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Crisis hotlines are bracing for the COVID-19 holiday season

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Americans have suffered a cascade of instability, illness, death, job loss, and school closures this year. The added stressors could make for a rough holiday season. Crisis hotlines and text apps that counsel people under acute duress are optimistic that this season may be less chaotic than usual, as families have settled into being homebound. But just in case there are issues, crisis lines are staffing up. Contrary to popular belief, the holidays are relatively quiet for crisis lines. Calls dwindle and organizations that respond to crisis lines offer volunteers a much-needed break. However, because this year has been unusually difficult, crisis lines will keep staffing up to prepare for a possible rise in calls and texts. Because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, some people are opting to spend the holidays alone instead of spending it with friends and family. People are already feeling more anxious and depressed than normal. Isolation could make that worse. “Volume is up even pre-holiday. It’s up from last year. It’s consistent with what we get in the spring, which is our highest volume during the year. So, we’re going into this with a different baseline,” says Beverly Marquez, CEO of Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners, an organization that supports crisis lines in Colorado. While official reports of child abuse have dropped substantially this year, calls to crisis hotlines have increased . Meanwhile, in September, the New England Journal of Medicine published a perspective that called intimate partner violence a “pandemic within the pandemic.” The report noted that in some regions reports of domestic abuse dropped 50% below the usual—not because incidents were dropping, but because people confined at home have not been able to safely reach out for help. Read More …

For the best deals on almost anything, check these 3 sites first

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We’re now officially neck deep in holiday deal ads, even though it feels like the holiday shopping season lasts half the year. (Fun fact: I received my first Black Friday email on October 13 this year—it was from Best Buy, for those of you keeping score.) The problem with every store in the history of retail offering holiday deals is that they each expect you to visit their sites to sift through all the would-be bargains. There’s got to be a better way! There is a better way. A much better way. I haven’t paid full price for something since I happily overpaid for a Nintendo Wii bundle in 2006. I also have almost no time to shop. So how do I score the best cheapskate-friendly deals? Here are the three sites I visit every time I’m in the market to buy something. DealNews: for a little bit of everything You’re not sure what you want; you just want deals. For you, there’s DealNews Read More …

As psychedelics enter a new era, Errol Morris’s new doc explores their original evangelist

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While the U.S. has been seized by both a pandemic and an epic undermining of its democratic processes, psychedelics are undergoing their own revolution. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that drugs associated with existential awakening should accompany movements like Black Lives Matter, which oppose systemic inequity. It’s in this moment that filmmaker Errol Morris has decided to fix his camera lens on Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the onetime girlfriend of psychedelics evangelist Timothy Leary, called “the most dangerous man in America” by President Richard Nixon. Timothy Leary was a Harvard lecturer and psychology researcher who, alongside assistant professor Richard Albert, created the Harvard Psilocybin Project between 1960 and 1962. The project sought to understand how the human mind interacted with hallucinatory drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, which were both legal at the time. Leary was later dismissed from Harvard for proselytizing the virtues of using LSD and for his lax if not unscientific approach to experimentation. After leaving Harvard, Leary was propelled into pop culture fame. His numerous run-ins with the law and the loud condemnation from Nixon helped seal his status as an icon of the counterculture revolution. The film, called My Psychedelic Love Story , follows the five year relationship of Harcourt-Smith and Leary as they tripped from country to country evading U.S. law enforcement and meeting new friends. Premiering on Showtime on November 29, the film is a high drama story that is rendered absurd in the light of 2020 drug legislation. Joanna Harcourt-Smith in My Psycehdelic Love Story . [Photo: Nafis Azad/Courtesy of SHOWTIME] “It’s certainly ironic that this whole thing was propelled forward by drugs laws that we now see as insane,” says Morris. “But the war on drugs has always been nonsense.” When Harcourt-Smith and Leary met, he was on the run from U.S Read More …

Silicon Valley expects a chillier relationship with Biden than Obama

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Now that the Biden administration has announced a transition team and is gradually announcing key advisory and cabinet appointments, the posture of the new administration toward Silicon Valley is becoming clearer. And it’s not the look of a budding friendship. When Biden last worked at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the White House had an open and friendly relationship with Silicon Valley. For example, the Obama administration also recruited talent from Silicon Valley to form the U.S. Digital Service , the elite technology “startup” within the White House that helped government agencies streamline systems and exploit new agile development methods. Obama also created the position of U.S. chief technology officer within the Office of Science and Technology Policy. From a regulatory standpoint, the tech industry enjoyed a light touch during the Obama years. Its relationship with the Biden administration will likely be different and less trusting. That’s one of the reasons it’s closely watching the formation of the new Biden administration, now in its beginning stages. There’s a lot to watch, since so many government agencies now impact the business of tech. Some high-level appointments, such as Ron Klain as chief of staff, will deal with a broad spectrum of issues, many of which don’t touch tech directly. But others, like the appointment of Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary could, for example, have implications for digital currencies and other financial tech. “There are enormous fintech issues that will be facing the financial regulators, most principally the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, but some issues that’ll touch upon the FDIC, Federal Reserve ,and Treasury as well,” says Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks presidential appointees who come from various industries. Antitrust under Biden Of chief concern to Big Tech is the Biden administration’s thinking on antitrust. Proposals for breaking up big tech companies in the last couple of years from people such as Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren have ridden a wave of populist feeling in the country. The Department of Justice has already filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in federal court, and the Federal Trade Commission is reportedly in the final stages of deciding whether to file its own suit against Facebook. The agencies are also conducting investigations into alleged anticompetitive aspects of marketplaces run by Amazon and Apple. The Valley is waiting for Biden to announce his attorney general and FTC chair , which could tell a lot about the new administration’s plans to control Big Tech. I don’t think this administration is going be kind to Big Tech in general.” Eric White, Seismic Capital Company Biden said precious little about antitrust on the campaign trail, but his statements on adjacent issues give some clues to his thinking Read More …

With just 7 COVID-19 deaths in Taiwan, even huge events are back in business

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It’s a Saturday afternoon at 3:00 in the afternoon, and Taipei Metro’s blue line is packed. Riders are standing shoulder to shoulder. Exiting passengers positioned in the interior kindly ask those in front of the doors to make way. All passengers are sporting compulsory masks—including those heading to the four-day Outdoor Show at the Nangang Exhibition Center. Right inside the exhibition center entrance, a young man is positioned off to the side behind a standup desk. On top sit a laptop and connected security camera. As attendees flow through the doors, the camera captures their body temperature and relays it to the laptop, where their respective temperatures pop up in front of their faces on the screen Read More …