Sounders at Real Salt Lake, recap: A hard point - Sounder At Heart

hard.indah.link

The Seattle Sounders hit the road to face Real Salt Lake for the season’s second meeting between the two sides on Saturday night. After a lot of poor finishing and some less-than-stellar passing, a lot of physical play and a well-deserved second-yellow red card to Pablo Ruiz in stoppage time the game ended 0-0.

Both sides had stretches of possession and dangerous chances throughout the first half. RSL’s best moments seemed to come from transition moments as they attempted to punish Seattle for giveaways, but time after time Stefan Frei was there to keep them off the scoreboard. Seattle got into plenty of dangerous spots, but Zac MacMath wasn’t required to intervene much as the Sounders got in their own way or let themselves down with a final pass or touch more often than not. At the halftime whistle the game was still as it had started: scoreless.

There were plenty of moments when a goal was there for the taking, through craft or guile, but neither side seemed to have what they needed. As the game wore on the altitude seemed to clearly be taking its toll on Seattle, and the repeated kicks and clashes that they suffered from RSL took their own toll as well. Nine yellow cards were shown in total, with six of them going to Salt Lake including Pablo Ruiz receiving two of them after a stamp on Nico Lodeiro as the game ticked into stoppage time.

It's a frustrating attacking performance, but ultimately it's a shutout and a point on the road. Whatever good feeling may have come from the result was likely wiped out by Kelyn Rowe having to be helped off of the field late on with an apparent knee injury.

9’ — A fortunate bounce of the ball puts Léo Chú goal side of his defender and he plays a ball across the box that nearly finds Héber on the doorstep.

11’ — Alex Roldan plays Jordan Morris through after picking a pass off. Morris hits a dangerous cross that nearly finds the net off of a touch from a defender.

18’ — The first real look for RSL comes from a dangerous cross off of the wing and a header around the 6-yard box for Rubio Rubin, but the shot goes just wide of the far post.

21’ — Chú nutmegs a defender and dribbles into the box to lay the ball off to Héber, whose first-time effort is saved well by Zac MacMath at the near post.

29’ — João Paulo plays a little slip pass at the edge of the RSL box with Héber and Morris both running onto it. Héber takes the shot but pulls it wide.

30’ — Stefan Frei makes an excellent leaping, one-handed save to stop a twisting shot from distance, then is able to pop the ball over the bar and deny any chance of a rebound.

45’ — RSL play quickly through Seattle following a giveaway from Morris on the sideline and Rubin gets another good look that’s just kept out by a diving save from Frei.

47’ — Alex Roldan sends in a tantalizing cross from the right that just misses connecting with Morris’s head right in front of goal.

51’ — Another in a long line of very close chances for Seattle as Chú slips a ball through for Morris, who just gets there ahead of MacMath and rounds him but can’t get a good look.

78’ — A great touch from Héber gets him through the defense, and another clever touch sets Morris up with a great chance but the shot goes high.

Ode to Kelyn Rowe: Kelyn Rowe came to Seattle having already accomplished more than many players ever do. He’d constructed a meaningful and impressive career in professional soccer, initially making his way as that most elusive of American players: a god’s honest no. 10. He played himself into the USMNT conversation, but some injury trouble and the ever-changing makeup of the league forced him to adjust as he made his way back across the country from his time with the New England Revolution, stopping at Sporting Kansas City and Real Salt Lake before finally arriving home in Seattle. He joined his hometown club a journeyman and a veteran, willing to play on a team-friendly deal in whatever role was required of him. In that manner he’s consistently been available, he’s been a vocal leader and a guiding presence for younger guys, and he’s put in solid, reliable performances. There’s not much more you can ask for from a veteran depth piece. He’s been a legitimate backup option at a number of spots, including left back. We won’t know the severity of his injury for a little while, but it’s undeniably a blow. Hopefully the people around him are able to lift him up and help him through it. Get well soon.

Feeling Cristian Roldan’s absence: I don’t know that having Cristian Roldan available would have changed the result of this game, but it probably would have made the task of keeping the Sounders attack in check a bit more complicated. In Cristian Roldan’t absence Brian Schmetzer has rolled out Jordan Morris on the right side of the attack with Léo Chú keeping his spot on the left. It’s not a bad option, and it gets a lot of quality attacking talent on the field, but there’s a reason Morris has moved primarily over to the left for a while now. Deployed on the right, Morris has a tendency to drift centrally which does help to occupy the centerbacks, but it also puts a lot of weight on Alex Roldan’s shoulders to maintain and provide width to the attack and prevent opponents from attacking down that side. With Cristian Roldan in that spot he and his brother more evenly split those duties as they overload and outwit whoever has the misfortune of lining up opposite them. Add the outrageous chemistry and understanding between them to Cristian’s attacking abilities in their own right and the Sounders just aren’t the same without him on the field. Once again, get well soon, we all hope for a complete recovery.

Championships are built on defense: For a brief moment, the Sounders are on top of the West with 20 points through 10 games. They’ve only allowed seven goals through those 10 games, and four of those came in that nightmarish Portland Timbers game. This was the sixth clean sheet of the season for Seattle, and the first to come away from Lumen Field. It would have been great to get the win, and that’s surely something the team will talk about in training this week, but the result is an objectively good one. Trips to face RSL have long been cursed ones, and it’s absolutely necessary to come away with a result of some kind when the team travels and while RSL’s place in the table doesn’t strike fear in the heart they had scored three goals in each of their last two home games. This Sounders team has everything they need to add more silverware to the trophy case, and this game is another step towards doing just that.

Stefan Frei was clutch, as usual.

Coach Brian Schmetzer notes that it’s a knee injury for Rowe and probably serious. Schmetzer surmises that RSL fans thought Rowe was embellishing his injury, and that they were making light of his situation. He makes it clear that Rowe was not embellishing anything. #Sounders pic.twitter.com/pvipnIK0Kz

— Miki Turner (@turneresq) April 30, 2023

3,824 — The Sounders hadn’t kept a clean sheet in Sandy, UT since they won 1-0 on November 8, 2012, 3,824 days ago.

---

Poll

Man of the match

• 59%

  Stefan Frei

  (288 votes)

• 17%

  Kelyn Rowe

  (85 votes)

• 9%

  João Paulo

  (44 votes)

• 13%

  Léo Chú

  (65 votes)

482 votes total Vote Now

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April 30, 2023 at 11:58AM
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Sounders at Real Salt Lake, recap: A hard point - Sounder At Heart

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'Clearly not a penalty' - Was Quartararo hard done by? - The Race

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Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo says that he had “no other solution” than the contact with Miguel Oliveira and Marco Bezzecchi on the opening lap of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, thanks to what he and many of his rivals have been adamant was nothing more than a normal opening-lap racing incident at Jerez.

Bringing out the red flags and leaving Oliveira in hospital for the second time this season through no fault of his own, the incident was one the RNF Aprilia rider was lucky to escape with nothing more serious than a dislocated left shoulder.

The crash happened when Quartararo, coming up from slightly behind, got sandwiched between Oliveira and Bezzecchi while braking for Turn 2.

“Bezzecchi was in front,” Quartararo explained afterwards, “I was in the middle and I had no other solution.

“I could not escape this crash because I just tried to brake and stop, but I hit… I don’t know who was first, but then the bike of Miguel took my clutch and I hit the bike of Bezzecchi. But I had no other solution, so I mean, the crash was 100% sure [unavoidable].”

However, while the former world champion might have understood the crash, he didn’t understand what came next: a long-lap sanction from the FIM MotoGP stewards for causing the incident.

“Surprised,” he admitted afterwards, “and we didn’t see any reason why. I want race direction to have some explanation, no clear explanation was said. From our side, I think we don’t see anything strange and I think it is clearly not a penalty.”

The sanction had a double effect on Quartararo’s race, given that he had to serve it again after dipping outside the long-lap loop the first time around.

Through hell and back to finish 10th! 🤯

Following the crash in the opening lap of the race, @FabioQ20 had to repeat his Long Lap Penalty after serving it incorrectly ⚠️#SpanishGP 🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/oHMHpLUsex

— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) April 30, 2023

Quartararo was backed up by team boss Maio Meregalli, with the former racer explaining that he was left unimpressed by the stewards’ reasoning – and believing that they themselves weren’t fully certain of their decision.

That visit to the stewards marked the second day in a row Yamaha had to do that, after Quartararo’s team-mate Franco Morbidelli received the same penalty in very similar circumstances after the sprint – triggering an unsuccessful appeal, which wasn’t possible in this case.

“We went to the race direction because we didn’t really understand why they decided to penalise Fabio with a long lap,” Meregalli told MotoGP. “After talking to them, we are even more convinced that they made a mistake.

“They showed us the images, many different views, and in the end they did not convince us that their decision was right. I’m disappointed, because for sure the race was compromised by their decision.”

The Yamaha team was not alone in chalking up the crash as a racing incident, either, with Oliveira’s team boss Razlan Razali (who publicly called for harsher penalties in the aftermath of his rider’s crash with Marc Marquez in Portugal) also telling The Race that he didn’t see anything egregious.

“Well,” the Malaysian said, “in the heat of the moment and when we saw the review, the playback, honestly, I think it was a race incident and I think it’s a bit harsh for Fabio to get the long lap. I mean, I feel it’s a racing incident. It’s just that Miguel’s just unlucky, that’s it. What else would you say?”

That’s a stance that Bezzecchi also agreed with, at least on his first viewing of the incident, with the VR46 Ducati rider telling the media afterwards that he didn’t believe that the Frenchman had done anything crazy before getting trapped in between his Ducati and Oliveira’s Aprilia as they closed for the corner.

“For me, it was a situation that was a little bit also difficult to avoid,” he explained, “because at the end the only thing that he could do was to brake a little bit earlier because he was in the middle between me and Miguel from what I saw, but I didn’t have the time to look very well, so take it all with a [pinch of salt].

“So maybe braking a little bit earlier, but in the end it was difficult because the space is not so much. So it’s a mistake that can happen, I don’t want to say nothing about Fabio.”

In fact, the only riders among Quartararo’s rivals questioned about the move who came out somewhat on the stewards’ side were the Pramac Ducati duo.

Compatriot Johann Zarco said that he understood why Quartararo’s action was punishable under MotoGP’s current rules.

“Hard to say,” was his assessment. “Yesterday Fabio did an amazing start on the first one and he said on the second one that starting from 16th – if you don’t get the right opportunity, it’s tough to come back. And I think he tried to immediately get this strong start as yesterday…

“Oliveira was struggling at that moment because starting from ninth he missed a bit at the start and it seems that on the first two corners he was struggling a bit.

“The way we have the rules now it can be normal that he can get the penalty because we are so close and he tried to go… didn’t make it but maybe not a huge mistake, we can understand that he tried it because it was maybe the only way for him to catch position and then do a good race, but then yeah… with our rules now it’s normal.”

Team-mate Jorge Martin said suggested that Quartararo perhaps didn’t fully account for the effect of braking right behind two other bikes, but admitted the situation was “difficult to understand”.

“Maybe he was expecting Bezzecchi to go on the inside. It’s complicated,” said Martin.

“I hope Oliveira is well because it was not nice to see.”

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May 01, 2023 at 01:31AM
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'Clearly not a penalty' - Was Quartararo hard done by? - The Race

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Star Wars Jedi Survivor's Mogu hits so hard, you may permanently lose your XP - Eurogamer.net

hard.indah.link

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor players have encountered another irritating bug – and this one steals your XP.

Many of you may have already come across the enemy Mogu, a big space troll thing that packs a punch. Trouble is, it turns out that the troll hits so hard, in some cases it smashes your XP clean off – or into – the map so that you can't recover it.

Let's Play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor!

In a reddit post entitled "don't die to this troll, he eats your XP", u/slaymaker1907 reports that there "seems to be a bug where if you die to this very particular troll, you can't get your XP back".

"[I] was three-quarters full on my XP," added another commenter. "The player death marker says it is 3m below me or something. This bug is annoying."

Don’t die to this troll, he eats your XP
by u/slaymaker1907 in FallenOrder

To see this content please enable targeting cookies.

"After hitting this problem twice in the past hour, I was ready to put the game on the back burner until some patches, but I feel a little better seeing so many other people running into it as well," said another unlucky player (thanks, TheGamer).

A Star Wars Jedi: Survivor player is warning others of a "major game-breaking bug" that can prevent progress.

If you pass a certain point early in the game – usually within the first two to three hours, although this depends upon how quickly you're trying to get through the story, of course – and die before you save, you risk respawning into a trapped location, effectively blocking your progress.

As Star Wars Jedi: Survivor continues to rack up negative reviews on Steam for its PC performance issues, EA has released a statement to purchasers saying it's "aware [the game] isn't performing to our standards" and insisting it's "committed to fixing these issues".

"We are aware that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor isn't performing to our standards for a percentage of our PC players," the publisher wrote in a statement shared on Twitter, "in particular those with high-end machines or certain specific configurations."

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Star Wars Jedi Survivor's Mogu hits so hard, you may permanently lose your XP - Eurogamer.net

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Sounders at Real Salt Lake, recap: A hard point - Sounder At Heart

hard.indah.link

The Seattle Sounders hit the road to face Real Salt Lake for the season’s second meeting between the two sides on Saturday night. After a lot of poor finishing and some less-than-stellar passing, a lot of physical play and a well-deserved second-yellow red card to Pablo Ruiz in stoppage time the game ended 0-0.

Both sides had stretches of possession and dangerous chances throughout the first half. RSL’s best moments seemed to come from transition moments as they attempted to punish Seattle for giveaways, but time after time Stefan Frei was there to keep them off the scoreboard. Seattle got into plenty of dangerous spots, but Zac MacMath wasn’t required to intervene much as the Sounders got in their own way or let themselves down with a final pass or touch more often than not. At the halftime whistle the game was still as it had started: scoreless.

There were plenty of moments when a goal was there for the taking, through craft or guile, but neither side seemed to have what they needed. As the game wore on the altitude seemed to clearly be taking its toll on Seattle, and the repeated kicks and clashes that they suffered from RSL took their own toll as well. Nine yellow cards were shown in total, with six of them going to Salt Lake including Pablo Ruiz receiving two of them after a stamp on Nico Lodeiro as the game ticked into stoppage time.

It's a frustrating attacking performance, but ultimately it's a shutout and a point on the road. Whatever good feeling may have come from the result was likely wiped out by Kelyn Rowe having to be helped off of the field late on with an apparent knee injury.

9’ — A fortunate bounce of the ball puts Léo Chú goal side of his defender and he plays a ball across the box that nearly finds Héber on the doorstep.

11’ — Alex Roldan plays Jordan Morris through after picking a pass off. Morris hits a dangerous cross that nearly finds the net off of a touch from a defender.

18’ — The first real look for RSL comes from a dangerous cross off of the wing and a header around the 6-yard box for Rubio Rubin, but the shot goes just wide of the far post.

21’ — Chú nutmegs a defender and dribbles into the box to lay the ball off to Héber, whose first-time effort is saved well by Zac MacMath at the near post.

29’ — João Paulo plays a little slip pass at the edge of the RSL box with Héber and Morris both running onto it. Héber takes the shot but pulls it wide.

30’ — Stefan Frei makes an excellent leaping, one-handed save to stop a twisting shot from distance, then is able to pop the ball over the bar and deny any chance of a rebound.

45’ — RSL play quickly through Seattle following a giveaway from Morris on the sideline and Rubin gets another good look that’s just kept out by a diving save from Frei.

47’ — Alex Roldan sends in a tantalizing cross from the right that just misses connecting with Morris’s head right in front of goal.

51’ — Another in a long line of very close chances for Seattle as Chú slips a ball through for Morris, who just gets there ahead of MacMath and rounds him but can’t get a good look.

78’ — A great touch from Héber gets him through the defense, and another clever touch sets Morris up with a great chance but the shot goes high.

Ode to Kelyn Rowe: Kelyn Rowe came to Seattle having already accomplished more than many players ever do. He’d constructed a meaningful and impressive career in professional soccer, initially making his way as that most elusive of American players: a god’s honest no. 10. He played himself into the USMNT conversation, but some injury trouble and the ever-changing makeup of the league forced him to adjust as he made his way back across the country from his time with the New England Revolution, stopping at Sporting Kansas City and Real Salt Lake before finally arriving home in Seattle. He joined his hometown club a journeyman and a veteran, willing to play on a team-friendly deal in whatever role was required of him. In that manner he’s consistently been available, he’s been a vocal leader and a guiding presence for younger guys, and he’s put in solid, reliable performances. There’s not much more you can ask for from a veteran depth piece. He’s been a legitimate backup option at a number of spots, including left back. We won’t know the severity of his injury for a little while, but it’s undeniably a blow. Hopefully the people around him are able to lift him up and help him through it. Get well soon.

Feeling Cristian Roldan’s absence: I don’t know that having Cristian Roldan available would have changed the result of this game, but it probably would have made the task of keeping the Sounders attack in check a bit more complicated. In Cristian Roldan’t absence Brian Schmetzer has rolled out Jordan Morris on the right side of the attack with Léo Chú keeping his spot on the left. It’s not a bad option, and it gets a lot of quality attacking talent on the field, but there’s a reason Morris has moved primarily over to the left for a while now. Deployed on the right, Morris has a tendency to drift centrally which does help to occupy the centerbacks, but it also puts a lot of weight on Alex Roldan’s shoulders to maintain and provide width to the attack and prevent opponents from attacking down that side. With Cristian Roldan in that spot he and his brother more evenly split those duties as they overload and outwit whoever has the misfortune of lining up opposite them. Add the outrageous chemistry and understanding between them to Cristian’s attacking abilities in their own right and the Sounders just aren’t the same without him on the field. Once again, get well soon, we all hope for a complete recovery.

Championships are built on defense: For a brief moment, the Sounders are on top of the West with 20 points through 10 games. They’ve only allowed seven goals through those 10 games, and four of those came in that nightmarish Portland Timbers game. This was the sixth clean sheet of the season for Seattle, and the first to come away from Lumen Field. It would have been great to get the win, and that’s surely something the team will talk about in training this week, but the result is an objectively good one. Trips to face RSL have long been cursed ones, and it’s absolutely necessary to come away with a result of some kind when the team travels and while RSL’s place in the table doesn’t strike fear in the heart they had scored three goals in each of their last two home games. This Sounders team has everything they need to add more silverware to the trophy case, and this game is another step towards doing just that.

Stefan Frei was clutch, as usual.

Coach Brian Schmetzer notes that it’s a knee injury for Rowe and probably serious. Schmetzer surmises that RSL fans thought Rowe was embellishing his injury, and that they were making light of his situation. He makes it clear that Rowe was not embellishing anything. #Sounders pic.twitter.com/pvipnIK0Kz

— Miki Turner (@turneresq) April 30, 2023

3,824 — The Sounders hadn’t kept a clean sheet in Sandy, UT since they won 1-0 on November 8, 2012, 3,824 days ago.

---

Poll

Man of the match

• 56%

  Stefan Frei

  (186 votes)

• 19%

  Kelyn Rowe

  (64 votes)

• 9%

  João Paulo

  (32 votes)

• 14%

  Léo Chú

  (49 votes)

331 votes total Vote Now

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April 30, 2023 at 11:58AM
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Sounders at Real Salt Lake, recap: A hard point - Sounder At Heart

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Disney's Creepiest Live-Action Film Is Hard To Shake Off - Collider

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Disney's Creepiest Live-Action Film Is Hard To Shake Off - Collider

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Jenna Bush Hager Talks Changed Perspective on 'Really Hard' Miscarriage - PEOPLE

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Jenna Bush Hager admits that her perspective on one of her "biggest heartbreaks" has changed over time.

In conversation with co-host Hoda Kotb on TODAY Friday, the book club host, 41, talked about how she looks back at the miscarriage she had before welcoming her oldest — 10-year-old daughter Margaret "Mila" Laura — as they talked about rejection and let-downs.

"You know, I had a miscarriage before Mila, an ectopic pregnancy. And at the time, because I had to have surgery, it felt like… it felt really hard," she recalled.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

"And also hard cause we were young and I don't know that Henry and I necessary knew even the language of life yet; how lucky we were," she continued.

"But now — and everybody knows it, Mila loves to tell people, 'Mommy had a baby that died.' I'm like, 'Mila…strangers!'"

Bush Hager — who shares son Hal, 3, and daughters Poppy Louise, 7, and Mila with Hager — explained that when she looks back, she sees how different things would have been if that pregnancy hadn't ended.

Jenna Bush Hager Instagram

"When I look at those three kid's faces, had that baby lived, the other three wouldn't necessarily be mine," she shared. "And I always think about those little twists that felt like the hardest heartbreaks."

She concluded, "Whatever it is, it's looking at those rejections, those heartbreaks, those failures as a path that's going to take you somewhere better."

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Jenna Bush Hager Talks Changed Perspective on 'Really Hard' Miscarriage - PEOPLE

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Opinion | Hard Truths About Organ Transplants: The Often Harrowing Aftermath - The New York Times

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Transplant recipients, doctors and others react to a guest essay by a dying woman with a donor heart.

To the Editor:

Re “My Donor Heart and I Will Die Soon,” by Amy Silverstein (Opinion guest essay, April 23):

Even in her final hours, days or months, Amy remains very brave. As a fellow heart transplant recipient of 21 years, I can attest that everything she says about being a patient is true.

It is anathema to my personality to be negative, simply because I’m not brave enough to allow myself to think my transplant is anything other than a miracle. However, the cost is that only those closest to you know the truth of just how hard it is to live this way. People make the assumption that it must be easy because you handle it well. It isn’t.

Amy’s positivity lay in her strict adherence to patient protocols to give her heart every chance to perform well. But the system does need change. Transplant is a treatment, not a cure.

Before she leaves, I want to thank her for telling the truth and for trying to make the transplant world better for those of us still fighting every day to live.

Godspeed, Amy.

Candace Moose
Rumson, N.J.
The writer is co-founder of the Myocarditis Foundation.

To the Editor:

Amy Silverstein’s moving guest essay stirred many memories. From 1990 to 1996, I served as the medical director for cardiac transplantation at the University of Florida, a six-year ride on an emotional roller coaster.

Ms. Silverstein’s essay poignantly captures the dilemma of heart transplantation. The procedure is not a cure, but a trade. Patient and physician agree to manage a short-term life-threatening illness by substituting a long-term life-threatening illness — immunosuppression.

I take issue only with her understandably harsh words about “stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors.” Early on, many thought the immune response would yield to targeted therapies using relatively nontoxic small molecules. But experience has taught us that managing the immune response is like peeling back layers of an onion. There are more layers than we ever dreamed of, and each one brings more tears.

Ms. Silverstein’s voice has profoundly enriched the dialogue between patients and physicians. All we can say is “farewell, and thank you for speaking out.”

Roger M. Mills
Chagrin Falls, Ohio

To the Editor:

I would like Amy to know that I am thinking of her and have carried her in my heart since we met in 2017. My husband and I were on a Backroads trip in the Dolomites of Northern Italy. Each day we hiked eight to 10 miles, often with considerable elevation gain.

In the first few days I was lucky enough to hike with Amy and learn the story of her two heart transplants, her books and her very disciplined lifestyle. She was not only inspiring, but also hard to keep up with, even on the steepest climbs.

I returned from Italy and purchased and read her book “My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.” Amy has cherished her twice-blessed life. I cannot imagine anyone who has hosted a heart with more care and appreciation. Along the way she has touched so many, like me, and made us more appreciative of every breath we take, every step we make.

My hope is that researchers will hear her pleas and work to scale new heights for transplant patients.

Susan Hauser
Winston-Salem, N.C.

To the Editor:

Who doesn’t love a heart-wrenching story of a dying transplant patient railing against the health care system that saved her life? I fear that this one-sided, biased story about heart transplants will affect the willingness of other people or families to donate organs or potential recipients to accept them.

Here is another story: I’m a healthy, happy 74-year-old who received a heart transplant at the age of 56. I live a normal life: I walk at least two miles a day, cross-country ski in the winter, and tend my garden the rest of the year. I’m not on any special diet: I eat butter and drink an occasional glass of wine with dinner. I have virtually no side effects from the medications.

I couldn’t be more grateful for the advances in medical science that have, so far, given me 18 healthy years of life.

Judith Hale
Tigard, Ore.

To the Editor:

I was clueless. My mental image of undergoing a transplant is one of a harrowing set of procedures, but once the hurdles are overcome, a long and healthy life awaits, a miracle delivered by competent physicians and the selfless act of the donor.

Amy Silverstein’s guest essay peels back the awful truth of living with the awful side effects and the substitution of death by immunosuppressive drugs for death from a failing organ. Truly sad. My body ached as I read about this systemic failure to support progress on immunosuppressive therapies.

Ms. Silverstein is a brilliant communicator. The loss of Ms. Silverstein will be a loss for us all.

Robert A. Harris
Wayland, Mass.

To the Editor:

My husband died in 2013, 20 years after receiving a liver transplant. I believe that his body finally gave out after battling shingles, cancer, broken bones, internal bleeding and other consequences of taking immunosuppressive drugs for 20 years.

Like Amy Silverstein, we were grateful for the years that the transplant gave Jim. He was able to meet and get to know his only grandson. He was able to ride a bicycle again after being a longtime cyclist. But he had many months of illness interspersed with his periods of being able to work, travel and be with friends.

It is difficult to complain when you have been given a life due to a major organ transplant and as a result of someone else’s death. But the drugs that he took over the years actually wore his body out, and made him susceptible to many serious life-challenging conditions.

The U.S. medical establishment did well in giving Jim many years of life, but it could do better in making that life less painful, less illness-filled and more productive.

Marilyn O’Leary
Albuquerque
The writer is the author of “How to Be a Widow.”

To the Editor:

As a nephrologist I can understand Amy Silverstein’s frustration as she confronts mortality for the third and, sadly, the last time. However, implicit in her opinion is that transplant medicine has not done enough to prevent the rejection of her second heart or the occurrence of her cancer.

In fact, the advances of transplant medicine have been remarkable given the complexity of the immune system. It is not a trivial problem for research. Dedicated scientists have spent careers in prolonging the life of the transplanted organ, as well as the life of the person receiving that organ, and are as aware as Ms. Silverstein of the “deeply entrenched problems” that remain.

Their research is not “mired in stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors.”

Ronald Kallen
Highland Park, Ill.

To the Editor:

I understand Amy Silverstein’s qualms about immunosuppressive drug therapy, but her diatribe against the transplant system and the drugs that sustain it fail to take into account the tens of thousands of transplant patients being kept alive and well by the medicine she’s so quick to demonize.

I received a kidney from my father 23 years ago. I have religiously taken the medications to temper my immune system twice daily since. They have given me a life in which I’ve built a business, had a family and lived every day to its fullest.

Without these meds, the author would not have had 35 years with donor hearts, and I’d have probably died on a dialysis machine long ago. My wife, my children and I give thanks every day to the transplant system and its drug protocols for giving me and so many others so much.

John F. Martin
Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.

To the Editor:

Amy Silverstein’s essay rang true to me. My wonderful Type 1 diabetic brother received a kidney from his wife. Their joyful, dialysis-free year was filled with family, travel and love — until the weight loss, exhaustion and pain brought him back to the hospital.

The devastating diagnosis of advanced liver cancer sent him to hospice, where he apologized to his wife for leaving her with a lone kidney, possibly shortening her life, too. She reassured him that their last precious year was worth the surgical pain, her life with a sole kidney and all the noxious medications.

My brother, his wife and their excellent, committed physicians all enjoyed the “victory” and gratitude that Ms. Silverstein described. They also endured the horror of goodbye.

Ms. Silverstein’s plea for more transplant research, better immune suppression therapies and new, rapid advances in transplant medicine is timely and necessary.

Mary Lake Polan
New Haven, Conn.
The writer is a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale School of Medicine.

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April 29, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Opinion | Hard Truths About Organ Transplants: The Often Harrowing Aftermath - The New York Times

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House GOP’s debt ceiling bill still leads us to a hard crash - The Hill

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The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talks to reporters just after the Republican majority in the House narrowly passed a sweeping debt ceiling package as they try to push President Joe Biden into negotiations on federal spending, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

When decision-makers get locked into a path, they almost intuitively build up regimes, institutions, and rules that reinforce their decision, no matter how suboptimal that path may be. It makes it very difficult, and expensive in the short term, to leave that path.

We just witnessed a true-life example of Nobel Laureate Economist Kenneth Arrow’s Path Dependence or Increasing Returns theory.

My well-intentioned Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives passed an increase to the limits on the federal government’s credit with the hopes that they can reduce our national debt. To repeat: Republicans just raised the debt ceiling to bring down our national debt.

At the current baseline of spending-revenue ratio, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that our national debt will grow to more than $52 trillion by 2033. That’s an unfathomable and unsustainable amount of debt.

And, that doesn’t include the acceleration of spending that the Biden administration has requested. If you throw in the $800 billion increase in spending that Biden has requested, the national debt will be almost $58 trillion in ten years.

Lately, I have been accused of not adhering to maxims that I have long uttered, in particular, that we must bend the spending trajectory of the federal government down. Some of my friends have argued that the Republican plan bent the spending trajectory down.

Let’s look at the reality. In the first eight months of the plan, the national debt will likely increase by $1.5 trillion since we’re spending roughly $100-120 billion more than we bring in each month. That will raise our debt from $31.4 trillion to at least $33 trillion.

After 10 years, the comparison of the CBO baseline to Republican national debt looks like this: CBO, $52 trillion vs. Republican, $47 trillion. The angle of the slope of the national debt may be slightly reduced, but because deficit spending continues we don’t bend the spending curve down.

That kind of debt load is the kind that will bury, and perhaps finish the nation.

Some of the details in the Republican plan were suggestions that I either offered or support: rescinding the unconstitutional student loan forgiveness/restructuring plan, Rep. Scott Perry’s (R-Pa.) elimination of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Green New Deal subsidies, and cash giveaways.

But, those two proposals didn’t bend down the trajectory sufficiently to alter our crash course with fiscal reality.

What if we actually found a way to adjust our spending to our level of revenue? In other words, what if, just for a year even, we didn’t spend any more than we brought in? We lived within our means.

We might not bring down our national debt, which currently sits at $31.4 trillion, but we wouldn’t be growing it either. Wouldn’t that be a huge victory over the plans of both parties which continue to increase our debt load!

I proposed that we include the Republican savings proposals in the bill just passed in the House. But we could have and should have also returned “discretionary spending” to the pre-COVID spending levels of 2019. Does anyone think our federal government was too small in 2019?

With our current revenue levels, we could pay for 2019 discretionary spending and current levels of Social Security and Medicare without appreciably adding to our national debt. I suggested that we try that for a year to see what happens.

Firstly, we wouldn’t have to increase our debt limit again soon because our growth of national debt would be abated.

Secondly, inflationary pressure would largely be dissipated because flooding our economy with nonproductive, worthless dollars, which has driven our inflation, would end.

Thirdly, it would form the basis for restoring our economy by removing the federal incentives for millions of otherwise able workers to stay at home and out of the workforce.

And another benefit would be that we could assess during that year how to resolve our overwhelming national debt.

This proposal was laughed out of the room.

I was told it could never get enough Republican votes to pass out of the House and would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Putting such a plan on the floor of the House for a vote would have been interesting. The Board of Truth, the voting board, has a way of revealing whether a plan such as this would have been viable.

To prevent politicization, the IRA needs strong congressional oversight Why is the Biden administration punishing financially responsible homeowners?

Besides, the Republican bill passed out from the House, the one that allows an increase in the national debt by $1.5 trillion in less than a year, is said to be dead on arrival in the Senate as well. In fact, we were told that it is merely the price for starting negotiations with the Senate and White House.

If that is true, wouldn’t it have been better to start with a package that would require the federal government to live within its means?

Republican congressman Andy Biggs represents Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District and serves on the House Judiciary and Oversight & Accountability Committees.

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---

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April 30, 2023 at 03:00AM
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House GOP’s debt ceiling bill still leads us to a hard crash - The Hill

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Opinion | Hard Truths About Organ Transplants: The Often Harrowing Aftermath - The New York Times

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Transplant recipients, doctors and others react to a guest essay by a dying woman with a donor heart.

To the Editor:

Re “My Donor Heart and I Will Die Soon,” by Amy Silverstein (Opinion guest essay, April 23):

Even in her final hours, days or months, Amy remains very brave. As a fellow heart transplant recipient of 21 years, I can attest that everything she says about being a patient is true.

It is anathema to my personality to be negative, simply because I’m not brave enough to allow myself to think my transplant is anything other than a miracle. However, the cost is that only those closest to you know the truth of just how hard it is to live this way. People make the assumption that it must be easy because you handle it well. It isn’t.

Amy’s positivity lay in her strict adherence to patient protocols to give her heart every chance to perform well. But the system does need change. Transplant is a treatment, not a cure.

Before she leaves, I want to thank her for telling the truth and for trying to make the transplant world better for those of us still fighting every day to live.

Godspeed, Amy.

Candace Moose
Rumson, N.J.
The writer is co-founder of the Myocarditis Foundation.

To the Editor:

Amy Silverstein’s moving guest essay stirred many memories. From 1990 to 1996, I served as the medical director for cardiac transplantation at the University of Florida, a six-year ride on an emotional roller coaster.

Ms. Silverstein’s essay poignantly captures the dilemma of heart transplantation. The procedure is not a cure, but a trade. Patient and physician agree to manage a short-term life-threatening illness by substituting a long-term life-threatening illness — immunosuppression.

I take issue only with her understandably harsh words about “stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors.” Early on, many thought the immune response would yield to targeted therapies using relatively nontoxic small molecules. But experience has taught us that managing the immune response is like peeling back layers of an onion. There are more layers than we ever dreamed of, and each one brings more tears.

Ms. Silverstein’s voice has profoundly enriched the dialogue between patients and physicians. All we can say is “farewell, and thank you for speaking out.”

Roger M. Mills
Chagrin Falls, Ohio

To the Editor:

I would like Amy to know that I am thinking of her and have carried her in my heart since we met in 2017. My husband and I were on a Backroads trip in the Dolomites of Northern Italy. Each day we hiked eight to 10 miles, often with considerable elevation gain.

In the first few days I was lucky enough to hike with Amy and learn the story of her two heart transplants, her books and her very disciplined lifestyle. She was not only inspiring, but also hard to keep up with, even on the steepest climbs.

I returned from Italy and purchased and read her book “My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.” Amy has cherished her twice-blessed life. I cannot imagine anyone who has hosted a heart with more care and appreciation. Along the way she has touched so many, like me, and made us more appreciative of every breath we take, every step we make.

My hope is that researchers will hear her pleas and work to scale new heights for transplant patients.

Susan Hauser
Winston-Salem, N.C.

To the Editor:

Who doesn’t love a heart-wrenching story of a dying transplant patient railing against the health care system that saved her life? I fear that this one-sided, biased story about heart transplants will affect the willingness of other people or families to donate organs or potential recipients to accept them.

Here is another story: I’m a healthy, happy 74-year-old who received a heart transplant at the age of 56. I live a normal life: I walk at least two miles a day, cross-country ski in the winter, and tend my garden the rest of the year. I’m not on any special diet: I eat butter and drink an occasional glass of wine with dinner. I have virtually no side effects from the medications.

I couldn’t be more grateful for the advances in medical science that have, so far, given me 18 healthy years of life.

Judith Hale
Tigard, Ore.

To the Editor:

I was clueless. My mental image of undergoing a transplant is one of a harrowing set of procedures, but once the hurdles are overcome, a long and healthy life awaits, a miracle delivered by competent physicians and the selfless act of the donor.

Amy Silverstein’s guest essay peels back the awful truth of living with the awful side effects and the substitution of death by immunosuppressive drugs for death from a failing organ. Truly sad. My body ached as I read about this systemic failure to support progress on immunosuppressive therapies.

Ms. Silverstein is a brilliant communicator. The loss of Ms. Silverstein will be a loss for us all.

Robert A. Harris
Wayland, Mass.

To the Editor:

My husband died in 2013, 20 years after receiving a liver transplant. I believe that his body finally gave out after battling shingles, cancer, broken bones, internal bleeding and other consequences of taking immunosuppressive drugs for 20 years.

Like Amy Silverstein, we were grateful for the years that the transplant gave Jim. He was able to meet and get to know his only grandson. He was able to ride a bicycle again after being a longtime cyclist. But he had many months of illness interspersed with his periods of being able to work, travel and be with friends.

It is difficult to complain when you have been given a life due to a major organ transplant and as a result of someone else’s death. But the drugs that he took over the years actually wore his body out, and made him susceptible to many serious life-challenging conditions.

The U.S. medical establishment did well in giving Jim many years of life, but it could do better in making that life less painful, less illness-filled and more productive.

Marilyn O’Leary
Albuquerque
The writer is the author of “How to Be a Widow.”

To the Editor:

As a nephrologist I can understand Amy Silverstein’s frustration as she confronts mortality for the third and, sadly, the last time. However, implicit in her opinion is that transplant medicine has not done enough to prevent the rejection of her second heart or the occurrence of her cancer.

In fact, the advances of transplant medicine have been remarkable given the complexity of the immune system. It is not a trivial problem for research. Dedicated scientists have spent careers in prolonging the life of the transplanted organ, as well as the life of the person receiving that organ, and are as aware as Ms. Silverstein of the “deeply entrenched problems” that remain.

Their research is not “mired in stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors.”

Ronald Kallen
Highland Park, Ill.

To the Editor:

I understand Amy Silverstein’s qualms about immunosuppressive drug therapy, but her diatribe against the transplant system and the drugs that sustain it fail to take into account the tens of thousands of transplant patients being kept alive and well by the medicine she’s so quick to demonize.

I received a kidney from my father 23 years ago. I have religiously taken the medications to temper my immune system twice daily since. They have given me a life in which I’ve built a business, had a family and lived every day to its fullest.

Without these meds, the author would not have had 35 years with donor hearts, and I’d have probably died on a dialysis machine long ago. My wife, my children and I give thanks every day to the transplant system and its drug protocols for giving me and so many others so much.

John F. Martin
Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.

To the Editor:

Amy Silverstein’s essay rang true to me. My wonderful Type 1 diabetic brother received a kidney from his wife. Their joyful, dialysis-free year was filled with family, travel and love — until the weight loss, exhaustion and pain brought him back to the hospital.

The devastating diagnosis of advanced liver cancer sent him to hospice, where he apologized to his wife for leaving her with a lone kidney, possibly shortening her life, too. She reassured him that their last precious year was worth the surgical pain, her life with a sole kidney and all the noxious medications.

My brother, his wife and their excellent, committed physicians all enjoyed the “victory” and gratitude that Ms. Silverstein described. They also endured the horror of goodbye.

Ms. Silverstein’s plea for more transplant research, better immune suppression therapies and new, rapid advances in transplant medicine is timely and necessary.

Mary Lake Polan
New Haven, Conn.
The writer is a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale School of Medicine.

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April 29, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Opinion | Hard Truths About Organ Transplants: The Often Harrowing Aftermath - The New York Times

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Rangers Vs. Devils: The hard way - Blueshirt Banter

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Bantering Points: 4/28/23

Here are today's news and links: Rangers News: Highlights: NJD 4, NYR 0 (5:00 video via NHL.com) Game Recap: Coming off the heels of their worst game of the series in Game 4, Gerard Gallant's squad responded with an even worse performance in Game 5 that has their

Jack McKenna Apr 28, 2023

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April 28, 2023 at 08:33PM
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Rangers Vs. Devils: The hard way - Blueshirt Banter

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Deaths of three family members in Tyrone crash 'too hard to comprehend' - The Irish Times

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The deaths of three family members in a road crash in Co Tyrone is too hard to comprehend, a priest has said.

The victims – named locally as Dan McKane, his sister Christine and their aunt Julia McSorley – died when the minivan they were travelling in collided with a lorry near Aughnacloy early on Thursday morning.

The family members were travelling home from attending a funeral of a relative in England. Four others travelling in the van were injured in the crash and taken to hospital.

The victims were from the Strabane and Newtownstewart areas of Co Tyrone.

A religious vigil will take place in Strabane on Friday evening while a special mass will be held in Aughnacloy.

Priest Fr Declan Boland from Strabane said the incident had brought shock and profound sadness.

“We’re still trying to come to terms with the enormity of the loss,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.

“This was a family coming back from Corby after burying their aunt and to hear that a brother and a sister and an aunt have all been taken so quickly in this tragic accident, it’s really too hard to comprehend.

“And the entire community of Strabane, and indeed the aunt is from Newtownstewart, so the community that is here in Strabane and Newtownstewart are deeply grieving at his time and trying to come to terms with this huge, unexpected loss.”

The collision occurred on the A5 Tullyvar road just outside Aughnacloy at around 7.20am on Thursday.

The incident has intensified calls for a long-stalled upgrade of the A5 to proceed without further delay.

Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill made that demand as she expressed condolences.

“My heartfelt sympathies to the families of those killed in Aughnacloy, & best wishes to those injured for a full recovery,” she tweeted.

“The community of Strabane is in our thoughts during this heartbreaking time.

“The A5 must be built now, no one should ever have to experience this heartache.” - PA

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April 28, 2023 at 06:52PM
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Deaths of three family members in Tyrone crash 'too hard to comprehend' - The Irish Times

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Why is landing on the Moon safely so hard? - Nature.com

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China's Chang'e-4 mission made the first-ever landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019.Credit: Xinhua/Alamy

The M1 spacecraft, built by Tokyo-based company ispace, made a valiant bid to become the first private space vehicle to land on Moon. Instead, on 25 April, it became the latest in a long line of Moon missions that didn’t quite make it, apparently crashing on the lunar surface. Why is it so hard to touch down safely on the Moon? And when might the first private company succeed?

Only three entities have successfully soft-landed on the Moon — the government-funded space agencies of China, the Soviet Union and the United States. And only China has done it since the 1970s and on its first attempt.

“What makes landing on the Moon so difficult is the number of variables to consider,” says Stephen Indyk, director of space systems at Honeybee Robotics in Greenbelt, Maryland. Compared with Earth, for example, the Moon has reduced gravity, very little atmosphere and lots of dust.

To pull off a successful landing, engineers need to anticipate how a spacecraft will interact with this environment — and spend money testing how things might go wrong. “Tests, tests and more tests are needed to prove out the landing system in as many scenarios as possible,” Indyk says. “And even then, nothing is guaranteed.”

Spectacular failures

ispace is only the second private company to try to land on the Moon. In 2019, an attempt by the Israeli company SpaceIL ended in a crash-landing as well.

It’s no surprise that commercial companies are running into challenges in their bids to land on the Moon, Indyk says. In the 1960s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were racing to land there, they crashed spacecraft after spacecraft before each finally succeeded in 1966.

The government space agencies were able to learn from each landing attempt. Today, by contrast, private companies are expected to repeat these successes, without government resources and without lessons gleaned from many failed and successful missions, Indyk says. “That’s a lot to ask of a private enterprise to get it right on the first attempt.”

In 2013, China landed successfully on the Moon on its first try with its Chang’e 3 mission. China also accomplished the first-ever landing on the far side of the Moon, and brought back samples of Moon rocks. But India, for its part, crashed during its attempt to land on the Moon in 2019; it will try again later this year.

Early challenges

Getting a mission to the Moon, around 384,000 kilometres from Earth, is much more challenging than lofting a satellite into low-Earth orbit — and failures can occur early on, even for missions that don't plan to land. This happened with NASA’s Lunar Flashlight mission, a small spacecraft that launched in December and was supposed to map the Moon’s ice. Its propulsion system malfunctioned soon after launch and may keep it from reaching an orbit from which it can do the intended science.

Even if a lander makes it to the vicinity of the Moon, it still has to navigate its way down to the surface with no global-positioning satellites for guidance and virtually no atmosphere to help to slow it down. Once it gets within the crucial last few kilometres, its software has to deal quickly and autonomously with any last-minute challenges, such as its sensors potentially becoming confused by large amounts of dust kicked up from the surface by exhaust plumes.

Both of the 2019 landing failures probably stemmed from software and sensor issues during these final moments. And early indications suggest that this week’s ispace failure could have been caused by the lander running out of propellant just before it touched down.

Commercial Moon rush

The ispace crash raises the bar for a flurry of other commercial missions scheduled to land on the Moon, including as many as three by the end of the year that are partially funded by NASA. Those landers are part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which private companies aim to build landers and fly payloads from NASA and other customers to the lunar surface.

One of these landers, built by the company Astrobotic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was anticipated to take off in early May, but delays in readying its rocket means the launch will probably slide by several months at least. That could mean that a lunar lander from Intuitive Machines, in Houston, Texas, is first up to launch, perhaps as early as June.

These companies will be looking at the experience of others as they try to achieve the first successful private Moon landing. “The rising tide lifts all boats,” said Alan Campbell, an engineer who works on CLPS projects at the company Draper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at a lunar conference this week before the ispace failure. “If we can learn from what happens for commercial or NASA CLPS missions and apply that across — that’s absolutely something we should be doing.”

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Why is landing on the Moon safely so hard? - Nature.com

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