The Death of the Mind

The US hospice system is supposed to provide compassionate end-of-life care. But private equity firms have swallowed up the industry: 7 out of 10 hospice agencies are now for-profit, putting profit maximization over patient well-being.
In recent years, private equity has exploited both fragmentation in the hospice sector and gaping holes in oversight left by federal agencies. (Justin Paget / DigitalVision via Getty Images) Though the majority of Americans spend the final weeks of their lives in hospice care, the United States only got its first hospice, the Connecticut Hospice, in 1974. Today, just under a half century later, over 5,500 hospices provide services for the dying; in 2020, 1.72 million…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobin.com/2023/05/private-equity-hospice-care-profit-regulation/

I’m about to write an essay that will lead to mass misinterpretation or out of context quoting, and before I get into that situation (intentionally), I have to create this entire sidebar to talk about a social construct I’ve observed over the years. I’ve spoken elsewhere about the Inside Out, but this is a different online (and offline) situation to that. Very quickly: The “Inside Out” is my belief that there are people who believe they are in private spaces online that are in fact not private at all but they’re absolutely convinced of it and the resulting friction is nearly blinding when it comes to a head. What I’m talking about is something else entirely….

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5528

A North Carolina State Court of Appeals will soon decide how many signatures an independent candidate needs to get on the ballot for Orange County Commissioner. The law says an independent needs 4% of the number of registered voters in the district. In Orange County, there are two rounds for County Commissioner elections. In the first round, the voters of district two are the only voters. But in the run-off, the entire county votes.

See this story. The independent candidate, Connor Fraley, argues that the 4% should be calculated on the number of registered voters in district two, not in the entire county. He lost in the lower court but is appealing.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/05/20/north-carolina-state-court-ponders-how-to-interpret-law-on-number-of-signatures-for-an-independent-candidate/

This is the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab’s series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/frans-de-jonge-tells-us-about-koreader-in-this-agplv3-interview

Enlarge / Willow is the highest-profile show to be removed as part of these cuts. (credit: Disney)
We saw it before with HBO Max and others, but Disney has now joined the content-cutting party. More than two dozen series and movies will be removed from Disney-owned streaming channels Disney+ and Hulu come May 26.
The list of shows removed notably includes Willow, the single-season TV series follow-up to the beloved 1988 cult-classic fantasy movie directed by Ron Howard. The Willow series premiered in November 2022 but struggled to find an audience.
Other notably cut content includes but is not limited to The World According to Jeff Goldblum, a couple of Marvel-themed documentaries, and several kids…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1940691

As part of the Red Hat layoffs announced in April with around a 4% reduction in headcount for the IBM-owneed company, one of the surprising casualties from that round of cost-cutting is the Fedora Program Manager…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-PM-Red-Hat-Laid-Off

Lack of affordable housing coupled with rising rents appears to have worsened Durham’s homelessness problem, according to an analysis by a Durham non-profit. In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Housing for New Hope shared the results of its annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, which seeks to estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness (both sheltered and unsheltered) in Durham. The count, conducted earlier this year, saw a 10 percent increase in unsheltered homelessness compared to last year.  The results suggest that Durham city and county may need to step up services–and confront deeper systemic issues–for a population struggling to find stable housing in one of the country’s hottest real estate markets. “We are really feeling the loss of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/ninth-street-journal/as-rents-and-housing-prices-spike-in-durham-so-does-unsheltered-homelessness/

The hyperbolic rhetoric that is a feature of the copyright industry, which tries absurdly to characterize making an additional digital copy as “theft”, can lead to some serious legislative harm. For example, Germany is currently aiming to bring in a new law against “digital violence” – things like bullying and stalking, but also identity abuse and theft. In the worst cases of digital violence, it may lead to real violence, with lives threatened. That makes legislation to curb it reasonable. But along the way, something unreasonable is happening, spotted here by Netzpolitik (translation by DeepL):

the planned law against digital violence is not only aimed at perpetrators of digital violence. It regulates “all cases of unlawful infringement of absolute rights”….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/05/germany-wants-to-include-copyright-infringement-under-its-planned-digital-violence-law/