the owner said: “People are scared, they want to know how to protect themselves.”
The post North Carolina gun store owner replaces billboard targeting ‘The Squad’ congresswomen appeared first on theGrio.
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Woman throws pot of hot grease at face of man after alleged break-in
An Alabama woman was in the fight of her life when an armed man broke into her home. But she fought back and wielded a pot of hot grease and scalded the criminal’s face.
—She’s Free! Cyntoia Brown is released from prison after serving 15 years—
The person on the receiving end of having hot oil thrown in his face was Larondrick Macklin. He suffered severe burns and was taken to a local hospital for medical treatment, according to the Decatur Police Department.
Police responded to a call for a domestic dispute at the 2800-block of Wimberly Drive, Decatur. According to USA Today, Macklin was the “primary aggressor in the altercation,” according to a police statement.
According to Newsweek, Macklin, 31, is the woman’s ex-boyfriend and had a gun.
Police contend that Macklin “entered the victim’s house with a firearm, and the victim defended herself with a pot containing hot grease.”
Police did not confirm how the woman knew Macklin.
“Since the situation was of a domestic nature, we are not at liberty to discuss the relationship between the victim and the suspect at this time,” a police spokeswoman told the outlet.
But she was compelled to defend herself with what was available to her.
Macklin was jailed and charged with first-degree domestic violence and first-degree burglary. He is being held on $300,000 bond.
Police said, “The defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty,” which is kind of an oxymoron given the evidence.
—Meek Mill retrial decision delayed until end of month—
According to Darley Law LLC, a criminal justice firm: “First-degree domestic violence is a Class A felony, which carries a sentence of life in prison. First-degree domestic violence occurs when the defendant commits either aggravated stalking or first-degree assault.”
We hope this suspect learns from this and get butter, we mean, better.
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Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Astrophysical shock phenomena reproduced in the laboratory
Vast interstellar events where clouds of charged matter hurtle into each other and spew out high-energy particles have now been reproduced in the lab with high fidelity. The work, by MIT researchers and an international team of colleagues, should help resolve longstanding disputes over exactly what takes place in these gigantic shocks.
Many of the largest-scale events, such as the expanding bubble of matter hurtling outward from a supernova, involve a phenomenon called collisionless shock. In these interactions, the clouds of gas or plasma are so rarefied that most of the particles involved actually miss each other, but they nevertheless interact electromagnetically or in other ways to produces visible shock waves and filaments. These high-energy events have so far been difficult to reproduce under laboratory conditions that mirror those in an astrophysical setting, leading to disagreements among physicists as to the mechanisms at work in these astrophysical phenomena.
Now, the researchers have succeeded in reproducing critical conditions of these collisionless shocks in the laboratory, allowing for detailed study of the processes taking place within these giant cosmic smashups. The new findings are described in the journal Physical Review Letters, in a paper by MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center Senior Research Scientist Chikang Li, five others at MIT, and 14 others around the world.
Virtually all visible matter in the universe is in the form of plasma, a kind of soup of subatomic particles where negatively charged electrons swim freely along with positively charged ions instead of being connected to each other in the form of atoms. The sun, the stars, and most clouds of interstellar material are made of plasma.
Most of these interstellar clouds are extremely tenuous, with such low density that true collisions between their constituent particles are rare even when one cloud slams into another at extreme velocities that can be much faster than 1,000 kilometers per second. Nevertheless, the result can be a spectacularly bright shock wave, sometimes showing a great deal of structural detail including long trailing filaments.
Astronomers have found that many changes take place at these shock boundaries, where physical parameters “jump,” Li says. But deciphering the mechanisms taking place in collisionless shocks has been difficult, since the combination of extremely high velocities and low densities has been hard to match on Earth.
While collisionless shocks had been predicted earlier, the first one that was directly identified, in the 1960s, was the bow shock formed by the solar wind, a tenuous stream of particles emanating from the sun, when it hits Earth’s magnetic field. Soon, many such shocks were recognized by astronomers in interstellar space. But in the decades since, “there has been a lot of simulations and theoretical modeling, but a lack of experiments” to understand how the processes work, Li says.
Li and his colleagues found a way to mimic the phenomena in the laboratory by generating a jet of low-density plasma using a set of six powerful laser beams, at the OMEGA laser facility at the University of Rochester, and aiming it at a thin-walled polyimide plastic bag filled with low-density hydrogen gas. The results reproduced many of the detailed instabilities observed in deep space, thus confirming that the conditions match closely enough to allow for detailed, close-up study of these elusive phenomena. A quantity called the mean free path of the plasma particles was measured as being much greater than the widths of the shock waves, Li says, thus meeting the formal definition of a collisionless shock.
At the boundary of the lab-generated collisionless shock, the density of the plasma spiked dramatically. The team was able to measure the detailed effects on both the upstream and downstream sides of the shock front, allowing them to begin to differentiate the mechanisms involved in the transfer of energy between the two clouds, something that physicists have spent years trying to figure out. The results are consistent with one set of predictions based on something called the Fermi mechanism, Li says, but further experiments will be needed to definitively rule out some other mechanisms that have been proposed.
“For the first time we were able to directly measure the structure” of important parts of the collisionless shock, Li says. “People have been pursuing this for several decades.”
The research also showed exactly how much energy is transferred to particles that pass through the shock boundary, which accelerates them to speeds that are a significant fraction of the speed of light, producing what are known as cosmic rays. A better understanding of this mechanism “was the goal of this experiment, and that’s what we measured” Li says, noting that they captured a full spectrum of the energies of the electrons accelerated by the shock.
"This report is the latest installment in a transformative series of experiments, annually reported since 2015, to emulate an actual astrophysical shock wave for comparison with space observations," says Mark Koepke, a professor of physics at West Virginia University and chair of the Omega Laser Facility User Group, who was not involved in the study. "Computer simulations, space observations, and these experiments reinforce the physics interpretations that are advancing our understanding of the particle acceleration mechanisms in play in high-energy-density cosmic events such as gamma-ray-burst-induced outflows of relativistic plasma."
The international team included researchers at the University of Bordeaux in France, the Czech Academy of Sciences, the National Research Nuclear University in Russia, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the University of Rome, the University of Rochester, the University of Paris, Osaka University in Japan, and the University of California at San Diego. It was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the French National Research Agency.
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WATCH | Black Travel Diary: Inside Antigua’s Hottest Late-Night Music Competition
This week the island of Antigua celebrates Carnival, also known as The Caribbean’s Greatest Summer Festival. The streets will be filled with the sweet sounds of soca, calypso music, and dancehall too. As part of our Black travel series “Grio Goes to: Antigua,” theGrio’s Deputy Editor Natasha S. Alford gets an inside look at the history and unique music scene on the island.
In this episode, local soca artist Menace XL narrates the history Sound Clash, a massive DJ battle with a live audience, which takes place at the Historical Fort James Plantation Venue in Antigua.
“Sound Clash is culture. Dancehall is culture,” explains Menace XL. “I don’t care how you go around it and twist it around or if you want to try to fight it. It’s just culture. Since the days of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, coming right up, it’s always been embedded in the Carribean people and the world in general. Sound Clash is always about competition and once you add competition to anything, you get a rivalry and it brings entertainment.”
Menace also opens up about Caribbean music’s cultural connection to Africa.
“You already know how to feel when the drums come on,” Menace tells theGrio. “You already get a type of vibes. Soca is basically a wonderful job at adding some keys and some sense into different elements. But the drum pattern is actually what drives it.”
“The bass you feel it in your belly, feel it in your heart,” says the soca artist. “It drives you. So that’s why it’s always music that gives you this wonderful feeling, this happy feeling.”
“From time you hear it from the ancestors, we usually use the drums to relay messages or to celebrate something. You feel it in soca music.”
Watch the full episode above and subscribe to theGrio’s YouTube channel to get more Black Travel Diary episodes.
The post WATCH | Black Travel Diary: Inside Antigua’s Hottest Late-Night Music Competition appeared first on theGrio.
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How brain cells pick which connections to keep
Brain cells, or neurons, constantly tinker with their circuit connections, a crucial feature that allows the brain to store and process information. While neurons frequently test out new potential partners through transient contacts, only a fraction of fledging junctions, called synapses, are selected to become permanent.
The major criterion for excitatory synapse selection is based on how well they engage in response to experience-driven neural activity, but how such selection is implemented at the molecular level has been unclear. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists have identified the gene and protein, CPG15, that allows experience to tap a synapse as a keeper.
In a series of novel experiments described in Cell Reports, the team at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory used multi-spectral, high-resolution two-photon microscopy to literally watch potential synapses come and go in the visual cortex of mice — both in the light, or normal visual experience, and in the darkness, where there is no visual input. By comparing observations made in normal mice and ones engineered to lack CPG15, they were able to show that the protein is required in order for visual experience to facilitate the transition of nascent excitatory synapses to permanence.
Mice engineered to lack CPG15 only exhibit one behavioral deficiency: They learn much more slowly than normal mice, says senior author Elly Nedivi, the William R. (1964) and Linda R. Young Professor of Neuroscience in the Picower Institute and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. They need more trials and repetitions to learn associations that other mice can learn quickly. The new study suggests that’s because without CPG15, they must rely on circuits where synapses simply happened to take hold, rather than on a circuit architecture that has been refined by experience for optimal efficiency.
“Learning and memory are really specific manifestations of our brain’s ability in general to constantly adapt and change in response to our environment,” Nedivi says. “It’s not that the circuits aren’t there in mice lacking CPG15, they just don’t have that feature — which is really important — of being optimized through use.”
Watching in light and darkness
The first experiment reported in the paper, led by former MIT postdoc Jaichandar Subramanian, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Kansas, is a contribution to neuroscience in and of itself, Nedivi says. The novel labeling and imaging technologies implemented in the study, she says, allowed tracking key events in synapse formation with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The study resolved the emergence of “dendritic spines,” which are the structural protrusions on which excitatory synapses are formed, and the recruitment of the synaptic scaffold, PSD95, that signals that a synapse is there to stay.
The team tracked specially labeled neurons in the visual cortex of mice after normal visual experience, and after two weeks in darkness. To their surprise, they saw that spines would routinely arise and then typically disappear again at the same rate regardless of whether the mice were in light or darkness. This careful scrutiny of spines confirmed that experience doesn’t matter for spine formation, Nedivi said. That upends a common assumption in the field, which held that experience was necessary for spines to even emerge.
By keeping track of the presence of PSD95 they could confirm that the synapses that became stabilized during normal visual experience were the ones that had accumulated that protein. But the question remained: How does experience drive PSD95 to the synapse? The team hypothesized that CPG15, which is activity dependent and associated with synapse stabilization, does that job.
CPG15 represents experience
To investigate that, they repeated the same light-versus-dark experiences, but this time in mice engineered to lack CPG15. In the normal mice, there was much more PSD95 recruitment during the light phase than during the dark, but in the mice without CPG15, the experience of seeing in the light never made a difference. It was as if CPG15-less mice in the light were like normal mice in the dark.
Later they tried another experiment testing whether the low PSD95 recruitment seen when normal mice were in the dark could be rescued by exogenous expression of CPG15. Indeed, PSD95 recruitment shot up, as if the animals were exposed to visual experience. This showed that CPG15 not only carries the message of experience in the light, it can actually substitute for it in the dark, essentially “tricking” PSD95 into acting as if experience had called upon it.
“This is a very exciting result, because it shows that CPG15 is not just required for experience-dependent synapse selection, but it’s also sufficient,” says Nedivi, “That’s unique in relation to all other molecules that are involved in synaptic plasticity.”
A new model and method
In all, the paper’s data allowed Nedivi to propose a new model of experience-dependent synapse stabilization: Regardless of neural activity or experience, spines emerge with fledgling excitatory synapses and the receptors needed for further development. If activity and experience send CPG15 their way, that draws in PSD95 and the synapse stabilizes. If experience doesn’t involve the synapse, it gets no CPG15, very likely no PSD95, and the spine withers away.
The paper potentially has significance beyond the findings about experience-dependent synapse stabilization, Nedivi says. The method it describes of closely monitoring the growth or withering of spines and synapses amid a manipulation (like knocking out or modifying a gene) allows for a whole raft of studies in which examining how a gene, or a drug, or other factors affect synapses.
“You can apply this to any disease model and use this very sensitive tool for seeing what might be wrong at the synapse,” she says.
In addition to Nedivi and Subramanian, the paper’s other authors are Katrin Michel and Marc Benoit.
The National Institutes of Health and the JPB Foundation provided support for the research.
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Wendy Williams reportedly joins forces with her alleged cheating ex to continue joint business ventures
Is Wendy Williams softening her stance on her cheating ex-husband a bit?
—Wendy Williams sheds tears over divorce drama, but then gets real about it—
Could be since reported surface that the talk show host has hired Kevin Hunter, 47, back on her team to handle some of her business affairs, after he allegedly had an affair.
The two had been joined at the hip for more than 20 years as a married couple and together built an empire and had several business ventures together like the Hunter Foundation.
But when Williams, 55 reportedly found out her man had fathered a baby outside the marriage, she ousted him with the quickness, filed for divorce and dissolved her joint businesses.
But it appears poppa has rolled his way back into Wendy’s good graces and they released a joint press release saying that they will not dissolve their production company, publishing house or charitable foundation that they’ve built together.
“Wendy and Kevin’s marriage might be over but they still have love for one another and she realizes that when it comes to business they had a great partnership, there was definitely magic there,” a source close to the couple told DailyMail.com.
“Wendy has come around to the idea that it makes more sense for Kevin to stick around, it’s best for her business and career and for their family.
“Since he left the business there’s been a lot of infighting and back-biting behind the scenes, that’s the kind of stuff Kevin kept a handle on.”
—SHOCKING: Black man in Texas led by white police officers on horses with leash tied around his neck—
“Of course Wendy was furious with Kevin over his affair, she felt he had publicly humiliated her and she wanted to come out fighting, but she’s since softened her view of him and wants an amicable divorce.”
“He has been very supportive, particularly around her struggles with alcoholism.”
Williams has put on a brave face since her very public and she’s been celebrating her new lease on life since she filed for divorce. Still, talk show host still gets emotional when talking about the way her family has been torn apart over the last year.
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SHOCKING: Black man in Texas led by white police officers on horses with leash tied around his neck
In one of the most inhumane and emasculating moments a human could have, a photo has gone viral of a Black man in Texas being led on a leash by two white police officers.
Galveston Police was hit with a barrage of complaints over the weekend about the shocking photo of Donald Neely, 43, who was arrested on charges of criminal trespass at 22nd street and Mechanic, ABC 13 reports.
—Body of 4-year-old Baltimore boy reported missing found in dumpster, mother charged—
The photo hit a nerve among people of color at a time when racial tensions are high and white criminals are often treated in a more humane manner than Black suspects.
Chief Vernon L. Hale, III of the Galveston Police Department released a statement about the ordeal and apologized to Neely:
“First and foremost I must apologize to Mister Neely for this unnecessary embarrassment. Although this is a trained technique and best practice in some scenarios, I believe our officers showed poor judgement in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of arrest. My officers did not have any malicious intent at the time of the arrest, but we have immediately changed the policy to prevent the use of this technique and will review all mounted training and procedures for more appropriate methods.”
On Facebook, a woman, Christin Neely said Donald was her brother in law and explained that he is “mentally ill” and “homeless” but the family has contacted a lawyer to find out why he was treated in such an inhumane way.
“The MAN in the photos is my brother in law Donald Neely. He is mentally ill and homeless with family just over the causeway in Texas City. We have attempted many times to bring him home but he refuses. He gets arrested often for trespassing. After calling GPD and getting no where we have contacted our family lawyer who is working to get answers as to what occurred and why. We would like to thank everyone who has shared the original post and encourage you all to continue sharing! #wearenotourancestors #dontlookaway #share”
—Afton Williamson calls out ‘The Rookie” co-star she alleges sexually harassed her—
“You don’t even do a dog like that,” said Sherri Kelly about the troubling photo. “I don’t care. That’s inhumane.”
“Where were they walking him to and why did they rope him if he was handcuffed? I don’t think it’s right,” Cynthia Orise of Galveston said.
The officer under fire has been identified as P. Brosch and A. Smith. They were also wearing body cameras and police confirmed the cameras were activated.
Posted by Adrienne Bell for Congress TX-14 on Monday, August 5, 2019
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Daniel Freedman wins Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Daniel Z. Freedman, professor emeritus in MIT’s departments of Mathematics and Physics, has been awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. He shares the $3 million prize with two colleagues, Sergio Ferrara of CERN and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen of Stony Brook University, with whom he developed the theory of supergravity.
The trio is honored for work that combines the principles of supersymmetry, which postulates that all fundamental particles have corresponding, unseen “partner” particles; and Einstein's theory of general relativity, which explains that gravity is the result of the curvature of space-time.
When the theory of supersymmetry was developed in 1973, it solved some key problems in particle physics, such as unifying three forces of nature (electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force), but it left out a fourth force: gravity. Freedman, Ferrara, and van Nieuwenhuizen addressed this in 1976 with their theory of supergravity, in which the gravitons of general relativity acquire superpartners called gravitinos.
Freedman’s collaboration with Ferrara and van Nieuwenhuizen began late in 1975 at École Normale Supérior in Paris, where he was visiting on a minisabbatical from Stony Brook, where he was a professor. Ferrara had also come to ENS, to work on a different project for a week. The challenge of constructing supergravity was in the air at that time, and Freedman told Ferrara that he was thinking about it. In their discussions, Ferrara suggested that progress could be made via an approach that Freedman had previously used in a related problem involving supersymmetric gauge theories.
“That turned me in the right direction,” Freedman recalls. In short order, he formulated the first step in the construction of supergravity and proved its mathematical consistency. “I returned to Stony Brook convinced that I could quickly find the rest of the theory,” he says. However, “I soon realized that it was harder than I had expected.”
At that point he asked van Nieuwenhuizen to join him on the project. “We worked very hard for several months until the theory came together. That was when our eureka moment occurred,” he says.
“Dan’s work on supergravity has changed how scientists think about physics beyond the standard model, combining principles of supersymmetry and Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” says Michael Sipser, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Donner Professor of Mathematics. “His exemplary research is central to mathematical physics and has given us new pathways to explore in quantum field theory and superstring theory. On behalf of the School of Science, I congratulate Dan and his collaborators for this prestigious award.”
Freedman joined the MIT faculty in 1980, first as professor of applied mathematics and later with a joint appointment in the Center for Theoretical Physics. He regularly taught an advanced graduate course on supersymmetry and supergravity. An unusual feature of the course was that each assigned problem set included suggestions of classical music to accompany students’ work.
“I treasure my 36 years at MIT,” he says, noting that he worked with “outstanding” graduate students with “great resourcefulness as problem solvers.” Freedman fully retired from MIT in 2016.
He is now a visiting professor at Stanford University and lives in Palo Alto, California, with his wife, Miriam, an attorney specializing in public education law.
The son of small-business people, Freedman was the first in his family to attend college. He became interested in physics during his first year at Wesleyan University, when he enrolled in a special class that taught physics in parallel with the calculus necessary to understand its mathematical laws. It was a pivotal experience. “Learning that the laws of physics can exactly describe phenomena in nature — that totally turned me on,” he says.
Freedman learned about winning the Breakthrough Prize upon returning from a morning boxing class, when his wife told him that a Stanford colleague, who was on the Selection Committee, had been trying to reach him. “When I returned the call, I was overwhelmed with the news,” he says.
Freedman, who holds a BA from Wesleyan and an MS and PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin, is a former Sloan Fellow and a two-time Guggenheim Fellow. The three collaborators received the Dirac Medal and Prize in 1993, and the Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics in 2006. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Founded by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the Breakthrough Prizes recognize the world’s top scientists in life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics. The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics honors profound contributions to human knowledge in physics. Earlier honorees include Jocelyn Bell Burnell; the LIGO research team, including MIT Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss; and Stephen Hawking.
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BREAKING NEWS: Nobel laureate Toni Morrison has died
A publisher at Knopf has just confirmed that the Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison has died Monday night in New York City.
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), Morrison was the second of four children from a black working-class family. She went on to study at both Howard and Cornell Universities and developed a career as a literary critic and editor for Random House.
Her first novel, “The Bluest Eye” was released in 1970, and went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Most recently, a new documentary on her life was released. The film, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am focused on the legendary author’s career, highly acclaimed novels, and life, OprahMag reports.
The documentary also looks back on her childhood, her experience as an undergraduate student at Howard University, and much more.
The biopic, directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, offers fans a better understanding of Morrison’s perspective on topics such as racial identity, prejudice, and the “plight of Black Women.” It also highlight her current achievements.
Morrison, who died last night was 88 years old.
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Real Housewives of Potomac’s Ashley Darby meets her dad for the first time in 30 years
Real Housewives of Potomac star Ashley Darby took a journey into her past on Sunday’s episode to confront her father, a man who she has never met in 30 years.
—John Legend and Rihanna call out Donald Trump over El Paso and Dayton mass shootings—
While you’ll have to wait until next week to see what Darby and her dad discussed, the episode was all about the journey of confronting the man who divorced her mom 30 years ago and left his family without much explanation.
Darby made the trek to Atlanta, Georgia to get answers of a past that has haunted her and to douse the burning desire to better understand why her father left when she was one year old, PEOPLE reports.
Darby admits that five years ago she tried to reach out to her dad on Facebook, but in pure Facebook fashion, he blocked her.
“It was really hurtful,” Darby recalled. “And yet even still, I have this nagging desire to find my dad.”
“When I sit with myself, I think about my life and who I am and all that. I think about my dad a lot,” she added. “I have never known my dad … I’m tired of thinking about it. I need it for myself. I need to close this chapter of my life to look to the future.”
She continued: “This is something I’ve been thinking about a long time, reconnecting with my other side of my family. So what’s stopping me? As I’m trying to embark on starting a family, I’m thinking about my kid and what my kid will ask. They will want to know about their grandparents and their aunts and uncles. I feel like it’s a responsibility of mine to foster those relationship.”
To help ease the tension of meeting her father for the first time as an adult, Darby brought along her dad’s brother-in-law Uncle Jim and his sister, Aunt Sheila, two relatives whom she has kept in phone contact with other years. Her mother Sheila Matthews, also came along.
“When I put myself in my dad’s shoes, I think the shame of having abandoned me is too much for him to bare,” Darby said. “He can’t confront it. But I’m hoping that my dad will feel a little more comfortable having Uncle Jim and Aunt Sheila there. Maybe he’ll be more receptive to having a conversation?”
“Even if I haven’t been able to have a close relationship with my dad, the fact that my aunt and uncle still make an effort to want to talk to me and show me that they care about me? That warms my heart,” Darby said.
—Is RHOA star Porsha Williams back with her ex Dennis McKinley?—
But there’s no promise that Aunt Sheila and Uncle Jim’s presence will ease the meeting especially since they said they haven’t talked to Darby’s dad in eight years.
“I’ve attempted to try, but nothing has happened,” Sheila said. “Dad has not spoken to me since 2011. I really don’t know.” “
“I have mixed feelings about you going to see your dad,” Jim told Darby. “I think your mom did absolutely the right thing, keeping you away from him. 20 years ago, he had a lot of demons running around inside of him. … I hope I’m 100 percent wrong.”
“My husband says the same thing. He does not think this is a good idea,” Darby said. “Honestly, what I’m just really looking for from this is just some sort of acknowledgement. Just to see his face.’ Cause everyone says we have the same face shape.”
“At this point in my life, I feel like I owe it to myself to make that effort and see what kind of response I get,” she added, admitting that while she was “scared,” she felt empowered. “Before, what would hold me back is this fear that he will reject me. But it’s not so scary that I couldn’t get on the plane.
Darby’s mom just wants closure for her daughter.
“All I know is I am looking for my daughter to finally having some form of closure in my life,” Matthews said.
“Oh my god,” Matthews said in the preview. “There’s your father.”
You’ll have to wait until The Real Housewives of Potomac airs next Sunday (8 p.m. ET) on Bravo to find out what happens or if they get the door closed in their faces.
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Is RHOA star Porsha Williams back with her ex Dennis McKinley?
Porsha Williams and Dennis McKinley are reportedly back together again.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta star and her former fiancé broke the internet when they broke up earlier this year shortly after Williams gave birth to their baby Pilar in March.
—RHOA’ star Porsha Williams accuses LAX restaurant of being “completely racist.”—
Last season on the show, rumors swirled that McKinley was a lady’s man and her castmates worried and predicted that the relationship wouldn’t last.
The gossip mill also overflowed with reports that McKinley had cheated on Williams with WAGS Atlanta star Sincerely Ward. Ward however denied the affair and said she “never met” McKinley.
McKinley previously fought back against the rumors saying they were false.
But eventually the two broke up. It was a sad turn of events given that Williams fought hard against claims on her reality show by Kandi Burruss that McKinley was a playboy in Atlanta.
McKinley previously sent a statement to E! News in an attempt to clear the air. “These false and slanderous allegations against me are made solely to damage my reputation, jeopardize my ongoing businesses, and negatively impact my family,” he said at the time. “My attempts to ignore this slander have only empowered Latasha Kebe (aka Tasha K.) to create more false accusations. I am currently taking legal action—and am currently being represented by Michael T. Sterling of Dreyer Sterling, LLC.”
—RHOA’ star Porsha Williams accuses LAX restaurant of being “completely racist.”—
Now it’s a new day and a new season and filming has started all around Atlanta. A source confirmed to Us Weekly that Williams, 38 and McKinley, 39 have been spotted together and during a recent interview with the outlet she was sporting her engagement ring. They were also reportedly seen together on a RHOA cast trip too.
So, will bells be ringing sometime soon?
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Monday, August 5, 2019
Automating artificial intelligence for medical decision-making
MIT computer scientists are hoping to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence to improve medical decision-making, by automating a key step that’s usually done by hand — and that’s becoming more laborious as certain datasets grow ever-larger.
The field of predictive analytics holds increasing promise for helping clinicians diagnose and treat patients. Machine-learning models can be trained to find patterns in patient data to aid in sepsis care, design safer chemotherapy regimens, and predict a patient’s risk of having breast cancer or dying in the ICU, to name just a few examples.
Typically, training datasets consist of many sick and healthy subjects, but with relatively little data for each subject. Experts must then find just those aspects — or “features” — in the datasets that will be important for making predictions.
This “feature engineering” can be a laborious and expensive process. But it’s becoming even more challenging with the rise of wearable sensors, because researchers can more easily monitor patients’ biometrics over long periods, tracking sleeping patterns, gait, and voice activity, for example. After only a week’s worth of monitoring, experts could have several billion data samples for each subject.
In a paper being presented at the Machine Learning for Healthcare conference this week, MIT researchers demonstrate a model that automatically learns features predictive of vocal cord disorders. The features come from a dataset of about 100 subjects, each with about a week’s worth of voice-monitoring data and several billion samples — in other words, a small number of subjects and a large amount of data per subject. The dataset contain signals captured from a little accelerometer sensor mounted on subjects’ necks.
In experiments, the model used features automatically extracted from these data to classify, with high accuracy, patients with and without vocal cord nodules. These are lesions that develop in the larynx, often because of patterns of voice misuse such as belting out songs or yelling. Importantly, the model accomplished this task without a large set of hand-labeled data.
“It’s becoming increasing easy to collect long time-series datasets. But you have physicians that need to apply their knowledge to labeling the dataset,” says lead author Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz, a PhD student in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “We want to remove that manual part for the experts and offload all feature engineering to a machine-learning model.”
The model can be adapted to learn patterns of any disease or condition. But the ability to detect the daily voice-usage patterns associated with vocal cord nodules is an important step in developing improved methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat the disorder, the researchers say. That could include designing new ways to identify and alert people to potentially damaging vocal behaviors.
Joining Gonzalez Ortiz on the paper is John Guttag, the Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and head of CSAIL’s Data Driven Inference Group; Robert Hillman, Jarrad Van Stan, and Daryush Mehta, all of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation; and Marzyeh Ghassemi, an assistant professor of computer science and medicine at the University of Toronto.
Forced feature-learning
For years, the MIT researchers have worked with the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation to develop and analyze data from a sensor to track subject voice usage during all waking hours. The sensor is an accelerometer with a node that sticks to the neck and is connected to a smartphone. As the person talks, the smartphone gathers data from the displacements in the accelerometer.
In their work, the researchers collected a week’s worth of this data — called “time-series” data — from 104 subjects, half of whom were diagnosed with vocal cord nodules. For each patient, there was also a matching control, meaning a healthy subject of similar age, sex, occupation, and other factors.
Traditionally, experts would need to manually identify features that may be useful for a model to detect various diseases or conditions. That helps prevent a common machine-learning problem in health care: overfitting. That’s when, in training, a model “memorizes” subject data instead of learning just the clinically relevant features. In testing, those models often fail to discern similar patterns in previously unseen subjects.
“Instead of learning features that are clinically significant, a model sees patterns and says, ‘This is Sarah, and I know Sarah is healthy, and this is Peter, who has a vocal cord nodule.’ So, it’s just memorizing patterns of subjects. Then, when it sees data from Andrew, which has a new vocal usage pattern, it can’t figure out if those patterns match a classification,” Gonzalez Ortiz says.
The main challenge, then, was preventing overfitting while automating manual feature engineering. To that end, the researchers forced the model to learn features without subject information. For their task, that meant capturing all moments when subjects speak and the intensity of their voices.
As their model crawls through a subject’s data, it’s programmed to locate voicing segments, which comprise only roughly 10 percent of the data. For each of these voicing windows, the model computes a spectrogram, a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies varying over time, which is often used for speech processing tasks. The spectrograms are then stored as large matrices of thousands of values.
But those matrices are huge and difficult to process. So, an autoencoder — a neural network optimized to generate efficient data encodings from large amounts of data — first compresses the spectrogram into an encoding of 30 values. It then decompresses that encoding into a separate spectrogram.
Basically, the model must ensure that the decompressed spectrogram closely resembles the original spectrogram input. In doing so, it’s forced to learn the compressed representation of every spectrogram segment input over each subject’s entire time-series data. The compressed representations are the features that help train machine-learning models to make predictions.
Mapping normal and abnormal features
In training, the model learns to map those features to “patients” or “controls.” Patients will have more voicing patterns than will controls. In testing on previously unseen subjects, the model similarly condenses all spectrogram segments into a reduced set of features. Then, it’s majority rules: If the subject has mostly abnormal voicing segments, they’re classified as patients; if they have mostly normal ones, they’re classified as controls.
In experiments, the model performed as accurately as state-of-the-art models that require manual feature engineering. Importantly, the researchers’ model performed accurately in both training and testing, indicating it’s learning clinically relevant patterns from the data, not subject-specific information.
Next, the researchers want to monitor how various treatments — such as surgery and vocal therapy — impact vocal behavior. If patients’ behaviors move form abnormal to normal over time, they’re most likely improving. They also hope to use a similar technique on electrocardiogram data, which is used to track muscular functions of the heart.
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WATCH | Black Travel Diary: Is this the best fried fish spot in the Caribbean?
When it comes to eating good, we all know that some of the best food doesn’t come in fancy five-star buildings.
On the lush island of Antigua, one of the two islands that make up the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda, there’s a tiny roadside restaurant with a reputation for food so delicious, there are long lines every time they open.
Cavells Cook Shop in the capital city of St.John’s is known for having some of the best local cuisine on the island. The family-owned establishment has been on the island for about 19 years. The food is made with love, nearly every dish blessed by the owner herself, and it keeps locals and tourists alike coming back.
In this episode of “Grio Goes To: Antigua,” theGrio’s Deputy Editor Natasha S. Alford visits Cavell’s to see if the food lives up to the hype!
You’ll get an up-close look at the Antigua’s best fried snapper, rice & black beans, fritters, mac cheese and even a very special sweet potato that looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before…
Watch the full episode above to find out the final verdict on Cavell’s, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Black Travel Guides to the hottest destinations.
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WATCH | Black Travel Diary: Why you should visit the island of Antigua
In the heart of the Caribbean, Black travelers will find a travel oasis like none other. Antigua, one of the two islands which make up the country of Antigua & Barbuda, is a vacation destination with laid back vibes, 365 gorgeous beaches, historic landmarks and one of the top sailing centers in this region of the world.
In our first episode theGrio’s Deputy Editor, Natasha S. Alford, heads to Antigua, to see first-hand what makes the island so special. The episode features the beautiful Blue Waters Resort in the capital city of St. John’s. Blue Waters Resort has held the title of world travel award winner for Antigua’s leading hotel for five consecutive years and it’s easy to see why.
With 17 acres of lush gardens, the resort has multiple villas, each complete with a kitchen, living room, dining room, a large private bathroom for every bedroom. To top it off, the villas have balconies overlooking an incredible view of the ocean water. Everything that you need is right within your villa. The resort’s staff provide exceptional service and complimentary drinks to its guests, and they’ll pick you up from your villa for transportation between buildings and the lobby.
“When you travel to places to be a tourist, often there’s a feeling of overcrowdedness or feeling like it’s really commercial,” Alford shares.
“But in Antigua, there are beaches where hotels are not allowed to build and you just sort of see the natural beauty of the landscape. I think that is what’s so special There’s a uniqueness and calmness and positivity that has been preserved in Antigua.”
Watch the full video episode of “Grio Goes to Antigua” above, and subscribe to theGrio’s YouTube channel for more top Black Travel Diary content.
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Chicago Obama library highly anticipated, but gentrification and displacement fears begin to surface
The upcoming Barack Obama legacy library has several residents of a Chicago district concerned that the four-building, 19-acre “working center for citizenship” will lead to the displacement of thousands of low-income Black families.
The project is being built in Jackson Park on the city’s South Side and will reportedly include a 235-foot-high museum tower, a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden and a sledding hill — and cost an estimated $500 million, according to The New York Times.
READ MORE: Judge rules lawsuit intended on blocking Obama Presidential Library can move forward
“Because our area has become attractive to developers now, they’ll count us out,” said 52-year-old social services worker Tara Madison, who lives in the area with her two children and two grandchildren. Madison, the daughter of civil rights activists, is not alone in her fear of gentrification and the racial disparities that often come with it.
The former president has teased that the center will serve as a hub for the youth and will attract new businesses, but there is concern that a resurgence will push out longtime residents, ABC News reports.
“The best things that have happened to me in my life, happened in this community. Although we had a formal bidding process to determine where the presidential library was going to be, the fact of the matter was it had to be right here on the South Side of Chicago,” Obama told a crowd in 2016.
The Windy City reportedly ranks third after New York and Los Angeles for cities with the most neighborhoods that have gentrified. Neighborhood activists conducted a study that estimated up to 4,500 families will be at risk of displacement by development around the Barack Obama center.
READ MORE: DC’s go-go sound becomes anti-gentrification battle cry
Activist Jeannette Taylor has reportedly gained sponsorship for an ordinance calling for protections in a two-mile radius around the Obama library. The ordinance also wants 30% of the area’s housing to be designated as affordable, and any buildings up for sale should first be offered to the current tenants.
“It is morally wrong to get investment in a community that’s long overdue investment and then to displace the very people who have been dealing with disinvestment,” Taylor said. “It is a conversation that should have been had way before this, way before the library.”
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Seven people shot and wounded at west side Chicago park
On Sunday, amid twin mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, seven people were also shot on the west side of Chicago, police said.
A group of people was fired on in Douglas Park in the 2900 block of West Roosevelt Road in the city. The shooter reportedly opened fire at 1:20 a.m. in a drive-by from a black Camaro, Fox 23 reports.
—Confederate group sues Georgia city to fly divisive flag at parade—
According to reports Mount Sinai Hospital took in several victims, including a 21-year-old man who is in critical condition after getting shot in the groin area, a 25-year-old woman was hit in the arm and leg and was stabilized, and also a 22-year-old woman.
A 23-year-old man and another victim, 21, were both shot and took themselves to Mount Sinai, police said.
Two other victims, a 20-year-old man who was hit on his side and a woman, 19, who was shot in her leg, were taken to Stroger Hospital, police said.
A tragic 24 hrs for our country. Our thoughts & condolences are with everyone affected by this senseless gun violence. In Chicago, we are investigating 2 multiple victim shootings in the Ogden District & there is no known connection to El Paso or Dayton. pic.twitter.com/zEhX3Swx60
— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) August 4, 2019
The nation is reeling and trying to absorb the harsh reality of two mass shootings that occurred over the weekend, leaving at least 29 dead and increased demand for action.
The crime in El Paso is now being treated as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime charges will reportedly be filed because authorities believe the killing took place because of its proximity to the border.
—Six of the nine victims in Dayton, Ohio shooting were Black—
On Sunday, 24-year-old Connor Betts was killed by police in a hail of gunfire after taking aim at innocent bystanders and killing his sister on East Fifth Street in Dayton’s Oregon District around 1 a.m. Sunday, Cincinnati.com reports.
It has been reported that six of the victims shot on Sunday were Black and three were white.
Donald Trump spoke out on Monday to condemn ‘racism, bigotry and white supremacy in response to Texas and Ohio mass shootings.
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Donald Trump condemns ‘racism, bigotry and white supremacy’ in response to Texas and Ohio mass shootings
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday condemned weekend shootings in Texas and Ohio as “barbaric” attacks and crimes “against all humanity” as he called for bipartisan cooperation to strengthen the nation’s gun laws.
Trump said he wants legislation providing “strong background checks” for gun users, but he provided scant details and has reneged on previous promises after mass shootings.
“We vow to act with urgent resolve,” Trump said Monday.
READ MORE: Six of the nine victims in Dayton, Ohio shooting were Black
Trump spoke Monday from the White House about shootings that left 29 dead and dozens wounded. He suggested early on Twitter that a background check bill could be paired with his long-sought effort to toughen the nation’s immigration system.
But he didn’t say how or why he was connecting the issues. Both shooting suspects were U.S. citizens, and federal officials are investigating anti-immigrant bias as a potential motive for the El Paso, Texas, massacre.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said, adding that he had directed the FBI to examine steps to identify and address domestic terrorism. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America,” he said.
READ MORE: Democrats promise congressional action on gun control
Trump has frequently sought to tie his immigration priorities — a border wall and transforming the legal immigration system to one that prioritizes merit over familial ties — to legislation around which he perceives momentum to be building.
Over the weekend, Trump tried to assure Americans he was dealing with the problem and defended his administration in light of criticism following the latest in a string of mass shootings.
“We have done much more than most administrations,” he said, without elaboration. “We have done actually a lot. But perhaps more has to be done.”
Congress has proven unable to pass substantial gun violence legislation this session, despite the frequency of mass shootings, in large part because of resistance from Republicans, particularly in the GOP-controlled Senate. That political dynamic seems difficult to change.
And Trump himself has reneged on previous pledges to strengthen gun laws.
READ MORE: Gunman in Italy goes on shooting rampage targeting black people
After other mass shootings he called for strengthening the federal background check system, and in 2018 he signed legislation to increase federal agency data sharing into the system. But he has resisted Democratic calls to toughen other gun control laws.
In February, the House approved bipartisan legislation to require federal background checks for all gun sales and transfers and approved legislation to allow a review period of up to 10 days for background checks on firearms purchases. The White House threatened a presidential veto if those measures passed Congress.
At a February meeting with survivors and family members of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting in which 17 people died, Trump promised to be “very strong on background checks.”
Trump claimed he would stand up to the gun lobby and finally get results in quelling gun violence. But he later retreated, expressing support for modest changes to the federal background check system and for arming teachers.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tweeted that if Trump is serious about strengthening background checks, he should demand Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “put the bipartisan, House-passed universal background checks bill up for a vote.”
In the El Paso attack, investigators are focusing on whether it was a hate crime after the emergence of a racist, anti-immigrant screed that was posted online shortly beforehand. Detectives sought to determine if it was written by the man who was arrested. The border city has figured prominently in the immigration debate and is home to 680,000 people, most of them Latino.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”
On Twitter Monday, Trump seemed to deflect from scrutiny over the manifesto, which had language mirroring some of his own. As Democrats have called on Trump to tone down his rhetoric, Trump blamed the news media for the nation’s woes.
“Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years,” he claimed
As Trump weighs trips to the affected communities — the Federal Aviation Administration advised pilots of a presidential visit Wednesday to El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — local lawmakers signaled opposition to his presence.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso, said Trump is “not welcome” to visit the city.
In recent weeks, the president has issued racist tweets about four women of color who serve in Congress, and in rallies has spoken of an “invasion” at the southern border. His reelection strategy has placed racial animus at the forefront in an effort that his aides say is designed to activate his base of conservative voters, an approach not seen by an American president in the modern era.
Trump also has been widely criticized for offering a false equivalency when discussing racial violence, notably when he said there were “very fine people, on both sides,” after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of an anti-racism demonstrator.
On gun control, a majority of Americans have consistently said they support stronger laws, but proposals have stalled repeatedly in Congress, a marked contrast to some countries that have acted swiftly after a mass shooting.
In March, a poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found a majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws. The survey was conducted both before and after a mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand. It found that 67 percent of Americans support making US gun laws stricter, while 22 percent say they should be left as they are and 10 percent think they should be made less strict.
READ MORE: Here’s why the NRA uses black faces in their anti-gun control campaigns– and why it’s suspect.
Less than a week after the mosque shootings, New Zealand moved to ban “military-style” semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines; similarly, after a mass shooting in 1996, Australia enacted sweeping gun bans within two weeks.
The poll suggested many Americans would support similar measures, but there’s a wide gulf between Democrats and Republicans on banning specific types of guns. Overall, 6 in 10 Americans support a ban on AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons. Roughly 8 in 10 Democrats, but just about 4 in 10 Republicans, support that policy.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson accused of downplaying down mass shootings issues apology
People were left wondering over the weekend if star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has his head in the clouds after his latest comments about the recent back-to-back mass shootings were deemed insensitive.
—John Legend and Rihanna call out Donald Trump over El Paso and Dayton mass shootings—
Tyson noted that while the killings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas has people up-in-arms, data points to more people are killed by the flu or medical errors adding, “often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.”
DeGrasse comments outraged people on social media, especially after 29 people were gunned down in the mass shootings and families are still grappling with the gruesome reality of what occurred, Yahoo reports.
In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.
On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…
500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via HandgunOften our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 4, 2019
“The difference is people are currently working on decreasing those other death toles, Neil. Jesus you’re awful,” said one commenter.
The difference is people are currently working on decreasing those other death toles, Neil.
Jesus you’re awful.
— Andy (@trtx84) August 4, 2019
“As you may or may not have noticed, part of the upset around this isn’t about the number of deaths, but rather the failure of government to adequately respond to a public health issue,” said another critic.
As you may or may not have noticed, part of the upset around this isn’t about the number of deaths, but rather the failure of government to adequately respond to a public health issue.
— Summer Brennan 🌈👠(@summerbrennan) August 4, 2019
“Imagine tweeting this and thinking it adds anything to intelligent discourse,” said another.
Imagine tweeting this and thinking it adds anything to intelligent discourse
— Shaena Montanari (@DrShaena) August 4, 2019
“Why would you ever tweet this?” asked another.
Why would you ever tweet this?
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) August 4, 2019
The popular scientist and host of ‘Cosmos’ who recently got himself out of a controversial bind after allegations of sexual misconduct by two women, issued an apology early on Monday.
—Six of the nine victims in Dayton, Ohio shooting were Black—
“My intent was to offer objectively true information that might help shape conversations and reactions to preventable ways we die,” he said.
“What I learned from the range of reactions is that for many people, some information –-my Tweet in particular — can be true but unhelpful, especially at a time when many people are either still in shock, or trying to heal – or both.
“I apologize for not knowing in advance what effect my Tweet could have on you. I am therefore thankful for the candor and depth of critical reactions shared in my Twitter feed.
“As an educator, I personally value knowing with precision and accuracy what reaction anything that I say (or write) will instill in my audience, and I got this one wrong.”
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Neil deGrasse Tyson Writes Apology after His Tweet Following Mass Shootings
Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, took to Facebook to issue an apology after tweeting in response to last weekend’s almost back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
The scientist’s original tweet compared the number of deaths in the shootings to other fatal events such as deaths from the flu and suicides:
In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 4, 2019
On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…
500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun
Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.
The tweet received a tsunami of backlash. Some called his statement “soulless” and “heartless.” Others said that Tyson was “tone deaf” and engaging in “false equivalency.”
You’re a scientist, you understand false equivalency, yeah? How many of those things you listed are done with purposeful, malicious intent? Quit being Edgelord, Ph.D on Twitter.
— Anthony Carboni (@acarboni) August 5, 2019
For me, the spectacle of a once-respected scientist now yields data.
— Annie Gabston-Howell- (@AnnieGabstonH) August 5, 2019
One less person willing to follow you because of your inability to understand the difference between murder, for the sake of inspiring terror, and a car accident.
Early Monday morning, Tyson posted the following statement on his Facebook page:
Yesterday, a Tweet I posted in reaction to the horrific mass shootings in America over the previous 48 hours, killing 34 people, spawned mixed and highly critical responses.If you missed it, I offered a short list of largely preventable causes of death, along with their average two-day death toll in the United States. They significantly exceeded the death toll from the two days of mass shootings, including the number of people (40) who on average die from handgun homicides every two days.I then noted that we tend to react emotionally to spectacular incidences of death, with the implication that more common causes of death trigger milder responses within us.My intent was to offer objectively true information that might help shape conversations and reactions to preventable ways we die. Where I miscalculated was that I genuinely believed the Tweet would be helpful to anyone trying to save lives in America. What I learned from the range of reactions is that for many people, some information –-my Tweet in particular — can be true but unhelpful, especially at a time when many people are either still in shock, or trying to heal – or both.So if you are one of those people, I apologize for not knowing in advance what effect my Tweet could have on you. I am therefore thankful for the candor and depth of critical reactions shared in my Twitter feed. As an educator, I personally value knowing with precision and accuracy what reaction anything that I say (or write) will instill in my audience, and I got this one wrong.Respectfully Submitted
Neil deGrasse Tyson
On Saturday, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, fatally shot 20 people and injured 26 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Crusius has since been identified as an extreme right-wing white nationalist with a vendetta against immigrants.
Approximately 13 hours after that mass shooting, Dayton, Ohio suffered its own active shooting incident. Connor Betts, a 24-year-old white male, killed nine people and injured 27 outside of a popular bar in Dayton.
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Six of the nine victims in Dayton Ohio shooting were Black
As the horrifying details of the Dayton, Ohio shooting unfolds, it has been reported that six of the victims shot on Sunday were Black and three were white.
—Confederate group sues Georgia city to fly divisive flag at parade—
- Megan Betts, 22, the gunman’s sister
- Lois Oglesby, 27.
- Saeed Saleh, 38.
- Logan Turner, 30.
- Nicholas Cumer, 25.
- Thomas McNichols, 25.
- Beatrice Warren-Curtis, 36.
- Monica Brickhouse, 39.
- Derrick Fudge, 57.
The suspect, 24-year-old Connor Betts was killed by police in a hail of gunfire after taking aim at innocent bystanders on East Fifth Street in Dayton’s Oregon District around 1 a.m. Sunday, Cincinnati.com reports.
A friend of Megan Betts, Dana Raber recalled her as a “sweetheart.” She said the 22-year-old loved kids and just a few years ago she remembers when she dressed up as a scarecrow to collect candy on Halloween and scare little ones.
“It made me smile because she did it in good fun,” said Raber, 20. “She’s a lot of fun.”
The motive behind Betts killing his own sister and the others are still being investigated. While authorities are falling short of calling the killings racially-motivated hate crimes, families are still grappling with the reality of the gruesome tragedy which is just the latest in a string of cases that has authorities scrambling to understand…
Tajaun Cobbins, 23, of Dayton was directed to the Dayton Convention Center to find out more info about his sister, Lois Oglesby, who he learned was one of the slain.
“Man, how could this happen?” Cobbins said. “She was just down here to have a good time.”
Nicholas Cumer, another victim was a graduate student at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, studying in the master of cancer care program. According to a statement from the school, Cumer was in town to complete an internship for the Maple Tree Cancer Alliance.
—Ronald Reagan’s daughter asks for forgiveness for late president’s racist remarks—
Cumer was a standout who was offered a full-time position last week with Maple Tree and was just a week away from securing the position and finishing out his internship. He was expected to graduate with a master’s degree in exercise physiology.
Brandon White’s cousin Thomas McNichols was also one of the deceased. His family was directed to the Convention Center too where they learned that McNichols was killed, but details were sketchy.
“Me and my mom rushed down here, and we’re just waiting to hear something,” said White, 29.
“There are cops all over the place down here on the weekend. He must have had a death wish or somethin’,” White said about the gunman.
The shooting marks the 250th mass killing in the US in 2019, this just as the country was dealing with another killing in El Paso, Texas with another gunman who killed 20 people and wounded 26 others at a Walmart.
On Sunday, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley confirmed Sunday’s that the shooter carried a .223-caliber “assault-style” rifle with a bevy of body armor and extra magazines and committed “a senseless act of violence.”
“These things are so random,” she said. “What really goes through my mind is this is completely preventable.”
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