Alternative solution for the Ronit Bird issue: consider downloading (or downgrading) to version 12.6.5.3 of iTunes, which is the last version of iTunes to allow management of books. That should allow you to run the Ronit Bird eBooks on your computer. (But whatever you do, don't let iTunes update itself, and keep a backup of the installer file in case). Old versions of iBooks can still get books, so in principle it should be possible for older versions of iTunes to do so (since it appears books are still classified as such at Apple's end, in a way that is backwards-compatible).

Sometimes, position awareness can be poor. Yoga moves for children help (for much the same reason pilates does), and it's perfectly OK to learn along with them. Just make sure everyone does it gently and you learn them a few (or indeed one) at a time. For the link in this post, do the ones that look useful in whichever order makes most sense to you - the point is to help everyone be more aware of body position and to do the chosen moves well, rather than to master a set repertoire. You are likely to want at least one move involving a straight back and at least one with a curved back, since that's the body part most involved in slouching. Getting good office chairs may also help, even if they are only used some of the time (e.g. when using screens). Finally, check desk and equipment alignment. Particularly with computers, it's common for screens to be too high or too low, or input devices to be in the wrong place, any of which can result in slouching. Screens that aren't at eye level and input devices not at the level of whatever body part you use to do the input should be moved. All the other ideas in this thread are good too.

Definitely not Autism Speaks, because the Autism Speaks group was only founded in 2005 (though some of the charities that merged with it are older). I think you might mean the Autism Angels Group. Although the information I can see about them is limited, I also can't find any mention of them being involved in controversies in their own right. Research is always wise, though, for the sort of thing @Tanaquiproposed to do. I've had the "obviously incredibly high functioning" [implied: "so you can't know what low functioning is like"] line from people before (there were autism charities with harmful attitudes before Autism Speaks existed). Telling them I nearly got put in special school due to being almost non-verbal and non-social at the mandatory school starting age has proved remarkably effective at changing individual minds.

No harm in trying.

It's to strengthen both the range of variants one is protected against, and the length of time one is protected for. OxfordAstrazeneca protects 15-20 % points more with two doses than one, as an example, which is likely due to providing more immunity and resistance against more variants than the natural method. It has also been shown to work for at least six months when it does work, as opposed to natural infection (which has had many cases of people getting re-infected because a variant was different from the one they had the first time).

I have "British-type" pancakes (aka crepes), and either they get served with orange juice and sugar... ...or spinach. In the latter case, the spinach is placed on top of a pancake and the whole thing is rolled, to serve with vegetables and chips. (There's no rule that says you can't have the spinach as the first course and the orange juice/sugar version as dessert, however).

I'd have suggested the National Autistic Society, but I think you were after a non-controversial American charity, rather than a British one. Last year, Charity Navigator gave Autism Speaks three stars due to improved transparency, though it was denied the fourth star as its financial position is relatively weak compared to charities that have a maximum score. Also of note is that it spends 15% of its income on fundraising, meaning it only spends 75% on actual charitable activities (the 10% it spends on administration is in line with reasonable amounts for a large charity). On the other hand, I don't trust Autism Speaks one bit when it comes to its conduct against fellow autistic people and their families. It's simply spent too long advocating against the people it claimed to serve (which is a particular shame given its unique position in the USA to do things that would help them).

It is quite an odd effect, for a vaccine to be more effective when there is a long delay between the doses. This would, however, explain why people who've had COVID may only need one dose (in effect, they've already had the "primer dose").

As for @PeterPan 's original last question, the UK announced today that employers can refuse to hire new staff who don't vaccinate, unless the Equality Act is involved (so no refusal of employment because people have any sort of medical contraindication, or are too young to get vaccinated yet). Since Equality Act information is involved, it's not clear if it's legal to ask at interview or whether employers who wish to bar unvaccinated candidates can only ask that question on the (unseen by interviewers) personal information form. It is also possible that jobs where not vaccinating poses minimal risk to others (e.g. homeworking jobs) may not be able to require vaccination, but it would need to be tested in court. Existing staff - regardless of their job - cannot be made to vaccinate unless a new contract is agreed voluntarily. I am not aware of what, exactly, USA law has to say about the matter. Care home staff are undervaccinated in the UK, too - 80% of people in the top 2 priority groups (which includes all health care workers) have been vaccinated, including 88% of health care workers in general and 93% of care home residents, but only 70% of care home workers. This is despite care home staff typically being offered the chance to vaccinate at the same time as their home's residents. "Cultural reasons" have been cited as a significant cause (think: "Saturday afternoon vaccinations? Nah, not going back to work for hours to help with vaccination unpaid because it's then classed as a medical appointment"*) There is also especial distrust among ethnic minorities caused by mistakes made by the government earlier in the pandemic (there are more people in ethnic minorities in care home work than the national occupation average). * - I am told everyone (residents and staff) accepted in the care home my relatives work in, partly because the care home opted to pay staff time-and-a-half. Not all care homes did this. Seeing that show of unanimity, in turn, helped gain trust from residents. One more thing I should add: wealth has something to do with it. In Wales, between 4.4 and 5.7 % points fewer eligible people in poor areas accepted the vaccine than in the wealthiest ones. (You won't be surprised to hear care home workers tend to be on minimum-wage, or low-wage, in the UK). This is rather smaller than the 14 % points gap between white and ethnic minority people, but it is still significant. (Before anyone asks, I have no data from the UK regarding the effect of education on take-up, and don't expect to see any in the near future because that sort of infomation isn't consistently put in GP's records and would have to be cross-referenced from another source).

I'd start by checking language options on games you already own. An increasing number of them allow multiple languages. even as audio. Otherwise, platformers, sports and strategy games tend to have a lot of games where it's possible to see what needs to be done even if the audio is not 100% understood. The ability to set audio and subtitles/text instructions separately is much less common, unfortunately.

I am in the UK and not expecting to be eligible for a while. However, every adult in the priority groups above me that I personally know will have had their first dose by the end of this week. The target was to have everyone age 70+ or with a serious underlying condition with their first injection in their arm by this point, and my area is now partway through the "60+ and adults with less serious underlying conditions" groups, which are the two groups lower in priority than the target one. (Technically, the 60+ category has priority, but my local practise has opted to combine both). It is good news. Dad and my brother got a call when their care home was scheduled for mass vaccination (they're staff), and will get their second dose at some point before Easter. The elderly ex-neighbour I support got a call from his practise about a month ago, although there was a bit of a (socially-distanced) queue because of the "one in, one out" system in place, and expects his second dose by the end of April. Mum, my aunt and uncle received a call from their respective practises during the last 10 days to schedule an appointment; they were able to select a reasonable one at their practice, but could have gone to the local theatre for one of their mass vaccination sessions had that not worked out. I don't know how my aunt and uncle decided to arrange their appointment, but everyone in my family will take the vaccine as soon as it is offered. All three are likely to receive dose #2 in May. Nobody I know had to do any sort of chasing or know anything at all about the vaccination system to get a slot; the system assumes everyone will have a slot and calls people as soon as one is available for them. Receptionists are very, very busy... The inequality in vaccine distribution worries me - I have a friend in a country that have had 25 doses sent to it total so far, which can't be good for their vaccine efforts. Edit: Just read that my local GP practice/family doctor office is now accepting patients who are not part of its practice for its vaccination sessions, and a local hotel (supervised by a local pharmacy) will do so from this Thursday. The hotel has just switched over from being a mass flu vaccine site, so it's not a newcomer to the field. Booking is via the same system as booking at one's home GP office (or the local theatre) - wait to be called, then request to be vaccinated at the mass centre (or ask for an appointment time your home GP office cannot provide - likely to be more common in the working population because many of them need evening or weekend appointments). 82% of people over 80 in my home county have received their first dose of vaccine, a little above the national average of 80%, and 50% of people in the "over 70, in a frontline health job or with a serious underlying condition" category (noting that due to supply lag in some parts of the county, some eligible people are still waiting for a call while my area starts issuing them to younger people. Others may be working and therefore have a delay in when they can have the appointment - something the new mass vaccination centre seeks to remedy).

Personal debt is at an all-time high. While this was aggravated by events of the last year, it is also true that more people are living further beyond their means than before. Budgeting is an issue that needs to be taken into account, and a reason I'd prefer multiple methods to pay for and save for things. I know several small businesses that would go bust if society went cashless, because the prices they are charged for small-volume sales would be too high. Smartphones (on which much of this plan appears to hinge) have become less accessible for people with some disabilities over the 12-15 years they've existed, and that I know several adults who can't use a card due to their disabilities but can use cash (in at least one case, it's the difference between them being able to be independent and not). 20% of people in the UK do not have a smartphone, 14% don't have internet, and there's good reason to believe those statistics aren't going to change much in the near future (and if they do, it'll be fewer people with those things, rather than more, on account of their cost). Also, there are a fair number of people who are pretty much disconnected from government and wouldn't get assistance with navigating a cashless society for the same reason they don't get assistance now with a society that assumes people will have access to food, power and a roof over their heads. Finally, I am very uncomfortable with the amount a cashless society makes theft against careful people easier. It's a lot easier to steal from a "cashless" app than directly from the bank (though the point of vulnerability for cash and cashless is the concrete object itself). Yes, the phone or card. So much of people's identities being on a device they're expected to have whenever they leave the house. It's a magnified version of the car key problem (not only because of the amount a theif can steal with something so small, but because a smartphone tends to be rather larger than a set of car keys). Identity theft doubled in the last 12 months in the USA, something I expect will only get worse as the shift to making phones so valuable continues. This is especially serious in a mandatory direct-link system (one method of implementing cashless I've seen implied this thread) because stealing that phone means every account that person has interacted with becomes known and easier to hack into, not just the person whose phone was taken. Having a cashless option is good. Being all-cashless would be disastrous for any society (even one that consisted completely of robots).

The NHS in the UK is saying to leave a week's gap between vaccines for different things, and to move the non-COVID appointment if there's a clash due to the relative difficulty in obtaining slots. In the USA, the advice has been variable, so I would advise checking before proceeding if possible.

Mathematics is supposed to be objective, that's much of the point. Teaching that there are multiple solutions to some types of mathematical questions (primarily in mathematical investigations) is important. As is teaching the underlying assumptions behind subjective statements about maths which are presented as objective (practical statistics in everyday life is full of this). However, the foundation of symbolic maths is that the proposition 1 + 1 = 2 is equally true regardless of who's looking at it (Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell spent 2 books of the Prinicipia Mathematica proving it). Given that one of the authors quoted about the other that, "After some contact with the Chinese language, that he was horrified to find that the language of Principia Mathematica was an Indo-European one", perhaps I can be a little more sympathetic with the Oregon Department of Education apparently not being aware of this. Only a little...

Which makes sense. The University of Manchester found that, in households where 2 or more people got COVID, a teenager was 7 times more likely to have tracked in the virus in the first place than any other member of the family (this was shortly before schools shut for the 2nd time in the UK, in early December). Note that most children younger than teens who were in schools where they did not switch classrooms and were otherwise in a good position to have class-sized bubbles, with the same teacher and the same classroom for most subjects, whereas teenagers tended to have more complicated education patterns where either they moved classroom each subject - or their teachers did. It's a lot easier to stop someone spreading an illness if they're showing symptoms of it!

My dad and brother knew they were getting Pfizer because at that point in deployment, that was what the local hospital hub was getting. They were, however, part of the early vaccine rollout, before Moderna and OxfordAstrazeneca had many doses in the distribution system. At this point, asking the expected provider appears to be the best option, with the proviso that the vaccine they get may change and they may not be in a position to respond quickly due to being busy. I'd prefer OxfordAstrazeneca as it has no ingredients in common with this winter's flu vaccine (to which I had a hospitalisation-grade, although not overnight-grade or life-threatening, negative reaction), but the way the various vaccines have been performing, I'd happily take any of the ones my doctor gives me. Even J&J (which is not yet approved in the UK, but at 66% is high enough that it could be very soon) is 6 percentage points more effective than the flu vaccine, which may explain why vaccine hesitancy is fairly low where I live. (I'd definitely want to know which vaccine I'd get if I am asked to go to a mass vaccination venue, simply because I don't want to publically collapse and accidentally put off an onlooker from getting their dose. If I'm to go to a doctor's practice to get it, I probably wouldn't bother asking in advance).

The NHS in the UK is advising people to wait 1 week between the flu vaccine and COVID (or vice versa), and to move the flu vaccination (not the COVID one) if necessary. No other advice regarding other vaccines has been offered by the NHS, though it would seem wise to ask at the time of receiving whichever one is obtained first. I assume the American health authorities are being a bit more cautious about possible interactions/side effects. Good luck to everyone getting themselves the appropriate protection!

The number of applicants to a major compared to the number of seats a specific college has has would likely affect things. After all, it's easier to get admitted to a major which has space for 90% of the people who apply, than for one which can only make room for, say, 60% - even if in both cases it is the same subject.

MLA is will be in its 9th edition in April, and is currently on its 8th edition. Writing Research Papers was written in 2012, so anything it has for "new" MLA will be for the 7th edition. On the other hand, the Chicago Manual of Style is in its 17th edition, but Writing Research Papers was written when version 16 was current, and there are few differences between Chicago 17th and Chicago 16th that would affect a high-schooler or beginning undergraduate. (Had it been written during version 15, that would have been a larger issue, since Chicago made a lot of changes about digital document referencing between 15th and 16th edition). The principles of citation are timeless, and it's much better to teach an uncommon or outdated method well than a newer one badly, but some methods of citation change over the years. "Out-of-date" presumably refers to Writing Research Papers' use of previous citation editions, rather than a suggestion that the broader advice is in any way wrong. An online college/university citation reference guide that covers whatever new citation method/edition is wanted would seem the easiest way to get resolve this, rather than necessarily buying a different book just to get newer citation editions.

It might not be relevant to OP, but "how a mom needs to implement this in a class that she is running"... ...another possible method could be to have an outside "moderator". Set a date on which you will take a sample of the student's work to a friend or neighbour and discuss it with them. (This person does not need to know the subject as such, or even necessarily count up marks you've done. They just be willing to have a discussion, however cursory, about the work). Clearly you can't move that discussion however much the student pleads, so now there's a logic behind whatever deadline is set. This is a thing schools, colleges and universities do with their assessed work (with variations). Another technique might be to go ahead and set that exam (as if doing the credit-by-exam route)... ...but tell the student that they can bring a piece of paper in with notes to help them. Feel free to discreetly strew a couple of books about note-taking around (or, if they were already there but getting ignored, put them somewhere slightly more obvious), but don't teach them how to take notes unless they specifically ask. Some students put more effort into the "exam aid" that is "their secret shortcut" than they do into the "official" learning, thinking this is a clever way of getting out of learning - and not realising that this is, in fact, another way to learn the material. If this works, you can continue doing this occasionally alongside whichever curriculum is used in future.

It's a cyclical issue. Remember Socrates started philosophising to try to get the people of ancient Athens to think about why they hold their beliefs... It's an occupational hazard of being a species that has historically depended on making fast decisions - it leads to the opposite mistake of making them too fast, and not processing enough. Mental shortcuts get taken. The priority becomes to manage information overload using the least overhead, instead of managing it effectively. As for the current iteration... ...I've noticed definite changes in the last 20 years, that have accelerated in the most recent 10. There is a lot of social reward for parroting influential people's opinions, and quite a lot of punishment for deviating from them even slightly, in many places. That leads to a temptation to pick the first opinion by someone that individual considers influential, and then sticking rigidly to it. Any feedback relating to it is interpreted as support for the position, even if outright contradicts the position ("positive" ones are seen as conventionally supportive, "negative" ones are seen as supportive due to the person obviously being wrong due to holding that position). The circularity of the latter is obvious to many onlookers but does not reduce the temptation of making the same mistake on a different discussion. One effect is that it discourages listening, in favour of presuming. Those who groupthink but are still listening can at least learn from people who agree with them. The trouble with those encouraged to presume instead of listen is that they are less likely to understand what it was the person providing the position said (let alone intended) in the first place - regardless of whether the statement agrees with the presumer's beliefs or not. The part where Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr conventions lean towards suggestion and opposition being worded identically (which removes nuance and subtlety - there's a reason sarcasm is often followed by /s on the internet...) does not help either (the "optimal style" to be understood on those platforms is to be as unambiguous as possible, even at the risk of lying, so that's what the platforms implicitly encourage). This is because anything not done in the optimal style for a given location is already at risk of being misunderstood, simply through lack of familiarity in that context (autistic people are very familiar with this, which was why the 1990s version of the World Wide Web was such a boon to many of them - everyone suddenly had much of the same disadvantage they have in face-to-face situations because nobody was familiar with "optimal styles" that didn't exist yet for that new context). Some of this was happening pre-Internet, in groups where there wasn't much moderation of powerful influences. Hence "groupthink". However, the Internet's ability to bring together larger groups of people, from a greater distance - except where social norms contained the more powerful influences on any given site to give more people a reasonable chance to be heard. The good news is that I think most of these people can understand deeper and broader perspectives. It's just that getting them to that perspective may be unfeasible due to the mental shortcuts they have chosen.

The mutations before September happened not to have much effect on the traits of the virus most people cared about (how easily it spreads, how much damage it causes or how lethal it is). Once the mutations that did affect these things arose (independently, and somewhat differently, in the UK and South Africa), it took a while for them to out-compete other variants (because few people are worried about a more lethal version of the virus if the less lethal variants prevent it from gaining a sustained foothold). Finally, the fact vaccines came on stream at about the point the new variants became dominant and widespread caused further concern, because vaccines have limitations on their effectiveness. It's why it's important to vaccinate people before the hypothetical point where the virus out-mutates the vaccines.

I object to Google's privacy practises, the trackers it uses slow my computer down a lot compared to alternatives that don't track, and also found it not very good at finding the sort of results I want (in other words, its attempts at personalisation give me worse results than I get from a search engine that doesn't try to personalise my search experience). For example, I was following a specific F1 team and because of certain news relating to it, Google proceeded to send the next three months trying to sell me business financial consolidation (I didn't own a business at the time), when searching for news about that team (which, as a sports fan, was what I actually wanted when I typed in the terms I was typing - none of which named the business financial consolidation directly). People who consider the selling of a certain amount of their data to be a reasonable trade for the service, those with better computers than me and people whose search behaviour more closely resemble what Google's algorithm expect will find Google more useful to them than I do.

Stock price can affect how much money is available to the company to effect the plans. This is because stock markets offer a different way to become a "customer" of a company, than buying product. When a company sells shares onto the market in the first place, it receives money for them. However, the downside is that companies are generally expected to redeem those shares later at whatever the market deems "par value". This requires companies to have enough cash on hand to do so. Of course, most of the time, there are other buyers on the market for any given share, which means the company doesn't have to pay anything - unless whoever does buy it decides they need to sell at a point where no other buyers are willing to pick up the tab. Moderate shorts don't (have to*) cause any change to company plans because there are still people buying and selling enough of the shares that company cashflow can pick up any shortfall at par - especially since the definition of "at par" changes with share valuation (that is to say, ). The problem comes if there is an extreme short, where everyone decides to sell at the same time and the company can't afford to buy back the shares. At that point... ...the company is out of money and can't pay for any plans that require cashflow. Plans like converting bricks-and-mortar stores require cashflow, having that cashflow restricted by a mass short would prevent the plan from going ahead. This is because tradespeople need to be paid money. (Note: a company has to be trying pretty hard to get themselves into an "extreme short" situation - by problematic practises causing a instant mass drop in faith (which was a major component in the 2008 stock market crash), selling too many shares and therefore over-diluting the shares (I can't think of any big companies off-hand as examples, but an F1 team from 20 years ago called Arrows managed it) or by trying odd techniques in those share sales (allowing 40% more shares to be borrowed than actually exist, as Gamestop has, would fall into this category). Most likely, the company will be forced into administration, Chapter 11 or some other highly restrictive method of restoring cashflow (e.g. high-interest loans or imposed corporate restructuring). Sometimes, companies go bankrupt if they are forced to pay for too much too quickly and requirements for making other cash-restoration methods cannot be met. In other words, the reason mass shorting is a problem to the company is the same as for other reasons for failure of shares on a stock market. * - I say "have to" change plan, because a company could look at shorting activity, decide it's related to some practice they should not be doing and change it. If the practice was actually harmful to the business, then this would be an example of when moderate shorting can be a healthy part of the stock market. Shorting is a tool that can cause both good and bad effects.

That is odd. I've never had any adult material appear on Duckduckgo, even on moderate settings. Something seems to have gone very, very wrong. Clearing the cache (and internet history, as Katy advises) would be a good thing to check, but you're right to be concerned because a search engine that doesn't track you shouldn't behave like that.