Current Listing

theconversation.com/as-trump-tries-to-slash-us-foreign-aid-here-are-3-common-myths-many-americans-mistakenly-believe-about-it-248979

Frank is a chocolate point snowshoe Siamese who is named after Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. He was abandoned but luckily found his way to a friendly house about six months ago. He was very guarded from having to survive outside, but with loving, consistent care Frank became more comfortable and trusting. He enjoyed the companionship of the home’s visiting chickens, even cuddling up with one of them in his bed, and
keeping her eggs warm when she went off to feed! Around Christmas it was time for Frank to move indoors, so he now has his own private room complete with all the requisite comforts befitting a star like Frank. Frank loves attention, adores being pet, and responds by rubbing his head against you and rolling around in bliss. Frank is fine around a Shepard mix, so he may adjust to a dog pal.

Sharky wakes up with a smile and is always in a happy mood. He enjoys other cats, playing with feather toys, a kick sock, and lounging in a sunny spot of the house. Sharky comes running when called, travels well, plays fetch, and is even an accomplished bug hunter! Sharky isn’t a lap cat but doesn’t mind being held as long as there’s petting involved, and is an affectionate boy that will gladly snuggle up to your neck or your feet at bedtime.

You can learn more about these boys, as well as other cats and kittens available for adoption, at unitedpaws.wordress.com, where you can also complete an application. If you would like to schedule a “Meet & Greet”, please email unitedpawsapps@gmail.com or call United Paws at 503-842-5663.

Perhaps back in 1961 Stanley Kubrick was more of a prophet than we realized. 😉

Here’s the video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/0qKSo1mavMQ

You can can also check out the DeepFake of General Jack Ripper: https://youtube.com/shorts/5pVsoL4VhVI

Gene Dieken

A Blitzkrieg, a slight of hand, or a fork-in-the-road letter to America? Or maybe a love letter?

Gaza beach resorts, Greenlandia, Panamanium, $Trump, Tariff threats, DOGE Bros, Stargate AI, Quantanamo roundups, Kennedy Center Chairman, Gulf of Florida, anti-DEI, military transport flights, purging DOJ and Federal law enforcement, ongoing Big Tech RIFs, Project 2025 staffers… I hope it’s not a preamble to yet even more.

How much of this is performative TV wrestling kayfabe chaos-monkey business? Maybe 75% smoke-and-mirrors distraction and 25% destructive chaos? Blitzkrieg or slight of hand?

Don’t get too distracted by the monkey business as the dancing gorilla parades in plain sight. I perceive a clever trickster. There is a fork in the road. No matter what color your circus car you drive, we are all in for a ride for sure. Praying for wisdom, for our country, for the world and for our president and those advising him.

You know, we’ve all complained about Washington and the bureaucratic inertia. Let’s hope he doesn’t inadvertently burn it all down in the process.

this article was published in The Guardian, a British daily newspaper founded in 1821. The Guardian prides itself on its in-depth, investigative journalism with a strong focus on social justice issues, holding power to account, and providing a diverse range of perspectives on current affairs; essentially, being a reliable source for high-quality, impactful reporting that challenges the status quo and champions important causes.

Tue 21 Jan 2025
I set out to study which jobs should be done by AI – and found a very human answer.
Allison Pugh

Allison Pugh is a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. All names have been changed.

Much of the power of work like counseling lies in a relationship where we really see each other. And tech just can’t do that

When I interviewed a nurse practitioner in California about what she cherished most about nursing, it was the “human element” of being present with others. “I think we all just want acknowledgment of our suffering, even if you can’t cure it or do anything about it,” she told me.

She still remembered when a homeless man came into her clinic, his back hunched, feet gnarled and callused from being on the streets for years, and she “just sat and did wound care for his feet”. The moment stood out for her, in part because the opportunity to take that kind of time is getting rarer in clinics and hospitals as drives for efficiency impose time constraints.

Washing his feet captured what nursing was about for her: the humility, the service, the witnessing. “Just to give him that moment of ‘I’m seeing you, I’m acknowledging you, this is me caring for you’,” she said. “It was powerful for both of us.”

What is the value of being seen by another human being, outside of your friends and family? What happens when people connect with one another in the everyday encounters of civic life or commerce, and why is that important? Amid the rapid spread of efficiency campaigns, ceaseless data-collecting and AI in connecting jobs such as therapy or teaching, these questions have never been more urgent.

The benefits of human interactions have long eluded measurement, making them easy to ignore, while the skills of connecting to others have long been presumed to be innately feminine, making them easy to devalue. As a social scientist, I spent five years researching these connections to see how and why they are important, and how people forge them in different settings. All sorts of occupations – from teaching, therapy and primary care, to sales, management and the law – rely on seeing others to help students learn, patients heal, or consumers buy.
Sorry, Labour, but ChatGPT teachers are a lesson in how not to transform our schools.

In fact, the doctor-patient relationship has been shown to have a stronger effect on healthcare outcomes than taking a daily aspirin to ward off heart attacks, while the therapist’s connection to clients has a greater impact than the particular therapeutic tradition they adhere to. Reflective, witnessing work is so important that it deserves its own name: after five years of interviewing and observing scores of practitioners and their clients at work, I’ve come to call it “connective labour”.

Connective labour may enable the contemporary service economy, but it serves as more than some sort of engine grease for the outcomes we value, such as understanding algebra, managing diabetes or learning how to control anxiety. Instead, seeing and being seen has its own powerful effects, for individuals and for their communities. University of Sussex researchers, for instance, demonstrated that people who paused to interact with their baristas experienced more gains to wellbeing than those who breezed right by. It is critical that we drill down into these effects: as people race to replace connective labour with its mechanised forms, we need to understand what we all risk losing.

First, when people see one another, it helps to create dignity, by conveying simply that they are worthy of being seen by another person. I spoke to a woman named Mariah who ran a programme that taught entrepreneurial skills to ex-prisoners in California by having them meet mentors in small groups. She said that it took a while for the men to become comfortable with the attention. “Like, [they ask] ‘You mean, you just want to know about what I think? Like we’re just going to be talking about what I want to do?’” The programme helped to transform the men through the power of human attention.

The power of human attention to inspire others may be a truism, but it is perhaps less well-known that these effects go both ways. “It’s a trusting relationship,” Jenna, a primary care physician, told me. “That trust imbues the relationship with almost a power, a sanctity – there’s just something about it. I feel really honoured and lucky that I get to do that. It gives me just as much as I give to people.”

Finally, people help others better understand themselves. “I think each kid needs to be seen, like, really seen,” Bert, a school principal, said. “I don’t think a kid really gets it on a deep level; I don’t think they are really bitten by the information or the content until they feel seen by the person they’re learning from.”

These kind of results – dignity, purpose, understanding – are profound for the individuals involved. But being seen can also have broader impact. A recent study of formerly incarcerated people in Chicago found that interpersonal recognition from local community leaders helped them feel that they fitted in; one ex-inmate said she knew now that she had “something valuable to say”. Who is seen and who is not has political ramifications, as the sense of being overlooked may drive populist rage, while being recognised promotes the feelings of belonging that knit communities together.

Of course, human beings also mis-recognise each other, as judgment and bias can poison these interactions, drawing out shame in moments of considerable vulnerability. But as therapists told me, if people seek only to avoid shame – say by opting for an AI companion or counsellor – then they might never be free of it. Although shame is piercing in human interactions, it is something to walk through together, rather than run from. Part of the very power of human interaction comes from the risks involved when we reveal ourselves to each other.

Connective labour has profound consequences for individuals and for our society, and yet it is under siege by data analytics, which is drowning practitioners in its requirements to collect and measure, and under threat from AI, which is increasingly behind automated therapy, teaching and other novelties. For some, AI might be better than nothing, while others view AI as better than humans – yet both opt for technology to solve problems largely created by inadequate staffing and unremitting drives for efficiency, and both reflect the fact that what humans actually do for each other is not well understood.

Instead, we need to preserve and protect these personal interactions. We need to bolster the working conditions of connective labour practitioners so they are able to see others well. We need to impose a “connection criterion” to help us decide which AI to encourage – the kind that creates new antibiotics, for instance, or decodes sperm whale language – and which to put the brakes on, that is, the kind that intervenes in human relationships. Each of us needs to decide how much we value the human connections in our lives and the lives of our neighbours.

Why all the noise? Have you never heard of an audit? These are our tax dollars, like household budgets – one has to determine, especially in an economic crunch, where this money is going.

AND SO IT SHALL BE DONE!
I would request that any of these noise makers write and/or declare why THERE SHOULD BE NO AUDIT. Because I believe an audit is way over due!

Here is just one item: 30 million dollars given to the George Soros Fund – a George Soros Fund! George Soros is a billionaire who gave millions to fund the political campaigns of those running for district attorney positions, if they would agree to NOT prosecute criminals, thereby keeping them in the public streets to continue chaos and crime in their respective states, like Oregon! 600 million dollars every two months to fly in illegals? Biden was accused of doing that to hide the visuals of so many crossing the border.

The left-wing media is against this audit – (WHY?* – some of them are receiving money from USAID too!) so they are distorting the message of the media – they are telling you about people starving, medical needs of clinics in war torn countries, etc Let me say that if the money is going to good charity, or other entity, they will resume getting their funds, or there will be a discussion in our congress to decide if they should still receive funds. We need a proper accounting of our tax payer dollars. Wait until you hear where social security money has been going !!!!!- I don’t believe that this audit will have that info. But there is another audit for that!

At the finish of the audit you will see it all, I am sure. So we as a country will be better off for it. Just have patience!

**The USAID hidden information (no audit) has been funding our deep state,(swamp) which is the name given to the corruption in our federal government.!
President Donald Trump is the tip of the spear that is DRAINING THE SWAMP! Like he promised – remember!!!

*Including many popular US journals and newspapers, so now taxpayer dollars that have been allocated toward essentially subsidizing subscriptions to these journals and newspapers will no longer be happening.”