Category: Local / Living

Memes as Form of Business Communication

And organized levity is now an expected part of professional life, especially in sectors like tech. A friend of mine briefly worked for a massive Internet search company that will remain nameless. He told me that the buzzy new time-waster at work was trying to handle as much internal communication as possible not with e-mail or instant messaging, but with funny memes. A whole platform was designed from scratch to facilitate this dubious-but-“fun” goal. If the boss from Office Space pops up on your screen saying “That’d be great,” that’s a Level Three problem. But if Rambo pops up, uh-oh. That’s a Level Five. You might be working late tonight. “Considerable time and effort has gone into developing this tool,” my friend said, smiling ruefully.

Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture
Ken Jennings

Colorado Inventions: Modern Tampons, Crocs, Christmas Lights – Happy Colorado Day

https://mix1043fm.com/10-colorado-inventions/

Tampons are said to have existed for centuries, but the first person to patent the creation with an applicator was Denver resident, Dr. Earle Cleveland Haas. By using telescoping paper tubes, Dr. Haas was able to invent an applicator to make insertion simpler and more sanitary. In 1932, Dr. Haas trademarked the name Tampax, a combination of the terms “tampon” and “vaginal packs.”

A trend most of us didn’t see coming was spawned directly in Colorado from the minds of natives Scott Seamans, George Boedecker, Jr., and Lyndon “Duke” Hanson. The trio introduced the footwear as a boating shoe in 2002 and since then 850 million pairs of Crocs have been sold.

David Dwight (D.D.) Sturgeon is believed to be the person responsible for making outdoor Christmas lights a thing. Sturgeon founded his own electric company in 1912 and in 1914 is said to have dipped ordinary bulbs in red and green paint so that he could string the lights outside his ill son’s bedroom in an effort to cheer him up.

https://www.colorado.gov/governor/news/celebrate-colorado-governor-polis-invites-coloradans-celebrate-149th-annual-colorado-day

Friday, July 25, 2025
COLORADO – Today, Governor Polis announced the return of Celebrate Colorado, a week-long, statewide celebration of everything Colorado. August 1st marks the 149th anniversary of Colorado’s entrance into the Union as the 38th state, now celebrated as Colorado Day. In honor of Colorado Day, statewide celebrations will take place starting today, July 25, 2025 through August 3, 2025. Celebrate Colorado is a great opportunity to come together and show support for local businesses and community organizations.

Starvation in Gaza

The World Health Organization said Sunday there have been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under the age of 5 — up from 11 deaths total the previous six months of the year.

Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the number even higher, reporting 82 deaths this month of malnutrition-related causes: 24 children and 58 adults. It said Monday that 14 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas government, is headed by medical professionals and is seen by the U.N. as the most reliable source of data on casualties. U.N. agencies also often confirm numbers through other partners on the ground.

The Patient’s Friends Hospital, the main emergency center for malnourished kids in northern Gaza, says this month it saw for the first time malnutrition deaths in children who had no preexisting conditions. Some adults who died suffered from such illnesses as diabetes or had heart or kidney ailments made worse by starvation, according to Gaza medical officials.

The WHO also says acute malnutrition in northern Gaza tripled this month, reaching nearly one in five children under 5 years old, and has doubled in central and southern Gaza. The U.N. says Gaza’s only four specialized treatment centers for malnutrition are “overwhelmed.”

PBS News
Israel’s leader claims no one in Gaza is starving. Data and witnesses disagree
World Jul 28, 2025 5:17 PM EDT

SUMMERS: So tell us, if you can, what are families, people there in Gaza, able to eat now?

TANIS: Fundamentally, food is not available for the more than 2 million Palestinians there. There’s a very small supply of local vegetables, like some eggplant, zucchini, rarely maybe onion or garlic. Now, before things got so bad, people could at least eat bread. Now, flour is very expensive, and there’s not enough of it. So even if you have money, you can’t buy food.

And it’s not just food, though, because there’s a serious shortage of fuel and water for cooking and drinking. And the IPC report said today that nearly 9 out of 10 families in Gaza have to resort to extreme coping measures. I asked Beckie Ryan with the aid group CARE – she’s in Gaza right now – to tell us what she’s hearing from mothers who come to their clinic.

BECKIE RYAN: Some of the coping mechanisms they’ve had to resort to is choosing which child, you know, will be fed that day. You know, are they going to buy supplies for the baby, or are they going to buy something that the 5-year-old can eat?

TANIS: Aid workers also told me they’re seeing children rummaging through garbage daily, but not finding any food.

NPR
Famine is unfolding in Gaza, an alert from UN-backed food security experts confirms

Health Insurance Rates Going Up – Way Up

For weeks, policy experts and some political leaders have warned of a tsunami of high costs and worse access coming for the health care of ordinary America because of sweeping policy moves made in Washington.

Coloradans who get their insurance on the individual market — which is about 282,000 people — got a first glimpse of it on Wednesday after the state’s insurance division dropped preliminary annual insurance rates for next year: Average premiums will rise 28 percent for 2026; on the Western Slope, they could climb as high as 38 percent on average, and higher than that for many.

Colorado health insurance rates expected to skyrocket after budget bill slashes health spending

Notes on Medicaid and Rural Health

Or they’re just very humble and they don’t want to take something they can’t pay for at one night clinic. This story has always really stuck with me. A woman in her forties came in to the night clinic. She’d never been seen in our clinic before because of a complaint that people in the choir wouldn’t stand near her. Hmm. And she had started having an odor that made her unpleasant to be near and she’d avoided healthcare because she couldn’t afford it.

And she was a housekeeper. She had no access to any health insurance and didn’t wanna bankrupt her family. And so on exam that night, she had a breast cancer that was so advanced that had grown through her skin and that’s where the smell was coming from. Wow. And she, she ended up dying a few months later. We could have, if she’d gotten mammograms, you know, like we could have caught this very, very early and treated her and she would’ve gone on to be there for her family. But her fear of bankruptcy for seeking healthcare, or maybe it was, you know, she just didn’t wanna take services from someone else. It’s hard to know what keeps people from walking in the door.

One Rural Doctor on the Cuts to Medicaid
The Daily Podcast transcript

Miscellaneous Professional Inside Dope

What's a "secret" from your profession that everyone should probably know?
byu/LaKoref inAskReddit

UnhappyJohnCandy
The federal government is generally made up of people who want to work and serve the public. There’s no more waste here than in any other job I’ve ever been in.

redseca2
As an Architect, now retired: 50% of married couples who take on a major, like down to the studs, house remodel end up in divorce.

dutyofloves
The name brand eyewear like Gucci, Versace, and Coach are some of the worst quality. I would never ever recommend them to anyone. Total waste of money. You’re paying for the logo. That is it.

Also, sometimes if your glasses come back too quickly, we will hold onto them for a few days longer so you think the lab took their time making them. Too quick of a turnaround makes it feel rushed. Rarely seen as a good thing.

MrJQ52
Nurses are humans. We can’t do everything, we can’t be everywhere and there is a limit of how much shit (literally and figuratively) that we can take . Amen

Network-King19
Reboots fix a lot of issues.

Wu-Tang Clan – Denver* – July 4, 2025

Run the Jewels was the opening act.

Excellent show. 10/10

From a review of their Ft. Worth show:

24. Energy stew. All night RZA has been our master of ceremonies, conducting the crowd and getting us to participate in certain songs. After U-God and RZA called out different sections of the arena for their energy, RZA said, “Let’s take all that energy and put it together in one big energy stew. And we gonna take you back to that ‘90s hip-hop and make your energy just explode!” The beat for “4th Chamber” came in. It turned the place up.

25. Cappadonna is having the best night. In every verse Cappadonna did, he rapped with more intensity and heart. RZA has instructed us to ball our negative energy into a fist, open our hands to release it and make a chopping motion like an axe to chop up the bullshit. It set up Cappadonna’s “Run” nicely, which now instructed us to keep it moving when things get sticky.

Wu-Tang Clan Forever: 36 Moments From Their Final Show in Fort Worth
Wu-Tang Clan is currently on its last tour, a rare opportunity for the members to say goodbye and thank their fans.
By Eric Diep
June 15, 2025

* This was at Fiddler’s Green, which is technically Greenwood Village.