Madalyn Parker wanted to take a couple days off work. She didn't have the flu, nor did she have plans to be on a beach somewhere, sipping mojitos under a palm tree.Parker, a web developer from Michigan, wanted a few days away from work to focus on her mental health.Parker lives with depression. And, she says, staying on top of her mental health is absolutely crucial."The bottom line is that mental health is health," she says over email. "My depression stops me from being productive at my job the same way a broken hand would slow me down since I wouldn't be able to type very well."She sent an email to her colleagues, telling them the honest reason why she was taking the time off."Hopefully," she wrote to them, "I'll be back next week refreshed and back to 100%."Soon after the message was sent, the CEO of Parker's company wrote back:"Hey Madalyn,I just wanted to personally thank you for sending emails like this. Every time you do, I use it as a reminder of the importance of using sick days for mental health — I can't believe this is not standard practice at all organizations. You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work." \u201cWhen the CEO responds to your out of the office email about taking sick leave for mental health and reaffirms your decision. \ud83d\udcaf\u201d — madalyn (@madalyn) 1498854569 Moved by her CEO's response, Parker posted the email exchange to Twitter.The tweet, published on June 30, 2017, has since gone viral, amassing 45,000 likes and 16,000 retweets."It's nice to see some warm, fuzzy feelings pass around the internet for once," Parker says of the response to her tweet. "I've been absolutely blown away by the magnitude though. I didn't expect so much attention!"Even more impressive than the tweet's reach, however, were the heartfelt responses it got."Thanks for giving me hope that I can find a job as I am," wrote one person, who opened up about living with panic attacks. "That is bloody incredible," chimed in another. "What a fantastic CEO you have."Some users, however, questioned why there needs to be a difference between vacation time and sick days; after all, one asked, aren't vacations intended to improve our mental well-being?That ignores an important distinction, Parker said — both in how we perceive sick days and vacation days and in how that time away from work is actually being spent."I took an entire month off to do partial hospitalization last summer and that was sick leave," she wrote back. "I still felt like I could use vacation time because I didn't use it and it's a separate concept."Many users were astounded that a CEO would be that understanding of an employee's mental health needs.They were even more surprised that the CEO thanked her for sharing her personal experience with caring for her mental health.After all, there's still a great amount of stigma associated with mental illness in the workplace, which keeps many of us from speaking up to our colleagues when we need help or need a break to focus on ourselves. We fear being seen as "weak" or less committed to our work. We might even fear losing our job.Ben Congleton, the CEO of Parker's company, Olark, even joined the conversation himself.In a blog post on Medium, Congleton wrote about the need for more business leaders to prioritize paid sick leave, fight to curb the stigma surrounding mental illness in the workplace, and see their employees as people first."It's 2017. We are in a knowledge economy. Our jobs require us to execute at peak mental performance," Congleton wrote. "When an athlete is injured, they sit on the bench and recover. Let's get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different."This article originally appeared on 07.11.17

Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they'd positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.It was the largest such event ever filmed.For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won't be the last time something like this happens either.But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that "global warming" thing.Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he'd scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!""I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible," he explained in the 2012 documentary film "Chasing Ice."There was too much margin of error in the computer simulations, too many other pressing problems to address about our beautiful planet. As far as he was concerned, these melodramatic doomsayers were distracting from the real issues.That was then.In fact, it wasn't until 2005 that Balog became a believer.He was sent on a photo expedition of the Arctic by National Geographic, and that first northern trip was more than enough to see the damage for himself."It was about actual tangible physical evidence that was preserved in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica," he said in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress. "That was really the smoking gun showing how far outside normal, natural variation the world has become. And that's when I started to really get the message that this was something consequential and serious and needed to be dealt with."Some of that evidence may have been the fact that more Arctic landmass has melted away in the last 20 years than the previous 10,000 years.Watch the video of the event of the glacier calving below:This article originally appeared on 11.04.15

A great opera voice is a learned art, not a natural-born gift like other styles of singing. It takes discipline, physical training, and to truly wow the audience, the performer must be a great actor and athlete as well."Singing opera is to ordinary vocal activity what distance running, triple-jumping and pole-vaulting are to ordinary exercise," said Sir Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House wrote for the BBC. "Which means that singers and, almost as important, those who teach them are locked in the same kinds of relationship that obtain between elite athletes and charismatic coaches."So what goes on inside of the head and throat of an opera singer while they perform?German baritone Michael Volle performed "Song to the Evening Star" by German composer Richard Wagner while inside of an MRI scan to give people a never-before-seen look at how an opera singer produces such a haunting sound. It's a pretty freaky-looking image, but shows the amazing control these performers must have to hit such powerful notes.This article originally appeared on 05.05.16

Getting that growl going. The post How Ken Nordine influenced Tom Waits to make ‘What’s He Building’ first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

It worked out well for him!

It worked out well for him!

The Victims of Communism Museum held the opening reception for Belene – A Bulgarian Resistance Story this week. The groundbreaking and immersive pop-up exhibit is a worthwhile visit. The interactive exhibit is based on an interview conducted with survivor Nikola Daskalov of the worst Bulgarian gulag, Belene. Participants can ask Nikola questions and receive responses plucked from his interview by AI. On the outside of the exhibit, a peaceful wetland shows what Belene looks like today. Once inside, the depiction becomes bleak, just as it was in the gulags. Nikola sits waiting on a large screen, waiting for you to ask him a question. I was lucky enough to be able to interact with the exhibit myself and hear in Nikolai’s own words why he was put into the Belene camp. His reply was simple. “I was born in the wrong family.” The Bulgarian ambassador to the United States, Georgi Panayotov, made a moving speech before the exhibit was unveiled. He highlighted the Bulgarian people’s love of freedom and proudly reminded those in attendance that this year marked the 20th anniversary of Bulgaria’s NATO membership. In recent times, both in the United States and Bulgaria, people have forgotten the horrors of communism. In Bulgaria, some even talk about how “great” things were “back in Daddy Tosho’s day,” a reference to Todor Zhivkov, the longest-ruling leader of an Eastern-bloc communist nation. Sofia Platform Foundation focuses its efforts on recent history and civic education with the goal of keeping the memories of communist Bulgaria alive. With support from the America for Bulgaria Foundation, Sofia Platform pioneered Belene – A Bulgarian Resistance Story using state-of-the-art technology. The exhibit is part of their larger project, Belene.Camp, which works to preserve Bulgarian gulag survivor legacies through AI.  The exhibit helps people connect more personally to the individuals affected by communism. These stories brought back to life by AI should never be forgotten. The exhibit will be at the Victims of Communism Museum June 12–June 14. The post AI Is Being Used in a New Way: To Preserve the Stories of Gulag Survivors appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Paul Joseph Watson, Modernity News: Le Pen can claim absolute majority after alliance with Republicans. The first poll taken after French President Emmanuel Macron announced snap parliamentary elections shows his party will lose badly, potentially forcing him to resign. Following his trouncing by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the EU elections, Macron was […]