Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Windows 10 Warning: Anger At Microsoft Rises With Serious New Failure
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/09/windows-10-warning-serious-failure-provokes-questions-and-anger/#6ea063e734f4

When only people with large budgets or institutional connections can access and use research, it puts many others at a disadvantage.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/open-access-human-rights-issue

Nanoparticles produced from burning coal result in damage to mice lungs

Titanium oxide found in coal smog and ash can cause lung damage in mice after a single exposure, with long-term damage occurring in just six weeks.

Size matters! What drives zoo attendance and how does footfall impact conservation?

Conserving species in the wild remains the gold standard but there is an increasing relevance and importance to the role played by the thousands of zoos and aquariums across the globe in supporting conservation in the wild. This study provides global evidence to suggest that zoos don't need to compromise their economic viability and entertainment value in order to have a significant value to conservation.

Treating wastewater with ozone could convert pharmaceuticals into toxic compounds

With water scarcity intensifying, wastewater treatment and reuse are gaining popularity. But some methods for killing microbes in wastewater create disinfection byproducts (DBPs) that could be harmful to human health. Now researchers have found that ozone treatment and subsequent chlorination can convert trace amounts of some pharmaceuticals in wastewater into DBPs called halonitromethanes.

Feeding bluebirds helps fend off parasites

If you feed the birds in your backyard, you may be doing more than just making sure they have a source of food: you may be helping baby birds give parasites the boot.

We’re glad to see the Attorney General reaching out to ICANN to learn what the impact of the sale of the .ORG registry would have on the nonprofit community. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/after-nonprofits-protest-icann-californias-attorney-general-steps-org-battle

Yes, Michael Bloomberg Is Definitely an Oligarch

In the wake of Tuesday night's Iowa caucus results debacle, one question has been on everybody's mind: Is Michael Bloomberg an oligarch?

The query was first raised by Bernie Sanders’ campaign co-chair Nina Turner, in the course of an interview by MSNBC host Chris Matthews. Her description of Bloomberg as an oligarch buying his way into the Democratic debates prompted a spirited defense of the media mogul from The Root’s political editor Jason Johnson. Johnson objected that “Oligarchy in our particular terminology makes you think of a rich person who got their money off of oil in Russia, who is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional system.”

This is a strange defense. Aside from the mention of Russia, a subject known to elicit unbalanced responses from liberal commentators, the description fits Michael Bloomberg pretty well. He is indeed very rich, and it can scarcely be denied that he is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional political system. Johnson implicitly acknowledged the latter, effectively arguing “hate the game, not the player.” But the problem with this argument is that Michael Bloomberg has long been fighting to preserve the rules of the game that have made him so obscenely wealthy. He’s been acting, in other words, like an oligarch.

Making Bloomberg

Bloomberg is famous for being something of a political chameleon. He was a Democrat for most of his life, became a Republican to run for mayor of New York in 2001, became an independent in 2007, and then became a Democrat again in 2018, apparently in response to President Trump. But throughout all of these changes, one thing has remained consistent: his devotion to the interests of the wealthy.

Bloomberg came into office in 2002 promising to run New York City like a business, and he delivered. He immediately offered city unions contracts with pay raises, but demanded concessions on pensions and healthcare, just as private sector companies have been demanding from unions for decades. At the next round of contract negotiations, when the costs of these concessions became clear to teachers’ union members and they demanded more, Bloomberg simply refused to bargain with them.

He also got rid of pesky democratic impediments to enacting his neoliberal agenda. He placed city schools under mayoral control, eliminating local school boards and implementing policy instead through the Panel on Education Policy, whose members he appointed. At the same time, Bloomberg’s administration expanded charter schools in the city, further putting education under private control. Like a good businessman, he accompanied this privatization blitz with a public relations campaign, expanding the Department of Education’s PR staff from 4 to 23.

Throughout his administration, Bloomberg was also a vocal defender of the interests of the rich. In classic trickle-down fashion, he argued that helping the poor was best accomplished by helping the rich. Want to address poverty? “Attract more very fortunate people. They’re the ones who pay the bills,” he said in 2013. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Bloomberg ran interference for the banks, repeating right-wing lies that blamed fair housing laws for the mortgage meltdown. When Occupy Wall Street put inequality into the national spotlight, Bloomberg dismissed the protests, arguing that the country had been “overspending” and social services should be cut. And though he’s singing a different tune now, in 2012 he was a dogged opponent of raising the minimum wage.

It would be bad enough if Bloomberg were just a New York problem. However, because of his vast wealth, Bloomberg has secured a role as a player on the national stage, backing politicians and causes that protect the wealth of the billionaire class. He supported George W. Bush for reelection in 2004, after Bush passed massive tax cuts for the rich. He donated money to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and backed a host of ultra-conservative politicians, ranging from religious zealot Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to racist loudmouth Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Though he donated to Democrats as well, up until the 2018 midterms, Bloomberg’s super PAC Independence USA spent more money funding the campaigns of Republicans than Democrats.

Oligarchy in action

Now, Bloomberg is running for the Democratic nomination for president. As with the rest of his political career, he’s running entirely on the support of his personal wealth. So far, he’s spent more $300 million of his personal fortune on his campaign. And following the Iowa caucus debacle, Bloomberg announced he would be doubling his ad spending.

What’s more, Bloomberg has been able to use his obscene wealth to shift the institutional field to his favor. He has picked up a number of endorsements from prominent mayors in whose cities he spent philanthropic money such as Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California and Greg Fischer of Louisville, Kentucky. Other endorsements have come through mayors who received training in Bloomberg’s Harvard City Leadership Initiative.

Even more outrageously, the Democratic National Committee recently eliminated the donor number requirement from the Nevada debate, allowing Bloomberg on the stage even as other candidates were eliminated by the DNC’s strict debate rules. Bloomberg’s money just doesn’t buy him a campaign—it buys his campaign the ability to change the rules.

Michael Bloomberg is, therefore, a perfect example of a “rich person...taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional political system.” It’s worth remembering that in other countries, Bloomberg wouldn’t be able to throw his wealth around like this. In Canada, for example, candidates and parties are bound to maximum spending limits, scaled to the population of the electoral district in which they’re competing. Not so in the United States, and Bloomberg has taken full advantage.

For his entire career in politics, Michael Bloomberg has backed policies and politicians that protect his fortune. In doing so, he has acted exactly as an oligarch does. The term “oligarch” dates back to ancient Greece. There, Aristotle used it to describe a government which the rich control in their own interests. This has been Bloomberg’s approach to government throughout his career. It’s the game he plays, and anyone who wants to change it will learn very quickly that he is not on their team.

Trump Says Covering All Immigrants Would Bankrupt Our Healthcare System. That’s a Lie.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump put Medicare for All in the crosshairs. Single-payer healthcare will “bankrupt our nation by providing free taxpayer-funded healthcare to millions of illegal aliens,” he seethed, “forcing taxpayers to subsidize free care for anyone in the world who unlawfully crosses our borders.” Like so many of the other claims in Trump’s speech, this one was demonstrably false. If anything, the evidence suggests that immigrants actually subsidize healthcare systems—and it is time for advocates to push back. 

For proponents, the case for single-payer is fundamentally a moral one: Healthcare should be a right, and everybody should be covered. This argument, however, is up against the rancorous rhetoric of the demagogic Right, which is not only advancing dehumanizing narratives of exclusion, but also bolstering those narratives with factual inaccuracies. According to one CNN poll, some 59% of the American public is opposed to providing public coverage to the undocumented. Changing this opinion means overturning the right-wing narrative. To do so, we have to make the case that Trump’s claim—that including all U.S. residents in a single-payer system will bankrupt it—is wrong.  

A fundamental fact about financing healthcare for immigrants is that they are, compared to the native-born population, relatively young, and therefore healthy. As a result, immigrants tend to use comparatively less healthcare (indeed, too little) relative to those born in the United States. At the same time, they still pay into the system—even undocumented immigrants. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but as Paul Van De Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted, undocumented immigrants were estimated to have contributed a net $12 billion into the Social Security system via payroll taxes back in 2007. Something similar plays out in healthcare. As two important studies led by my colleague Dr. Leah Zallman at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School make clear, in healthcare, immigrants subsidize the U.S.-born.

In a 2013 study published in Health Affairs, Zallman and colleagues examined how much immigrants pay into the Medicare trust fund, relative to how much Medicare spends on their healthcare. They found that while immigrants paid some $33 billion in Medicare taxes in 2009, they only used $19 billion in health services—in other words, they subsidized the trust fund to the tune of nearly $14 billion. In a second study, also published in Health Affairs, researchers turned to private insurance, and a similar picture emerged. Premium contributions from immigrants (including the undocumented) exceeded plans’ outlays on immigrants’ healthcare. In contrast, U.S.-born enrollees contributed less than what they used in care—a deficit of about $163 per native-born person.

Including immigrants in an insurance system, in other words, makes it more actuarially sound. “mmigrants subsidize US natives in the private health insurance market,” the researchers concluded, “just as they are propping up the Medicare Trust Funds.”

Evidence from abroad—in particular, Spain—similarly strengthens the economic case for covering everyone. Spain’s universal system dates back to the 1980s, but as health researcher Helena Legido-Quigley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine described with colleagues in Lancet Public Health, the nation passed a law in 2011 that “gave an explicit right to free health care for all people living in Spain, both Spanish and migrant, irrespective of their legal status, making Spain one of the most migrant-friendly health systems in Europe.” Still, it hasn’t been straightforward path. In 2012, a newly elected conservative government reversed this expansion. They were met, however, with a wave of resistance, including civil disobedience. Some 1,300 doctors and nurses pledged to defy the law and treat immigrants regardless of documentation status, as the British Medical Journal reported. After elections in 2018, the new left-wing government of Pedro Sanchez restored coverage to all. 

In 2018 (the latest year of data available from the OECD), Spain spent some $3,323 per capita on healthcare—compared to more than $10,000 in the United States. It seems unlikely that the the 2019 figures will change that overall picture much. As such, the policy of extending universal healthcare to immigrants has not bankrupted Spain’s system.

Legido-Quigley and colleagues, writing in the British Medical Journal last year, cite other evidence of cost-savings from European nations, including a study in German that found that a policy of limiting healthcare access for asylum seekers and refugees actually led to larger healthcare costs down the road.  

Europe, needless to say, faces the same sorts of right-wing populist forces that we contend with in the United States. Recent conservative governments in the United Kingdom, for instance, have taken steps to restrict access to the National Health Service to migrants. Achieving true universal coverage will be no easier here than abroad. But we should see the impediments as political—not economic. 

For advocates of Medicare for All, the moral case for universal healthcare will always be paramount.  Realizing it, however, requires changing millions of minds and moving millions of voters in the face of an earsplitting barrage of xenophobic bombast from President Trump and his right-wing backers. The enormity of that challenge requires that every relevant argument and data point be drawn upon to make our case. Fortunately, when it comes to the economics of full universal Medicare for All, the facts are with us. 

For advocates of Medicare for All, the moral case for universal healthcare will always be paramount. Even if the above realities were not true, we should still include immigrants in universal coverage, on the basis that healthcare is a human right and no one should be left to die because they can’t afford to go to the doctor, regardless of national origin. However, the claim that immigrants would bankrupt the system is an empirical one that can be disproven, and factual inaccuracies should not be allowed to stand, especially when they are used amplify xenophobic bombast from President Trump and his right-wing backers. The fact that a Medicare for All system that includes immigrants would be economically sound is one of the many data points we can use to make the case to millions of people that it is our moral imperative to build a Medicare for All system that includes everyone.

Few consumers understand THC levels in cannabis edibles

Few cannabis consumers understand what the THC numbers on packages of cannabis edibles really mean, according to a new study. The study, which surveyed nearly 1,000 Canadians aged 16 to 30, found that most consumers could not identify whether a cannabis edible contained 'low' or 'high' levels of THC based on the label.

Simple, solar-powered water desalination

A completely passive solar-powered desalination system could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal areas to provide an efficient, low-cost water source.

Molecular 'switch' reverses chronic inflammation and aging

Scientists have identified a molecular 'switch' that controls the immune machinery responsible for chronic inflammation in the body. The finding could lead to new ways to halt or even reverse many age-related conditions, from from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and cancer.

The House Just Passed a Sweeping Labor Bill. Here’s Why It Matters.

House Democrats just passed an important blueprint for strengthening unions and building worker power. If signed into law, the labor law reforms within the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would amount to the biggest change to the rules governing employers and workers in generations. Among other major features, it would bolster workers’ ability to unionize, expand organizing rights to more workers and strengthen the right to strike.

Social media users 'copy' friends' eating habits

Social media users are more likely to eat fruit and veg -- or snack on junk food -- if they think their friends do the same, a new study has found.

Feds Find Fourth Amendment Workaround, Buy Phone Locations From Marketing Firms
https://gizmodo.com/feds-find-fourth-amendment-workaround-buy-phone-locati-1841516436 #privacy #security #librem5

Majority of US adults believe climate change is most important issue today

As the effects of climate change become more evident, more than half of US adults (56%) say climate change is the most important issue facing society today, yet 4 in 10 have not made any changes in their behavior to reduce their contribution to climate change, according to a new poll.

Arctic ice melt is changing ocean currents

Using 12 years of satellite data, NASA scientists have measured how the influx of cold, fresh water is affecting the Beaufort Gyre, a major Arctic current.

Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Could Be Even More Beneficial Than We Realized

The world wastes trillions of dollars every year on fossil fuel direct and indirect subsidies. Trillions! The U.S. alone spends hundreds of billions of dollars on them, ten times as much as it spends on education.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/cutting-fossil-fuel-subsidies-could-be-even-more-benefi-1841500311 #climatechange #climatecrisis

Arctic permafrost thaw plays greater role in climate change than previously estimated

Abrupt thawing of permafrost will double previous estimates of potential carbon emissions from permafrost thaw in the Arctic, and is already rapidly changing the landscape and ecology of the circumpolar north, a new study finds.