In 2012, I learned that I was positive for the BRCA1 gene. This is a condition that significantly increases a person’s chance of developing breast cancer. My grandmothers, my aunt, and my mom all developed – and survived – breast cancer. 1/4
Over the years I worked with doctors to closely monitor my health and look for any early signs of cancer. While none had developed, I decided in January 2017 to have a preventative double mastectomy to reduce the risk and bring peace of mind to our family. 2/4
This post is my small way to support any women or men who are facing a similar health decision. Health care can be deeply personal, but we all know it's also a major part of our current political debate. 3/4
Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are real people behind these decisions. Jeff was with me every step of the way. He gets this, and he's the person I would trust to remember the person behind the politics.
- Marisa
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So much of crummy politics is explained by our susceptibility to propaganda.
Our defenses to propaganda aren't natural: We have to build them.
Lots of those defenses are institutional, like real-time fact-checking or limiting the use of bots.
But they're also personal.[thread]
Modern propaganda techniques have evolved so quickly that our personal defenses have not caught up.
Until recently, we had never been subjected to an environment in which media, social media, and elected officials could form a solid circle of misinformation.
If you get pulled into that circle, you will experience constant reinforcement from each of those sources that will tell you to believe the others and reject all else.
And it will feel incredibly natural. That's how we form beliefs. We look for validation.
In North Carolina, we just passed a major criminal justice bill *unanimously.*
This almost never happens - and if it weren't for the national uproar over the killing of George Floyd, it would not have happened.
YOUR VOICE MATTERS.
The bill - which has been signed into law - does a few things:
1) If you're found not guilty or the charge is dismissed, instead of having to hire an attorney and pay money to get an expungement, you get one automatically. No attorney, no fees. This is huge, and took years.
I was a prosecutor. Every day, folks would come to my courtroom with misdemeanors like trespassing on their neighbor's yard or making a harassing phone call to their neighbor. But often (very often) the neighbor would show up and tell me, "Nah, that's just Jimmy, we're fine."
Last night I went into uptown Charlotte at 7:00 p.m. to do my part to help keep the peace.
Our city had already had a peaceful protest earlier that afternoon with a message of love and justice and it was important that this protest stayed safe and civil.
At the beginning there were roughly 1,500 people. That’s about half the number who were at the afternoon protest.
The evening group was also much younger. I’d put the average age at about 24.
That meant the tone was audibly different. The conversations I had were different. It was a more personal perspective from people who weren’t just marching for others - they were also marching for themselves. There were more people who felt this issue directly concerns them.
For hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, the most important issue right now is the inability of our Division of Employment Security (DES) to process unemployment insurance claims and send out checks in anything resembling a timely manner.
We all know that DES was hit with a tsunami and the number of daily claims is now 10x the normal number.
But it’s been eight weeks and there’s still a major backlog. So what’s going on?
Here’s the situation:
The two biggest problems at are: 1) not enough staff to answer the phones, and 2) not enough staff to process claims.
They’re getting about 50k calls/day. Last week, about half the calls were being answered. Now it’s about 80% (assuming you’re willing to hold for several hours).
So we readjusted. We want to keep people safe AND provide a pathway to successfully reopening.
The new position is, "Ok, as long as we've basically flattened a few different types of curves for a couple weeks, we'll start to carefully reopen."
So the new goal is "sustained leveling."
We're looking for leveling in a handful of areas, not just infections.
(The truth is, we're still strictly rationing our tests due to multiple bottlenecks and shortages, so we really can't base policy just on infection rates.)