Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Even if you have good health insurance, hospitals "in your network" have a scam whereby doctors not in your network treat you -- and you're on the hook for megabucks.

It should be flatly illegal to do this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/30/1151778684/a-baby-spent-36-days-at-an-in-network-hospital-why-did-her-parents-get-a-huge-bi

The St. Louis Federal Reserve published a completely dishonest graph about military spending. Imagine how these people treat data about employment, inflation, etc. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/23/china-military-spending-st-louis-fed-graph/

h/t @doctorow

This is accurate ;)

(via https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/evolution-of-smart-products.html)

For folks in academia using #Mastodon and excited about the prospects of the #Fediverse in your institutions, we just got the results of a #Stanford "Academic/GLAM" survey from late last year in which we participated: https://digitalhumanities.stanford.edu/academic-mastodon-survey-nov2022/ It might provide useful insights for you and data points for your discussions with internal decision makers 😎 !

A HS student to their TX school board, which is banning books:

“I’m not going to sit here and talk about the slippery slope that book banning leads to because I learned from a book, that I checked out from my school’s library, that I don’t need to resort to logical fallacy to make a point. I’m simply going to say that no government – and public school is an extension of government – has ever banned books, and banned information from its public, and been remembered in history as the good guys.”

Everyone who read the NYT Magazine article today on NIL deals in college athletics (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/magazine/ncaa-nba-student-athlete.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes) should also read Craig Garthwaite et al. on how current funding practice "effectively transfers resources away from students who are more likely to be black and more likely to come from poor neighborhoods towards students who are more likely to be white and come from higher-income neighborhoods"
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27734

THIS.

Complete absurdity from a Gannett newsroom: We think comments on articles are great but we're not going to invest the energy or care to keep them civil. Kindly go to social media, where "you can still have discussions..."

Yeah, that'll keep it civil...

https://www.lohud.com/story/news/2023/01/28/usa-today-network-lohud-restricting-reader-comments-to-social-media/69851367007/

Pretty sure that if a male U.S. athlete was on the verge of breaking the all-time victory record in his sport, U.S. media -- including broadcasters -- would be trumpeting his achievements.

There's coverage of Mikaela Shiffrin's astonishing World Cup skiing feats, but what she has done -- and will do -- is being mostly ignored by American broadcasters and given insufficient attention in other U.S. news outlets.

Guardian's story today is solid: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jan/29/mikaela-shiffrin-world-cup-skiing-record-lena-duerr

Are you a #CLI lover? Are you unhappy with the #Gitea #tea CLI? Feel free to check out #cod then.

Cod #Codeberg CLI: https://codeberg.org/RobWalt/codeberg-cli

#Forgejo/Gitea CLI: https://gitea.com/gitea/tea

This project -- a mobile app that helps you understand corporate spying on you, and do something about it -- is a GREAT move by Consumer Reports.

CR, a venerable nonprofit, was slow to understand and adapt to the digital era. But with a much savvier board and leadership, and support from people like @craignewmark, the organization is making brilliant moves to help all of us.

https://www.permissionslipcr.com/

Dem mayors beefing up spending on cops in response to BLM protests and "defund" rhetoric is very on brand, sadly.

It's almost like there is some powerful system that encompasses both the Democrat and Republican parties, that *requires oppression* of the powerless, regardless of who is nominally in power. Gee, I wonder what that could be.

https://defector.com/cop-city-is-a-step-toward-cop-nation

Fascinating history of polio from the Infectious Diseases and Therapy article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4108111/#:~:text=Before%20the%20twentieth%20century%2C%20poor,of%20sewage%20from%20drinking%20water):
"Before the twentieth century, poor hygiene and sanitation meant that almost all children were exposed to polio virus during infancy, which enabled natural immunity to build up in populations. The industrial revolution brought great sanitary improvements[, but] it reduced childhood exposure to the virus..., creating the perfect setting for epidemics to ignite [3]."

A reminder that the Daily Mail is a toxic waste dump of journalism -- vile, vile people at an outlet you should never, ever cite as proof of anything. (I immediately unfollow any account that treats the Mail as legitimate journalism.) https://mastodon.social/@rvawonk@newsie.social/109765532849132897

If you're looking for work in IT, and a prospective employer tells you, confidently, that they're a "Microsoft Shop" they've got really bad governance and I'm confident they'll cause you more pain than they're worth if you work for them. Here's what I mean: https://davelane.nz/mshostage

Decades of research prove that the best way to end homelessness is...

Give people a home. Seriously. That's it. No strings, no prerequisites, no faith-based, holistic, means-tested, yoga-cebtric meditation parole. Just a home.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356643-we-can-reduce-homelessness-if-we-follow-the-science-on-what-works/

The race to out-Nazi everyone for the GQP nomination

Scratch a Libertarian, find an Authoritarian whose beef is that they're not in charge of everything.

"Erasure of history is not a secret. There are 2.8 million students sitting in Florida public schools right now knowing that their governor does not want them to learn about Black history"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/25/desantis-african-american-studies-black-history/

A true open standard (see https://openstandards.nz/definition) allows for *permissionless innovation*. Literally anyone can both study the open standard in its entirety, and implement it without fear of patent extortion or the need to pay up front or have profit drained by royalties.