LSUDVM1999

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For what? One song (In the Air Tonight) off a mediocre album? The rest of his solo work is shite

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Punch, a 7-month-old macaque monkey, had no friends.

His mother abandoned him. He wasn’t quite fitting in with the other monkeys at Ichikawa City Zoo, outside Tokyo. The closest thing he had to loved ones were the zookeepers who look after him, and a stuffed animal from IKEA.

But a series of widely shared posts showing his predicament — including a hashtag started by the zoo, #HangInTherePunch — have put Punch in the global spotlight and made him somewhat of an internet celebrity.

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In a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest, a tiny pollinator has just gained something usually reserved for people and companies. Municipalities in Satipo and Nauta in Peru have approved ordinances that recognize native stingless bees and their habitat as legal subjects with rights to exist, to thrive, and to be defended in court.

It is the first time anywhere in the world that an insect species receives this kind of legal status.

Why should anyone outside the rainforest care about a legal victory for small, black bees that do not sting. Because they quietly support much of what ends up on kitchen tables.

Researchers estimate that about half of the roughly 500 known stingless bee species live in the Amazon region, and that they help pollinate around eighty percent of tropical plant species, including cacao, coffee, avocados and many wild fruits.

In practical terms, the Satipo and Nauta ordinances read almost like a small bill of rights for bees.

The texts recognize a right to exist and prosper, to maintain healthy populations, to live in a clean and intact habitat with ecologically stable climate conditions, to regenerate natural cycles, and to receive legal representation if pollution, deforestation or new projects threaten their survival.

Any company, agency or individual that harms their colonies can now be sued on behalf of the bees, with courts required to consider not only human losses but damage to the species and the forest itself.

This change did not start in a legal office. It began when chemical biologist Rosa Vásquez Espinoza and her team at Amazon Research Internacional were asked to analyze honey that Indigenous families were using as medicine during the worst months of the pandemic.

Their samples revealed hundreds of bioactive molecules with antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and even potential anti-cancer properties, confirming what local healers had said for generations.

From there, researchers and Indigenous elders mapped colonies across large swaths of the forest, documented traditional meliponiculture, and showed how bee numbers dropped where old trees and diverse understory plants disappeared.

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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that 10 people, including the suspected shooter, have been killed in a shooting at a high school in the province of British Columbia, with more people injured.

Another two people were found dead at a home that police believe is connected to the shooting.

The RCMP said the incident involved an “active shooter at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School” in British Columbia, and that “an individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self-inflicted injury”.

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Governor Ron DeSantis, First Lady Casey DeSantis, and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo appeared together on Thursday at Palm Beach State College, unveiling the latest round of the state’s Healthy Florida First food-testing initiative, releasing new findings that show several widely sold bread brands contain high levels of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

Independent lab testing commissioned by the Department of Health found what the state described as “triple-digit” glyphosate levels in several high-volume bread brands, including Nature’s Own Butter Bread, Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted White, Wonder Bread Classic White, and Sara Lee Honey Wheat. Other breads, including Sara Lee Artesano White and Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse White, showed no detectable glyphosate. Dave’s Killer Bread tested low compared to other brands.

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in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford.

I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year.

That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her “a disability accommodation”.

She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as “disabled”.

Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.
housing on campus.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where competition for the best dorm rooms is fierce, this practice is particularly rife. The Atlantic reported that 38 percent of undergraduates at my college were registered as having a disability — that’s 2,850 students out of a class of 7,500 — and 24 per cent of undergrads received academic or housing accommodations in the fall quarter.

At the Ivy League colleges Brown and Harvard, more than 20 per cent of undergrads are registered as disabled. Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations. Bizarrely, the schools that boast the most academically successful students are the ones with the largest number who claim disabilities — disabilities that you’d think would deter academic success.

The truth is, the system is there to be gamed, and most students feel that if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

When I arrived on campus two and a half years ago, I would have assumed that special allowances were made for a small number of students who genuinely needed them. But I quickly discovered that wasn’t true. Some diagnoses are real and serious, of course, such as epilepsy, anaphylactic allergies, sleep apnea or severe physical disabilities.

But most students, in my experience, claim less severe ailments, such as ADHD or anxiety. And some “disabilities” are just downright silly. Students claim “night terrors”; others say they “get easily distracted” or they “can’t live with others”. I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.

In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little scepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.

“In college, I haven’t had that many ‘in real life’ tests as opposed to take-home essays,” Callie told me. “When I did use the extra time, I felt guilty, because I probably didn’t deserve the accommodations, given the fact I got into Stanford and could compete at a high academic level. Extra time on tests — some students even get double time — seems unfair to me.”

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