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Gabby Petito speaks to the camera in her only YouTube upload

YouTube/Nomadic Statik

On October 21, after a nearly six-week manhunt, the FBI confirmed that skeletal remains found in a Florida nature preserve were those of Brian Laundrie. As the days turn to weeks since Laundries whereabouts were uncovered, its become apparent that this grim resolution to one outstanding question is no match for the publics fascination in the murder of Gabby Petito.

From the moment 22-year-old Petito was reported missing by her family in early September, the aspiring vanlife influencer became a real-time fixture of the true crime content mill. The phenomenon was accelerated by the subsequent discovery of her body in a Wyoming campsite, which implicated Laundrie, Petitos fiance and travel companion at the time of her death, as a person of interest in the investigation. But even before an autopsy determined that Petito had died by strangulation a common indicator of intimate partner violence the relationship appeared central to online outpourings of concern and speculation.

There are numerous likely reasons for the publics preoccupation with the case, including the well-established facts of Petitos youth and blonde-haired whiteness. Among the scores of mostly white, mostly 20-something women on TikTok whove taken up the mantle of #justiceforgabby, Petitos purported relatability is one oft-repeated refrain. While its tempting to dismiss these claims of personal identification with Petito as flimsy efforts to justify exploiting a womans death for content, it seems disingenuous to presume that thats all there is to it.

In many respects, Petitos heart-wrenching story speaks to the central tension in digital age constructions of identity. What passes for authenticity online is, more accurately, the convincing commitment to a bit. An influencers digital presence is effectively a character based on its creator, a work of internet autofiction. If the persons offline circumstances are at odds with their broadcasted persona, upholding the act may occur at the expense of the creators wellbeing.

Like so many young women hoping to amass followings online, Petito had been trying to find her voice along the two parallel circuits of a young influencers domain: as an adult making her way in the world and as an aspirational figure by trade. She was, in other words, working toward cementing the pillars that are broadly understood as prerequisites for mature adulthood: an enduring romantic partnership and a fruitful career. Tragically, Petitos path positioned her relationship to Laundrie as the vehicle for both.

The potential hazards imposed on the couple-as-influencer are self-evident. Simply, a monetized relationship discourages each partners disentanglement. For young women, in particular, the adjacent risks can be profound. They are the combined pitfalls of coming of age at this specific moment in time, while inheriting the time-worn legacy of violence that womanhood too often entails especially, but not exclusively, for women with additional marginalized identities.

From the beginning, the Petito case has given a face to the worst-case scenario for the widespread ideal of the influencer couple. And, perhaps, marked an inflection point in the way that this ideal is perceived.

From the hipster Mormon housewife bloggers of the early 2010s to the van life vloggers courting corporate sponsorships today, happy couples have served as more than a recurring set piece in the influencer industrial complex. Picture-perfect partnership and, eventually, family life form the basis of a lucrative market fantasy. These idealized, archetypal personas are too #blessed to stress about unpaid bills or unmet desires, let alone anything more nefarious. They want for nothing they cant materialize into being; their apparent lack of yearning inspires yearning, in turn.

It wasnt so long ago that the bankability of relationship-centric, lifestyle creator content became understood by the general public. Writing in 2015 about the lifestyle blogger-turned-influencer Naomi Davis for The Cut, Jen Gann recalls her delayed realization that Davis blog, Love Taza, was less a public-facing diary of contented homemaking than a savvy commercial enterprise. I felt stupid for not realizing how successful Naomis blog is, Gann writes. She, not her husband, was financially supporting their lifestyle with her lifestyle blog.

Nearly seven years later, the concept of the influencer has become so embedded within the collective imagination that Ganns revelation reads like the relic of a distant era. Among my fellow millennial and Gen Z counterparts, its now taken for granted that any social media personality with a robust follower count and the barest modicum of conventional attractiveness is likely getting some monetary kickback for their outfits of the day. The division between an aspirational life and an aspirational performance of one is more porous than ever before.

In a recent column for TechCrunch, the writer Safy-Hallan Farah argues that the ability to monetize ones social media following is no longer incidental to an influencers appeal; it is their appeal. Fans look up to [lifestyle influencers] not only because they want to live the same way but because they [also] want to monetize their own lives, Farah writes. Somewhere over the course of the past decade, fulfilling the criteria for a hashtaggable #lifestyle carving out a presence within an established sphere of influence has become as desirable as any actual lifestyle, in and of itself.

Its a feat thats easier said than done. Last month, Slates Heather Schwedel reported on the effect of Petitos death among members of TikToks #VanLife community. Some felt that the case underscored public misperceptions of the actual work involved in making a living as a semi-famous, sentient ad. People think that if they live in a van now, theyre just automatically going to get a following and be an influencer, said one 24-year-old woman.

Logistics notwithstanding, theres a major profit incentive for young couples to at least try figuring out the tricks of the influence trade. Early last year, the digital marketing trade publication MarTech Series declared that so-called power pairs stood at the forefront of a new wave of influencer marketing. Though the article focuses primarily on influencers who pair up to form a united mega-brand, it speaks to the basic logic of any influencer couples appeal: They embody happiness and romance, which most onlookers are content to experience even vicariously. As a result, couples have a distinct advantage in facilitating an emotional connection to [whatever] product or service they promote.

For young couples seeking to leverage their relationships for financial gain, the potential for harm is baked right into the premise. The relationship is no longer just a relationship, but a professional endeavor. To extract oneself means surrendering a path to solvency, even if that path has not yet proved fruitful. The dynamic is ripe for exploitation by perpetrators of abuse.

In a culture whose valorization of the nuclear family is rivalled only by its fetish for dollar-quantifiable achievement, the project becomes a compounded test of stick-to-it-iveness; endurance, an arbiter of work ethic. In this light, the tragedy of Petitos death takes on an almost unbearable poignance.

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Gabby Petitos tragic story sheds light on the grim reality of turning your life into a business - News Nation USA

Roblox Corp. was digging itself out Monday from a three-day outage that shut out millions of users, as investors wiped away more than $1.5 billion of the videogame companys market capitalization.

Roblox RBLX, -1.55% shares declined as much as 4% Monday, and closed down 3.4% at $81.14, after the company restored service to millions of users in an outage that started last Thursday and was resolved on Sunday. At 575 million shares outstanding, Mondays drop wiped away $1.66 billion in market cap.

Based on Robloxs last quarterly report, the company brought in $454.1 million, so three days of that would come out to around $15 million in lost revenue. Roblox last reported that 46.6 million people used the platform on a daily basis, and some of those users also derive income from offering their own experiences or wares within the game.

In a blog post on Sunday, Roblox Chief Executive David Baszucki said the outage had been especially difficult because it involved a combination of several factors.

Read: Facebook outage, by the numbers: Largest outage ever tracked could cost millions

A core system in our infrastructure became overwhelmed, prompted by a subtle bug in our backend service communications while under heavy load, Baszucki said. This was not due to any peak in external traffic or any particular experience.

In a Monday morning note, MKM analyst Mike Hickey said it was important Roblox made the distinction that the outage wasnt due to any one factor, as many users suspected that a Halloween Boorito event on the platform involving a giveaway of $1 million in free burritos from Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. CMG, -1.25% was at fault.

Rather the failure was caused by the growth in the number of servers in our datacenters, Baszucki in the blog post. The result was that most services at Roblox were unable to effectively communicate and deploy.

Baszucki said the company would publish a post-mortem of the outage once it had finished its analysis.

On Monday, a Roblox spokesperson confirmed to MarketWatch that the company did not have any more details to share outside of Baszuckis blog post.

Roblox is next scheduled to report quarterly results on Nov. 8. Shares are 80% above their reference price of $45 set back in March when the companys stock began trading.

Continue reading here:
Roblox sheds more than $1.5 billion in market cap following outage that could have cost millions - MarketWatch

The luncheon allowed community members to hear the good, bad and the ugly from the mouths of city, chamber, education and Lawrence County leaders.

SPEARFISH, S.D. Spearfish community members were able to hear from the mouths of city, chamber, education and Lawrence County leaders the lowdown in a State of the Community luncheon on Tuesday.

A meal that highlighted growth in many areas of Spearfish including major areas like housing.

We have already surpassed previous records in building and development, said Spearfish Mayor Dana Boke. You know we have 105 new homes scheduled to be built in this year alone.

Mayor Boke shared at the luncheon the following figures for building and growth, especially building permit evaluations:

According to Mayor Boke, 95 new residential structures were built in 2021 for a total value of $36.7 million, which equals out to each home costing roughly $386,000 to build. Seven commercial structures were also built in Spearfish, for a total value of $13.5 million.

In her presentation, Mayor Boke highlighted the growth of Spearfishs population, which grew roughly 16 percent from 2010 to 2020 (10,494 to 12,193 according to the 2020 census.) That was slightly lower than what Spearfish, according to Mayor Boke has seen in the past with a 20 percent growth over ten years being the norm.

Mayor Boke also shared that the YTD Sales Tax Revenue is up 18 percent for the year so far at $4.4 million.

Black Hills State University reported some positivity with its Strategic Enrollment plan and a new Title Three Grant worth $2.2 million grant that will help pay for the plan. BHSU also highlighted five different partnerships including:

Spearfish is facing its share of issues.

Like a nearly two percent overall drop in enrollment at Black Hills State University, which is highlighted by a Native American population at BHSU thats been cut in half in the last two years.

We really, truthfully are down nearly 50 percent, said BHSU President Dr. Laurie Nichols. We lost about 20 percent one year, one year and then about 30 percent the next. So its been a dramatic hit on our Native American population.

Issues that also include a jail with a failing infrastructure and a lack of space that theyre hoping to be remedied by a $40 million expenditure in the future.

All of this is explained in Lawrence County Sheriff Brian Deans presentation that explained the hoops theyve jumped through to balance out the books.

Its important in a project of this size to establish what your what your budget is early on, so that you have a system of checks and balances that are integral to the process, Sheriff Dean said.

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"State of the Community Luncheon" sheds light on Spearfish promise, issues - KNBN NewsCenter1 - Newscenter1.tv

Student leaders of the #BlackburnTakeover protest hosted a town hall on Sunday night that brought together up to 614 students, faculty, staff, alumni and community supporters, such as Rev. Jesse Jackson.

All came together to voice their concerns for the Universitys inability to acknowledge the issues that are being brought to light and the demands made by the protesters. Leaders Erica England and Channing Hill began the town hall by disclosing the experiences theyve had with housing insecurity, sickness and financial aid, and they confirmed that the reason theyre going to these extents are for the love of Howard and wanting to hold the University accountable.

We want to see Howard grow and flourish, but take care of every student that walks across the Yard, England said. We are working for the betterment of Howard University even if the administration doesnt want to admit it.

England said that the two sessions the #BlackburnTakeover team had with the Universitys legal counsel was unfruitful and did not include President Wayne A.I. Fredericks presence. Confirming Englands statement was the #BlackburnTakeover teams pro-Bono legal counsel and Howard University alumnus, Attorney Donald Temple.

We were told by the University counsel that the President was not going to negotiate with them, Temple explained.

Amplifying Englands sentiments, Temple expressed that the protesters intentions are pure and, as the saying goes, their demands are not demanding.

I urged with every ounce of my body that the administration negotiate with these students every piece of press that comes out about this is hurting the University, and we dont want to hurt the University, Temple said.

The University has yet to budge, saying that they are not willing to negotiate with the protesters nor grant them any form of amnesty, according to Attorney Temple.

Along with student leaders and their legal counsel, faculty representatives, alumni and alumni groups were present and spoke on the matters at hand.

The students have not exaggerated the experiences of students and faculty, Professor Marcus Alfred, an associate professor of physics and astronomy and faculty senate chair, said.

Professor Alfred also hinted at faculty bringing in millions of dollars of grants to the University for students, yet the University paid students late on the grants that many of them heavily relied on. Alumnus, former graduate research assistant and current adjunct lecturer Anthony Jackson and others commented that they were paid 2-4 months late.

Alumni organizations that attended and spoke at this town hall were Howard Alumni United and The Capstone Group, a stakeholders collective that was founded in response to the 2018 administration building takeover, according to member and alumna Maria P. Jones.

Jones urged alumni to get involved as best they can by assisting students with financial scholarships, housing and collective organizing. There were brief talks of an alumni gathering on campus in solidarity with student protesters.

Some, including Rev. Jackson, mentioned expanding the matter to a national level by getting Congress. Alumni K. Yvonne Lucas even suggested organizing a march from Howard to the Hill.

Though protesters have struggled to gain their in-person meeting with President Wayne A.I. Frederick, Rev. Jackson has been able to attend meetings with him to advocate on behalf of the student protesters. At his last meeting with the President, the activist was injured and rushed to the hospital.

While meeting with various administrators, including Dr. Wayne Frederick, Rev. Jackson sustained an injury upon entering the Blackburn Center, the University tweeted. We can confirm that Rev. Jackson was taken to the hospital by a university administrator and was later joined by Dr. Wayne Frederick, they said in a follow up tweet.

The #BlackburnTakeover team has received media coverage from various outlets and many members of the Howard community have banded together to provide them with necessary resources. The communitys support has kept them going, and, according to leaders, they will not be moved until their demands are met.

We will not bend, we will not fold until we get what we deserve, Aniyah Vines, a Howard University senior and leader in this movement, said.

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Student-Led Town Hall Sheds Light On Week 3 Progress of #BlackburnTakeover - The Hilltop Online

A crew member that worked in the costume department of Rust has finally shed some light on the actual work conditions that crew members were in right before the horrific shooting of its cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Her version of events was initially posted in the comment section on Facebook and was shared by Alec Baldwin himself in an Instagram post.

It starts off with the words, Im so sick of this narrative. I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is [expletive].

The crew member also went on to claim, We never worked more than a 12.5 hour shoot day. That was once. Most days were under 12. The day Halyna died we had come off of a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour shoot day. We had (including camera) gotten off by 6:30pm.

Not only that, We had just had a 56 hour weekend right before that. No one was too tired to do their jobs. This is all provable by daily time sheets.

She also clapped back against the entitlement of some of the camera crew and went on to write, The camera crew HAD hotels. They just didnt feel they were fancy enough. NOT that they were unsafe. You cant tell me that 6 big men felt so unsafe in their hotel but were fine sleeping in their cars in parking lots (which never happened) like they also claimed.

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Crew member sheds light on real work conditions before shooting on Rust - The News International

Do you believe in monsters?

Getting into the Halloween theme by talking to monster expert, Dr. Emily Zarka.

Dr. Zarka earned a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Arizona State University, specializing in British Romantic literature with an emphasis on the Gothic. Dr. Z approaches literature and film through monsters, applying the theory that human history is monster history.

She is the writer and host of PBS Digital Studios seriesMonstrum, which looks at the complex histories and motivations behind some of the worlds most famous monsters. Her teaching experience includes literature, composition, film and media, and humanities classes.

We talked to Dr. Zarka about the werewolves and their origins.

Werewolves go back thoughts and thousands of years, the first recorded werewolf story we have is actually from the Epic of Gilgamesh, said Dr. Zarka.

Also, we talked about the Mothman and possible sightings in Chicago.

For more information on Monstrum, click here.

Happy Halloween!

For more Chicago Scene fun, follow @tomwgnchicago on Instagram.

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Are monsters real? Monster expert sheds light on lore of werewolves, vampires, and the Mothman - WGN TV Chicago

Alzheimers disease and other types of dementia affect more than 55 million people worldwide. But the development of effective treatments and cures is progressing slowly. To some extent, this is because we still dont understand enough about what causes the disease and drives its progression.

Myself and my colleagues most recent work, published in Science Advances, presents a new approach using ideas from other areas of science to analyse data from Alzheimers patients. In this way, weve been able to build a better understanding of the processes that control the progression of Alzheimers disease in the brain.

By way of background, in Alzheimers disease and many other neurodegenerative diseases, like Parkinsons disease, proteins that are normally part of healthy brain cells start sticking together in microscopic clumps. These clumps of protein, called aggregates, form in patients brains, killing off brain cells and leading to symptoms such as memory loss.

As the number of aggregates increases, the disease worsens and eventually leads to death, often many years after the first mild symptoms. Several processes likely contribute to the formation of aggregates, but scientists are yet to understand how aggregates form in detail, and which processes are the most important in controlling how quickly they form.

Read more: Alzheimer's: new research shows a leap forward in identifying neurons vulnerable to the disease

Research into Alzheimers disease often uses lab animals, such as mice, to mimic the human disease. This approach can be very useful for investigating specific aspects of the disease, such as the effect of genetic factors. But its not a great model for the disease as a whole. This is partly because Alzheimers normally takes decades to develop in humans, and lab animals can only be studied over a much shorter timescale.

Weve been in need of a way to understand the progression of Alzheimers disease in the brain using data directly from humans. Until now, this has been difficult, firstly because the data from humans is much more limited than what we can obtain in lab animals (we can modify lab animals, but not humans). Its also been tricky because the mathematical models to combine and analyse different kinds of human data relevant in this context did not exist.

This is where our work comes in. Using an approach from physical chemistry called chemical kinetics, we were able to work out what happens at the microscopic level in the Alzheimers brain. Chemical kinetics allows us to understand the way molecules interact with each other, and how quickly, without having to be able to zoom in and watch at the molecular level.

For example, we can work out how bleach destroys coloured molecules simply by looking at how quickly a stain disappears when bleach is applied. With Alzheimers disease, its much more complex, but weve been able to apply the same ideas to determine how aggregates form in an Alzheimers brain.

Over more than ten years, weve used chemical kinetics in increasingly complex systems, starting in a test tube. Our new study represents the first time weve been able to apply these methods to human data, such as from PET scans in patients living with Alzheimers, brain microscopy of patients who have died with the disease, and other measurement techniques.

We found that the protein aggregates in brains of Alzheimers disease patients multiply exponentially, meaning one aggregate produces two aggregates after a certain period of time, which then, after the same amount of time has passed again, produce four aggregates, and so on.

As weve all experienced during the COVID pandemic, exponential growth can appear deceptively slow at first, and then result in a seemingly sudden increase. In Alzheimers disease, this explains why patients experience no symptoms or mild symptoms while aggregates initially build up, followed by much more rapid progression and worsening of symptoms.

One encouraging finding from our work is that the human brain is actually quite good at slowing down the multiplication of aggregates. We found it takes around five years to double the amount of aggregates, which is over ten times longer than in lab animals or the test tube. The reason for this likely relates to many factors, such as the presence of molecules that slow down different steps of aggregation in the brain. Its all part of our ongoing research.

Read more: Is Alzheimer's caused by disruptions to the brain's energy supply?

Another process scientists are very interested in is the spreading of aggregates from one region of the brain to another. We also investigated how important this process is in driving the progression of disease and found, surprisingly, that it appears to have little effect on the speed of progression. While spreading may influence the location of the initial aggregates to some degree, we found the main factor that controls the speed of progression is the multiplication of aggregates in individual brain regions.

We can think about this by returning to COVID-19. Stopping travel between countries is not a particularly effective way to stem cases when there are already significant numbers of infected people in the original country. We found that, in the same way, stopping spreading of aggregates between brain regions is unlikely to help slow down Alzheimers once its started.

Targeting the multiplication of aggregates in individual regions of the brain is likely to be a more promising strategy. We might one day be able to harness this approach to slow down the disease and give patients several more years of healthy life.

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Alzheimer's: our research sheds light on how the disease progresses in the brain - The Conversation UK

Drift: Bike, 2019, from the series Materialisms, rubber, polyurethane foam, steel, aluminum, lacquer, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene , polyoxymethylene, stainless steel, gel, polycarbonate, brass, magnet, fiberglass, 26.57 by 11.61 by 7.87 inches.Courtesy the Shed. Photo Dario Lasagni

For the most part, Fragile Future, Drifts exhibition at the Shed, follows the conventions of the contemporary art exhibition. But the overall experience of it is unusual, thanks to moments when the conventions are rejected in strange, subtle ways. Take the wall labels. Some of them name the materials used to make the work, as youd expect. This naming is the conceit of the sculpture series Materialisms (201821). The label for Starbucks Cup (2021) lists paper, coffee, water, polystyrene, wood, and glue; the components of Bike (2019) include aluminum, steel, rubber, and foam. In the sculptures, those substances are shaped into rectangular prisms, sized in proportion to their use in the named item. You can identify each material by color and texture, and match it to the word on the label. Viewing Materialisms is a satisfying exercise that teaches you something about the stuff of everyday life. But theres nothing on the label but a title for Drifters (2017 21), the exhibitions showstopping finale, which withholds information and induces awe. An ensemble of massive blocks float overhead in the Sheds four-storyhigh McCourt Space, languidly dancing to Anohnis brooding, billowing score. Though some trompe loeil painting makes the blocks look like weathered concrete, you might assume they are made of a much lighter material. If you know about Anicka Yis In Love with the World, currently on view at Tate Modern, where microbe-sculptures fly around the Turbine Hall, their transparent plastic membranes revealing the drones powering them inside, you might guess that Drift has used a similar technology for their flying art. While Materialisms encourages analytical thinking, Drifters abjures it. Dont try to figure out how its made. Just surrender to the mystery.

Drift was founded in 2007 by Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralpha Nauta, who lead a team of sixty-four engineers and designers in building the complex apparatuses of their art. When it comes to their most spectacular installations, Gordijn and Nauta are magicians who wont reveal their tricks. There are plenty of artists who trade in obscurity, challenging the audience to puzzle over references and tease stories out of the work. But Drifts obscurity is of a different order. The experience of the work is immediate and embodied. The backstory doesnt matter. Theyre concerned with the miraculous, with the audiences sense of wonder, moderated at times with a scientific curiosity.

Fragile Future is an artfully choreographed odyssey through reason and magic. The show begins with the eponymous installation, versions of which Drift has been making since the studios founding. LED bulbs with real dandelion seeds glued to them rest in concatenated boxes of copper alloy, which conduct the electricity that illuminates them. It looks fragile indeed, with seeds that look they might blow away delicately cradled in spindly formations. The installation suggests a synthesis of technology and nature aimed at preservation. Coded Coincidence (2021), in the following gallery, sets small lights whirling in swarms, attached to transparent wings that rustle as they brush against the black platform. Their inverted eddies reminded me of fire, though the label says the work is meant to evoke elm seeds borne on spring winds. Either way its a primal vision, an approximation of a natural phenomenon somehow both tempered and intensified by the knowledge of its technical underpinnings. This is followed by Ego (202021), a cube woven from slender nylon filaments that shimmer under a spotlight, heaving and falling like a mourners chest as the soundtrack emits sighs and groans.

After the dramatic lighting and motion in the black-box galleries preceding it, the stillness and brightness of Materialisms represents a return of reason. But this is brief: monitors and projections in the next gallery show new animations of the Drifter blocks flying through cityscapes and nature. Then, at last, come the Drifters themselves. After the videos, they appear as a fantasy made flesh.

Fragile Future is presented in collaboration with Superblue, a new enterprise supporting immersive art experiences that opened its first venue in Miami this past spring, and showed an installation by Drift there. Drifts work is often categorized among that of other studios who produce immersive experiences, and displaying it requires the resources and know-how that an organization like Superblue can provide. But Drifts work isnt immersive, or at least it doesnt bathe viewers in projections or surround them with stimuli from all sides, as most work presented under the banner of immersion does. An encounter with a work by Drift follows a twentieth-century script: the viewer encounters an object, moves around it, contemplates it. But Drifts objects often move, too: they float, swarm, and sigh. Images are so ubiquitous these days that an encounter with one is unlikely to trigger an experience of the sublime. Drift aspires to cultivate that sensitivity anew. Fragile Future is a rare exhibition that brings on wonder and awe.

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Objects of Wonder: Drift at the Shed - ARTnews

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

By David M. GreenwaldExecutive Editor

PPIC this week released a key study of Police Use of Force and Misoncudct in California. Researchers Deepak Premkumar, Alexandria Gumbs, Shannon McConville, and Renee Hsia have taken advantage of state laws that have improved transparency in policing to examine the available data to provide a baseline understanding of police use of force and misconduct in California.

While most use-of-force incidents are not considered misconduct, civilian fatalities and injuriesparticularly of unarmed individualscan nevertheless harm the publics trust in law enforcement, they write.

Overall their study found that about 195 people die each year from interactions with California law enforcement (keep in mind that the national total is around 1000, so California alone constitutes nearly one fifth of all police fatalities).

Gunshots are by far the most common cause of death: nearly 250 people are shot by police each year, they found.

Locally we have focused on police stops, and indeed, Vehicle and pedestrian stops account for about 15 percent of police encounters in which a civilian is seriously injured or killed.

The other big component is encounters with people suffering from a mental health disorder.

More than four in ten people treated for non-fatal gunshot wounds from a police encounter were diagnosed with a mental health condition, an alcohol- or substance-related disorder, or both, they found.

This is a huge point because one of the common misconceptions that people point to they will argue, if people would just listen to the police many of these shootings could be avoided, but that ignores part of the reason why people may not be responding to the police they cant and police do not appear to be well trained to understand the difference between willful disobedience and mental health and trauma-based responses.

Meth turns out to be the most common drug used. Schizophrenia is the most common mental health condition recorded.

The data on armed versus unarmed civilians is interesting.

On the one hand, In about 80 percent of encounters resulting in death or a gunshot wound, the civilian was armed with a weapon, underscoring the risky environments officers face. On the other hand, when we also consider civilians who sustained other serious injuries, 56 percent were unarmed.

The findings on racial disparities also interesting.

The overall racial disparities are stark, the study found. Black Californians are three times more likely to be seriously injured, shot, or killed by police (comprising 18% of these incidents) relative to their share of the population (6%). Latinos are also overrepresented among police encounters that result in serious injuries or fatalities.

But the study did a good job of drilling down into these disparities.

They adjusted for contextual factors such as the reason for the stop and whether the person was armed.

What they found, adjusting for contextual factors narrows but does not eliminate this gap.

The study noted, Black residents are much more likely to be stopped by the police (16% of stops) compared to their share of the population; this overrepresentation in police contact puts them at a greater likelihood of being subject to police use of force.

Further, The share of Black people among all serious injuries and fatalities (18% to 19%) is still larger than their share among all police stops, though this disparity is considerably smaller.

By using data from RIPA (Racial and Identity Profiling Act) to examine contextual factors, using regression analysis they are able to control for some of these factors that may influence the decision to use deadly force.

This allows them to make a more apples to apples comparison between stops.

The researchers point out, All estimates are conditional on being stopped in the first place, which by itself has stark racial disparities that match what we find in use of force incidents.

There is another problem RIPA is based on the officers perception of a civilians identity and relies strongly on the validity of the officers post-interaction reporting and studies have found that, in certain contexts, law enforcement officers have misreported civilian race to evade detection of racial bias.

Prior to controlling for the contextual factors, they find a white person stopped by law enforcement faces a 0.23 percent likelihood that an officer will aim or discharge a firearm while a black faces a .75 percent chance.

Black people who are stopped by police are over 3.2 times as likely to have an officer aim or discharge a firearm at them than whites, they said.

Adding in context however, definitely narrows the gap from about 220 percent to about 100 percent (or from 3 times to 2 times the rate).

The good news here is that California has moved from a state that was hard to get good policing data to a state that is on the cutting edge of it.

The researchers write: Following several years of reform, California has become a bellwether for data transparency in policing with the creation of the OpenJustice portal and new reporting requirements for law enforcement agencies.

Overall, The Use of Force data show that 56 percent of civilians who are seriously injured or killed in police encounters are unarmed. Since 15 percent of these incidents occur during vehicle and pedestrian stops, typically lower-risk interactions, it is worth exploring how to reduce these encounters without affecting public safety.

Moreover, Reducing these encounters may also help narrow racial disparities: recent research highlights how racial disparities are largely driven by these stops, particularly traffic violations.

Certainly that is what we have seen in Davis which does not have a huge number of use of force incidents, but has a huge racial disparity in traffic stops. The city council recently addressed some critical issues like mental health crisis response, but now needs to address traffic stops overall.

Read this article:
My View: New Data Sheds Additional Light on Police Killing and Use Force, Especially Racial Disparities in Them - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

The Worlds Fattest Man: 10 Years On will air tonight on ITV at 9pm. It will demonstrate to viewers Paul Masons rollercoaster journey with his weight.

I thought, right, this is the time for me to make sure that my journey is documented and I thought it would help other people.

Looking back at the past few years, Paul recalled the difficulties of being obese, including an experience in the hospital where doctors had never dealt with anyone my size.

He said: They brought me a form to sign that said if I died while I was in hospital at that size, they would have to dispose of my body in an abbatoir.

Part of my journey was that you felt like you are not a human and youre just a name on a piece of paper.

For Paul, to maintain his weight loss he needed and still needs help with his mental health.

Therapy is the main thing for me, he said.

I dont think the NHS put enough resources into the therapy side.

You can have six sessions on the NHS and thats not even going to touch the surface.

Paul received therapy from 2008 up until 2014, when he moved to the US.

He thought he would no longer need help after his surgery, but things unfortunately didnt work out.

Paul spends many days on his own after separating from his partner, Rebecca, and he continues to live with addiction and depression, as well as arthritis.

He said: Now, Ive got severe arthritis so its limiting my mobility and it makes things harder.

The support Rebecca gave me was very good, but she just got to the stage where she couldnt do that anymore.

And I could see that, its very hard I think living with someone with an addiction and depression.

The 60-year-old, who is now 38 stone, hopes his documentary will show the world that investing in your mental health is just as important as physical health as often, and certainly in his case, both go hand-in-hand.

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Worlds Fattest Man sheds 51st and piles 20st back on 'Arthritis is limiting my mobility' - Express