over concerns about staffing shortages and violence against jail workers. Mayor Eric Adams has argued since he took office two years ago that isolating detainees is an important tool to help protect jail workers and detainees.
The mayor and the union representing correction officers, which also fiercely opposes the bill, are expected to continue to lobby against the ban right up to the vote. But the bill’s sponsors and supporters say there are enough votes to pass the bill and to override Mr. Adams if he vetoes it.
Last time I used Android was years ago, so I don't remember how in-app browsers worked. Don't they have a one-click "open in browser" button like Apple does?
When Ronald Braunstein conducts an orchestra, there’s no sign of his bipolar disorder. He’s confident and happy.
Music isn’t his only medicine, but its healing power is potent. Scientific research has shown that music helps fight depression, lower blood pressure and reduce pain.
The National Institutes of Health has a partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts called Sound Health: Music and the Mind, to expand on the links between music and mental health. It explores how listening to, performing or creating music involves brain circuitry that can be harnessed to improve health and well-being.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said: “We’re bringing neuroscientists together with musicians to speak each other’s language. Mental health conditions are among those areas we’d like to see studied.”
Mr. Braunstein, 63, has experienced the benefits of music for his own mental health and set out to bring them to others by founding orchestras in which the performers are all people affected by mental illness.
Upon graduating from the Juilliard School in his early 20s, he entered a summer program at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria, and in 1979 became the first American to win the prestigious Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin.
His career took off. He worked with orchestras in Europe, Israel, Australia and Tokyo. At the time, he didn’t have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
But looking back, he can see that his disorder contributed to his success, and his talent masked the condition.
“The unbelievable mania I experienced helped me win the Karajan,” he said. “I learned repertoire fast. I studied through the night and wouldn’t sleep. I didn’t eat because if I did, it would take away my edge.”
“My bipolar disorder was just under the line of being under control,” he said. “It wasn’t easily detected. Most people thought I was weird.”
He always sensed something was askew. When he was 15, his father took him to a doctor who diagnosed “bad nerves” and prescribed Valium.
As his career progressed, things started to unravel, and his behavior grew increasingly erratic. He was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 35. His manager dropped him as a client, and he was fired from a conducting job in Vermont.
It was there he met Caroline Whiddon, who had been the chairwoman of the Youth Orchestra Division of the League of American Orchestras. She had been given a diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder more than 20 years earlier, and had played French horn professionally, which she described as “a notorious instrument that’s known for breaking people.”
Mr. Braunstein reached out to her about creating an orchestra that welcomed musicians with mental illnesses and family members and friends who support them.
“I never thought I’d go back to playing French horn again,” she said. “Ronald gave me back the gift of music.”
Mr. Braunstein called his new venture the Me2/Orchestra, because when he told other musicians about his mental health diagnosis, they’d often respond, “Me too.”
Since the term #MeToo is now associated with sexual assault cases, people sometimes ask if the orchestra is connected to that cause. “It gives us an opportunity to explain that we were founded in 2011,” in Burlington, Vt., “before the Me Too movement began,” Ms. Whiddon said.
In 2014, a second orchestra, Me2/Boston, was created. In between, in 2013, Mr. Braunstein and Ms. Whiddon got married.
Each orchestra performs between six and eight times a year. Each has about 50 musicians, both amateur and professional, ranging in age from 13 to over 80, and they rehearse once a week. New affiliate ensembles in Portland, Ore., and Atlanta follow similar schedules.
Mr. Braunstein gives free private lessons to those who want to polish their skills.
Me2/Orchestra is a nonprofit, and the musicians are all volunteers. Ms. Whiddon raises money through an annual letter-writing campaign to cover expenses, with support from more than 100 donors.
“When we perform at a hospital, center for the homeless or correctional facility,” Ms. Whiddon said, “the cost of that performance is covered by corporate sponsorships, grants or donations from individuals, so the performance is free to those who attend.”
Participating in Me2/Boston allowed Nancy-Lee Mauger, age 55, to pick up the French horn again. The note on the rehearsal door — “This is a stigma-free zone” — made her feel welcome.
Ms. Mauger had played French horn until her mental illness made it impossible to perform. She has diagnoses of dissociative identity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
“In 2009, I was playing a Christmas Eve gig,” she said. “It was at the same church, with the same quintet, choir and music that I had played every Christmas Eve for 15 years. This particular night felt different. I had trouble focusing my eyes. At one point, I could not read music or play my horn.”
It lasted about two minutes, and she thought she was having a stroke. In fact, it was her mental illness.
“I learned that little parts of me would come out and try to play my horn during gigs,” she said. “The problem was that they didn’t know how to play. This became such an obvious problem that I quit.”
Now, after four years of intensive therapy, she is able to play again.
At each performance, a few musicians briefly talk about their mental illnesses and take questions from the audience. “Instead of thinking people with mental illnesses are lazy or dangerous, they see what we’re capable of,” Mr. Braunstein said. “It has a positive effect on all of us.”
Jessica Stuart, now 34, stopped playing violin in her mid-20s when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “Joining the Me2/Orchestra in Boston in 2014 was the first time I had played in years,” she said. “I cannot count the ways the orchestra helps me. It has allowed me to overcome the shame I felt about living with mental illness. I no longer feel I have to hide an important part of my life from the rest of the world.”
Jessie Bodell, a 26-year-old flute player who has borderline personality disorder, said he finds rehearsals fun, relaxed and democratic.
He noted that unlike most orchestras, Me2 doesn’t have first, second or third positions. “There isn’t an underlying, tense, competitive feeling here,” he said.
“We’ve seen when you sing or play an instrument, it doesn’t just activate one part of your brain,” said Dr. Collins of the National Institutes of Health. “A whole constellation of brain areas becomes active. Our response to music is separate from other interventions such as asking people to recall memories or listen to another language.”
Partnering with Dr. Collins on Sound Health is Renée Fleming, the renowned soprano and artistic adviser to the Kennedy Center. “The first goal is to move music therapy forward as a discipline,” she said. “The second is to educate the public and enlighten people about the power of music to heal.”
So far the initiative is investigating how music could help Parkinson’s patients walk with a steady gait, help stroke survivors regain the ability to speak, and give cancer patients relief from chronic pain.
“The payoff,” Dr. Collins said, is to “improve mental health. We know music shares brain areas with movement, memory, motivation and reward. These things are hugely important to mental health, and researchers are trying to use this same concept of an alternate pathway to address new categories of mental disorders.”
I can't wait to use it, but it seems it doesn't support overseas income yet and I live full-time outside of the US (and yes we legally have to file taxes every year even if we won't owe anything).
Yes it has become increasingly difficult for me to file taxes abroad. For my 2021 taxes I had to print out and physically mail my return since for some reason the electronic filing failed. For my 2022 taxes every company I used to file taxes from in the past refused to take my non-American credit card. I couldn’t even access the free stuff, presumably due to some IP blocking.
Hopefully eventually the IRS will solve this and everyone who needs to file taxes can easily do it for free.
I've been using H&R block, but every year shit breaks and I have to fight with them. Latest was that my NRA wife broke all their validations (despite it properly flagging her an NRA)
I’m wonder how cost-effective this is compared to, say, a regular apartmentblock with external stairs/walkways and shared ammenities? Density would go up, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t need to build a kitchen/bathroom in every unit anyway.
Most of these houses are gardensheds, they don’t look very durable to me, and very unsuited to, say, a 2021 Texas winter.
I think the difference in building codes alone could make this much less expensive.
My understanding is these places are designed to promote the independence of residents to give them a base to build on to put their life back together. The separate space really helps drive that home in a way that an apartment can’t. In an apartment, you can often hear what’s going on in the next room, and that’s not great when you’re trying to build better habits and your neighbor isn’t.
It reads strange if the Israelian military takes journalists on a “controlled” visit given the Israeli government’s sentiment towards journalists, when they NOT control them. Just a remainder here or here or here.
They will tell you “controlled” visits are for safety, but I remember in the post 9-11 Gulf War reporting how the Pentagon went all in for “embedded journalism”. Yeah, sure, it keeps the press ‘safe’, but it changes what gets covered. The media initially loved it, but later realized there were valid criticisms of the process.
More to the point: yeah, covering news should not be a death sentence. Even if you are covering a war, as civilian non-combatants you shouldn’t be targeted by any military… a la the ‘Collateral Murder’ wikileaks video of journalists shot by US helicopters.
Or women could just lower their standards if they don’t think anyone is good enough for them. That’s basically what men have been told for ages, that women don’t need to go about changing themselves to meet the standards of men. Surely the same operates in reverse, no? If women don’t like their prospects, they can either lower their bar or stay single since men don’t need to change themselves to please women?
I mean, the point of the article is the women who are struggling to find suitable partners. The attitude that woman should just lower their standards (and yet again just accept higher workloads and lower efforts from their partners) is pretty antifeminist. The problem here isn't that they have unattainable standards, it's that a lot of men aren't putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.
Well, maybe they are looking in the wrong place. Or they just have unobtainable standards.
The article treats it like a onesided issue, which when you are dealing with people, it’s not. There isn’t an easy way of dealing with this issue and the ‘men bad’ vibe this article gives off isn’t adding to the solution. It doesn’t offer solutions, suggestions or even a second viewpoint.
The problem here isn’t that they have unattainable standards, it’s that a lot of men aren’t putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.
Are men obligated to meet those standards if they have no interest in doing so? Men don’t just exist for the sake of giving women someone to date, after all. And while the article was (I hesitate to say intentionally) vague about specifics, one thing it mentioned multiple times was holding a college degree. It’s hardly what I’d call “basic standards”, considering it takes a huge amount of time, and a fair deal of money to achieve. Of all the men I’ve talked with, myself included, that “standard” doesn’t seem to be prevalent, with the closest thing being “I guess it would be cool”.
At what point does the principle of “if everywhere you go smells like shit” start applying to these women who date but seem to never find a man that meet their standards? It only seems reasonable if nobody meets the standards, that the standards may be a major part of the issue.
And I don’t mean to say that women should just settle for men they don’t like, but “just stay single” is always an option, one men are told repeatedly whenever they struggle with relationships.
You have some good points I hadn't considered before, so thank you for that. It's definitely something I'll have to think about more. It's also worth mentioning that the difference between women who couldn't find a suitable male partner vs men who couldn't find a suitable female partner also really isn't very much - "nearly half" vs "one third", which was something I also wasn't really considering when I made my comments. Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn't going to be fixed with one simple solution
Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn’t going to be fixed with one simple solution
Now this I agree with wholeheartedly. My primary issue with the article is that it takes a grievance mindset rather than a problem solving one. It just reads like the women’s equivalent of some incel rant, in the sense that it externalizes the issue such that it’s always someone else’s responsibility to do something about, which doesn’t help solve anything.
The standard doesn't necessarily apply in reverse if you look at how the work is split between male and female partners in hetero relationships - it's often skewed that the woman does a lot more emotional work, household work, and childcare, on top of also having full time jobs. I think you're right though, if men aren't meeting women's standards, then women should either be content to be single, hook up with other women (for those who would prefer), or reexamine how important romantic relationships are for them.
if men aren’t meeting women’s standards, then women should either be content to be single, hook up with other women, or reexamine how important romantic relationships are for them.
I take issue with the part that is bold and italisied. Not sure what you are saying, but it seems like a gross misunderstanding how people work.
Obviously that part only applies to people who are bisexual/pansexual/gay. I'm not saying that hetero women should just become gay >.< Though I realize it sounds like that, it isn't what I meant.
The world according the Fediverse : Nazis, bad, Muslim Terrorist Jew Rapers, Killers, and Burners, good. Those poor poor "palestinian" cinnamon rolls, oh come here lemme help you up, what did those bad Jews do to you now. The cognitive dissonance and purposeful selective outrage, kills Jews. Always has, always will.
This has opened my eyes to one thing: jewish people do need a state where they are majority, and the ability to defend themselves. The world will never change I’m afraid.
Outside of maybe Hexbear and Lemmygrad, which I blocked some time ago, I don’t encounter these extreme opinions much at all here. How are you justifying painting the entire fediverse with such a broad brush?
Those poor poor “palestinian” cinnamon rolls, oh come here lemme help you up, what did those bad Jews do to you now.
this is an incredibly weird thing to say about a bombing campaign that has disproportionately killed people who have literally nothing to do with Hamas. let’s not.
It could also be a lot worse. Ever heard of Hiroshima - or about the carpet firebombing of Dresden?
“it’s bad but worse war crimes have happened in world history so it’s fine actually” is such an incredibly bad and disgusting argument to make for killing hundreds of people–many of which are children–a day who, again, have done nothing but be born in a place that a terrorist group operates and from which they cannot leave because Israel (and to a lesser extent Egypt) will not let them. any further attempt to justify the course of action Israel is taking on these grounds will get you banned from this instance.
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