In December 2017, I told a man I didn’t want to marry him. He was someone I had, for several years, wanted to marry. By the time he told me he felt the same way, we hadn’t spoken in months and I’d met someone else, a woman, and fallen in love with her... My first boyfriend was a philosophy student whom I would watch play computer games for hours on end, and whose genuine, passionately held fantasy was that I would bring him sandwiches. He could be funny and charming, and he was good-looking – these were reassuring qualities – but he also broke up with me every six months because he felt suffocated, only to grudgingly take me back a week later each time. The effect of all this was that I was constantly on my toes, insecure; I agonised about whether or not he was happy, about what I could do to avoid the next biannual dumping. Once, after staying up late to finish an essay on philosophical empiricism, he crawled into bed beside me and I heard him whisper, “I love you.” It was the first time he’d ever said it. “I love you, too,” I whispered back, without missing a beat, and I felt him tense up. “Oh no,” he said. “No, I said I love Hume.” Notable in hindsight, beyond the all-consuming kill-me-now mortification, was that I hadn’t paused to ask myself whether or not I loved him. I just responded with what I felt was expected of me.

But framing a developing Alexa capability as a way to revive a connection to late family members is a giant, unrealistic, problematic leap. Meanwhile, tugging at the heartstrings by bringing in pandemic-related grief and loneliness feels gratuitous. There are some places Amazon doesn't belong, and grief counseling is one of them.

“Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has worked to address longstanding issues relating to the borrower defense process,” Cardona said in a statement.

Ocean optional

But hey, Biden’s banning Juul! Probably evens out in the end.

Labor board asks court to order coffee chain to rehire seven former employees the government says were unlawfully fired.

Model and influencer Niece Waidhofer -- who often worked to help her followers through their own mental health struggles -- has died by suicide ... TMZ has learned.

Team USA coach Andrea Fuentes leapt into the pool to rescue artistic swimmer Anita Alvarez, a two-time Olympian. “Anita is okay,” she said of Alvarez following the incident.

A Logically investigation has uncovered a cluster of QAnon crypto trading chats promoting fraudulent tokens, causing their followers to lose over $2 million.

Ian Miller walks quickly when he is irritated. He picked up his stride one recent morning as he approached the polling location where employees at a Starbucks in Olney, Md., were going to decide whether to unionize. The store’s manager, district manager and regional manager were standing in front of a makeshift voting booth set up in the parking lot. They were talking to a tall man in a collared shirt — a lawyer representing the $13 billion company, Miller later learned — as baristas trickled into the store, where they each earned slightly more than the minimum wage. In recent weeks, managers had spoken to all 18 union-eligible workers at this Starbucks. They’d talked about the company’s pay (more generous than other retail stores) and benefits (set to increase in the coming months). They’d made everyone watch a video where Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ founder, called the company a “family” under siege by “outside forces.” And they’d explained, at length, what workers stood to lose by joining the union effort being led at Starbucks stores across the nation by young, female and queer employees.

A defense attorney argued speakers made prejudicial statements to the jurors, which included comments about seeking “justice” for families of violent crime victims.

One of America’s most prominent philosophers argues that climate change calls us to rethink world history.

A documentary filmmaker lays bare the dangerous and sweeping implications of a court ruling protecting Arkansas's law to punish people who won't pledge not to boycott Israel. This thread is an important piece of commentary on the far-reaching implications of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decision against the Arkansas Times for refusing to knuckle under to a state law compelling us to pledge not to boycott Israel as a condition of being able to do business with the state (or to take a 20 percent reduction in our customary rates). It’s an anti-boycott, anti-First Amendment decision that is already being used to broaden state legislative schemes to chill speech, such as to protect the fossil fuel industry.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reportedly preparing an order to remove Juul Labs vaping products from the market. The move to ban Juul's e-cigarettes could come as soon as Wednesday following a two-year review of the vaping powerhouse's application seeking authorization to continue selling non-fruit-flavored products, the Wall Street Journal reported. The FDA has reviewed marketing applications from Juul and hundreds of other companies amid calls from anti-tobacco groups to crack down on products that led to a surge in youth vaping in the last decade. But advocates of these nicotine-delivering devices say they can help adult smokers kick the habit of smoking cigarettes or using other tobacco products. Juul did not immediately comment on the report. An FDA spokeswoman said the agency did not have any information about the timing of the agency's decision on Juul's application.

The Food and Drug Administration is planning to require tobacco companies to slash the amount of nicotine in traditional cigarettes to make them less addictive and reduce the toll of smoking that claims 480,000 lives each year. The proposal, which could take years to go into effect, would put the United States at the forefront of global antismoking efforts. Only one other nation, New Zealand, has advanced such a plan. The headwinds are fierce. Tobacco companies have already indicated that any plan with significant reductions in nicotine would violate the law. And some conservative lawmakers might consider such a policy another example of government overreach, ammunition that could spill over into the midterm elections. Few specifics were released on Tuesday, but according to a notice published on a U.S. government website, a proposed rule would be issued in May 2023 seeking public comment on establishing a maximum nicotine level in cigarettes and other products. “Because tobacco-related harms primarily result from addiction to products that repeatedly expose users to toxins, F.D.A. would take this action to reduce addictiveness to certain tobacco products, thus giving addicted users a greater ability to quit,” the notice said. The F.D.A. declined to provide further details. But in a statement posted on its website, Dr. Robert M. Califf, the agency’s commissioner, said: “Lowering nicotine levels to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels would decrease the likelihood that future generations of young people become addicted to cigarettes and help more currently addicted smokers to quit.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected dialysis provider DaVita Inc's (DVA.N) claims that an Ohio hospital's employee health plan discriminates against patients with end-stage kidney disease by reimbursing them at low rates in hopes they would switch to Medicare. In a 7-2 decision authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that Marietta Memorial Hospital's employee health plan did not violate federal law by limiting benefits for outpatient dialysis because it did so without regard to whether patients had end-stage renal disease. A lower court had ruled in favor of Denver-based DaVita. DaVita, which provides kidney dialysis services through a network of outpatient clinics, sued in 2018 arguing that the hospital's plan violated the Medicare Secondary Payer statute, under which the government healthcare program for those ages 65 and older pays only after a patient's existing insurance plan does.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state programs providing money for public school tuition cannot exclude schools that offer religious instruction. The decision relaxed long-standing restrictions on using taxpayer money to pay for religious education, further lowering the wall of separation between church and state. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting. At issue was a state program in Maine that made taxpayer money available to families who live in remote areas without public high schools. Under the state law, they could use the money for their children's tuition at public or private schools in other communities, but not for sectarian schools, defined as those that promote a particular faith or belief system and teach material “through the lens of this faith.” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Maine’s program “promotes stricter separation of church and state than the federal Constitution requires.” The tuition program is not neutral, he said, because “the state pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.” He also noted that the state money does not go directly to to schools but flows “through the independent choices of private benefit recipients.” Two years ago, in a case from Montana, the court ruled that when states make tuition money generally available, they cannot exclude schools that are run by religious institutions — that have, in other words, a religious status. But that decision left unresolved the issue of whether it would matter if the schools actually offered religious instruction. The court has now answered that question, saying it doesn’t matter.

Popular vegan meal company Daily Harvest is under fire: Droves of customers have complained on social media about a range of alarming health issues—including agonizing stomach pain, liver and gallbladder damage, and vomiting—they claimed started after eating the company’s French Lentil + Leek Crumbles. On Friday, Daily Harvest, which is backed by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, recalled the plant-based meat alternative via a direct email to customers. “What started as extremely intense upper abdominal pain, fever, nausea, and fatigue took a dark turn with the test results for my liver enzymes,” one Instagram user wrote. He said his liver readings were abnormally high, even though he doesn’t drink. “I went home with no answers and the pain continued for 2 more days before finally subsiding.” Another Twitter user explained, “I’ve been sick off and on for weeks.” And one Reddit user detailed how his wife was hospitalized after developing symptoms consistent with liver issues: “extreme fatigue, dark urine, low-grade fever, and whole-body itching with no rash.” The customers who claimed to have suffered severe and confusing consequences after eating the lentil crumbles are outraged at the company’s nonchalant response and apparent delay in recalling the product—especially as some fear long-term liver damage. “My best guess is that it might’ve been an insidious mold or some kind of toxin, but we're still in the dark,” wrote one Reddit user, adding that “it’s beyond the pale that Daily Harvest has taken so long to release a statement of any kind.”

The risk of long COVID is very real, he said, but isn’t as obvious to people as “acute harm.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down rural Del Norte County schools, it was the buses that brought students a shred of normalcy. Teachers and staff boarded the yellow buses and helped deliver brown bags of free meals and school supplies. They drove along winding, dilapidated back roads known for landslides, as concerns grew about students who had been shut out of classrooms. “That school bus is a lifeline,” said Jeff Harris, superintendent of schools in Del Norte County, the northwestern corner of California. Del Norte, flush with redwood forests, is home to more than 4,000 K-12 students, a majority of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals. When district finances were tight in 2019, school officials considered making cuts to transportation services. But they ultimately backed off as community sentiment became clear: Buses are a necessity. “If we do not provide transportation services, then our students’ ability to access education just becomes critically endangered,” Harris said. “There is no way that a rural school district is able to decrease chronic absenteeism and support families who are in financial stress without running transportation services.” Unlike some other states, California does not require school districts to provide buses, even if a student lives far from campus. The state pays a fraction of transportation costs for schools — the same amount since 1981 — despite soaring inflation, increased demand, a sharp jump in gas prices and a projected record-high state budget surplus.