All posts tagged: hopeless

The Health-Care System Isn’t Hopeless

The Health-Care System Isn’t Hopeless

Published by José

Earlier this month, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare was assassinated during morning rush hour on a busy block in Midtown Manhattan; the alleged killer’s confession went viral, in particular the line “the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.” The murder led to a mass airing of grievances with American insurers and, among those who felt that the industry had it coming, a haunting moment of collective glee. What it did not lead to is any focus on policies that could make health insurance and the broader health-care system work better. Both the horrid act of violence and the flippant reaction to it struck me as tragic, because there are, in fact, many ways to make things better. The system is broken. But its problems are not intractable. Nor are America’s politicians incapable of making commonsense, even bipartisan, improvements. The problems are severe, to be clear. Americans spend more on health care than the citizens of any other country, and get less …

When “Making It” Becomes Hopeless

When “Making It” Becomes Hopeless

Published by skeptic

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, No wonder so many people devote themselves to curating an artificial digital representation of themselves that they reckon is worthy of recognition and status. What does it take to “make it” in today’s economy? As described in Withdrawing from the Rat Race Is Going Global, the world has changed in fundamental ways that have made it much more difficult to “make it” into the ranks of the middle class, and even harder to claw one’s way into the higher reaches of the economic order, i.e. the top 10%. In summary, developed economies have been stripped of secure, well-paid manual-labor work, the purchasing power of wages has declined, prices of assets such as homes have skyrocketed out of reach and the mass overproduction of elites (those with college diplomas and advanced degrees) has created a winner-take-all competitive pressure cooker with few winners and an abundance of also-rans. In other words, the work-a-day world has become far more complex and far more demanding than it was two generations ago. It’s not just making enough …

‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair | Climate crisis

‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair | Climate crisis

Published by skeptic

“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,” says the climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota. “After all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change, and after the fury of Hurricane Otis in Mexico, my country, I really thought governments were ready to listen to the science, to act in the people’s best interest.” Instead, Cerezo-Mota expects the world to heat by a catastrophic 3C this century, soaring past the internationally agreed 1.5C target and delivering enormous suffering to billions of people. This is her optimistic view, she says. “The breaking point for me was a meeting in Singapore,” says Cerezo-Mota, an expert in climate modelling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. There, she listened to other experts spell out the connection between rising global temperatures and heatwaves, fires, storms and floods hurting people – not at the end of the century, but today. “That was when everything clicked. Dr Ruth Cerezo-Mota: ‘There is no safe place for anyone.’ Photograph: Tamara Uribe/The Guardian “I …

NSS: Ofsted research shows RE is “a hopeless case”

NSS: Ofsted research shows RE is “a hopeless case”

Published by Sam

Religious Education in England is “poorly constructed, poorly implemented, and poorly learned” in “too many” schools, Ofsted has said. In newly published research, Ofsted said that “in many ways, the subject continues to wilt”, with curricula often lacking “sufficient substance to prepare pupils to live in a complex world”. At secondary schools, Ofsted found most statutory non-examined Religious Education (RE) to be “limited and of a poor quality”. The content selected was rarely “collectively enough to ensure that pupils were well prepared to engage in a multi-religious and multi-secular society”, and did not allow them to “systematically build disciplinary knowledge or personal knowledge”, Ofsted said. At four schools, pupils also told inspectors that the RE curriculum “did not reflect their experience of living in a complex world”. The National Secular Society said the report illustrated the “hopeless case” of RE, and called for its replacement with a nationally-determined civics and citizenship subject. Surveys consistently show RE to be one of the least popular school subjects. Fifty-eight per cent British adults think RE is unimportant at …

An anonymous neighbor stepped in when this single mom felt hopeless

An anonymous neighbor stepped in when this single mom felt hopeless

Published by skeptic

The Renfree family (from left) includes Eliana, Bethany, Hateya and Angelina. Bethany Renfree hide caption toggle caption Bethany Renfree The Renfree family (from left) includes Eliana, Bethany, Hateya and Angelina. Bethany Renfree This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. When Bethany Renfree was 20 years old, she and her three young daughters lived in a low-income apartment building in Jackson, California. Like most of the tenants, Renfree was a single mother. Life felt overwhelming. One cold morning, as Renfree shuffled into the kitchen, she looked at the sink piled high with pots and pans and dishes. “These pots were caked in grease and burnt because I actually didn’t really know how to cook very well at that time. So I’d always be burning our pans with eggs or other things,” Renfree said. Her 18-month-old twins sat in their high chairs, their cheeks covered with jelly. Her youngest was just a month old. When …

Climate change can make some people feel hopeless. Here’s what can be done about it

Climate change can make some people feel hopeless. Here’s what can be done about it

Published by skeptic

Given the existential stakes of climate change, it makes sense to feel afraid or depressed about the future of the environment. And it can be easy to feel alone when experiencing climate change-related depression. If a person is suffering through a drought, noticing temperatures are warmer than normal and observing the loss of local animal life, that individual can easily succumb to despair. Most humans do not have the ability to single-handedly eliminate humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of climate change. They are literally powerless — and feel that way. “Policies that strengthen the social safety net are critical to alleviating compounded stressors that worsen mental health.” But many people feel this way. You are not alone. Although your eco-anxiety is all too real, the medical literature still has large gaps in the knowledge needed to provide adequate help. These are some of the main conclusions of a recent systematic review published in the journal Nature Mental Health and performed by researchers from Harvard University, Yale University, the University of …

I was a hopeless hoarder – until I was forced to throw out 50 things I own | Life and style

I was a hopeless hoarder – until I was forced to throw out 50 things I own | Life and style

Published by Sam

I’m not saying that hanging on to things is in my genes, but while visiting my parents’ house last summer, I discovered a sachet of powdered beef casserole mix that went out of date in 1992. It had not only survived for a decade beyond its sell-by date in a cupboard in Leicestershire, it had then moved house to Shropshire, where it degenerated for a further 20 years. It’s almost certainly still there. I don’t tend to live as if the second world war is still raging, but it’s perhaps inevitable I have grown up as the sort of person who doesn’t throw “things” away. Museum guides, running medals, posters for gigs in a Leeds pub circa 2001 – such items, obtained over 43 years, have always been squirrelled away in a storage box somewhere. Almost none are on display – which, you could argue, makes keeping them all the stranger. So how, the Guardian asked, would I feel about giving away 50 of my possessions in a new year clear-out? Would it be liberating, leaving …

Christmas carols bring hope in a hopeless time. No matter, we’ll keep singing – with tissues handy | Justine Toh

Christmas carols bring hope in a hopeless time. No matter, we’ll keep singing – with tissues handy | Justine Toh

Published by skeptic

I tell myself I’m not a crier, but Christmas carols always prove me wrong. I’m old school. By “carols”, I don’t mean the jolly background tunes to your Christmas shop, still less the shiny, happy singalong that is Carols in the Domain. It sounds bah humbug but I’m a purist who’s stingy with my limited tears. Those songs won’t make me weep. Trad carols, however, will. This doesn’t mean I’m only into carols sung by church choirs in robes. I love a bit of Christmas crooning from Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby too. But if those guys make me misty-eyed, it’s from nostalgia for a simpler, less complicated time – a claim that’s total rubbish, obviously. But tell that to my tear ducts. Which, I get, people could equally say of me when I start leaking tears in church: that I’m buying into a nice story but certainly not a true one. Perhaps. If recent censuses are any indication, fewer and fewer Australians find themselves among the faithful. But carols have a subtle way of …