All posts tagged: Emergency

When Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Is a Medical Emergency

When Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Is a Medical Emergency

Published by skeptic

A few years ago, a family brought their 9-year-old daughter Sarah* to my office for an evaluation. While emergencies aren’t the norm in my outpatient private practice, I determined that the situation was dire and needed an immediate medical evaluation based on her story and how she looked. What made it so clear? Sarah’s parents, Joan and Marc, told me that Sarah had become a completely different child in the last few weeks. About a month before I met her, Sarah had been sick for a few days, but nothing remarkable. She stayed home from school for a few days and then went back on a Monday morning, feeling a lot better. Things took a dramatic turn on Tuesday morning when she struggled to get out of bed and then refused to eat or drink anything, telling her parents she was afraid the food would make her sick. Her parents thought maybe she was having a recurrence of her illness so they kept her home, but things kept getting worse over the next few days. …

Far-Right Extremists Are LARPing as Emergency Workers in Los Angeles

Far-Right Extremists Are LARPing as Emergency Workers in Los Angeles

Published by skeptic

Extremists including white supremacists and border livestreamers have descended on Los Angeles in the midst of the wildfires there to gain followers, juice social media engagement, solicit donations and, experts claim, recruit new members, while in some cases LARPing as emergency workers. This past weekend Ryan Sánchez and three other members of his Nationalist Network group set up shop at the entrance to Santa Monica Pier. Sánchez, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, and his crew had driven overnight from Arizona, where they live. Sánchez, who was a member of the now-defunct white supremacist fight club known as the Rise Above Movement, is an ally of white supremacist Nick Fuentes and is sometimes known by his online moniker “Culture War Criminal.” Sánchez, who did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, claims on his social media accounts that his group “got much more support than anticipated” and said that all of the donations were given to the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall, a building said to …

Emergency Library Worker Support for Those Impacted by California Wildfires

Emergency Library Worker Support for Those Impacted by California Wildfires

Published by skeptic

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View All posts by Kelly Jensen If you’re a library worker who has been impacted by the California wildfires, you are invited to join one or both of two upcoming peer support network meetings this week. The Urban Librarians United (ULU) Library Worker Support Network, one of the outcomes of ULU’s Urban Library Trauma Study, are peer-led virtual groups for library workers to discuss the unique realities and challenges of library work with colleagues who can empathize and provide support. These groups are not mental health counseling but instead an opportunity to build community and support through a trauma-conscious lens. Attendees have similar lived experiences and are able to provide insight, information, and resources with one another. Two special peer support …

California’s Wildfires Show No Signs of Slowing Down

California’s Wildfires Show No Signs of Slowing Down

Published by skeptic

On Tuesday, Santa Ana winds swept seaward through Southern California, scattering embers and then fanning flames of a growing wildfire. By nighttime, residents received urgent text alerts warning of potential 100 mph gusts—a terrifying escalation that transformed a precarious situation into a full-blown crisis. As the winds howled, more embers took flight, sparking new fires in dry, brittle brushlands that hadn’t seen significant rain in over eight months. Los Angeles County, primed by drought-like conditions, was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. Firefighters faced an uphill battle against winds so severe that airplanes used to drop water and flame retardants were grounded. Officials warned in a Wednesday morning press release that “all residents of Los Angeles county are in danger.” Evacuation orders have since displaced tens of thousands of residents, with thousands more awaiting updates. By Wednesday evening, three major fires had consumed over 13,000 acres with containment efforts lagging: The Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, Hurst Fire in Sylmar, and Eaton Fire near Pasadena have showed no signs of slowing down, are …

John Lennon’s son has emergency surgery for cancer | Ents & Arts News

John Lennon’s son has emergency surgery for cancer | Ents & Arts News

Published by skeptic

John Lennon’s son Julian has had emergency surgery after he was diagnosed with cancer. The musician and photographer said he underwent a seven-hour surgery after discovering a mole on his arm. The 61-year-old urged his social media followers to “please get yourself checked out by your doctor”. Image: Julian Lennon with his father John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968. Pic: PA In a post on X, Julian Lennon explained how his dermatologist said he “should be operated on ASAP” over concerns about the skin on his shoulder and forearm, one of which had melanoma. He said the doctor, who he called “Dr Tess”, had “saved his life” during a previous cancer scare in 2020. He visited her for a routine appointment in Los Angeles before flying to New York for a series of events – but said soon after arriving, he got a message telling him to return “with some urgency”. He wrote: “So instead of going home to put my Christmas tree up and happily finish the year off, relaxing at home, I …

Mpox became a global health emergency for the second time in 2024

Mpox became a global health emergency for the second time in 2024

Published by skeptic

A Red Cross worker spraying chlorine-based disinfectant in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 2024 MOISE KASEREKA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Mpox surged in parts of East, West and Central Africa in 2024, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a public health emergency of international concern in August. This was just over a year after it said an earlier mpox emergency was over, marking the first time the WHO has declared two such alerts consecutively over the same infection. The emergency that ended in 2023 was driven by the clade IIb variant of mpox, formerly known as… Source link

South Korea’s President Yoon declares emergency martial law | News

South Korea’s President Yoon declares emergency martial law | News

Published by Sam

South Korea’s president has declared emergency martial law, accusing the opposition of antistate activities. Entrance to the National Assembly was sealed on Tuesday and parliamentarians were barred from entering the building, according to local news outlet Yonhap. While making the announcement in a late-night televised address, President Yoon Suk-yeol said he will rebuild a free and democratic country through martial law. “To safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate antistate elements … I hereby declare emergency martial law,” Yoon said in a live televised address. “This is an unavoidable measure to ensure the freedom and safety of the people and guarantee the sustainability of the nation against the unrest stirred by these subversive, antistate elements. “The National Assembly has also completely cut budgets essential for national operations, drug crime prevention and public safety, undermining the core functions of the state. This has left our citizens in a state of chaos with the nation becoming a haven for drugs and public safety collapsing.” Police struggle with …

How to use the emergency satellite features on Google Pixel and iPhone

How to use the emergency satellite features on Google Pixel and iPhone

Published by skeptic

If you own a recent iPhone or Pixel phone, you’ve got an emergency backup communication option in a crisis: satellite messaging. Introduced by Apple with the iPhone 14 and iOS 16 in 2022 (and available on all iPhones since), it’s now available on the latest Pixel 9 series phones with Android 14 too. The idea is that when you’re in difficulty and outside of cell signal range—for example, if you get lost or injured while hiking in the wilderness—you can use satellite networks to contact emergency services and direct them to your location. The bandwidth is limited but enough to send some texts. Your phone needs a special combination of hardware and software to connect to a satellite out in space, which is why it’s not available on all phones yet. (Samsung is likely to add support next year.) However, it’s already saving lives across the world, and if you do have a compatible phone, you can use it for free. How to use emergency satellite SOS on Pixel phones Satellite connectivity is exclusive to …

Milton Disrupted the Flow of Drinking Water—so Florida Deployed a Machine to Harvest It From Air

Milton Disrupted the Flow of Drinking Water—so Florida Deployed a Machine to Harvest It From Air

Published by skeptic

David Stuckenberg, cofounder and chief operations officer at Genesis Systems, explains that the WaterCube uses proprietary liquid and solid sorbents—materials that absorb water—that essentially “form a handshake with the water in the air.” The machine then heats these materials to extract the water. Atmospheric water generators typically require a substantial amount of energy to run, but Stuckenberg claims the company’s materials work 400 percent better than those that are currently commercially available, and that they have a very high affinity for water. But the tech comes at a steep price. The WaterCube delivered to St. Petersburg is listed at $860,000. The company just started selling a second, smaller device for home use called the WaterCube 100, which retails for $20,000 and is about the size of an HVAC system. That device can generate about 100 to 200 gallons of water per day. Efficiency ranges from 0.07 to 0.8 kilowatt-hours per gallon of water and costs anywhere from $10 to $80 a day to operate, depending on cost of energy and humidity. A WaterCube can run …