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Support your local body during the COVID-19 pandemic

Event cancellations at local bodies due to COVID-19 will reduce revenue, but not rent and other fixed expenses. Many local bodies already operate on extremely tight margins and struggle to pay their bills even during normal times. All members are encouraged to continue to financially support their local bodies, even if there are no events …

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Valhalla Rising movie review

About a week ago I rented this movie, now if you’ve been watching any new movies over the last couple of months you’ve probably seen the trailer for this movie. If your like me you probably thought to yourself “Hey this looks pretty sweet, it looks like there’s going to be lots of hacking and slashing and all that fun stuff”




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Black Death Movie Review

If you haven’t heard of this movie, don’t worry you’re not the only one, I only recently found out about it after going to Blockbuster and seeing it there a couple days ago.




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Battle Los Angeles Movie Review

There’s an old saying “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one” This couldn’t be more true of all the Battle Los Angeles reviews I’ve seen online. It’s seems to be a mix of positive acclaim, comparing it to Independence day, and comments like this one made by Robert Ebert on his website “Battle Los Angeles is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid, it’s manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of it’s makers” Well that’s nice Mr. Ebert, but then who really cares what you have to say since you think movies like the Assaination of Richard Nixon is a great movie. So with all that out there I thought I’d throw my own review into the mix.................. Now if you haven’t seen Battle Los Angeles it’s nothing like Independence Day, which in my opinion went way over the top with American pride. Hey nothing wrong with being American but the rest of the world doesn’t need it shoved in its face. This movie closer to Saving Private Ryan, but with aliens instead of Nazi’s.










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Synchronizing moving GPS clocks

This article with drawings is in these links https://www.academia.edu/40876793/Synchronizing_moving_GPS_clocks Word, PDF https://pengkuanonphysics.blogspot.com/2019/11/synchronizing-moving-gps-clocks.html PDF 1. Light pulse synchronization Can we synchronize clocks of a moving frame? Let us see Figure 1 where we have stationary frame F1 and moving frame F’2. The 2 clocks in the frame F1 are synchronized with the master clock through a...




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Cumbernauld Action for Care of the Elderly: Covid-19 response

Cumbernauld Action for Care of the Elderly or CACE is an organisation that supports improved wellbeing and quality of life for older people in Cumbernauld.

We spoke to Margaret Riley, Chief Executive of CACE about how the organisation is managing in the Coronavirus outbreak.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes.




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Improving justice in child contact

Improving justice in child contact is a project exploring child contact decisions in families affected by domestic abuse. It is funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). Child contact is understood to be the systems and court processes which decide whether and how a child sees a parent that they are not living with.

It is a partnership project across Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal, Romania and Scotland.

Professor Kay Tisdall from the Childhood and Youth Studies Research Group at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr Marsha Scott, CEO of Women’s Aid kindly gave me their time to talk about the project.

Note: This episode was recorded before the implementation of social distancing requirements due to COVID-19. However, we are aware that those requirements create particular concerns around child contact and domestic abuse and that this content is therefore relevant to COVID-19 responses. Read: Supporting women and children affected by domestic abuse throughout COVID-19.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes.




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Rashielee Care Home: Covid-19 response

On 22 April 2020, Michelle from Iriss spoke to Jennifer Carruthers, Deputy manager at Rashielee Care Home in Erskine.

Jennifer tells us how both staff and residents are managing in the current circumstances and how they’ve had to change and adapt services to cope in the crisis.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes.




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Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19

Creative Commons has joined forces with other legal experts and leading scientists to offer a simple way for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge grants the … Read More "Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19"

The post Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19 appeared first on Creative Commons.




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Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge

Momentum continues to swell in support of the Open COVID Pledge, with the announcement today by Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories, that they are pledging their patents to the public to freely use in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Following in the footsteps of Intel, Fabricatorz Foundation, and … Read More "Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge"

The post Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge appeared first on Creative Commons.




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Just One Giant Lab Co-Founder Leo Blondel on the Power of Community and Open Source During COVID-19

Thousands of strangers working together, almost entirely online, to effectively solve an urgent, global challenge is remarkable—and it’s happening, right now. Recently, we published a post titled, “Open-Source Medical Hardware: What You Should Know and What You Can Do” examining the collaborative efforts by volunteer groups, universities, and research centers to solve the medical supply … Read More "Just One Giant Lab Co-Founder Leo Blondel on the Power of Community and Open Source During COVID-19"

The post Just One Giant Lab Co-Founder Leo Blondel on the Power of Community and Open Source During COVID-19 appeared first on Creative Commons.




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Keeping it Personal: Improving person-centred care

The People Powered Health and Wellbeing Programme (PPHW), delivered by the Health and Social Care ALLIANCE Scotland is contributing towards the Scottish Government’s ambition to create a safe, effective and person-centred health and social care system.

Each of the PPHW programme partners explored different facets of the PPHW aim. The Iriss project – Keeping It Personal (KiP) – explored the use of person-centred approaches when designing improvements to the delivery of health and social care services. 

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Impact of antiretroviral therapy on liver disease progression and mortality in patients co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C: systematic review and meta-analysis

Systematic review produced by the EPPI-Centre in 2015.This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effect of HAART and ARV monotherapy on liver disease progression and liver-related mortality in individuals co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C, including in patients with haemophilia.




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Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland (CCPS)

CCPS is the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland. Their mission is to identify, represent, promote and safeguard the interests of third sector and not-for-profit social care and support providers in Scotland, so that they can maximise the impact they have on meeting social need.




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A review of respite / short break provision for adult carers of adults in the Highland Partnership area

As part of the implementation of the Equal Partners in Care (EPiC) Highland Carer’s Strategy 2014-2017 it was agreed to undertake a review of respite for Adult Carers of Adults (aged 16+). Independent consultants were commissioned by NHS Highland through Connecting Carers to undertake this work. There are four groups of people – totalling an estimated 200 people - with whom conversations have taken place during the review: Carers and staff from carer support organisations – more than 75 carers have given their views; Health and social care workforce – we have met with just over 50 people who have given their views and shared our initial findings with more than 60 others; Respite providers – we have met with staff from 15 organisations that are providers of respite Those staff responsible for overseeing the commissioning, planning and administration of respite.




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This Bizarre Instagram Account Inserts Donald Trump Into Your Favorite Movies

Trump In Cinema is dedicated to displaying some of movie history's best moments with Donald Trump at the center of them. Some of these photoshops are too perfect. Others as just... troubling.




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Internet Reacts To Trump's Comments About Injecting Disinfectant To Cure COVID-19

The internet is reacting to comments made by Donald Trump during a COVID-19-related press briefing held yesterday. Trump claimed that the virus could be treated by bringing "light inside the body" or injecting a disinfectant. Thankfully medical professionals were quick to denounce these claims, and people on the internet have since been creating some excellent memes on the matter. 

This should go without saying, but please don't inject yourself with disinfectant, y'all.




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#25: Movie and Fiddy Five




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Drones to the rescue: how drones are helping in the fight against COVID-19

With COVID-19 “stay at home” advisories in effect across the globe, an unlikely technology has come to the aid of public safety agencies responsible for enforcement measures: drones. Government officials everywhere have asked citizens to




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Maintaining Egress from Businesses During the COVID-19 Emergency

The overused understatement of the decade is, “This is an unprecedented time.” While the coronavirus outbreak has turned our lives into something none of us likely ever imagined, one fundamental life safety truth remains: THERE IS NO




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Demobilizing buildings under construction, alteration or demolition during COVID-19 construction shutdown

  COVID-19 is having an immediate and drastic impact on the construction industry with job sites being abandoned and workers being furloughed. A byproduct of these unprecedented pandemic-related changes has been the demobilization of




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Infographic Reinforces Infection Control As Covid-19 Continues

If there has been a constant concern throughout the coronavirus, it has been the issue of infection control. While the medical community works tirelessly to save lives and straighten the COVID-19 curve, first responders play an equally vital role on the




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Men’s Sheds offer alternative avenue for improving health and wellbeing


Men’s Sheds health initiatives increase men’s confidence, self-worth and sense of wellbeing by providing an environment for men that is appealing, safe and socially acceptable, new research by a Leeds Beckett University academic has...




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Остановить поток оскорблений в адрес ЛГБТ во время пандемии COVID-19!


Киселев, Соловьев, Прилепин, многочисленные представители РПЦ и многие другие - поток браки и оскорблений в адрес ЛГБТ не ослабевает и в России. ...А не только в Белизе, Уганде и на Филиппинах. В этой связи ЮНЭЙДС и MPact призывают государства обеспечить защиту ЛГБТ-людей на фоне пандемии COVID-19.
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Пандемия COVID-19 резко снизила распространение ВИЧ и других половых болезней


Специалисты крупнейшей в Лондоне клиники сексуального здоровья на 56-й Дин-стрит утверждают, что на фоне пандемии нового коронавируса передача ВИЧ "резко снизилась". По словам специалистов клиники, передача ВИЧ значительно сократилась, поскольку самоизоляция разорвала цепочку новых случаев. Пока нельзя оценить...
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Певица Скарлетт написала композицию "Голоса в раю" - об умерших от COVID-19


Певица Скарлетт, совершившая трансгендерный камин-аут в феврале этого года, рассказала в "Инстаграме", что написала песню о людях, которые умерли от последствий нового коронавируса. "Песня "Голоса в раю" посвящена людям, которые покинули этот мир из-за случившейся эпидемии COVID-19 по всему миру. Я знаю, что они не...
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[ВИДЕО] Испанская версия "Chiquitita" Шер против пандемии COVID-19


Шер, как и обещала, представила испанскую версию хита "Chiquitita" группы "ABBA", записанного в рамках совместного благотворительного проекта с ЮНИСЕФ для США. Двумя годами ранее блестящее исполнение Шер "Chiquitita" мы уже слышали на пластинке "Dancing Queen" - ее альбоме каверов "ABBA". Теперь она перезаписала...
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Home schooling provides a whole new appreciation for teachers!

                          Schoolhouses might be closed but “school” is not.   As parents and caregivers balance working at home




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Include and empower: an international conference on improving the rights and wellbeing of disabled children and young people

When: Thu Dec 3, 2015 to Fri Dec 4, 2015 

Where: Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Event Status: confirmed
Event Description: Aimed at delegates from across Europe, this conference offers an opportunity to share the successes and challenges of recent developments across Europe, and to explore the creation of inclusive services for all children and young people as part of our shared vision of how they can fulfil their potential. For further information, please visit the event website



  • http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event




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Trump On Pence Staffer That Tested Positive For COVID19: 'I Don't Know What Happened'

After it was revealed Friday that Mike Pence's spokesperson, who is Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, tested positive, Trump gave an illogical and moronic response to the media about her and coronavirus testing in general.

Trump said, "She tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of a sudden today, she tested positive."

That's the way any virus spreads, especially one as infectious as COVID-19. One day you don't have it, and the next, if you're not protecting yourself, you've got it.

Trump said he and Pence tested negative after her results came back.

"So she tested positive out of the blue," he said.

A person doesn't test positive out of the freaking blue. They were contaminated by somebody else. It's Basic Science 101.

Trump continued, "This is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great."

Trump has admitted how much he hates the idea of testing Americans in general, not because they are unreliable, but because it affects the number of cases that are reported, and makes him look bad.

What a swell guy.

Then he made another baffling statement that makes no sense in any reality. Trump said, "The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test where it’s good and then something happens and all of a sudden…”

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Cops Didn't Enforce Law On Anti-lockdown Protesters, COVID-19 Spread

Remember the April 15th "Operation Gridlock?" in Lansing Michigan? In my piece on April 21st I said we needed to start tracking these protesters to show that they will spread the virus to other communities. Well, someone did.

Cellphone data shows 300 of the people who had gathered in Lansing for "Operation Gridlock" scattered throughout the state after the protest. The color of the dot represents device activity: yellow is more activity, red is lighter Image from: Doctors at the Committee to Protect Medicare

The people at the Committee to Protect Medicare released data which shows the protesters dispersing to smaller communities across Michigan in the following days. The map above shows that cellphones that were in Lansing on April 15 scattered across the state. (Link)

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  • anti-lockdown protests
  • coronavirus. COVID-19
  • First Lt. Darren Green
  • Michigan Department of Health and Human Services
  • michigan protests
  • Michigan state House
  • Michigan State Police
  • Robert Gordon

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COVID-19 spread is fueled by 'stealth transmission'

Cases of COVID-19 that fly under the radar — without being diagnosed — appear to fuel the rapid spread of the disease.




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Your COVID19 Turning Points #9

From TPM Reader MM … My story is like many others — not dramatic in itself but important to me....




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Your COVID19 Turning Points #10

After walking us through a series of COVID19 turning points over the course of the spring (out of work in...




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Where do baby magnetars come from? Mysterious 'fast radio bursts' may provide clues.

Magnetars — highly magnetized, rapidly rotating super-dense stars — are among the most enigmatic creatures to inhabit the cosmos and their origins are shrouded in mystery.




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Please Support Civil Liberties and Public Policy During the Covid-19 Crisis: An Appeal from Judy Norsigian

These challenging times require fierce, broad, and intersectional activism – which is just what Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) has been doing for the past four decades. This now-independent nonprofit, which used to be affiliated with Hampshire College, continues its unique movement-building work preparing younger activists to work on the front lines of today’s struggle for reproductive justice. Please consider supporting CLPP today with a generous donation. 

As we know, the Covid-19 pandemic is disproportionately harming those in our communities who were already facing ... More

The post Please Support Civil Liberties and Public Policy During the Covid-19 Crisis: An Appeal from Judy Norsigian appeared first on Our Bodies Ourselves.



  • Abortion & Reproductive Rights
  • Activism & Resources

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coronavirus and COVID-19

A retired colleague contacted me with this query:
Has a dialect difference emerged between US novel coronavirus/new coronavirus and UK COVID-19, do you think? Novel coronavirus/new coronavirus is favoured by Reuters, but I don't know whether that counts in the dialect balance.

I hear plenty of COVID-19 from US sources, so that didn't strike me as quite right, but I had a look (on 29 April) at the News on the Web (NOW) corpus, which (so far this year) had 226 covi* (i.e. words starting with covi-) per million words in US and 49 per million in UK. For coronav* it's 362 US v 92 UK. (I searched that way so that I'd get all variations, including COVID without the -19, without the hyphen, coronaviruses, etc.).

Now, I don't trust the geographical coding on the NOW corpus very much, because you have things like the Guardian showing up in the US data because it has a US portal that has US-particular content, but also all the UK content—and that doesn't do us much good in sorting out AmE from BrE. I really don't know why the per-million numbers are so much higher in the US sources, since the news in both places is completely taken over by the virus and stories related to it. But anyway, about 38% of the (named) mentions of the disease are COVID in the US and 35% in the UK, so there is no notable difference in preference for COVID. I found it interesting that the two newspaper apps on my phone (Guardian [UK] and New York Times) prefer coronavirus in headlines, even though COVID-19 is shorter.

But my colleague is right that there is a lot more new/novel coronavirus in US than UK. About 12% of AmE usages are prefaced by an adjective that starts with N, while only about 3% of BrE coronaviruses are. Distribution is fairly even between novel (from medical usage) and new. It's worth noting that since I'm only searching news media,  new/novel is probably far more common in this dataset than it would be in everyday interactions.

Including the definite article (the coronavirus) seems to be more common in AmE. If I just look for how many coronavirus occurrences are preceded by the, the proportion is 45% for AmE and 37% for BrE.  this search hits examples like the one in the 'middle school' story on the left: the coronavirus lockdown where the the really relates to the lockdown. So, to try to avoid this problem, I searched for (the) coronavirus [VERB] and (the) coronavirus [full stop/period]. In those cases, then AmE news media have the the about 50% of the time, while BrE ones have it less than 30% of the time. That misses the new/novel coronavirus (because of the adjective between the and coronavirus), so the real difference in the before coronavirus is probably more stark.

The media's style guides are supposed to guide the choices journalists and editors make in phrasing such things, but how strictly they follow their own guides is another matter. I had a look at a couple:

The Guardian Style Guide (UK) says:
coronavirus outbreak 2019-20
The virus is officially called Sars-CoV-2 and this causes the disease Covid-19. However, for ease of communication we are following the same practice as the WHO and using Covid-19 to refer to both the virus and the disease in our general reporting. It can also continue to be referred to as the coronavirus.  [I've added the bold on the latter]

The Associated Press (US) gives similar advice, though it goes into more particular rules for science stories.
As of March 2020, referring to simply the coronavirus is acceptable on first reference in stories about COVID-19. While the phrasing incorrectly implies there is only one coronavirus, it is clear in this context. Also acceptable on first reference: the new coronavirus; the new virus; COVID-19.
In stories, do not refer simply to coronavirus without the article the. Not: She is concerned about coronavirus. Omitting the is acceptable in headlines and in uses such as: He said coronavirus concerns are increasing.
Passages and stories focusing on the science of the disease require sharper distinctions.
COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019, is caused by a virus named SARS-CoV-2. When referring specifically to the virus, the COVID-19 virus and the virus that causes COVID-19 are acceptable. But, because COVID-19 is the name of the disease, not the virus, it is not accurate to write a new virus called COVID-19. [bold added]
In comparing the two passages you can see one predictable difference between them. AP writes COVID in all caps, Guardian has Covid with the initial capital only. There is a widespread preference in BrE (and generally not in AmE) to differentiate between initalisms and true acronyms. (There's been a bit in the Guardian about it, here.)

In an initialism, you pronounce the names of the letters: the WHO stands for World Health Organization and it is pronounced W-H-O and not "who". It's spel{led/t} with all caps (or small caps), no matter where you live. (AmE styles are more likely than BrE styles to insist on (BrE) full stops/(AmE) periods in these: W.H.O.—but styles do vary.)

Acronyms use the initial letters of words to make a new word, pronounced as a word. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's short name is pronounced "nasa", making it a true acronym. All AmE styles that I know of spell it with caps: NASA. Many BrE styles spell it like any other proper name, with just an initial capital: Nasa.

This disease name provides a slightly different case because it's doesn't just use initial letters: COronaVIrusDisease. That's probably why I'm seeing some initial-only Covid in AmE, for instance in the Chronicle of Higher Education, where they spell other acronyms (like NASA) in all caps.

Other variants, like CoViD and covid are out there—but they are in the minority. COVID and Covid rule.While some other UK sources, like the Guardian, follow the initial-cap style (Covid), many UK sources use the all-cap style, including the National Health Service and the UK government.


And on that note, I hope you and yours are safe.

P.S. Since I'm talking about newspaper uses, I haven't considered pronunciation—but that discussion is happening in the comments.