[JustTheNews] "The spirit behind it, from the beginning, has been to be responsive to feedback and to consider adjustments based on that feedback."
Stanford University is scrambling to respond to backlash following reports that an internal guide of removing "harmful language" from the school's online materials included the term "American."
Seeking to "eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased... language in Stanford websites and code," the guide labelled the term "American" as "imprecise" given it "often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas."
The term "American" is a common shorthand for people from the United States and no other country in the Western Hemisphere frequently uses it as an identifier for their citizens.
Now, Stanford has asserted that the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, under which the directive fell, did not represent a mandatory policy, but was merely part of an internal document intended for discussion between members of the school's IT department.
"First and importantly, the website does not represent university policy. It also does not represent mandates or requirements," said Stanford Chief Information Officer Steve Gallagher, per the Washington Times. "This guide for the university’s IT community is undergoing continual review."
"The spirit behind it, from the beginning, has been to be responsive to feedback and to consider adjustments based on that feedback," he went on. "We value the input we have been hearing, from a variety of perspectives, and will be reviewing it thoroughly and making adjustments to the guide."
Gallagher's statement echoes that of Stanford Assistant Vice President of External Communications Dee Mostofi, who told the New York Post immediately following the initial story that the guide "was specifically created by and intended for use within the university IT community."
The Stanford CIO also directly addressed the backlash surrounding use of the term "American."
"We have particularly heard concerns about the guide's treatment of the term 'American,'" he said. "We understand and appreciate those concerns. To be very clear, not only is the use of the term 'American' not banned at Stanford, it is absolutely welcomed."
He again contended that the recommendation came from a desire to be more precise in using terms to refer to different nationalities, but conceded that the school "missed the mark in this presentation."
#1
next two weeks will be a nice warm up almost everywhere that was hit by the Dec 20-24 arctic blast
Buffalo and Grand Rapids and a few more places will also suffer dec 25 before warm up
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/25/2022 0:24 Comments ||
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#2
How can this be?
We have it on 🤣 "good" climate authorities🤣 Climate $$$$ Pimps, that were verified and found correct by the Trusted Click-Bait hungry media. That the poplar icecaps would be melted, the 100's of miles of coastline would be underwater and the heat index even in winter would kill millions.
Written by A Once Called Crazy Conspiracy Theorist
Buffalo, the second largest city in New York state, has been slammed by the bomb cyclone sweeping across the country, impacting 200 million Americans
Families are freezing in their homes after the power cut out and one person was found dead on the street
Hundreds of drivers have been stranded in their cars overnight, with many still waiting to be rescued
Emergency services across Erie County have been halted after travel became nearly impossible and two people died when first responders were unable to reach them
Experts said it was the City's worst blizzard in history, with total snowfall double the previous record
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Live update from downtown Buffalo looking down at trapped emergency vehicles in 15 foot snow drift with #blizzard continuing to pound Buffalo. Heaviest band is sagging back south pic.twitter.com/dgeQV24puh
#1
Nat Guard should have been deployed earlier = even one day earlier would have made a difference
- the weather forecasts were not perfect but they certainly had the big picture correct.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/25/2022 0:47 Comments ||
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#2
My darling mother-in-law had 4’ of snow just south of the city as of this afternoon... and a whole-house generator standing by in case the power goes out. Also plenty of food to keep her until the roads are plowed out again.
#4
Re: Snow. I was visiting a friend in Steamboat Springs once. I asked what was the most snow they ever got? I was thinking hours. He smiled and said, "We got 22 feet in 21 days and nobody missed work or school."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/25/2022 5:50 Comments ||
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I lived in the front range mountains west of Denver for a while. My best snow story was 5 feet in 3 days. The Dodge PU would go thru it, nice light powdery stuff, but the doors wouldn't open. Had to climb in and out of the sliding rear window from the bed.
Besoeker, I lived a little north of your neck of the woods. for a few years (Murphy) As you know the variables are mountainous.
eg. a bunch of 1/2 kids one winter, ICE Locked the entrance road to 4 cabins. They thought it would be fun to run water down the entrance road and make a 300 yd. ICE slide.
Even my Chev Trail Blazer 4x4 with 12" lift kit couldn't do it.
But the Guy below me with a C-10 had a set of European studded Ice tires and towed me out.
#14
winter of 97 near Colorado Springs. 4ft of snow - spent 3 days in a total station and helped run the cash registers. It a good thing there were lots of snow mobiles. Global Warming is a bear...
Posted by: Ho Chi Gurly-Brown5202 ||
12/25/2022 12:23 Comments ||
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#16
80 - high 70's in San Diego today
*ducks* But a week of rain starting Tues PM. Watch for us on the STORMWATCH™ news. My jobsite will be flooded if the forecast is right
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/25/2022 14:47 Comments ||
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#17
I've been in SD when there's been a major downpour Frank, so I don't envy you. It's not fun as everything flows downhill, and the low areas flood like crazy.
Plus too many motorists don't have any tire tread.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/25/2022 15:06 Comments ||
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#18
^ Amen. Working adjacent to the SD River in Mission Valley. Should be EPIC idiocy
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/25/2022 15:08 Comments ||
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#19
But how are the Bills doing?
Posted by: Betty Protector of the Esquimeaux3938 ||
12/25/2022 16:21 Comments ||
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#20
The Buffalo News has complete coverage, articles free until one hits their limit, which I did. At any rate, 13 now confirmed dead in Erie and Niagara counties, a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning, frozen outside, and frozen in cars. The snowstorm has passed, now it’s just a matter of digging out.
I can’t imagine this is actually the worst blizzard on record, unless the experts differentiate between blizzards and a really, really bad snowstorm. I s’pose I should read the article to find out.
The Buffalo Bills won something in the AFC and were greeted upon their return by cheering fans — presumably arriving on snowmobiles and cross-country skis... maybe even snowshoes.
And my darling mother-in-law reported herself fine this morning, not even bored at being stuck at home again. Mr. Wife’s niece, a hospital ICU nurse, just got home after being stuck at the hospital for 57 hours — because of the travel ban no-one came to relieve them. Her husband gallantly handled Christmas and the storm while caring for their three very active sons, the oldest all of eight, and an unknown number of equally active dogs.
Procopius2k, any roofs that were going to give way probably did so during the big Thanksgiving storm, and have since been repaired. The current storm dropped less snow, but had higher winds.
The M23 rebel group, who have seized swaths of territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have pledged to retreat from a strategic front-line position. pic.twitter.com/ZR0ARIHMep
...also known as the Congolese Revolutionary Army. The Tutsi group was founded in 2012 as a Rwandan sock puppet, which no doubt seemed a good idea at the time, but in less than a year the Congolese army defeated them, and then Rwanda publicly stepped back in response to international pressure. Recently M23 has started acting up again, possibly again at Rwandan instigation...
Nobody in The Family had a problem with his predilection for underage girls until photos appeared on the front pages of the popular press. Suddenly nobody is laughing with Randy Andy anymore.
[An Nahar] Yao Ruyan paced frantically outside the fever clinic of a county hospital in China's industrial Hebei province, 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Beijing. Her mother-in-law had COVID-19 and needed urgent medical care, but all hospitals nearby were full.
"They say there's no beds here," she barked into her phone.
As China grapples with its first-ever national COVID-19 wave, emergency wards in small cities and towns southwest of Beijing are overwhelmed. Intensive care units are turning away ambulances, relatives of sick people are searching for open beds, and patients are slumped on benches in hospital corridors and lying on floors for a lack of beds.
Yao's elderly mother-in-law had fallen ill a week ago with the coronavirus. They went first to a local hospital, where lung scans showed signs of pneumonia. But the hospital couldn't handle COVID-19 cases, Yao was told. She was told to go to larger hospitals in adjacent counties.
As Yao and her husband drove from hospital to hospital, they found all the wards were full. Zhuozhou Hospital, an hour's drive from Yao's hometown, was the latest disappointment.
Yao charged toward the check-in counter, past wheelchairs frantically moving elderly patients . Yet again, she was told the hospital was full, and that she would have to wait.
"I'm furious," Yao said, tearing up, as she clutched the lung scans from the local hospital. "I don't have much hope. We've been out for a long time and I'm terrified because she's having difficulty breathing."
Over two days, AP journalists visited five hospitals and two crematoriums in towns and small cities in Baoding and Langfang prefectures, in central Hebei province. The area was the epicenter of one of China's first outbreaks after the state loosened COVID-19 controls in November and December. For weeks, the region went quiet, as people fell ill and stayed home.
Many have now recovered. Today, markets are bustling, diners pack restaurants and cars are honking in snarling traffic, even as the virus is spreading in other parts of China. In recent days, headlines in state media said the area is " starting to resume normal life."
But life in central Hebei's emergency wards and crematoriums is anything but normal. Even as the young go back to work and lines at fever clinics shrink, many of Hebei's elderly are falling into critical condition. As they overrun ICUs and funeral homes, it could be a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of China.
The Chinese government has reported only seven COVID-19 deaths since restrictions were loosened dramatically on Dec. 7, bringing the country's total toll to 5,241. On Tuesday, a Chinese health official said that China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to COVID-19 in other places.
Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths in China next year, and the World Health Organization warned that Beijing's way of counting would "underestimate the true death toll."
At Baoding No. 2 Hospital, in Zhuozhou, Wednesday, patients thronged the hallway of the emergency ward. Patients were breathing with the help of respirators. One woman wailed after doctors told her that a loved one had died.
The ICU was so crowded, ambulances were turned away. A medical worker shouted at relatives wheeling in a patient from an arriving ambulance.
"There's no oxygen or electricity in this corridor!" the worker exclaimed. "If you can't even give him oxygen, how can you save him?"
"If you don't want any delays, turn around and get out quickly!" she said.
The relatives left, hoisting the patient back into the ambulance. It took off, lights flashing.
In two days of driving in the region, AP journalists passed around thirty ambulances. On one highway toward Beijing, two ambulances followed each other, lights flashing, as a third passed by heading in the opposite direction. Dispatchers are overwhelmed, with Beijing city officials reporting a sixfold surge in emergency calls earlier this month.
Some ambulances are heading to funeral homes. At the Zhuozhou crematorium, furnaces are burning overtime as workers struggle to cope with a spike in deaths in the past week, according to one employee. A funeral shop worker estimated it is burning 20 to 30 bodies a day, up from three to four before COVID-19 measures were loosened.
"There's been so many people dying," said Zhao Yongsheng, a worker at a funeral goods shop near a local hospital. "They work day and night, but they can't burn them all."
At a crematorium in Gaobeidian, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Zhuozhou, the body of one 82-year-old woman was brought from Beijing, a two-hour drive, because funeral homes in China's capital were packed, according to the woman's grandson, Liang.
"They said we'd have to wait for 10 days," Liang said, giving only his surname because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Liang's grandmother had been unvaccinated, Liang added, when she came down with coronavirus symptoms, and had spent her final days hooked to a respirator in a Beijing ICU.
Over two hours at the Gaobeidian crematorium on Thursday, AP journalists observed three ambulances and two vans unload bodies. A hundred or so people huddled in groups, some in traditional white Chinese mourning attire. They burned funeral paper and set off fireworks.
"There's been a lot!" a worker said when asked about the number of COVID-19 deaths, before funeral director Ma Xiaowei stepped in and brought the journalists to meet a local government official.
As the official listened in, Ma confirmed there were more cremations, but said he didn't know if COVID-19 was involved. He blamed the extra deaths on the arrival of winter.
"Every year during this season, there's more," Ma said. "The pandemic hasn't really shown up" in the death toll, he said, as the official listened and nodded.
Even as anecdotal evidence and modeling suggests large numbers of people are getting infected and dying, some Hebei officials deny the virus has had much impact.
"There's no so-called explosion in cases, it's all under control," said Wang Ping, the political commissar administrative manager of Gaobeidian Hospital, speaking by the hospital's main gate. "There's been a slight decline in patients."
Wang said only a sixth of the hospital's 600 beds were occupied, but refused to allow AP journalists to enter. Two ambulances came to the hospital during the half hour AP journalists were present, and a patient's relative told the AP they were turned away from Gaobeidian's emergency ward because it was full.
Thirty kilometers (19 miles) south in the town of Baigou, emergency ward doctor Sun Yana was candid, even as local officials listened in.
"There are more people with fevers, the number of patients has indeed increased," Sun said. She hesitated, then added, "I can't say whether I've become even busier or not. Our emergency department has always been busy."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2022 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
"Surprise ... C19+ coming soon to town near you"
Now that the 2022 Holiday Shopping season is over......
The DC & MSM types will likely start up with their usual overhyped doom and gloom of a new deadlier C19-+.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[JustTheNews] "The spirit behind it, from the beginning, has been to be responsive to feedback and to consider adjustments based on that feedback."
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] 
[An Nahar] Yao Ruyan paced frantically outside the fever clinic of a county hospital in China's industrial Hebei province, 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Beijing. Her mother-in-law had COVID-19 and needed urgent medical care, but all hospitals nearby were full.
