Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Indeed, if the prices are in a standards-defined, machine-readable form, patients and their advocates could automatically import them, create price-comparison sites, leaderboards, etc. None of this addresses the core problem that health-care is a) a human right and b) not a discretionary expense, but it could help at the margins.

But there's another wrinkle here. The same people who claim that prices can solve all of our problems also insist that monopolies are *impossible*.

14/

As Robert Kuttner writes for *The American Prospect*, this kind of abuse was predictable from the outset, especially since Health and Human Services is starved of budget for auditors and can only hand out "slaps on the wrist" when they catch a hospital ripping off the system:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-13-fantasyland-general/

10/

The hospital system responded by "upcoding' patients: if you showed up with a broken leg and a history of coronary disease, they would code you as a heart patient *and* someone who needed a cast. They'd collect both lump sums, slap a cast on you, and wheel you out the door:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195137/

9/

Senate GOP—who unanimously let the child tax credit expire, increased childhood poverty 30%, & cancelled free school lunches—just blocked IVF again because a clump of cells is a child but an actual child can starve.

It was never about life. It was always about control of women.

The massively bad-faith Republican "investigations" -- persecutions to deter truth-telling -- into vital research on right-wing extremism have paid off for the extremists.

In a cowardly but understandable move, Stanford University is dismantling its Internet Observatory, which has been a focus of the Republican lies and attacks.

It's understandable in the way capitulation to Joe McCarthy was understandable in the 1050s before enough people grew spines to stop him.

https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/

“There’s little transparency” around bossware that employers use to surveil workers, EFF’s @htsuka told @washingtonpost. “Even figuring out what is on your computer can be a huge step to figuring out how you want to deal with it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/13/work-surveillance-tips/

A full-fledged attack on access to public records is underway in the states.

Journalists and the public must fight back.

https://freedom.press/news/states-keep-public-in-dark-with-anti-transparency-reforms/

#Forgejo v7.0.4 was just released! This is a security release.

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

Note that Forgejo v1.21.11-2 was also published with the most important security fix for the benefit of the instances not yet upgraded to v7.0.

Everybody knows that the 13th Amendment didn't technically end slavery, right?

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,** shall exist within the United States...

https://alabamareflector.com/2024/06/10/inmates-challenge-motion-to-dismiss-in-alabama-forced-labor-federal-lawsuit/

When it comes to international relations, I swear there really is very, very little difference between Dem and Repub agendas. Unhinged, the lot of 'em.

https://fair.org/home/nyt-ramps-up-venezuela-propaganda-ahead-of-elections/

Pride month means an unapologetically #queer reading list. First up, Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies. Get 20% off this title - no code required. https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1296

Right wing extremists (I know, redundant at this point) are pushing people to drink raw milk. If a bird flu pandemic erupts, millions will probably die. And those vile know-nothings will have helped kill them.

https://www.mediamatters.org/turning-point-usa/turning-point-usa-promoting-drinking-raw-milk-amid-bird-flu-outbreak

Great news: all Italian-language schools in South Tyrol migrated to free software. Read about the project, the results, and what other schools can learn from the experience of the FUSS Project, when migrating to free software: https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-cases-italy-south-tyrol.html

Thanks to new records spotted by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, we now know more about the current generation of cell-site simulators being used by law enforcement. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/next-generation-cell-site-simulators-here-heres-what-we-know

A pair of superb blog posts (among many) from my friend Jane on the topics of savouring coffee in other climes and the politics of 'woke'. Most refreshing: https://www.janeshearer.com/coffee-and-cadiz and https://www.janeshearer.com/weaponising-of-woke Her first book, 'Broken is beautiful', is also excellent.

"Many young students have a talent for programming; they are fascinated with computers and eager to learn how their systems work. With proprietary software, this information is a secret so teachers have no way of making it available to their students. But if it's free software, the teacher can explain the basic subject and then hand out the source code for the student to read and learn." https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.html

San Francisco Police are “not able to just say ‘we’re collecting data on criminals,’” EFF’s Dave Maass told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They’re collecting data, in fact, on innocent people going about their lives.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sfpd-arrests-license-plate-readers-19509117.php

PSA on Wildfire preparedness.

"My suggestion: If you live in a rural area prone to wildfires in the western United States… have a week’s worth of supplies, they might shut your power off this Summer."

https://thehotshotwakeup.substack.com/p/they-shut-grandmas-power-off-for

“The thing with Sam Alito is that he doesn’t give a fuck. He is a seventy-something Fox News watcher and religious fundamentalist who happens to find himself in a position of immense and almost incomparable power over all of American society and he’s going to take that power to the limit to advance his own political preferences. He’s not even going to go through the motions of pretending that’s not the case.”

Josh Marshall understands Alito all too well. Gift link:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/resilience-part-2-or-thoughts-on-sam-alitos-dgaf-justicehood/sharetoken/Y8snIS0q4CvM

It is so unfair that some of the most vulnerable members of our society (through no fault of their own) are treated so badly that they can't live reasonable lives despite working really hard to manage life under stressful conditions. All for tax cuts to pay landlords. https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-06-2024/what-happens-when-disabled-people-lose-flexible-funding