Home Blog Page 230

Lufkin Holds First Art Walk

By
Larry Waldorp
-
0

This past Saturday, January 28th, 2023, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Downtown Lufkin held its first, historic art walk. The art walk was set to display some of the best artwork in town, and stress the need for more artists to express themselves.

Becky Cota, head of Lufkin Creative, said that it was done to showcase the talents of local artists, to show that Lufkin is a community that supports art and culture, and that it inspires to be creative. There were performances, music, and artwork display.

“Art is for everyone.”

One of TFCL’s own, Bee Martinez, was at the event, displaying her artwork. Bee started her artwork during her senior year. She didn’t think it would anywhere because she didn’t regard it as her type of media. When she developed a passion for it, she began practicing on her craft and eventually started working with any idea that came to mind.

Bee Martinez from TFCL, selling her artwork at Downtown Lufkin.

Bee wants her work to spread across different cultures and backgrounds and be open to other peoples’ interpretations.

“It’s okay to mess up as long as you learn from your mistakes. Most of my ideas don’t work sometimes, but that’s okay.”

Overcoming Childhood as a Wallflower

By
Rozalin Martin
-
0

I was a wallflower child when I was younger. I was never in a specific group and was either with my best friend Sydnie, or drawing ponies and unicorns in a corner. Sydnie was a very sporty person and played a numerous amount of activities, while I never did. I constantly tried to get into sports, but I either embarrassed myself in the try outs or was scared to even step foot in the gyms because of my weight. But Sydnie always had my back and she helped me practice for each game I wanted to try. She will forever be my best friend.

I got into riding horses, which helped a lot with socialization. My mother found a sweet man who gave us a filly for free to show in 4H, so we gladly took her in, and my head exploded! She was a stubborn horse, but she had my entire heart. When meeting different horse trainers, my confidence slowly began to show. When we finally got to show my horse, we won second place overall and I was the happiest I had ever been.

When the pandemic erupted, I had no clue how life would be next. I was pulled out of public school, we were at home constantly, and we were scared to go out. This time in my life was rough like many others. I was depressed and my anxiety started to take a major toll on my life. I was horrified that I would never have a future. I was scared I was going to die just by going to the grocery store. Life was awful, and my shell grew back around me.

Then Sydnie and I were sent to a homeschool co-op where we can go to school and socialize with others. This improved my life immensely. I met other kids like me who are “weird” and like artsy things. I met my group of friends that impacted my life and my relationship with Christ and I am forever grateful for them. I got an internship that turned into the wonderful job that I have now. My anxiety and depression is no longer controlling my life, and I am not afraid to meet other people anymore. My shell has been broken completely.

me and sydnie
my friends at lead
me and sydnie

BANDS OF STEEL

By
Larry Waldorp
-
0

It was an extremely gray and chilly day, the wind gusted past strongly and blew a heavy whistle. The trees danced to the chaotic rhythm of the air and buckets of rain poured in mercilessly.

And there I sat, with my notebook and pencil on the desk, in front of a blank computer screen. There were millions of thoughts going on inside my head, yet I felt empty. I couldn’t pour any thought out on paper.

You know, problems do that to us. They swelter upon us, they pile up quickly, mound after mound, and they are not satisfied until they have both killed us and buried us, while we are still alive.

So I was stuck in a vortex of stress and depression. And trauma. I was too busy being the victim of usury, like I was a novelty item. I could feel God telling me, “Son, I was warning you the whole time”. Yeah. To stay away from such women, from certain crowds, whose only interests they lived for were their own. Slipping was the easiest thing to do, it seemed like. Wasting money left and right, wasting time here and there; on people, on things, that benefited me at no time, both psychologically and spiritually.

You see, if one is not careful, he can be drawn away in his youthful passions, and it is not until he is bit that he realizes that he was entertaining a devil the entire time, under the disguise of a “righteous one”.

My youthful passions blinded me to reality, and I was consumed in them to my demise. Now the after-effects were like bands of steel, tightly wrapped about and reinforced with thick chains, with a huge padlock with the key lost forever in an endless pit. When I tried to run to others for guidance, for refuge, they knew not what to do, nothing they said could fix anything.

Then I remembered who it was that always had my back. He never left me. Whenever I would tell Him something, He didn’t lose interest, He would just listen. And every single time I would fall, He didn’t laugh, but He was there to comfort me. I remembered that anything He did, whatever He said, no bond was strong enough to hold it. Surely, He could free me from this hell.

Jesus is the Savior, I said to myself. And He saves, and saving consists of rescuing one from peril, whatever that may be.

So–I approached Him, there was no other choice.

My five cents…
A weekly column from Sen. Robert Nichols

By
Senator Robert Nichols
-
0

On January 25, 1839 the official flag of Texas was adopted by the Third Congress of the
Republic of Texas. It specified the look of the iconic Lone Star Flag that we know and love
today. The colors were chosen to signify certain attributes: red for courage, white for purity and liberty, and blue for loyalty. The Texas flag is the only flag of an American state that previously served as a flag for an independent country.
Here are five things happening around your state:

  1. Starting pay at state hospitals and state supported living centers increases
    The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) announced it is increasing salaries and starting pay at state hospitals and state supported living centers to combat staffing shortages and bring hospital beds back online. HHSC said there are 700 state hospital beds offline due to a shortage of staffers. The commission is hoping to recruit and attract workers, reduce vacancies, and bring more beds back online. There are approximately 1,805 openings in state hospitals and 2,137 openings in state supported living centers. Registered nurses with three years’ experience could have starting salaries as high has $90,000 per year. Psychiatric nursing assistants and direct support professionals would start between $17.50 and $21.00 an hour depending on experience. Current employees are also receiving salary increases.
  2. Bill filed to make catalytic converter theft a state felony
    Senator John Whitmire and Senator Carol Alvarado jointly filed Senate Bill 224 which seeks to increase the criminal penalty for catalytic converter theft. For the past several years, there has been a marked increase in thefts of catalytic converters. Even when thieves are caught in
    possession of stolen catalytic converters it can be difficult to prove the case. This bill seeks to
    increase the penalty for stealing catalytic converters to a state jail felony and makes it easier for law enforcement to charge those who possess catalytic converters unlawfully. The bill adds additional penalties for criminals who stole catalytic converters while in possession of a firearm. Criminals engaging in catalytic converter theft have become violent and there have been many stories from around the state of Texans being injured or killed during the theft. It is time to give law enforcement more tools to combat these violent crimes.
  3. Senate committee assignments announced
    This week Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick released committee assignments for the 88th
    Legislature. I was honored to be reappointed as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and remain a member of Senate Finance, Business and Commerce, Local Government, and Redistricting Committees. The Senate Finance Committee will begin holding hearings next week to start the budget process. Each state agency will come before the committee and discuss their appropriations request with the committee. Members of the committee will have the opportunity to ask questions and get further clarification on details of the budget before further deliberations begin.
  4. Afghan soldier arrested as US-Mexico border has federal immigration charges dropped
    Abdul Wasi Safi is a former Afghan special forces intelligence officer who worked directly with
    US forces in Afghanistan. During the collapse of the Afghan government, he was unable to
    escape the country on any of the US military flights out of Kabul. He became a target of the
    Taliban once they took over the country. He went into hiding for months before he trekked
    across countries and continents to make it to the US-Mexico border in an attempt to join his
    brother who lives in Houston as a US citizen. He was apprehended by federal authorities and
    charged with a criminal misdemeanor. He has spent nearly four months in a detention center, but now an assistant US attorney asked the judge this week to dismiss the case against him in the interest of justice and the judge agreed. He will now continue on his journey toward asylum and will hopefully be released and reunited with his brother soon.
  5. Jim and Margaret Perkins honored for higher education initiatives
    This week it was my pleasure to honor Jim and Margaret Perkins on the Senate floor for all of
    their contributions to our communities, specific in higher education. This year, they were
    recognized with the 2023 Texas Higher Education Distinguished Service Award. Leaders from
    more than 100 institutions of higher education chose them for their work supporting East Texas students, institutions, and communities. Starting in 2014, the Perkins worked with Tyler Junior College to establish a scholarship program for local high school graduates known as the “TJC Promise,” which has supported hundreds of students pursue post-secondary education. Congratulations to the Perkins for this tremendous achievement!

Cornyn Meets with Deep East Texas Council of Governments

By
Larry Waldorp
-
0

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) met Tuesday, January 24th, with representatives from the Deep East Texas Council of Governments (DETCOG) to discuss the U.S. Forest Service’s Secure Rural Schools Program, the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief Program, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s provisional maps, which will determine broadband funding allocations for Texas.
 
DETCOG is a voluntary association of local governments encompassing Angelina, Houston, Nacogdoches, Newton, Polk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, Shelby, Trinity, and Tyler counties. Meeting attendees included DETCOG President and Shelby County Judge Allison Harbison, DETCOG Vice President and Polk County Minority Representative Brandon Prescott, DETCOG Secretary and San Jacinto County Commissioner Mark Nettuno, DETCOG Executive Director Lonnie Hunt, Sabine County Judge Daryl Melton, and DETCOG Broadband Project Manager Mickey Slimp.

GW Study Links Offline Events to Spikes in Online Hate Speech

By
Larry Waldorp
-
0
Trigger events, such as protests and elections, often lead to an increase in numerous types of online bigotry toward a wide range of targeted groups.

 A new George Washington University study reveals that real world events are often followed by surges in several types of online hate speech on both fringe and mainstream social platforms. Researchers discovered that racist rhetoric constituted the overwhelming majority of bigoted remarks online, but expressions of hate toward other groups with little connection to a trigger event abounded as well.

The research team trained an algorithm to analyze seven types of online hate speech: racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semitism, anti-religion, anti-immigrant, and xenophobia. The machine learning analysis covered six interconnected online platforms, from mainstream sites like Facebook to websites notorious for hosting offensive content, such as 4Chan and Gab. In all, researchers collected 59 million English-language posts from approximately 1,150 online communities.

“More than any other event we studied, the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests triggered sharp increases in online hate speech,” Yonatan Lupu, a GW political science professor and lead author of the study, said. “In the online communities we study, levels of hate speech still have still not returned to where they were before the murder.”

Racist posts skyrocketed by 250% during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. The research team observed that many other types of online hate speech, especially anti-LGBTQ and anti-Semitism, also increased, despite those targets not being directly connected to demonstrations for racial justice. Facebook experienced the largest increase in racist content during the George Floyd demonstrations, outpacing even some unmoderated web forums.

“These events highlight both the importance of content moderation and the challenges of effectively implementing this,” Lupu said. “Hateful users online mobilize quickly and move across platforms easily. Our evidence suggests content moderators on mainstream platforms should be keeping an eye on how discourse and narratives evolve on fringe platforms.”

The study took place between June 2019 and December 2020. Researchers did not collect any user information and did not investigate how online hate speech influences offline events. Although the study has concluded, the research team continues to monitor approximately 2,000 online hate communities, where bigoted content continues to run rampant at elevated levels.

“Hate online is still very much alive and our team is continuing to study its evolution and spread,” Richard Sear, a data analyst in the GW Department of Physics and co-author of the study said. “Recently, we have looked not only at how different types of hate fluctuate in response to real-world events, but also how they respond to efforts by moderated platforms to remove hateful content. ‘Deplatforming’ has been a major topic of interest over the past couple of years, and we hope to inform strategies for removing hateful content that won’t result in further escalation of hate levels or even re-emergence of removed content.”

The study, “Offline Events and Online Hate”, was published in PLOS ONE on Jan. 25, 2023. In addition to Lupu and Sear, the research team includes GW physics professor Neil F. Johnson and former GW researchers Nicolás Velásquez, Rhys Leahy and Nicholas Johnson Restrepo, and Beth Goldberg of Google. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and Jigsaw (a unit of Google). 

-GW-

For more information, go to newswise.com

How To Uniquely Display Photos

By
Rozalin Martin
-
0

Film Strips

These clear film strip frames are helpful to easily display fun memories! However, when buying these frames, check the size measurements so you’re certain your photo will fit. These frames are affordable as well! The one in the photo was only $1.00!

Photo String Lights

Use creativity to bring light and pictures to your space. All you need are string lights, clothespins, and push pins to make a spread like the one below!

Photo Pages

This is a super fun way to display photos! You can interchange them without taking them out of the frame. It’s super easy and practical!

2 Super Easy Recipes

By
Stanton Zbylot
-
0

Cooking can be one of the most challenging tasks, but it can simultaneously be fun as well! For me, cooking helps me to relax. Doing it from home can save you money, and it tastes so much better than fast food!

Texas Sheet Cake

This dessert is by far one of the easiest, quickest, and most delicious desserts ever. This chocolate cake will leave you craving for more. This recipe makes about 22-24 slices. This is a great dessert to bring to any family function or friend get-together. Enjoy!

What you need:

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 2 sticks butter
  • 2 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
  • 1 cup Coca-Cola

Directions for the cake:

  • Put your two sticks of butter in a saucepan with the coke and the cocoa powder, and bring to a boil. Let this cool before adding it to the dry ingredients
  • In a mixing bowl combine your flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda
  • In another saucepan heat the eggs and sour cream and add it to the cooled cocoa mixture
  • Heat oven to 350 degrees
  • Combine the wet and dry ingredients
  • Pour cake batter into a greased 17x11x1inch pan
  • Bake for 20-30 min

Directions for the icing:

  • Bring 4 tbsp of cocoa powder, 1/2 stick of butter, and 6 tbsp of coke to a boil and let cool
  • Add that mixture to 4 cups confectioners sugar or powdered sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla, and 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Enjoy this delicious recipe!

Crunchy Beef Bake

You have to have something savory to go with your dessert! This is the perfect casserole that is so easy to make, and so delicious. It is perfect for any occasion, and your friends and family will love it. This recipe serves about 8 people and is one of my favorite recipes ever. It is so easy to make and will leave your family and friends in awe.

What you need:

  • 1 medium chopped onion
  • 1 medium chopped bell pepper
  • 1 Ib. ground beef
  • 2 cups of uncooked corkscrew macaroni
  • 1 can of cream of mushroom soup
  • 1 can of petite diced tomatoes
  • 3/4 tsp seasoning salt
  • 1 cup grated cheese
  • 1 can of french-fried onions

Directions:

  • Cook and drain the macaroni
  • Cook the ground beef, onions, and bell peppers until the meat is brown and the onions are transparent
  • Combine the meat, onions, and bell peppers with all the other ingredients except the french-fried onions
  • Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
  • Pour into a sprayed casserole dish
  • Cover and bake for 30 min
  • After it is done baking uncover and top with the french-fried onions and enjoy

What to Do on a Rainy Day

By
Rachel Lauren
-
0

With it raining almost every day this week, people are not really able to go enjoy the great outdoors much. Staying inside all week can make you feel stifled and bored, and you can even get stressed out by the smallest things.

Instead of just sleeping all day or playing a video game by yourself, take this time to spend with your family or friends! If you do not like just watching a movie, play some card games, board games, or charades.

Sometimes, it is good to play board games that help one to grow closer to family and friends. I know of one board game that lists off different phobias on cards called “Your Worst Nightmare”. You have to rank the cards in order, from which one you fear the most to which one you fear the least while other people have to guess the order you put the phobias in. It’s definitely fun and it helps one to connect to his/her family and friends on a deeper level.

Personally, I do not like extremely competitive games. If you are like me, I would suggest playing a more laid-back game, like the board game “Life”! It’s a classic board game that takes an extensive amount of time, with only a little competitiveness.

If you do not like board games, try helping your parents out around the house or in the kitchen! Helping your parents out without them asking you to do anything makes them feel cared about. Helping them out can improve your relationship overall!

Lastly, try doing some karaoke! Singing with the people that you are close to is one of the most fun things to do, in my opinion. However, even if you are singing for fun, do not strain your voice! It can damage your vocal chords and make singing or even talking tough to do.

The Dangers of “Bureaucra-think”: Research Demonstrates Structural Bias and Racism in Mental Health Organizations

By
Larry Waldorp
-
0

 Bias is embedded in the very ways healthcare organizations operate, according to a study published recently in Clinical Psychological Science. 

Conducted by researchers Miraj U. Desai, Larry Davidson, APS Fellow John F. Dovidio (Yale University), Nadika Paranamana (University of Hartford), and Victoria Stanhope (New York University), the study reveals how organizational-level biases affect how patients and even providers are viewed—and in ways that can produce racial and ethnic inequities. 

The authors specifically focused on mental health organizations, detailing how they may systematically transmit bias and racism through common bureaucratic processes and, in some cases, through staff merely doing their job. 

In an equally disturbing finding, the study revealed that staff often remain unaware of this transmission process and perpetuate it simply by meeting their work requirements—a process that the authors termed “bureaucra-think.” 

Over time, this can lead to care becoming “system-centered” rather than person-centered, let alone equitable, the researchers concluded. 

“We hope that this study aids community members, providers, and policymakers vying for greater equity in healthcare,” said Desai, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and the paper’s first author. “At the same time, while the study focused on health settings, we firmly believe that it has direct relevance for institutions and systems outside of healthcare—offering concrete evidence and novel concepts to address how inequity can flourish in very hidden ways.” 

The study carries implications for healthcare and other organizations and suggests novel structural targets for intervention. It also signals a paradigm shift for psychological science, as it demonstrates how structural bias and racism partly depend on collective psychological processes, which psychological science has typically neglected in favor of individualist or internalist accounts. The study thus offers a robust scientific and practical framework to help psychology, healthcare, and related fields address structural bias and racism. 

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation. 

For more information, visit newswise.com.

1...229230231...749Page 230 of 749