TEHRAN — Iranians — battered by a government crackdown whose dead have yet to be fully tallied, still reeling from the 12-day conflict with Israel last year and fed up with endemic economic malaise born of sanctions and corruption — now face the prospect of another war with emotions ranging from anger to anticipation, but above all, exhaustion.
“Again and again, this routine of anxiety and worries,” said Ali, a barber in Tehran who like most of those interviewed did not give his last name for fear of harassment.
“All this feels like a pre-written scenario that has taken this long to unfold,” Ali said. “It’s not a pleasant feeling at all.”
A ticking clock hangs over Washington and Tehran’s latest diplomatic roundelay.
As the two sides continue Oman-brokered negotiations in Geneva, the U.S has amassed the largest military force in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion.
On Friday, President Trump said he was considering a limited military strike to force the Islamic Republic into a deal about its nuclear program and other issues.
“I guess I can say I am considering that,” he said to reporters at the White House.
Naval units from Iran and Russia carry out a simulation of a rescue from a hijacked vessel during the joint naval drills held Thursday at the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas along the Strait of Hormuz.
(Iranian army)
Such comments are contributing to the sense of unease felt throughout Iran. It’s shared by Hoda, 27, an art school graduate whose fellowship to Lisbon, Portugal, was derailed when the Portuguese Embassy closed during the 12-day war.
That conflict, when Israel launched a campaign targeting Iran’s top military echelons, as well as its nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure, showed Hoda “that daily life for ordinary people suffers, even if you only target military sites,” and that preparations “often prove to be pointless.”
That’s why she hasn’t bothered stocking up on supplies, and maintains hope — admittedly slim — that negotiations will bring about a deal.
“This war has no winners, and even the chance for improvement would be ruined by any conflict,” she said.
“Regardless of its outcome, it would be the worst possible scenario for ordinary people.”
Speaking on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal was “achievable” and that “there is no military solution” for curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran has repeatedly said it is developing nuclear power, not weapons.
Earlier in the week, Araghchi said that there was “good progress” in the talks and that both sides agreed on a framework.
But it’s clear that gaps remain.
The U.S. demands involve dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, though it’s uncertain whether that means full suspension of enrichment of uranium and neutralizing its arsenal of missiles. The U.S. also wants Iran to end its support for paramilitary groups, such as Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.
Iran, however, insists that the talks strictly concern its nuclear program.
“We are prepared for diplomacy, and we are prepared for negotiation as much as we are prepared for war,” Araghchi said. He added that previous U.S. administrations and the current one have tried war, sanctions and other measures against Tehran, “but none of them worked.”
“If you talk with the Iranian people with the language of respect, we respond with the same language,” he said. “But if they talk to us with the language of force, we will reciprocate in the same language.”
The U.S. forces arrayed off Iran’s shores — an armada comprising two carrier groups and dozens of warplanes — hint at a weeks-long campaign that could destroy much of Iran’s military capabilities.
But whether that would make Tehran more pliant, let alone spur regime change, is questionable.
Demonstrators hold the unofficial Iranian Lion and Sun flags and signs of protest at a rally in support of regime change in Iran at Los Angeles City Hall on Feb. 14.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t think a war initiated by Trump will deliver a decisive blow capable of toppling the current ruling establishment,” said Nader Karimi, a pro-government journalist.
Another fear is that if the government survives the onslaught, it would double down on its brutal smothering of dissent — just as it did in the wake of the 12-day war, when it detained hundreds and executed dozens on espionage charges.
Some Iranians hope a limited strike would essentially repeat what happened in Venezuela, when U.S. troops nabbed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro while the rest of the government — now more pro-U.S. — stays in place.
Once strategic targets and the command structure are destroyed, said Feriadoun Majlesi, a former Iranian diplomat, “remaining government officials will demand an end to the war and peaceful conditions.”
Others see in a confrontation with the U.S. an opportunity.
“Yes, I’m waiting and feeling anxious, but I try to reassure myself the future can be bright. I don’t think the Islamic Republic will survive this time,” said Ahmad, a 27-year-old barista who joined the January protests.
“We’re ready to take to the streets again, once the time is right,” said Ahmad, who says he always keeps canned food, frozen meals and aid supplies at home.
“I wish the war would last only a few weeks, and that only military targets and the Supreme Leader’s office would be hit. But who am I to decide which targets should be attacked?” he said. “Trump and his team know — or maybe even they do not.”
Rahimi, a 74-year-old tailor, said he was looking forward to Trump toppling the government. The rest of his family agrees.
“Why do we hope for war? Simply because we protesters are empty-handed, while the suppressors are fully armed, savagely cracking down and killing us,” he said.
Estimates on the numbers of protesters killed at the hands of security forces in January vary widely.
The government’s official figure is roughly 3,000, but other groups say it could be as much as 10 times more.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency — which relies on a network of activists in Iran and has produced accurate death counts during previous rounds of unrest — put the toll at just over 7,000, but said almost 12,000 other cases remain under review.
Whatever the number, “we cannot forgive them,” Rahimi said.
“War will weaken the regime’s security and military forces. There is no other way.”
Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bulos from Beirut.
Respondents to an annual Michigan college survey of overused and misused words and phrases say ” 6-7 ” is “cooked” and should come to a massive full-stop heading into the new year.
Those are among the top 10 words on the 50th annual “Banished Words List,” released Thursday by Lake Superior State University. The tongue-in-cheek roundup of overused slang started in 1976 as a New Year’s Eve party idea, and is affectionately called the list of “Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”
Around 1,400 submissions came from all 50 states and a number of countries outside the U.S., including Uzbekistan, Brazil and Japan, according to Lake Superior State.
Also in the top 10 are “demure,” “incentivize,” “perfect,” “gift/gifted,” “my bad” and “reach out.” “My bad” and “reach out” also made the list decades ago — in 1998 and 1994, respectively.
“The list definitely represents the fad and vernacular trends of the younger generation,” said David Travis, Lake Superior State University president. “Social media allows a greater opportunity to misunderstand or misuse words. We’re using terms that are shared through texting, primarily, or through posting with no body language or tone context. It’s very easy to misunderstand these words.”
But what does “6-7” actually mean? It exploded over the summer, especially among Gen Z, and is considered by many to be nonsensical in meaning — an inside joke driven by social media.
“Don’t worry, because we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means,” the dictionary’s editors wrote.
Each number can be spoken aloud as “six, seven.” They even can be combined as the number 67; at college basketball games, some fans explode when a team reaches that point total.
The placement of “6-7” at the top of the banished list puts it in good company. In 2019, the centuries-old Latin phrase “quid pro quo” was the top requested phrase to ban from popular use. In 2017, ” fake news ” got the most votes.
Alana Bobbitt, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is unapologetic about using “6-7.”
“I find joy in it,” Bobbitt said. “It’s a little bit silly, and even though I don’t understand what it means, it’s fun to use.”
Jalen Brezzell says a small group of his friends use “6-7” and that it comes up a couple of times each week. But he won’t utter it.
“Never. I don’t really get the joke,” said Brezzell, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. “I don’t see what’s funny about it.”
But banning it, even in jest, might be a bit of a stretch, he said, adding that he does use other words and phrases on the list.
“I’ve always used the word ‘cooked,’” Brezzell said. “I just think it got popular on the internet over this past year. It’s saying, like, ‘give it up, it’s over.’”
Some of the phrases do have longevity, Travis said.
“I don’t think they’ll ever go away, like ‘at the end of the day,’” he said. “I used ‘my bad’ today. I feel comfortable using it. I started using it when I was young. A lot of us older people are still using it.”
Travis said that while some terms on the list “will stick around in perpetuity,” others will be fleeting.
“I think ‘6-7,’ next year, will be gone,” he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration may have softened its language on China to maintain a fragile truce in their trade war, but Congress is charging ahead with more restrictions in a defense authorization bill that would deny Beijing investments in highly sensitive sectors and reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese biotechnology companies.
Included in the 3,000-page bill approved Wednesday by the House is a provision to scrutinize American investments in China that could help develop technologies to boost Chinese military power. The bill, which next heads to the Senate, also would prohibit government money to be used for equipment and services from blacklisted Chinese biotechnology companies.
In addition, the National Defense Authorization Act would boost U.S. support for the self-governing island of Taiwan that Beijing claims as its own and says it will take by force if necessary.
“Taken together, these measures reflect a serious, strategic approach to countering the Chinese Communist Party,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. He said the approach “stands in stark contrast to the White House’s recent actions.”
Congress moves for harsher line toward China
The compromise bill authorizing $900 billion for military programs was released two days after the White House unveiled its national security strategy. The Trump administration dropped Biden-era language that cast China as a strategic threat and said the U.S. “will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China,” an indication that President Donald Trump is more interested in a mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing than in long-term competition.
The White House this week also allowed Nvidia to sell an advanced type of computer chip to China, with those more hawkish toward Beijing concerned that would help boost the country’s artificial intelligence.
The China-related provisions in the traditionally bipartisan defense bill “make clear that, whatever the White House tone, Capitol Hill is locking in a hard-edged, long-term competition with Beijing,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank.
If passed, these provisions would “build a floor under U.S. competitiveness policy — on capital, biotech, and critical tech — that will be very hard for future presidents to unwind quietly,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington on Wednesday denounced the bill.
“The bill has kept playing up the ‘China threat’ narrative, trumpeting for military support to Taiwan, abusing state power to go after Chinese economic development, limiting trade, economic and people-to-people exchanges between China and the U.S., undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and disrupting efforts of the two sides in stabilizing bilateral relations,” said Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesperson.
“China strongly deplores and firmly opposes this,” Liu said.
US investments in China
U.S. policymakers and lawmakers have been working for several years toward bipartisan legislation to curb investments in China when it comes to cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing, aerospace, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Those efforts flopped last year when Tesla CEO Elon Musk opposed a spending bill.
The provision made it into the must-pass defense policy bill, welcomed by Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
“For too long, the hard-earned money of American retirees and investors has been used to build up China’s military and economy,” he said. “This legislation will help bring that to an end.”
Biosecurity protections
Congress last year failed to pass the BIOSECURE Act, which cited national security in preventing federal money from benefiting a number of Chinese biotechnology companies. Critics said then that it was unfair to single out specific companies, warning that the measure would delay clinical trials and hinder development of new drugs, raise costs for medications and hurt innovation.
The provision in the NDAA no longer names companies but leaves it to the Office of Management and Budget to compile a list of “biotechnology companies of concern.” The bill also would expand Pentagon investments in biotechnology.
Moolenaar lauded the effort for taking “defensive action to secure American pharmaceutical supply chains and genetic information from malign Chinese companies.”
Support for Taiwan
The defense bill also would authorize an increase in funding, to $1 billion from $300 million this year, for Taiwan-related security cooperation and direct the Pentagon to establish a joint drone and anti-drone program.
It comes amid mixed signals from Trump, who appears careful not to upset Beijing as he seeks to strike trade deals with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader has urged Trump to handle the Taiwan issue “with prudence,” as Beijing considers its claim over Taiwan a core interest.
In the new national security strategy, the White House says the U.S. does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and stresses that the U.S. should seek to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.
“But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone,” the document says, urging Japan and South Korea to increase defense spending.
NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — ‘Tis the season to put on some brand-new holiday music. The best way to get festive is to sing along to Christmas classics new and old. But don’t know what to press play on? We’ve got you covered.
In honor of the most wonderful time of the year, here are some of the best new holiday releases for the 2025 season. So, grab a loved one, a cup of eggnog and get to listening.
For the a cappella fan, there is no better news than yet another holiday album from Pentatonix. Across 18 tracks, “Christmas in the City” celebrates the magic of cosmopolitan life around the holidays and showcases the group’s vocal athletics. Hear them reimagine the songs you know and love as well as introduce a few originals. Start with “Snowing in Paris,” which features the R&B-pop star JoJo, and end with “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” a never-before-heard recording of the Frank Sinatra classic featuring Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.
It’s hard to believe, but 60 years ago, the “Peanuts” gang’s classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired on television for the first time and become an almost-instant sensation. Part of its charms, of course, must be credited to its whimsical score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. To celebrate such a huge anniversary, Craft Recordings is reissuing its soundtrack — as good a reason as any to revisit these beloved songs.
Just ahead of her Christmas tour, the country icon LeAnn Rimes released “Greatest Hits Christmas.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: a mesh of classics and some of her best-known songs from her past holiday albums. There are also new collaborations, like Aloe Blacc on “That Spirit of Christmas” and Gavin DeGraw on “Celebrate Me Home.”
Some things just make sense together: peanut butter and jelly, coffee and doughnuts, Brad Paisley and his touring band sitting down in Nashville to record a charming Christmas album. “Snow Globe Town” boasts of eight originals and eight covers — exactly what the heart wants this holiday season. It’s the former collection that will really connect, though; there are real charms to be found in “Lit,” “That Crazy Elf” and the title track.
Country singer Trisha Yearwood’s voice sounds like coming home; it makes her the ideal talent for a new holiday collection. “Christmastime” is stacked with familiar tunes and perhaps, best of all, features “Merry Christmas, Valentine,” a duet with her husband Garth Brooks. Blast that one at your get-together and there won’t be a dry eye in the house.
The world lost a giant in February when Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist, died at 88. Perhaps best known for her timeless take on “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” the Christmas season brings up another reason to celebrate her. A new release, “Holidays,” like many on this list, features originals and covers — and a selection of songs from Flack’s classic “The Christmas Album.” It holds a special meaning this year.
The country powerhouse Mickey Guyton feels like Christmas and once you dive into these eight tracks, you will, too. From her rendition of “O Holy Night” to her masterful take on “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” from Disney’s “Frozen” (sorry, parents!) there’s a lot to love here.
R&B singer Eric Benét’s first holiday album, “It’s Christmas,” is filled with warmth; consider it the sonic equivalent of curling up to a roaring fireplace on a snowy winter’s evening. Don’t believe us? Well, one listen to his take on “Please Come Home for Christmas” or “Oh Holy Night” will make you a believer. Or better yet, there’s “Christmas Morning,” featuring Benét’s youngest daughters Lucia and Luna. Tissues, you might want to grab a few.
Sometimes a compilation album is what a holiday party needs. Chess Records has the answer. “The Chess Records Christmas Album” is an impressive collection of veteran talent. The release features everything from Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” and The Moonglows’ “Hey Santa Claus” to Lenox Avenue’s “Little Drummer Boy” and The Salem Travelers’ “Merry Christmas to You.”
Hunter Hayes is a newer name on the country scene than a few of the artists listed here, but that simply means he’s a fresh voice to discover. His “Evergreen Christmas Sessions” is a brief introduction — just four covers of holiday standards — but it’s a charming romp. Start with “Winter Wonderland” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” stay for “Run Run Rudolph” and “Silent Night.”
PARIS (AP) — France’s government is taking action against billionaire Elon Musk ‘s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok after it generated French-language posts that questioned the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, officials said.
Grok, built by Musk’s company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.
The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, saying that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform’s rules.
In later posts on its X account, the chatbot acknowledged that its earlier reply to an X user was wrong, said it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Auschwitz’s gas chambers using Zyklon B were used to murder more than 1 million people. The follow-ups were not accompanied by any clarification from X.
In tests run by The Associated Press on Friday, its responses to questions about Auschwitz appeared to give historically accurate information.
Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Earlier this year, Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints about antisemitic content.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that the Holocaust-denial comments have been added to an existing cybercrime investigation into X. The case was opened earlier this year after French officials raised concerns that the platform’s algorithm could be used for foreign interference.
Prosecutors said that Grok’s remarks are now part of the investigation, and that “the functioning of the AI will be examined.”
France has one of Europe’s toughest Holocaust denial laws. Contesting the reality or genocidal nature of Nazi crimes can be prosecuted as a crime, alongside other forms of incitement to racial hatred.
Several French ministers, including Industry Minister Roland Lescure, have also reported Grok’s posts to the Paris prosecutor under a provision that requires public officials to flag possible crimes. In a government statement, they described the AI-generated content as “manifestly illicit,” saying it could amount to racially motivated defamation and the denial of crimes against humanity.
French authorities referred the posts to a national police platform for illegal online content and alerted France’s digital regulator over suspected breaches of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
The case adds to pressure from Brussels. This week, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said that the bloc is in contact with X about Grok and called some of the chatbot’s output “appalling,” saying it runs against Europe’s fundamental rights and values.
Two French rights groups, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme, have filed a criminal complaint accusing Grok and X of contesting crimes against humanity.
X and its AI unit, xAI, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
PARIS — France’s government is taking action against artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, which was launched by a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, after it generated French-language posts that questioned the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz and listed Jewish public figures, officials said.
Grok, built by Musk company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, said in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.
The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, and said that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform’s rules.
As of this week, Grok’s responses to questions about Auschwitz appear to give historically accurate information.
Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Earlier this year, Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints about antisemitic content.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that the Holocaust-denial comments have been added to an existing cybercrime investigation into X. The case was opened earlier this year after French officials raised concerns that the platform’s algorithm could be used for foreign interference.
Prosecutors said that Grok’s remarks are now part of the investigation, and that “the functioning of the AI will be examined.”
France has one of Europe’s toughest Holocaust denial laws. Contesting the reality or genocidal nature of Nazi crimes can be prosecuted as a crime, alongside other forms of incitement to racial hatred.
Several French ministers, including Industry Minister Roland Lescure, have also reported Grok’s posts to the Paris prosecutor under a provision that requires public officials to flag possible crimes. In a government statement, they described the AI-generated content as “manifestly illicit,” saying it could amount to racially motivated defamation and the denial of crimes against humanity.
French authorities referred the posts to a national police platform for illegal online content and alerted France’s digital regulator over suspected breaches of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
The case adds to pressure from Brussels. This week, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said that the bloc is in contact with X about Grok and called some of the chatbot’s output “appalling,” saying it runs against Europe’s fundamental rights and values.
Two French rights groups, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme, have filed a criminal complaint accusing Grok and X of contesting crimes against humanity.
X and its AI unit, xAI, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Rayann Martin sat in a classroom hundreds of miles from her devastated Alaska Native village and held up 10 fingers when the teacher asked the pupils how old they were.
“Ten — how do you say 10 in Yup’ik?” the teacher asked.
“Qula!” the students answered in unison.
Martin and her family were among hundreds of people airlifted to Anchorage, the state’s largest city, after the remnants of Typhoon Halong inundated their small coastal villages along the Bering Sea last month, dislodging dozens of homes and floating them away — many with people inside. The floods left nearly 700 homes destroyed or heavily damaged. One person died, two remain missing.
As the residents grapple with uprooted lives very different from the traditional ones they left, some of the children are finding a measure of familiarity in a school-based immersion program that focuses on their Yup’ik language and culture — one of two such programs in the state.
“I’m learning more Yup’ik,” said Martin, who added that she’s using the language to communicate with her mother, teachers and classmates. “I usually speak more Yup’ik in villages, but mostly more English in cities.”
There are more than 100 languages spoken in the homes of Anchorage School District students. Yup’ik, which is spoken by about 10,000 people in the state, is the fifth most common. The district adopted its first language immersion program — Japanese — in 1989, and subsequently added Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, German, French and Russian.
After many requests from parents, the district obtained a federal grant and added a K-12 Yup’ik immersion program about nine years ago. The students in the first class are now eighth-graders. The program is based at College Gate Elementary and Wendler Middle School.
The principal at College Gate Elementary, Darrell Berntsen, is himself Alaska Native — Sugpiaq, from Kodiak Island, south of Anchorage. His mother was 12 years old in 1964 when the magnitude-9.2 Great Alaska Earthquake and an ensuing tsunami devastated her village of Old Harbor. He recalls her stories of joining other villagers at high ground and watching as the surge of water carried homes out to sea.
His mother and her family evacuated to a shelter in Anchorage, but returned to Kodiak Island when Old Harbor was rebuilt. Berntsen grew up living a subsistence life — “the greatest time of my life was being able to go out duck hunting, go out deer hunting,” he said — and he understands what the evacuees from Kipnuk, Kwigillingok and other damaged villages have left behind.
He has also long had an interest in preserving Alaska Native culture and languages. His ex-wife’s grandmother, Marie Smith Jones, was the last fluent speaker of Eyak, an indigenous language from south-central Alaska, when she died in 2008. His uncles had their hands slapped when they spoke their indigenous Alutiiq language at school.
As the evacuees arrived in Anchorage in the days after last month’s flooding, Berntsen greeted them at an arena where the Red Cross had set up a shelter. He invited families to enroll their children in the Yup’ik immersion program. Many of the parents showed him photos of the duck, goose, moose, seal or other traditional foods they had saved for the winter — stockpiles that washed away or spoiled in the flood.
“Listening is a big part of our culture — hearing their stories, letting them know that, ‘Hey, I live here in Anchorage, I’m running one of my schools, the Yup’ik immersion program, you guys are welcome at our school,’” Berntsen said. “Do everything we can to make them feel comfortable in the most uncomfortable situation that they’ve ever been through.”
Some 170 evacuated children have enrolled in the Anchorage School District — 71 of them in the Yup’ik immersion program. Once the smallest immersion program in the district, it’s now “booming,” said Brandon Locke, the district’s world language director.
At College Gate, pupils receive instruction in Yup’ik for half the day, including Yup’ik literacy and language as well as science and social studies. The other half is in English, which includes language arts and math classes.
Among the program’s new students is Ellyne Aliralria, a 10-year-old from Kipnuk. During the surge of floodwater the weekend of Oct. 11, she and her family were in a home that floated upriver. The high water also washed away her sister’s grave, she said.
Aliralria likes the immersion program and learning more phrases, even though the Yup’ik dialect being spoken is a bit different from the one she knows.
“I like to do all of them, but some of them are hard,” the fifth-grader said.
Also difficult is adjusting to living in a motel room in a city nearly 500 miles (800 km) from their village on the southwest coast.
“We’re homesick,” she said.
Lilly Loewen, 10, is one of many non-Yup’iks in the program. She said her parents wanted her to participate because “they thought it was really cool.”
“It is just really amazing to get to talk to people in another language other than just what I speak mostly at home,” Loewen said.
Berntsen is planning to help the new students acclimate by holding activities such as gym nights or Olympic-style events, featuring activities that mimic Alaska Native hunting and fishing techniques. One example: the seal hop, in which participants assume a plank position and shuffle across the floor to emulate how hunters sneak up on seals napping on the ice.
The Yup’ik immersion program is helping undo some of the damage Western culture did to Alaska Native language and traditions, he said. It’s also bridging the gap of two lost generations: In some cases, the children’s parents or grandparents never learned Yup’ik, but the students can now speak with their great-grandparents, Locke said.
“I took this as a great opportunity for us to give back some of what the trauma had taken from our Indigenous people,” Berntsen said.
I was finishing my PhD at Stanford—three kids, big dreams, too little sleep—and on the job market. As I was looking into the top management consulting firms, I discovered a jarring truth: they called people who brought in the business hunters, and those who did the work were called skinners. So, what did that make customers—prey?
I wanted to make money and do good work, but I didn’t want to hunt or skin anyone. So I started my own firm and vowed to be different. Then, like most of us, I forgot, until I didn’t. Then, I wrote a book, The Amare Wave, promoting kinder business language and started coaching executives in love-powered leadership.
Fast forward to 2025. There was a recent New York Times article about late-night hosts calling for less aggression in American discourse. When comedians are asking people to calm down, you know the world has gone too far.
Oftentimes, violent language shows up in business. There’s talk about battle plans, crushing competition, and capturing market share, as if running a company were a military campaign.
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Language that fuels domination also fuels fear and disconnection. As I wrote in my book, changing your language may be the easiest—and most powerful—entry point into love-powered leadership.
Leaders who choose kinder words
Sister Mary Jean Ryan, longtime CEO of SSM Health, a large Catholic healthcare system, banned violent metaphors entirely. “Target audiences” became “intended audiences.” PowerPoints had “information points,” not bullets. Her reason was that violent language is counter to their goal of creating healing environments.
Under her leadership, medical errors fell, patient satisfaction rose, and SSM became the first health system to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. When you change words, you change outcomes. Research backs this up. A Washington Poststudy found that when a CEO’s rhetoric was framed as “declaring war” on competitors, employees were more likely to rationalize unethical behavior. Those who heard neutral or cooperative language instead showed stronger ethical awareness and empathy.
This means leadership language isn’t just cosmetic—it’s culture in motion. How you talk shapes how you act. As a leader, when you choose words of care and service, you’re not just being nice. Instead, you’re protecting integrity, trust, and long-term success.
Ask yourself these self-reflective questions
Where do you hear—or use—violent or predatory language in your work?
How does that language shape your team’s attitude toward customers, colleagues, and competitors?
What might shift if your company spoke with words rooted in respect and love instead of fear and control?
5 small steps to eliminate violent business language
Notice the war talk. Start by paying attention. Every “attack plan” or “market conquest” is a clue that old habits are running the show. Track when and where warlike language is in place.
Reframe key phrases. Replace “crush the competition” with “out serve the competition.” Replace “target audience” with “intended audience.” Small shifts add up quickly.
Create a word watchlist. With your team, list the top 10 aggressive phrases you use and brainstorm Amare alternatives. Post it where everyone can see, such as in the breakroom or if remote, on Slack.
Model what you mean. Leaders go first. Use gentle language without losing clarity or conviction. You’ll set a new tone immediately.
Celebrate replacements. When someone swaps “attack plan” for “service strategy,” call it out and thank them. Kindness compounds through attention.
Team talk: Try this with your team
At your next meeting, read aloud a few lines from recent emails or strategy decks. Circle phrases that sound like war. Rewrite them together using language that uplifts, connects, and serves. Notice how the tone changes and how everyone feels.
Revolutionary change starts with the words you choose
The late theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Words create worlds.”So let’s create better ones—starting in our inboxes, meetings, and metrics. When you replace “attack” with “serve” or “crush” with “care,” you begin reshaping how your business feels from the inside out. That’s the beauty of language. It’s fast, free, and contagious.
A simple word change today can transform how people think, act, and relate tomorrow. May your words this week build bridges, spark hope, and remind everyone around you what business can really be: an act of love in motion.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
PARIS — A lifelong fan of “Tomb Raider,” French gamer Romain Bos was on tenterhooks when an update of the popular video game went online in August.
But his excitement quickly turned to anger.
The gamer’s ears — and those of other “Tomb Raider” fans — picked up something amiss with the French-language voice of Lara Croft, the game’s protagonist.
It sounded robotic, lifeless even — shorn of the warmth, grace and believability that French voice actor Françoise Cadol has given to Croft since she started playing the character in 1996.
Gamers and Cadol herself came to the same conclusion: A machine had cloned her voice and replaced her.
“It’s pathetic,” says Cadol, who straight away called her lawyer. “My voice belongs to me. You have no right to do that.”
“It was absolutely scandalous,” says Bos. “It was artificial intelligence.”
Aspyr, the game developer based in Austin, Texas, didn’t respond to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. But it acknowledged in a post last week on its website that what it described as “unauthorized AI generated content” had been incorporated into its Aug. 14 update of “Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered” that angered fans.
“We’ve addressed this issue by removing all AI voiceover content,” Aspyr’s post said. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Still, the affair has triggered alarms in the voiceover community, with campaigners saying it’s a sobering example of dangers that AI poses to human workers and their jobs.
“If we can replace actors, we’ll be able to replace accountants, and a whole range of other professions that could also be automated,” says Patrick Kuban, a French-language voice actor who is also a co-president of United Voice Artists, an international federation of voiceover artists.
“So we need to ask ourselves the right questions: How far should we go, and how do we regulate these machines?”
Hollywood has seen similar concerns, with video game performers striking for 11 months for a new contract this year that included AI guardrails.
“This is happening pretty much everywhere. We’re getting alerts from all over the world — from Brazil to Taiwan,” Kuban said in an Associated Press interview.
“Actors’ voices are being captured, either to create voice clones — not perfect ones — but for illicit use on social media by individuals, since there are now many apps for making audio deepfakes,” Kuban said.
“These voices are also being used by content producers who aren’t necessarily in the same country,” he said. “So it’s very difficult for actors to reclaim control over their voices, to block these uses.”
Cadol says that within minutes of the release of the “Tomb Raider” update, her phone began erupting with messages, emails and social media notifications from upset fans.
“I took a look and I saw all this emotion — anger, sadness, confusion. And that’s how I found out that my voice had been cloned,” she said in an AP interview.
Cadol says 12 years of recording French-language voiceovers for Lara Croft — from 1996 to 2008 — built an intimate bond with her fans. She calls them the “guardians” of her work.
Once the initial shock subsided, she resolved to fight back. Her Paris lawyer, Jonathan Elkaim, is seeking an apology from Aspyr and financial redress.
In the update, new chunks of voiceover appear to have been added to genuine recordings that Cadol says she made years ago.
Most notably, fans picked up on one particularly awkward segment. In it, a voice instructs players how to use their game controllers to make Lara Croft climb onto an obstacle, intoning in French: “Place toi devant et appuyez sur avancer” — Stand in front and press ‘advance.’
Not only does it sound clunky but it also rings as grammatically incorrect to French speakers — mixing up the polite and less polite forms of language that they use, depending on who they’re addressing.
Gamers were up in arms. Bos posted a video on his YouTube channel that same evening, lamenting: “It’s half Françoise Cadol, half AI. It’s horrible ! Why have they done that?”
“I was really disgusted,” the 34-year-old said in an AP interview. “I grew up with Françoise Cadol’s voice. I’ve been a ‘Tomb Raider’ fan since I was young kid.”
“Lara Croft is a bit — how should I say — a bit sarcastic at times in some of her lines. And I think Françoise played that very, very well,” he said.
“That’s exactly why now is the time to set boundaries,” he added. “It’s so that future generations also have the chance to experience talented actors.”
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly’s yearly meeting of world leaders is here — and with it, an array of acronyms, abbreviations, titles and terms. Here is some key vocabulary, decoded.
UNGA: Shorthand (often pronounced “UN’-gah”) for the U.N. General Assembly’s “High-level Week,” when presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and other top leaders of all 193 U.N. member countries are invited to speak to the world and each other. New Yorkers sometimes just use “General Assembly” to describe what many experience mainly as a week of street closures and whizzing motorcades, but the assembly isn’t just this meeting. It’s a body that discusses many global issues and votes on resolutions throughout the year.
GENERAL DEBATE: The centerpiece of the week, it gives each country’s leader (or a designee) the mic for a state-of-the-world speech. This year’s theme is “Better Together,” emphasizing unity, solidarity and working collectively. But speakers use their 15 minutes — or more, since the time limit is ”voluntary” — to opine on the planet’s biggest issues and hotspots, spotlight domestic accomplishments and needs, air grievances, and project statesmanship. While the “debate” is more a series of speeches than an interactive discussion, rebuttals are allowed at the end of each long day, and some embittered neighbor nations routinely go multiple rounds.
BILATERAL (or “bilat,” for short): Private meetings between high-ranking officials of two countries. Many UNGA veterans argue that the gathering’s real value lies in these tête-à-têtes and other personal, off-camera encounters among decision-makers.
MINISTERIAL: Applies to meetings of cabinet-level officials, such as foreign ministers, from different countries.
SECURITY COUNCIL: The U.N.’s most powerful component, charged with maintaining international peace and security. The 15-member council can enact binding (though sometimes ignored) resolutions, impose sanctions and deploy peacekeeping troops. While this week is the Assembly’s show, the council generally also holds a high-wattage meeting or two. This year features a session on artificial intelligence.
P5: The Security Council’s five permanent members with veto power. Under a structure set up in 1945, they are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
E10: The Security Council’s 10 elected, non-permanent members. The General Assembly elects them for two-year terms in seats allocated by region. Calls for council reform are an UNGA staple. One major complaint is the lack of permanent members from Africa and the Latin America-Caribbean region, though some other nations also have angled for years for a permanent presence.
G77: Stands for the “Group of 77 and China,” a developing-countries interest group that formed within the U.N. in 1964. Despite its name, it actually now has 134 members.
1.5 DEGREES: A crucial climate threshold. Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, countries agreed to work to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times. The earth already has warmed 1.3 degrees (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-1800s, according to the U.N.
SIDS: At the U.N., this stands for some 39 “small island developing states.” UNGA is an important platform for them to elevate concerns such as climate change and the existential threat they face from projections of rising seas and intensifying storms, often a painfully timely subject at a meeting that falls in the thick of the Atlantic hurricane season.
BRICS: A developing-economies coalition that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It has since added others, including Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. There are many international groups centered around regional, economic, defense or other ties, but BRICS has gotten attention as a growing venue for Chinese-Russian influence as those powers have increasingly tangled with the West.
NGO: “Non-governmental organization,” such as an advocacy group, charitable foundation or nonprofit relief organization.
LDCs: Very poor nations that are known at the U.N. as “ least-developed countries.” Forty-four nations currently meet the criteria, which include a gross national income of $1,088 or less per person per year.
IFIs: International financial institutions, including the so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which were established at a 1944 U.N. conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Critics see the Bretton Woods duo as sclerotic entities that have badly failed poor and developing countries. The institutions have defended their work while saying they are trying to evolve.
MULTILATERALISM: Global or near-global partnership that is united and collectively develops enduring rules and shared norms. The idea undergirds the U.N. itself, though many warn it’s under threat.
MULTIPOLAR: A scenario in which there are several different and sometimes competing centers of power, not a single superpower or two.
MULTISTAKEHOLDER: An approach to big projects and problem-solving that incorporates not only governments but businesses, NGOs and possibly others. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is a fan, seeing this concept as key to the future of world cooperation. But some progressive groups view it as a sell-out to big corporations and other powers that be.
TWO-STATE SOLUTION: A concept for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian nation living in peace alongside Israel. The framework was set down in the 1993 Oslo Accords and embraced by the U.N., but progress toward implementing it stalled long before the nearly two-year-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: Collaboration among countries, organizations and people in what’s known as the Global South — a term that refers to developing nations that are largely, though not exclusively, in the Southern Hemisphere. Its aims include amplifying their voice in their own development and in international affairs.
UNILATERAL COERCIVE MEASURES: A usually critical way of describing sanctions imposed by one country in hopes of spurring some action in another.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal and lifted a Los Angeles judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said federal law says “immigration officers ‘may briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’ if they have ‘a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States’.”
“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” he said.
The three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote.
Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s assertions.
“Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”
The decision is a significant victory for President Trump, clearing the way for his oft-promised “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in American history.
Beginning in early June, Trump’s appointees targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeps that ensnared longtime residents, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens.
A coalition of civil rights groups and local attorneys challenged the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens caught up in the chaotic arrests, claiming they’d been grabbed without reasonable suspicion — a violation of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination.
The case remains in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Department of Justice argued even a brief limit on mass arrests constituted a “irreparable injury” to the government.
A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to set aside Frimpong’s order. They said agents should be allowed to act on the assumption that Spanish-speaking Latinos who work as day laborers, at car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.
“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal. Agents can consider “the totality of the circumstances” when making stops, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the Central District [of California], where 1 in every 10 people is an illegal alien.”
Both sides said the region’s diverse demographics support their view of the law. In an application to join the suit, Los Angeles and 20 other Southern California municipalities argued that “half the population of the Central District” now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion.
Roughly 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by the order, and almost as many speak a language other than English at home.
Sauer also questioned whether the plaintiffs who sued had standing because they were not likely to be arrested again.
That argument was the subject of sharp and extended questioning in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ultimately rejected it.
“Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location,” the panel wrote in its July 28 opinion denying the stay.
One plaintiff was stopped twice in the span of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat,” that he or any of the others could be stopped again, the 9th Circuit said.
Days after that decision, heavily armed Border Patrol agents sprang from the back of a Penske moving truck, snatching workers from the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot in apparent defiance of the courts.
Immigrants rights advocates had urged the justices not to intervene.
“The raids have followed an unconstitutional pattern that officials have vowed to continue,” they said. Ruling for Trump would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
The judge’s order had applied in an area that included Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
Savage reported from Washington, Sharp from Los Angeles.
Marc Pierrat’s mind once ran as smoothly as the gears on his endurance bike. He was a mechanical engineer by training and a marathoner for fun, a guy who maintained complicated systems at work and a meticulously organized garage at his Westlake Village home.
Three years after his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, Marc’s thoughts are a jumble he can’t sort out alone. Once-routine tasks are now incomprehensible; memories swirl and slip away. His wife, Julia Pierrat, 58, shepherds Marc, 59, through meals and naptime, ensures he is clean and comfortable, gently offers names and words he can’t find himself.
It is often impossible for a person to talk about the internal experience of living with FTD, either because they can’t accurately assess their internal state or don’t have the language to describe it. In many cases the disease attacks the brain’s language centers directly. In others, a common symptom is loss of insight, meaning the ability to recognize that anything is wrong.
But minds can unwind in a million different ways. In Marc’s case, the disease has taken a path that for now has preserved his ability to talk about life with what one doctor called “the most difficult of all neurologic diseases.”
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Thousands of people in the U.S. live with FTD. Marc can speak for only one of them, and at times he does so with clarity that breaks his wife’s heart. Occasionally Julia records snippets of conversation with his permission, mementos from a stage of marriage they never saw coming.
“It feels like walking into a closet you haven’t been in in a while, and you’re looking for something that you know is there, but you don’t know where,” Marc said recently, as Julia looked on.
“And then, you know, you just — yeah. You just give up,” he concluded. “It’s the giving up part that’s hard.”
Marc takes a selfie with his wife, Julia before Marc was diagnosed with FTD.
(Pierrat family)
Do you know the name of the disease that you’re living with?
Yes.
What is it called?
Frontotemporal dementia.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
FTD, for short.
How does it affect you?
Well, I guess, processing of inputs tend to, in a normal mind — they get processed efficiently to a decision. Like, if you’re going to catch a ball, you know, you have the ball in the air, [and] you have to raise your arm and your glove, and you catch the ball. And FTD interferes with all of that. So it makes it harder to catch the ball.
More than 6 million people in the U.S. currently live with dementia, an umbrella term for conditions affecting memory, language and other cognitive functions.
Up to 90% of dementia cases are caused by Alzheimer’s disease, the progressive memory disorder, or by strokes and other vascular problems that disrupt blood flow to the brain. The rest arise from a variety of lesser-known but equally devastating conditions. Frontotemporal dementia is one of them.
After putting Marc in bed for an afternoon nap, Julia spends a quiet moment in the kitchen of their home in Westlake.
In FTD, abnormal proteins accumulate in the brain’s frontal or temporal lobes, damaging and eventually destroying those neurons. It’s frequently misdiagnosed, and so the number of current U.S. cases is hard to pin down — estimates place it between 50,000 and 250,000 people.
By far the best-known person living with FTD is the actor Bruce Willis, whose family disclosed his diagnosis in 2023.
Willis has primary progressive aphasia, the second-most common form. In his case, the most damaged tissues are in his brain’s left frontal or left temporal lobes, which play crucial roles in processing and forming language. One of his first noticeable symptoms was a stutter, his wife Emma Heming Willis has said in interviews; he now has minimal language ability.
But FTD is highly heterogeneous, meaning that symptoms vary widely, and it has affected Marc and Willis in very different ways.
The disease has several subtypes based on where the degeneration begins its advance through the brain.
Marc Pierrat dances with activity counselor Rhoda Nino who leads a class at Infinity Adult Day Health Care Center in Westlake Village.
Pierrat has the most common subtype, behavioral variant FTD. His disease has targeted his frontal lobes, which manage social behavior, emotional regulation, impulse control, planning and working memory — essentially, everything a person needs to relate to others.
FTD typically presents between the ages of 45 and 60. Because it shows up so much earlier than other dementias, its initial symptoms are often mistaken for other conditions: depression, perimenopause, Parkinson’s disease, psychosis.
Everything we think and do and say to one another depends on very specific physical locations in our brains functioning correctly. Behavioral variant FTD strikes right at the places that house our personalities.
When an eloquent person suddenly can’t form sentences, it’s typically seen as a medical problem. But when an empathetic person suddenly withholds affection, it’s perceived as an act of unkindness. The truth is that both can be the product of physical deterioration in a previously healthy brain.
If you were to describe to another person what it’s like to live with FTD, how would you describe it?
Oh my God. . . . Well, you can’t assess situations accurately. You see a train coming, and it’s gonna smash into your car, and you’d be, like, ‘Oh. Huh. That train’s gonna hit my car.’ And there’s nothing you can do.
The first sign came in late 2018. Marc, then 52, was in a fender-bender a few blocks from home and called Julia for a ride. When she arrived, he was not just surprised to see her, but angry. Why was she there? Who’d asked her to come?
She was taken aback by his forgetfulness, and more so by his hostility. Marc could be stubborn and confrontational; over the decades, they’d argued as much as any couple. But this outburst was out of character. She chalked it up to nerves.
Marc was a respected project manager in the pharmaceutical industry. He spent weekends on home improvement projects or immersed in his many hobbies: hiking, woodworking, 100-mile bike races.
Marc, Julia (right), and their daughter take a selfie on the Golden Gate Bridge during a bike ride.
(Pierrat family)
Julia was a business manager with Dole Packaged Foods. Their daughter was pursuing a doctorate at UCLA. The couple enjoyed life as empty nesters with shared passions for road trips and camping.
For a year or two after the accident, nothing happened that couldn’t be dismissed as a normal midlife memory lapse or a cranky mood. But by late 2020, something had undeniably changed. The harsh parts of Marc’s personality ballooned to bizarre proportions, smothering his kindness, generosity and curiosity.
He lost a phone charger and accused Julia’s mother of stealing it. He misplaced his binoculars and swore his sister took them. The neighbors asked the Pierrats to trim their gum trees and Marc flew into a rage, ranting about a supposed plot to spy on them.
His work performance and exercise habits appeared unaffected, which only made his outbursts more confusing — and infuriating — to Julia.
“At the beginning of the disease nobody knew he had any issue, other than he seemed like a total jerk,” she recalled.
The Pierrats did not know they were at the start of a chaotic period distinct to sufferers of FTD’s behavioral variant.
Julia laughs as Marc he squeezes by on a narrow bridge at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
“Everything that can affect relationships is at the center of the presentation of the behavioral variant,” said Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center. “The first instinct of a spouse or a child or a human resource program or a psychiatrist [is to] assume a psychiatric problem.”
People with the condition start to lash out at loved ones or lose interest in lifelong relationships. They may snarl at strangers or shoplift at the mall. They consume food or alcohol obsessively, touch people inappropriately or squander the family’s savings on weird purchases.
And at first, just like in the Pierrats’ case, nobody understands why.
“When someone is not who they were, think neurology before psychology,” said Sharon Hall, whose husband Rod — a devoted spouse who delighted in planning romantic surprises — was diagnosed in 2015 after he started drinking heavily and sending explicit texts to other women.
At Julia’s insistence Marc visited his doctor in July 2021, who referred him to a neurologist. He would spend the next year making his way through a battery of appointments, scans and cognitive testing.
In the meantime, his life disintegrated.
Marc and Julia with their family dogs prior to his diagnosis with FTD.
(Pierrat family)
Just a few years earlier, bosses and colleagues praised Marc as a superlative manager. In January 2022 he was put on notice for a host of causes: combative emails, obnoxious behavior, failures of organization.
At home he botched routine fix-it jobs, missed crucial appointments and got lost on familiar routes. He stopped showering and called Julia appalling names. She went to therapy and contemplated divorce.
Finally, on July 18, 2022, the couple sat across from a neurologist who delivered the diagnosis with all the delicacy of an uppercut.
There was no cure, he told them, and few treatment options. He handed them a pamphlet. Marc showed no emotion.
In the car Julia sobbed inconsolably as Marc sat silent in the passenger seat. Eventually she caught her breath and pulled out from the parking lot.
Do you like being married?
Yes, I do.
Why?
It makes me a better person.
That’s so sweet. How do you think it makes you a better person?
Being able to talk to you and, you know, resolve through different problems together. I mean, it’s good to have an extra mind.
They left the neurologist with nothing: no instructions, no care plan, not even the stupid pamphlet, which was about memory problems in general. “It was diagnose and adios,” Julia said. “I hit the internet immediately.”
Julia now had three different roles: her paid job, Marc’s 24-hour care, and a part-time occupation finding support, services and answers.
Marc tries to figure out what he would like for lunch as Julia offers suggestions at the Joi Cafe in Westlake.
She insisted Marc fill the neurologist’s prescription for an anti-anxiety medication that diminished his irritability and agitation without zonking him out.
She found an eldercare attorney, and together she and Marc organized their legal and financial affairs while he was still well enough to understand what he was signing. Through Facebook she found her most valuable lifeline, a twice-weekly Zoom support group for caregivers.
She went on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of studies run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and FTDregistry.org, which lists trials specific to the disease, and signed the two of them up for every study they qualified for.
Marc was accepted into AllFTD, a longitudinal study that is the largest ever conducted for this disease. The couple travels yearly to the University of Pennsylvania’s FTD Center for tests that track changes in his symptoms and biomarkers, with the goal of contributing to future therapies and preventive treatments.
Marc paints a bird house during an art class at Infinity Adult Day Health Care Center in Westlake Village.
She found the website of the nonprofit Assn. for Frontotemporal Degeneration. Eventually she became a volunteer AFTD ambassador, speaking and advocating for families affected by the disease. In August, she posed for a group photograph at the state capitol with Emma Heming Willis and other FTD advocates who traveled to Sacramento to meet with state lawmakers.
All of it is a way of finding purpose in pain. FTD has dulled Marc’s emotional reactions, leaving Julia to carry the full weight of their grief.
“He grasps the impact, but somehow the emotion is buffered,” she said. “I lose it sometimes. I cry my eyes out, for sure. I feel the full emotional impact of it, in slow motion. . . . There’s no blunting it for me.”
Julia helps Marc up from a couch on the back patio of their home in Westlake.
These days the Pierrats rise around 6 a.m., eat the breakfast Julia prepares, and then Marc takes his first nap of the day (fatigue is a common FTD symptom). When he wakes around 9 a.m. Julia makes sure he uses the bathroom, and then drives him to a nearby adult daycare program where he does crafts and games until lunch. He sleeps for another few hours at home, spends two hours in the afternoon with a paid caregiver so that Julia can do errands or exercise, and then the couple eats dinner together before Marc beds down by 8 p.m.
When they are awake together, they go for walks around the neighborhood or to familiar cafes or parks. The hostility of the early disease has passed. They speak tenderly to one another.
At each sleep, Julia walks him upstairs to the bedroom they used to share. She tucks him in and gives him a kiss. At night she retires to a downstairs guestroom, because if they share a bed Marc will pat her constantly throughout the night to make sure she’s still there.
My clock’s ticking. I could die any day.
Do you feel like you’re going to die any day? Or do you feel healthy?
I feel kind of healthy, but I’m still worried. Because I have something that I can’t control inside of me.
About two years ago, Julia and Marc were on one of their daily walks when she realized they had already had their last conversation as the couple they once were, with both of them in full possession of their faculties. In one crucial sense, Marc was already gone.
Julia makes sure Marc is comfortable for his afternoon nap at their home in Westlake.
But in other ways, their connection remains.
“The love that we have is still completely there,” she said recently in the couple’s backyard, while Marc napped upstairs.
“When you’re married to someone and you’ve been with someone for so long, you almost have your own language between you. He and I still have that.”
She looked out over the potted succulents and winding stone pathways they had spent so many weekends tending together.
“A lot of our relationship is preserved in spite of it, which is just so interesting, [and] also makes it more heartbreaking,” she continued. “Because you know that if the disease plays out like it is expected to, you will just continue to slowly lose pieces.”
The average life expectancy for people with Marc’s type of FTD is five to seven years after diagnosis. Some go much sooner, and others live several years longer.
At the moment, all FTD variants lead to a similar end. Cognition and memory decline until language and self-care are no longer possible. The brain’s ability to regulate bodily functions, like swallowing and continence, erodes. Immobility sets in, and eventually, the heart beats for the last time.
But until then, people keep living. They find reasons to keep going and ways to love one another. The Pierrats do, anyway.
Marc and Julia visit horses at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
On a recent morning, the couple strolled through a nearby equestrian school where their daughter once took lessons. Julia brought a baggie of rainbow carrot coins she’d sliced at home. She showed Marc how to feed the horses, as she does at every visit.
“Hold your hand completely flat, like I’m doing,” she said gently.
“I don’t want to lose a finger,” Marc said as a chestnut horse nuzzled his palm.
“You’re not going to lose a finger,” Julia assured him. “I won’t let that happen to you.”
Marc and Julia walk hand-in-hand after visiting horses at the Foxfield Riding School in Lake Sherwood.
If you are concerned about a loved one with dementia or need support after a diagnosis, contact the Assn. for Frontotemporal Dementia helpline at theaftd.org/aftd-helpline or (866) 507-7222 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
ENTERPRISE, Ala. — The transition from the bustling Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to a small Alabama city on the southernmost tip of the Appalachian mountain range was challenging for Sarah Jacques.
But, over the course of a year, the 22-year-old got used to the quiet and settled in. Jacques got a job at a manufacturing plant that makes car seats, found a Creole-language church and came to appreciate the ease and security of life in Albertville after the political turmoil and violence that’s plagued her home country.
Recently, though, as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate began promoting debunked misinformation about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, causing crime and “eating pets,” Jacques said there have been new, unforeseen challenges.
“When I first got here, people would wave at us, say hello to us, but now it’s not the same,” Jacques said in Creole through a translator. “When people see you, they kind of look at you like they’re very quiet with you or afraid of you.”
Amid this mounting tension, a bipartisan group of local religious leaders, law enforcement officials and residents across Alabama see the fallout in Springfield as a cautionary tale — and have been taking steps to help integrate the state’s Haitian population in the small cities where they live.
As political turmoil and violence intensify in Haiti, Haitian migrants have embraced a program established by President Joe Biden in 2023 that allows the U.S. to accept up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years and offers work authorization. The Biden administration recently announced the program could allow an estimated 300,000 Haitians to remain in the U.S. at least through February 2026.
In 2023, there were 2,370 people of Haitian ancestry in Alabama, according to census data. There is no official count of the increase in the Haitian population in Alabama since the program was implemented.
The immigration debate is not new to Albertville, where migrant populations have been growing for three decades, said Robin Lathan, executive assistant to the Albertville mayor. Lathan said the city doesn’t track how many Haitians have moved to the city in recent years but said “it seems there has been an increase over the last year, in particular.”
A representative from Albertville’s school system said that, in the last school year, 34% of the district’s 5,800 students were learning English as a second language — compared to only 17% in 2017.
In August, weeks before Springfield made national headlines, a Facebook post of men getting off a bus to work at a poultry plant led some residents to speculate that the plant was hiring people living in the country illegally.
Representatives for the poultry plant said in an email to The Associated Press that all its employees are legally allowed to work in the U.S.
The uproar culminated in a public meeting where some residents sought clarity about the federal program that allowed Haitians to work in Alabama legally, while others called for landlords to “cut off the housing” for Haitians and suggested that the migrants have a “smell to them,” according to audio recordings.
To Unique Dunson, a 27-year-old lifelong Albertville resident and community activist, these sentiments felt familiar.
“Every time Albertville gets a new influx of people who are not white, there seems to be a problem,” Dunson said.
Dunson runs a store offering free supplies to the community. After tensions boiled over across the country, she put up multiple billboards across town that read, in English, Spanish and Creole, “welcome neighbor glad you came.”
Dunston said the billboards are a way to “push back” against the notion that migrants are unwelcome.
When Pastor John Pierre-Charles first arrived in Albertville in 2006, he said the only other Haitians he knew in the area were his family members.
In 14 years of operation, the congregation at his Creole-language church, Eglise Porte Etroite, has gone from just seven members in 2010 to approximately 300 congregants. He is now annexing classrooms to the church building for English language classes and drivers’ education classes, as well as a podcast studio to accommodate the burgeoning community.
Still, Pierre-Charles describes the last months as “the worst period” for the Haitian community in all his time in Albertville.
“I can see some people in Albertville who are really scared right now because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Pierre-Charles. “Some are scared because they think they may be sent back to Haiti. But some of them are scared because they don’t know how people are going to react to them.”
After the fallout from the initial public meetings in August, Pierre-Charles sent a letter to city leadership calling for more resources for housing and food to ensure his growing community could safely acclimate, both economically and culturally.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, to be a bridge,” said Pierre-Charles.
He is not working alone.
In August, Gerilynn Hanson, 54, helped organize the initial meetings in Albertville because she said many residents had legitimate questions about how migration was affecting the city.
Now, Hanson said she is adjusting her strategy, “focusing on the human level.”
In September, Hanson, an electrical contractor and Trump supporter, formed a nonprofit with Pierre-Charles and other Haitian community leaders to offer more stable housing and English language classes to meet the growing demand.
“We can look at (Springfield) and become them in a year,” Hanson said, referring to the animosity that’s taken hold in the Ohio city, which has been inundated with threats. “We can sit back and do nothing and let it unfold under our eyes. Or we can try to counteract some of that and make it to where everyone is productive and can speak to each other.”
Similar debates have proliferated in public meetings across the state — even in places where Haitian residents make up less than 0.5% of the entire population.
In Sylacauga, videos from numerous public meetings show residents questioning the impact of the alleged rise in Haitian migrants. Officials said there are only 60 Haitian migrants in the town of about 12,000 people southeast of Birmingham.
In Enterprise, not far from the Alabama-Florida border, cars packed the parking lot of Open Door Baptist Church in September for an event that promised answers about how the growing Haitian population was affecting the city.
After the event, James Wright, the chief of the Ma-Chis Lower Creek Indian Tribe, was sympathetic to the reasons Haitians were fleeing their home but said he worried migrants would affect Enterprise’s local “political culture” and “community values.”
Other attendees echoed fears and misinformation about Haitian migrants being “lawless” and “dangerous.”
But some came to try to ease mounting anxieties about the migrant community.
Enterprise police Chief Michael Moore said he shared statistics from his department that show no measurable increase in crimes as the Haitian population has grown.
“I think there was quite a few people there that were more concerned about the fearmongering than the migrants,” Moore told the AP.
Moore said his department had received reports of Haitian migrants living in houses that violated city code, but when he reached out to the people in question, the issues were quickly resolved. Since then, his department hasn’t heard any credible complaints about crimes caused by migrants.
“I completely understand that some people don’t like what I say because it doesn’t fit their own personal thought process,” said Moore. “But those are the facts.”
___
Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
MIAMI, Okla. — Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes grew up playing video games, including “probably hundreds of hours” colonizing a distant planet in the 1999 title Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
So when that same game studio, Firaxis, approached the tribal nation a quarter-century later with a proposal to make a playable character out of their famous leader Tecumseh in the upcoming game Civilization 7, Barnes felt a rush of excitement.
“I was like, ‘This can’t be true,’” Barnes said. “Do they want us to participate in the next version of Civilization?”
Beloved by tens of millions of gamers since its 1991 debut, Meier’s Civilization series sparked a new genre of empire-building games that simulated the real world while also diverging into imaginary twists. It has captivated nerdy fans like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and a young Barnes with its intricate and addictive gameplay and rich historical context.
Choosing among leaders that can range from Cleopatra to Mahatma Gandhi, players build a civilization from its first settlement to a sprawling network of cities, negotiate with or conquer neighbors, and develop trade, science, religion and the arts. Circana, which tracks U.S. game sales, says it’s the bestselling strategy video game franchise of all time.
But things have changed since the early days of Civilization. Of course, video game technology has advanced, but so too has society’s understanding of cultural appropriation and the importance of accurate historical framing.
Firaxis dropped plans to add a historical Pueblo leader in 2010 after tribal leaders objected. The game incorporated a Cree leader in 2018 but faced public criticism in Canada after its release.
Developers knew that to properly represent the Shawnee leader, they would need the input and blessing of the Shawnee people.
For Barnes, it was an opportunity to not only showcase the power and might of the Shawnee but also a way for tribal citizens to see themselves represented in popular culture in a new, imagined future for the tribe.
“For us, it’s really about a cultural expression of cultural hegemony,” Barnes said. “Why not us? Why not? Of course we should be in a video game title. Of course we should see ourselves reflected in every media. So we took advantage of the opportunity to make our star shine.”
For designers at Firaxis, the partnership represented a chance to improve a game development system that has been criticized by Indigenous leaders for misrepresenting their cultures, and for the Shawnee, it was a way to promote their language and history in a new way.
In interviews with The Associated Press, series founder Meier and other studio executives acknowledged past missteps in the Civilization franchise’s casual treatment of history, including how it incorporated Indigenous groups and colonization more broadly.
That led to careful thought and months of collaboration to “make sure it’s an authentic, sincere recreation” of Shawnee culture, said game producer Andrew Frederiksen, speaking on a September visit to the tribe’s headquarters. That meant asking the Shawnee questions about what a Shawnee university or library building of the future would look like and creating new Shawnee words to describe futuristic concepts.
Meier, who started developing computer games in the 1980s, said the Shawnee partnership is “kind of special” and was borne out of meetings with Barnes where the chief talked about the challenges of preserving the Shawnee language. As part of the partnership, Firaxis and its publishing label 2K Games — subsidiary of gaming giant Take-Two Interactive — are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in language revitalization programs and facilities.
When Shawnee actor Dean Dillon auditioned for a part that involved speaking the Shawnee language, he didn’t know he’d be voicing Tecumseh. The military and political leader from what is currently Ohio united a confederation of Native American tribes to resist U.S. westward expansion in the early 19th century.
“I just gave it my best shot,” Dillon said. “And then a few weeks later, I heard back and they said, ‘We’d like to offer you the role of Tecumseh.’ And my head exploded and I ran around the house yelling, ‘My gosh! My gosh!’”
“It was surreal, to say the least, to see Tecumseh’s face but to hear my voice come out of that,” Dillon said.
While the franchise has always had Indigenous leaders, starting with Montezuma of the Aztecs in the original 1991 game, Meier said game developers at the time were looking for familiar figures without much thought into the weight of history. Playable characters in that game included Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, whose totalitarian regimes were still in many people’s memory.
“We never realized people would take it as seriously as they do,” Meier said. “We always kind of felt, ‘Here’s a way that you can change history.’ Maybe we can make Stalin a good guy. But that might have been stretching things a little too far.”
“We learned a lot as time went on,” he added. The seventh edition, due out in February, will for the first time do away with barbarians — or at least no longer use that term for hostile characters that are not part of a playable civilization. Players can instead create diplomatic relations with them.
And as the game’s audience expanded beyond the U.S. and Europe, with more than 70 million games sold worldwide, so too did players want their societies or heritage reflected. More recent editions include themed music and spoken languages from dozens of playable civilizations, from the Māori people of New Zealand to the Mapuche of South America.
“It is now a badge of honor for a nation to be included in Civilization,” Meier said. “We’ve been lobbied by different countries, et cetera.”
That’s not to say everyone has been happy about their inclusion in a game centered around settling land and exploiting resources. Civilization is one of the pioneers of the genre known as 4X — for “explore, expand, exploit and exterminate.”
After the franchise added a 19th-century Cree leader to its gameplay in 2018, a prominent Cree leader complained to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that it “perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land. That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and worldview.”
One of the game’s two resident historians, Andrew Johnson, said the studio wanted to make Tecumseh a playable leader, but after reaching out to some academics, “we were told repeatedly, ‘No, this is a really bad idea, and nobody’s going to sign off on this.’”
So Johnson suggested reaching out to Shawnee leaders directly to ask what they think, and how it could help them.
“I think so often you get people assuming that representation in Civ is a reward of some sort. It’s not,” said Johnson, who’s also an anthropologist who studies Southeast Asia. “This is a company and we’re selling a product and we’re using an image and likeness to make a profit. And getting your ‘civ’ in Civilization doesn’t really help you very much if you’re struggling to preserve your culture.”
The game studio and the tribal nation decided on a partnership that would help the Shawnee people preserve and expand some of that culture, particularly language. Chief Barnes said the tribe was in dire need of resources for language education, and creating dialogue for a Shawnee civilization of the future was another way to help revitalize their language.
“Firaxis was asking questions about language we never would have thought to ask,” Barnes said in September at the opening of a new language education center in northeastern Oklahoma.
Barnes hasn’t had a chance to play the new version of the game yet, but he is already imaging the future he can build virtually, as well as how doing so will inspire other Shawnee gamers. “What I do know is that with the efforts we’re making here today, I expect Shawnee to be spoken in 2500.”
NEW YORK, August 26, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– Climate Cardinals, one of the world’s largest youth-led climate organizations, has appointed Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa as its first full-time Executive Director. Hayakawa is a founding director of the organization, which strives to expand access to climate education globally.
Hayakawa is a 23 year-old Guyanese and Japanese American climate justice activist from the New York Metropolitan Area. He has been with Climate Cardinals for four years, starting as a founding Partnerships Director in 2020 before taking on the role of Vice President and Deputy Executive Director in 2023. During his tenure, he established Climate Cardinals’ translation program, secured 30 partnerships, including with Translators Without Borders and Google Cloud, and managed over two million words of climate information translations. He also fundraised half a million USD and mentored 30 Directors.
Hayakawa led all of this work as a full-time student at Williams College and a visiting student at Exeter College at the University of Oxford, where he studied History and Environmental Studies with a focus on the global Indigenous rights movement.
In response to this announcement, Climate Cardinals Founder Sophia Kianni shared, “I’m excited to welcome Hikaru as our first full-time Executive Director. For those of you who know our work, this is not a surprise. I have consulted Hikaru as part of my decision-making processes since the beginning of Climate Cardinals, when he joined my founding team.”
Kianni is the founder of Climate Cardinals and was its first Executive Director, volunteering in this role since the organization’s formation in May 2020. Climate Cardinals was born out of Kianni’s realization that there is a lack of valuable climate information, especially scientific research, available in languages other than English. Kianni will remain President of Climate Cardinals.
“I’m excited to lead this organization in our aim to become one of the first youth-led and justice-focused environmental legacy organizations,” said Hayakawa.
Since 2020, Climate Cardinals has been a trailblazer in expanding climate accessibility, translating over three million words of climate information into 105 languages for organizations like Yale, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Over the past few years, Hayakawa has defined Climate Cardinals’ impact, and with his transition to this full-time role, he is set to accelerate the organization’s growth.
Learn how to identify the many types of lying and deception, including overt forms like outright fabrications and gaslighting, to subtle forms like white lies and lying by omission.
Lying is not always as clear-cut as telling a blatant falsehood. It can take many different forms, from subtle omissions to outright fabrications, each hurting our ability to understand reality, communicate effectively, and build honest relationships.
Some people try to justify certain forms of lying by claiming they didn’t technically say anything wrong, but knowing they were engaging in deception by not mentioning a key fact or framing an event in a misleading way.
This is why it’s important to recognize the many forms of deception and dishonesty. It allows us to better spot lying in our daily lives at home, work, or in the news, while also making us more honest communicators by avoiding these conveniently deceptive tactics.
Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of the many types of lying so that you can better recognize them in the future. Which do you have a hard time spotting? Which do you sometimes engage in yourself?
1. Falsehood
The most straightforward type of lying is the falsehood, where someone knowingly presents information that is entirely untrue. Falsehoods are blatant lies meant to deceive the listener by fabricating facts, events, or circumstances. “2 + 2 = 5” is a lie, no matter who says it or what day of the week it is. This form of lying is often the easiest to identify, especially when you have clear evidence that disproves it. This is what typically comes to mind when we think of a “lie.”
Example: Claiming you were at work all day when, in reality, you took the day off.
2. Lying by Omission
Lying by omission involves leaving out critical information that changes the nature of the fact. While the information provided may be true, the omission of key details results in a misleading impression. This type of lying is subtle and can be particularly insidious, as it allows the liar to maintain a facade of honesty, they may even claim they just “forgot” that one fact or didn’t think it was important to mention, knowing full well it changes the nature of their story.
Example: Telling a partner, “I went out with some friends last night,” but leaving out that you also met up with an ex during the outing.
3. Out-of-Context Lying
Out-of-context lying happens when someone presents an isolated truthful statement or quote in a way that strips it of its original meaning or intention. By removing context, the speaker can still be “technically” correct while deceiving the listener. This type of lie is frequently used in media, politics, and interpersonal conflicts to distort the truth while avoiding outright falsehoods.
Example: Quoting someone as saying, “I don’t care,” without mentioning that they were referring to a trivial matter rather than something important.
4. Starting the Story in the Middle
This type of lying involves telling a story or recounting an event but beginning at a point that omits important prior details. By starting in the middle, the liar can shift blame, change the narrative, or make themselves appear more favorable. This creates a skewed version of events that misleads the listener into forming a biased conclusion. This form of lying is particularly effective where the full story can’t be known until you get both sides’ perspectives.
Example: Describing an argument with a friend but starting with the moment they shouted at you, without mentioning that you had insulted them first.
5. Dishonest Framing
Dishonest framing involves presenting a story or situation from a deliberately biased or one-sided perspective, often emphasizing certain details or using dramatic language. This tactic is used to guide the audience toward a particular interpretation, typically one that benefits the person doing the framing. In many cases, individuals cast themselves into roles like “victim,” “savior,” or “persecutor” (see the drama triangle framework) to manipulate how others see them.
Example: After being criticized by a coworker for missing a deadline, you recount the incident to others by saying, “I’m being unfairly targeted at work for no reason,” without mentioning that you had repeatedly ignored reminders about the approaching deadline.
6. White Lies
White lies are minor, often well-intentioned, lies told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or to prevent minor inconveniences. These lies are typically considered harmless, like telling a friend, “I like your band,” even when their music isn’t to your taste. However, while white lies may seem innocuous, they can accumulate over time, leading to bigger issues such as a pattern of dishonesty or a gradual erosion of trust. To avoid white lies, try shifting the focus to something you genuinely appreciate about the person. For example, instead of saying, “I don’t like that outfit,” you might say, “I prefer this outfit of yours.”
Example: Telling a friend you love their new outfit when you think it’s not flattering, just to spare their feelings.
7. Silence
Silence can be a form of lying when someone withholds information or refuses to speak up on important matters, especially when they know that their silence will lead others to a false conclusion. Like lying by omission, silence can be used to manipulate a situation without saying anything outright false.
Example: Knowing that a coworker is being falsely accused of a mistake but choosing not to speak up to correct the record.
8. Exaggeration
Exaggeration involves inflating or overstating the truth to make it seem more significant or severe than it really is. Common forms of exaggerated thinking include overgeneralizing (“this always happens to me!”), catastrophizing (“this is the worst thing ever!”), and jumping-to-conclusions (“I’m always right!”). Exaggeration often serves as a way to evoke sympathy, justify actions, or amplify the importance of a situation to gain attention.
Example: Saying you “had the worst day of your life” because you spilled mustard on your shirt, when in reality, it was a minor inconvenience.
9. Minimization
Minimization is the opposite of exaggeration; it involves downplaying the significance or impact of a fact, making it seem less important or harmful than it actually is. This tactic is often used to avoid responsibility, diffuse conflict, or lessen the perceived severity of an issue. By quickly glossing over key details or understating the consequences, the person minimizes the importance of the situation.
Example: Describing a car accident that resulted in significant damage as “just a little fender bender” to avoid admitting the seriousness of the incident.
10. Ambiguity
Ambiguity involves the use of vague or unclear language to avoid giving a direct answer or fully addressing the truth. This technique often includes sidestepping the main issue, providing incomplete information, or being purposefully elusive. Ambiguity allows the person to create a sense of uncertainty or misinterpretation, which they can later exploit by claiming they weren’t lying but were simply misunderstood.
Example: When asked if you completed a task, you respond with, “I’ve made some progress,” leaving the impression that you’re almost done when, in reality, you’ve barely started.
11. Misleading Statistics
People can lie with statistics too. Misleading statistics occur when data is manipulated or presented in a way that distorts the truth. This can involve cherry-picking data, using biased samples, or presenting figures without the necessary context to understand them accurately. The goal is to deceive the audience into drawing false conclusions based on the manipulated numbers.
Example: Reporting that “90% of users love our product,” without mentioning that only 10 people were surveyed.
12. Fabrication
Fabrication involves creating entirely false information, events, or details that never happened. This is similar to falsehood but often involves more elaborate story-telling and imagination. Fabrication is common among individuals who seek to impress, manipulate, or deceive others for personal gain or attention, including pathological liars who get a thrill by making up bigger and bigger lies.
Example: Inventing a fictional story about heroically stopping a robbery to impress someone on a first date.
13. Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic where the liar attempts to make the victim doubt their own perceptions, memory, or sanity. This is done by consistently denying reality (“You’re just imagining things”), distorting the truth (“It didn’t happen that way”), and making the victim question their own experiences (“You’re insane” or “You’re the real liar”). Gaslighting is often part of a broader pattern of abuse and manipulation, and it can involve complex webs of lies designed to control and disorient the victim.
Example: Telling someone they’re “overreacting” or “remembering things wrong” when they confront you about an event that just happened.
Conclusion
As you can see, lying and dishonesty can take many different forms. By recognizing these various types of lying and the subtle ways in which the truth can be manipulated and distorted, we can better identify these tactics in our daily interactions — both as a speaker and a listener.
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LONDON — The gorilla and other animals that appeared to have escaped from the London Zoo in Banksy ‘s most recent work have been taken into safekeeping.
The zoo said it removed the elusive street artist’s mural on its gate Friday evening to preserve it and return its entrance to full operation after mobs of visitors came to see it over five days last week.
It was covered with a reproduction of the work and a sign using British slang that said: “Banksy woz ere.”
“We’re thrilled by the joy this artwork has already brought to so many, but primarily, we’re incredibly grateful to Banksy, for putting wildlife in the spotlight,” Kathryn England, the zoo’s chief operating officer, said on its website. “This has become a significant moment in our history that we’re keen to properly preserve.”
The work spraypainted with a stencil showed an ape holding up part of the roll-down gate, allowing birds to fly off and a sea lion to waddle away as three sets of eyes peered out from the darkness inside.
It was the final animal-themed work by the artist to pop up over nine consecutive days around London. And it’s the most recent one to disappear from public view.
The meaning of works by the artist known for making political statements has been widely debated online. The zoo said its mural had sparked thought-provoking conversations from people ranging from a 5-year-old to Banksy buffs. Some suggested it was a play on guerrilla art or a comment on the role of zoos.
A representative for Banksy told the Observer that the series was intended to be uplifting and amusing during tough times.
Banksy, who began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, has become one of the world’s best-known artists though he has always shielded his identity. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.
The zoo mural is at least the fifth in the animal series to be either stolen, defaced or moved to a secure place for protection.
A howling wolf painted on a satellite dish to look like it’s silhouetted against a full moon was taken by masked men hours after the artist confirmed it was his work by posting photos of it on his Instagram page. A rundown old billboard that featured a big cat stretching out was removed by a crew as onlookers jeered them.
The billboard’s owner told police it would be reassembled at an art gallery, the BBC reported.
A rhinoceros painted on a brick wall that appeared to be mounting a broken-down Nissan parked on the sidewalk was tagged with graffiti and the car was taken away.
A small police guard post that had a circling school of piranhas painted on its windows so it looked like a fish tank was removed by the City of London. A spokesperson said it would eventually be placed where it can be viewed by the public.
Jasper Tordoff, the Banksy expert at MyArtBroker, told The Associated Press that he liked the idea that the final mural in the series may have been the revelation that all those other animals — elephants, a goat, monkeys and pelicans — seen around London had come from the zoo.
But he also said the artist, well aware of the attention any of his works receives, may have been anticipating public reaction that went beyond simple appreciation.
“He might also be making a comment on our human nature to desire to own things, even if that means breaking the law,” Tordoff said. “But then also in quite a nice way to also try and look after these pieces and preserve them.”
The zoo, which had protected the mural when it was on display behind a see-through plastic shield and guarded by security officers, has not announced what it will do with the work.
Its removal, though, means the work is being conserved — like the animals themselves. If it goes back on display it may be inside the zoo where it can be seen but not touched.
A 16-year-old boy has kicked off a free speech debate—one that’s already attracting spectators beyond his North Carolina county—after he was suspended for allegedly “making a racially insensitive remark that caused a class disturbance.”
The racially insensitive remark: referring to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens.” Invoking that term would produce the beginning of a legal odyssey, still in its nascent stages, in the form of a federal lawsuit arguing that Central Davidson High School Assistant Principal Eric Anderson violated Christian McGhee’s free speech rights for temporarily barring him from class over a dispute about offensive language.
What constitutes offensive speech, of course, depends on who is evaluating. During an April English lesson, McGhee says he sought clarification on a vocabulary word: aliens. “Like space aliens,” he asked, “or illegal aliens without green cards?” In response, a Hispanic student—another minor whom the lawsuit references under the pseudonym “R.”—reportedly joked that he would “kick [McGhee’s] ass.”
The exchange prompted a meeting with Anderson, the assistant principal. “Mr. Anderson would later recall telling [McGhee] that it would have been more ‘respectful’ for [McGhee] to phrase his question by referring to ‘those people’ who ‘need a green card,’” McGhee’s complaint notes. “[McGhee] and R. have a good relationship. R. confided in [McGhee] that he was not ‘crying’ in his meeting with Anderson”—the principal allegedly claimed R. was indeed in tears over the exchange—”nor was he ‘upset’ or ‘offended’ by [McGhee’s] question. R. said, ‘If anyone is racist, it is [Mr. Anderson] since he asked me why my Spanish grade is so low’—an apparent reference to R.’s ethnicity.”
McGhee’s peer received a short in-school suspension, while McGhee was barred from campus for three days. He was not permitted an appeal, per the school district’s policy, which forecloses that avenue if a suspension is less than 10 days. And while a three-day suspension probably doesn’t sound like it would induce the sky to fall, McGhee’s suit notes that he hopes to secure an athletic scholarship for college, which may now be in jeopardy.
So the question of the hour: If the facts are as McGhee construed them, did Anderson violate the 16-year-old’s First Amendment rights? In terms of case law, the answer is a little more nebulous than you might expect. But it still seems that vindication is a likely outcome (and, at least in my opinion, rightfully so).
Where the judges fall may come down to a 60s-era ruling—Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District—in which the Supreme Court sided with two students who wore black armbands to their public school in protest of the Vietnam War. “It can hardly be argued,” wrote Justice Abe Fortas for the majority, “that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
The Tinker decision carved out an exception: Schools can indeed seek to discourage and punish “actually or potentially disruptive conduct.” Potentially is a key word here, as Vikram David Amar, a professor of law at U.C. Davis, and Jason Mazzone, a professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, point out in Justia. In other words, under that decision, the disruption doesn’t actually have to materialize, just as, true to the name, an attempted murder does not materialize into an actual murder. But just as the government has a vested interest in punishing attempted crimes, so too can schools nip attempted disruptions in the bud.
“Yet all of this points up some problems with the Tinker disruption standard itself,” write Amar and Mazzone. “What if the likelihood of disruption exists only by virtue of an ignorance or misunderstanding or hypersensitivity or idiosyncrasy on the part of (even a fair number of) people who hear the remark? Wouldn’t allowing a school to punish the speaker under those circumstances amount to a problematic heckler’s veto?”
That would seem especially relevant here for a few reasons. The first: If McGhee’s account of his interaction with Anderson is truthful, then it was essentially Anderson who retroactively conjured a disruption that, per both McGhee and R., didn’t actually occur in any meaningful way. In some sense, a disruption did come to fruition, and it was allegedly manufactured by the person who did the punishing, not the ones who were punished.
But the second question is the more significant one: If McGhee’s conduct—merely mentioning “illegal aliens”—is found to qualify as potentially disturbance-inducing, then wouldn’t any controversial topic be fair game for public schools to censor? If a “disruption” is defined as anything that might offend, then we’re in trouble, as the Venn diagram of “things we all agree on as a nation” is essentially two lonely circles at this point. That is especially difficult to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Tinker, which supposedly exists as a bulwark against state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination and censorship.
It is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that, up until a few years ago, “illegal alien” was an official term the government used to describe undocumented immigrants. The Library of Congress stopped using the term in 2016, and President Joe Biden signed an executive order advising the federal government not to use the descriptor in 2021. To argue that three years later the term is now so offensive that a 16-year-old should know not to invoke it requires living in an alternate reality.
Those who prefer to opt for less-charged descriptors over “illegal alien”—I count myself in that camp—should also hope to see McGhee vindicated if his account withstands scrutiny in court. Most everything today, it seems, is political, which means a student with a more liberal-leaning lexicon could very well be the next one suspended from school.
Google.org Announces Six-Figure Funding for Youth-Led Climate Cardinals, Signaling a Shift Among Climate Funders
NEW YORK, April 22, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– Climate Cardinals, a youth-led nonprofit focused on breaking language barriers in the climate movement, is proud to announce that it has received significant anchor funding from Google.org. This landmark initiative marks Climate Cardinals as one of the first youth-led organizations supported by Google’s philanthropic arm. The shift underlines the importance of empowering young voices in the global fight against climate challenges.
“Because young people stand to lose the most if we fail to combat climate change, youth-led organizations like Climate Cardinals have to be at the forefront of the fight for climate justice,” explains Sophia Kianni, founder of Climate Cardinals.
“So far, that hasn’t translated into adequate funding,” Vice President Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa adds. “We hope this recognition from Google.org signals a broader understanding of the vital role young activists play and encourages others to redirect more resources towards empowering the next generation of environmental leaders.”
In a world where youth-led climate organizations receive only 0.76% of climate funding, Climate Cardinals has succeeded against the odds. Founded in 2020, the organization educates and empowers a diverse coalition of young people to tackle the climate crisis by translating climate information into more than 100 languages. It has developed a global network of 14,000 student volunteers who dedicate their time to the cause amidst their busy schedules of lectures and exams.
Climate Cardinals is in the midst of broadening its vision, extending its activities beyond its foundational mission of translating climate information to grassroots climate education. The funding from Google.org will help to professionalize the organization and prepare it for future growth.
“We have already used the funding to onboard our first full-time employee,” says Sophia Suganuma, Special Projects Director. “It has also expanded our translation program in partnership with Translators Without Borders, increasing our capacity to an estimated million words per year.”
The funding agreement marks the next chapter in Climate Cardinals’ ongoing partnership with Google. Since 2023, the nonprofit’s volunteers have been using Translation Hub, Google Cloud’s AI-powered self-serve translation platform, which has enabled the team to translate at a much faster pace.
For Google, supporting organizations like Climate Cardinals is part of a broader strategy of empowering organizations with the tools to drive positive action and accelerate innovation to combat climate change.
“Our aim is to ensure that we are diversifying, expanding, and ensuring the overall sustainability of climate solutions, and our funding for Climate Cardinals is a step in that direction,” Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt adds.
This Earth Week, Climate Cardinals is gearing up for another year of action — excited to leverage the new funds to expand its roster of employees, keep growing its volunteer base, and sustain itself well into the future.
Norwegian and English share a deep historical connection, making them more alike than many realize. These similarities stem from their roots in the Germanic language family, leading to parallels in vocabulary, syntax, and even phonetics. For learners and linguists alike, these connections can simplify understanding and learning these languages.
Vocabulary Overlaps and Shared Roots
One of the most striking resemblances between Norwegian and English lies in their vocabularies. Centuries of trading and Viking invasions left a significant imprint on the English language, embedding Old Norse words into its lexicon. Words like “sky,” “window,” and “knife” have direct counterparts in Norwegian: “sky,” “vindu,” and “kniv.” Such similarities extend to hundreds of everyday terms, making initial learning stages notably easier for speakers of either language.
Syntax also shows remarkable similarities. Both languages generally adhere to a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sentence structure. This foundational grammar rule simplifies the transition for English speakers learning Norwegian and vice versa. Questions in both languages often involve a simple inversion of the subject and the verb, another parallel that facilitates cross-linguistic comprehension.
Phonetic Parallels Between Norwegian and English
Pronunciation between the two languages also shares some common ground. While each language has its unique sounds, the basic phonetic systems are less divergent than those found in many other languages globally. Both English and Norwegian use a range of similar vowel and consonant sounds, which can ease the learning curve for pronunciation.
Moreover, Norwegian’s consistent pronunciation rules mean that once learners grasp the basics, they can read and pronounce words more predictably than in English. This consistency is a relief for English speakers accustomed to the often irregular spelling-to-sound correlations in their native language.
Mutual Benefits for Language Learners
The structural and phonetic similarities between Norwegian and English provide mutual benefits for learners. English speakers find Norwegian grammar straightforward and its pronunciation rules logical, reducing the time it takes to achieve proficiency. Conversely, Norwegians typically learn English at a young age, finding it relatively simple due to these linguistic similarities.
This linguistic kinship not only aids in language acquisition but also enhances cultural exchanges and understanding. As globalization connects communities, the ability to communicate across languages becomes increasingly valuable. The relationship between Norwegian and English serves as a bridge between speakers, fostering deeper connections and mutual appreciation.
