All posts tagged: people

UK music projects aim to transform lives of people with dementia | Dementia

Published by Sam

Catherine has lived with dementia for five years. She can no longer find the words to talk to her children, but when she sings with her dementia choir she remembers the lyrics to songs from her childhood and joins in with word-perfect gusto. Mark, diagnosed with dementia last year, was becoming isolated and depressed. Until, that is, his care home started a choir. Gradually enticed in by the music therapist, his mental health has transformed: now sociable and enthusiastic, Mark often encourages residents to have singalongs before bedtime. Catherine and Mark are not alone in benefiting from the power of music. Research published in the Lancet has revealed music’s incredible power to improve the lives of the 994,000 people living with dementia across the UK: music therapy reduces agitation and the need for medication in 67% of people with dementia. Music therapy has been found to ameliorate symptoms of dementia, such as anxiety, apathy, depression and agitation. Its impact is similar to exercise in releasing endorphins, with recreational group singing in particular leading to clinically …

AI doesn’t cause harm by itself. We should worry about the people who control it | Kenan Malik

Published by Sam

At times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers, not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce. OpenAI is the hottest tech company today thanks to the success of its most famous product, the chatbot ChatGPT. It was inevitable that the mayhem surrounding the sacking, and subsequent rehiring, of Sam Altman as its CEO would play out across global media last week, accompanied by astonishment and bemusement in equal measure. For some, the farce spoke to the incompetence of the board; for others, to a clash of monstrous egos. In a deeper sense, the turmoil also reflected many of the contradictions at the heart of the tech industry. The contradiction between the self-serving myth of tech entrepreneurs as rebel “disruptors”, and their control of a multibillion-dollar monster of an industry through which they shape all our lives. The tension, too, between the view of AI as a mechanism for transforming human life and the fear that it may be an existential threat to humanity. Many are ‘preppers’, survivalists prepared for the possibility …

Ben Davies: ‘When you’re doing well, people get excited by any wobbles’ | Tottenham Hotspur

Published by Sam

It is not just the self-awareness. What truly hits home with Ben Davies is the willingness to articulate how it feels to have all of those eyeballs trained on him; in the stadium and far beyond – to be at the centre of the madness. “This game comes with insane amounts of pressure,” the Tottenham defender says. “And you’ve seen some players find it incredibly difficult. Let’s be honest, we are in a pressure cooker as Premier League players, of tough times being around the corner. Every action you do is judged by millions of people around the world. It’s pretty intense.” The question for Davies is: how does he cope? Or, to put a related spin on it: how does Ange Postecoglou, as the Tottenham manager, create an environment for Davies and his teammates to best express themselves? Because another part of it is that this is Spurs, a club synonymous with violent shifts in the mood music. When they beat Crystal Palace on 27 October, they remained top of the table with eight …

Pakistan: shopping mall fire in Karachi kills at least 11 people | Pakistan

Published by Sam

At least 11 people have been killed and 35 injured by a fire at a shopping mall in Pakistan’s commercial capital of Karachi, officials said. More than 60 people were inside the mall when the fire broke out on the fourth floor of the six-storey building in the southern port city. “Our rescue workers have taken 11 dead bodies to hospitals so far,” said Shahid Hussain, a spokesman for the Chippa welfare organisation, which runs a rescue service. He said 35 people were injured, with seven of them in serious condition. “At least 40 people have been rescued,” he added. Shabbir Ali, a provincial health ministry spokesperson, confirmed the death toll and number of injured persons. Hussain said the fire was started by a generator short circuit and spread to engulf two floors of the building. Poor safety laws and building codes as well as lax enforcement mean fires in large buildings are frequent in Pakistan. In 2012, at least 250 labourers died at a garment factory in Baldia Town, in western Karachi, when a …

There are many reasons disabled people can’t just work from home — threatening to cut their benefits won’t fix the wider problems

Published by skeptic

As part of the UK government’s latest economic plan, disabled people may have to look for jobs they can do from home or face cuts to their benefits. Previously, disabled people with limited ability to work may have received benefits without being required to look for work. Now, Laura Trott, chief secretary to the Treasury, has said that disabled people not in work must “do their duty” and work from home. While more disabled people have found work over the past decade (mirroring more general increases in employment), there remains a significant employment gap. In January to March 2023, 53.7% of disabled people were in employment compared with 82.7% of non-disabled people. Getting more disabled people into work just isn’t that simple. A stick-only approach is likely to make things worse for tens of thousands of people, whose incomes, physical and mental health are already affected more by the cost of living crisis. Work is not a tap that can simply be turned on or off. There are many factors already making it difficult for …

UK’s new back to work plan will make life even harder for disabled people

Published by skeptic

The UK chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has unveiled new rules for welfare benefit claimants. Under the government’s back to work plan, £2.5 billion of funding is to be allocated to employment support schemes with the aim of getting over 1 million people with long-term health conditions or disabilities, as well as those who are long-term unemployed, back into work. As part of these plans, the government is planning to implement tougher sanctions for people who are judged to not be taking appropriate steps to secure work. The proposed punitive measures include suspending benefit claims altogether and stopping access to free medical prescriptions and legal aid. Alongside this, the government intends to make significant changes to the work capability assessment, which is used to decide whether or not someone is fit for work. These changes would take effect from 2025 and could result in over 370,000 people receiving less benefit. Additional support to help people find and stay in work should always be welcomed. However, disability charities have expressed significant concerns. James Taylor, director of strategy at …

Poor people much more likely to die from sepsis, study finds | Sepsis

Published by Sam

Poor people and those with existing health problems are much more likely to die from sepsis, one of the UK’s biggest killers, a study has found. Sepsis, or blood poisoning, is a potentially fatal condition triggered when the body reacts to an infection by attacking its own tissues and vital organs. It leads to an estimated 48,000 deaths a year in Britain. Research from the University of Manchester has disclosed for the first time how some groups are at much higher risk of dying from the condition than the general population. An analysis of 248,767 cases of non-Covid sepsis in England between January 2019 and June 2022 has found that the most deprived people are twice as likely to die from it within 30 days. The findings, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, also show that: People who have cancer, brain disease or immunosuppressive conditions are also at higher risk, as are those who have received multiple courses of antibiotics, the team led by Prof Tjeerd van Staa and Xiaomin Zhong concluded. “This study shows socioeconomic …

What Happens When Real People Play ‘Squid Game’?

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People clad in green tracksuits stand nervously in a circle. They’re participating in a “test” on Squid Game: The Challenge, Netflix’s new reality competition series based on the streamer’s hit South Korean drama Squid Game, but they’re really just playing a game of chance. Each player must nominate someone to be eliminated, and then roll a dice. If they roll a six, the person they chose is eliminated. And so, over the course of 10 long minutes, they roll and roll and keep on rolling. Some inevitably roll sixes. Relieved players sigh; friends of eliminated players cry. Meanwhile, sitting on my couch, I hover my thumb over my remote’s fast-forward button, wishing they’d hurry up. This was not the reaction I had to the original Squid Game. Two years ago, I watched from behind my fingers, gasped at the twists, teared up for the characters as they risked their lives for a chance to win a massive fortune. The show’s casual hyper-violence was shocking, but its poignant relationships—the way they formed and fell apart as …

How to Have a Healthy Argument

Published by skeptic

I’ve heard of three Thanksgiving plans that got canceled because of disagreements over the Israel-Gaza War. In one case, over the past few weeks, a guy watched as his brother’s wife posted pictures of cease-fire rallies on Facebook. Finally he texted her: “So you love Hamas now?” She was horrified. After doing Thanksgiving together for two decades, they will not be continuing the tradition this year. I could give you more examples of unproductive fights that ended plans, friendships, relationships, but we’ve all been there. In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, we focus less on the substance of any of those disagreements. Instead, we talk about how to disagree, on things big (a war) or small (how to load the dishwasher). Our guest is Amanda Ripley, the author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, and her suggestions work equally well in the personal or political arena. We also talk with Utah Governor Spencer Cox about his Disagree Better initiative. In 2020 Cox ran an unusual political ad in …