People ‘Bathing’ in Nature To Get Respite From Chaotic News Cycle

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People ‘Bathing’ in Nature To Get Respite From Chaotic News Cycle (Maria)

The author writes, “For two hours, Claire Jefferies wanted to get away from the war in Iran and rising gas prices and just commune with nature. So, she treated herself to a little forest bathing. ‘When I’m here, it’s almost like a protective bubble around me,’ the human resources director said amid oaks and flowering magnolias at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, N.C. ‘It provides a shield.’ … The activity has been known to reduce stress, improve mood, lower blood pressure and boost the immune system.”

Trump Is Trying To Steal the Midterms. Can He Leverage His ‘Excursion’ in Iran To Help? (Reader Steve)

From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Trump has suggested he may try to invoke imaginary and unlawful ‘war powers’ in order to cancel or seize control of this year’s elections. Can he?”

Pentagon Threatened the Pope After He Criticized Trump (Dana)

The author writes, “Relations between the United States and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official. Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture. ‘The United States,’ Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, ‘has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.’”

A Secure Chat App’s Encryption Is So Bad It Is ‘Meaningless’ (Sean)

From 404 Media: “TeleGuard, an app that markets itself as a secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging platform which has been downloaded more than a million times, implements its encryption so poorly that an attacker can trivially access a user’s private key and decrypt their messages, multiple security researchers told 404 Media. TeleGuard also uploads users’ private keys to a company server, meaning TeleGuard itself could decrypt its users’ messages, and the key can also at least partially be derived from simply intercepting a user’s traffic, the researchers found.”

After a Decade as a Yale Hospital Janitor, She Is Now a Doctor There (Russ)

The author writes, “For about a decade, Shay Taylor-Allen walked the halls of Yale New Haven Hospital pushing a janitor’s cart. She mopped patient rooms, disinfected surfaces and emptied the trash. Soon, she’ll walk the halls of the hospital again, this time wearing a white coat. Taylor-Allen, 32, recently matched into an anesthesiology residency at Yale New Haven Hospital — where she spent most of her adult life working as part of the cleaning staff. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It is surreal.’”

Inside a Corporate Retreat That Went Very Badly Wrong (Bethany)

From The Wall Street Journal: “Senior executives at the tech company Plex were eager to treat their 120 fully remote staffers to a weeklong corporate getaway in a tropical paradise. The plan for the Honduras trip was simple: Company meetings and team building by powdery soft beaches during the day and island fun at night, at a cost of roughly $500,000 to the company. They’d build the trip around a Survivor theme, with teams and challenges. But it’d be fun, not too physically grueling. The CEO of Plex, a free streaming platform, would play a role similar to that of Survivor host Jeff Probst. … What followed was a comedy of errors including military drills that outpaced anything this group of office workers had in mind, a rogue porcupine, stranded airplanes and one syringe to the butt of an employee.”