If you read to the end, the article mentions that the first time Ferst tried to get sterilized (and her old doctor was being difficult) she still had a male partner. I think she’s bisexual.
She is a federal judge. Nothing will ever happen to her as long as there are 34 Republicans in the Senate.
Cannon might screw up badly enough to get the case taken away (I doubt, I’m sure her handlers are coaching her on exactly what she can get away with), but she’s going to be on this bench until she gets appointed to the supreme court.
Those arguments were always bullshit. He never went through the process of declassifying them. We also already know that he bragged to a reporter that he had classified documents. So he knew he had them, he knew he should not, and he knew he would get in legal trouble if he gave them back.
It is my understanding that the statues that he’s being charged under do not depend on the classification of the documents. The problem is that the documents belonged to the government and were not returned upon multiple requests. Therefore, even if the documents were declassified, which they were not, the same charges could still be brought against him.
Facebook put tracking pixels on all sort of medical websites, including websites that provided abortion services. Many of the companies with the tracking pixels didn’t even have anyone in them who understood tracking pixel technology.
Data brokers regularly obtain medical information about people and even if it can’t legally be used to discriminate against someone, all this information gets in through the back door through personality profiles that measure things like “resiliency” and “tenacity.”
Did you need to take a break from work due to severe depression? Well that can’t be legally used against you when you apply for a new job. However, since you couldn’t tough it out at work, you do have a “less resilient” personality and that will be factored into a personality profile used to exclude you from jobs. They are doing this using AI now to try to get this information in through the backdoor and make it legal, and since many of the pieces of data from data brokers have no clear source of origination or clear consent obtained, these companies claim they are not relying on privileged medical information.
It’s appalling and discriminatory and these companies should all be destroyed, their offices bulldozed, and the earth salted afterwards. The executives running these companies should all be castigated for what they do. They are profiting off of a data brokerage hack turning medical information into discrimination and then trying to white wash it.
Eventually, large greedy law firms will see they can make a lot of money with class action suits for disabled people who were collectively harmed by white-washing medical problems into personality profiles and these companies and their practices will become huge liabilities because they can’t determine the data sources and whether consumers actually opted in. (And almost all consumers exploited by these nefarious practices monetized by sleazeballs don’t opt in.)
Everyone who works in these industries is slime and worst of all, they make posts about adhering to regulations with #compliance hashtags to try to trick people that a large part of what they are doing isn’t white-washing backdoor data that includes confidential information.
They are tricking the stupid corporations and masses to extract money, but will eventually become a liability because the data lacks consent. But all the scum working at all these terrible companies using AI and feigning compliance will eventually depart once the legal vultures start to circle, leaving shareholders to be the ones losing money.
Most of the value of the treachery of these companies is the victims never know that they have been exploited. Someone who takes time off work occasionally for severe depression may in fact be a worse worker and so companies profit from exploiting this trick and companies do not notify job candidates when they have been eliminated as candidates based on personality profiles that incorporate medical information or traits that are proxies for medical information and/or based on medical apps or health websites.
Virtually all health sites sell information to data brokers. Where do people think that goes? It goes into personality profiles to eliminate less healthy job candidates.
Some of these companies and data brokers are using AI to circumvent the design of laws, and pretend that complex programs are somehow compliant while achieving the same intent, but all the compliance hashtags don’t exculpate them from their sleaze. Many of these companies that try to white wash this data show how their practices aren’t discriminatory to women or minorities and that pacifies governments and seems palatable, but they make their money from getting rid of other protected classes of people that are less obvious.
It’s just pure slimebag grifting, the whole thing, and eventually people wise up because their is profit in suing these assholes for their avaricious racket.
It was H&R Block and all those other online tax services who did that. It was a terrible violation and I wish those companies would all be just broken up, sued into oblivion, and their CEOs personally liable for this on both a civil and criminal level. It was one of the worst data breaches, without being a breach, ever and just vomit inducing treachery.
The following post my be completely wrong based on new updates to HIPAA and previous suggestions that were not added as expected to revisions. There is one reply below this saying it’s wrong, and they are probably right. This whole post is probably mostly wrong, therefore. I’m leaving it here for now, but it’s incorrect.
It’s not a textbook HIPAA violation.
HIPAA has a good-faith exception allowing medical professionals to disclose private medical information when it’s in the best interest of the patient.
What is in the best interest of the patient?
Well, following all the rules of the government, which are all there for people’s safety, of course!
For example, Norma gets pregnant and abortion is legal and she has an abortion. She is relying on HIPAA to keep her medical privacy.
Abortion then becomes illegal after she had her abortion. A hospital worker, knowing that abortion is illegal, provides this information to the police so that they can monitor Norma to make sure she doesn’t get more abortions. This would be a good-faith exception to HIPAA because the medical worker is breaching Norma’s privacy in Norma’s best interest because he is worried she could break the law by having more abortions, and following the law is always in the interest of safety, no matter what. (Have doubts? Just ask ChatGPT if it’s ever safer to not follow public rules and regulations because of having a different personal belief system.) Norma then sues the medical worker and claims the good-faith exception violated HIPAA, and a court then is left to decide whether this worker was acting in Norma’s best interests, by helping make sure she follows the law, or doing something bad. If the court finds against the worker, it’s at best a slap on the wrist and small fine, but if the hospital worker is in a conservative court, the worker is going to win anyway.
Worst of all, as a patient, Norma can not opt-out of the good-faith exception. There is no mechanism in the HIPAA rules that allows her to say “You know that good faith exception? I am explicitly requiring you to close that loop-hole for me because I’m a private person, my family and I have different values, and it’s just easier for me this way. I don’t want to have to worry about you deciding something that would make me uncomfortable. If I want you to talk to someone, I’ll give explicit consent beforehand and even emergencies or unusual exceptions don’t change this.” There is no way to opt-out of this awful ambiguous rule. In the medical industry, you either accept their rules and regulations or you walk away and don’t get medical care.
So sadly, you’re actually totally wrong. I hope this doctor who breached patient privacy claims HIPAA wasn’t violated in just this way so that legislators realize how much they fucked up and so that patients no longer have to hope and pray their doctor doesn’t decide to break privacy in a patient’s supposed best interest. There are so many exceptions and rules change so much that it’s no wonder that women will no longer talk with doctor’s about periods, and women are even afraid to tell therapists about having been raped in certain states.
It’s honestly better for patients, especially women, to start seeing the medical establishment for what it is: a highly regulated arm of the government who does exactly what it’s told in order to keep getting high salaries and wages. Don’t adhere to the government rules? Goodbye high salaries! They don’t dare bite the hands that feeds, and women are luckily wising up to it.
If this doctor gets convicted, it will be because of the false pretenses he allegedly used. He is also only being charged by the federal government which is more liberal and if it were up to the state government of Texas this person never would have been charged. The situation is far more dire that this feel-good idea that there’s real enforcement over this sort of thing when the reality is there explicit loopholes written into the laws to allow it.
There are three exceptions to the definition of “breach.” The first exception applies to the unintentional acquisition, access, or use of protected health information by a workforce member or person acting under the authority of a covered entity or business associate, if such acquisition, access, or use was made in good faith and within the scope of authority. The second exception applies to the inadvertent disclosure of protected health information by a person authorized to access protected health information at a covered entity or business associate to another person authorized to access protected health information at the covered entity or business associate, or organized health care arrangement in which the covered entity participates. In both cases, the information cannot be further used or disclosed in a manner not permitted by the Privacy Rule. The final exception applies if the covered entity or business associate has a good faith belief that the unauthorized person to whom the impermissible disclosure was made, would not have been able to retain the information.
You’re either partly right at least or I’m at least not up to date on things. It looks like there are recent additions to the rules based on the abortion case Dobbs and in addition, some of the proposed changes I read about in an article may not have been added in. Many people were complaining about HIPAA preventing them from finding out about family members who were hospitalized and there were discussions about changing things, but you may be right and none of those changes were incorporated into the actual HIPAA rules.
When I read about proposed changes to HIPAA, I figured they would be passed because it seems like the trend is erosion of individual privacy always in the interest of whatever the government says, and I didn’t verify everything prior to my reply.
Good catch. It appears at least initially I’m wrong and you’re right. I’m going to research it more later, but it likely won’t change things.
“Even when the patient is not present or it is impracticable because of emergency circumstances or the patient’s incapacity for the covered entity to ask the patient about discussing her care or payment with a family member or other person, a covered entity may share this information with the person when, in exercising professional judgment, it determines that doing so would be in the best interest of the patient. See 45 CFR 164.510(b).”
i may not be wrong after all?
www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/164.510(3) Limited uses and disclosures when the individual is not present. If the individual is not present, or the opportunity to agree or object to the use or disclosure cannot practicably be provided because of the individual’s incapacity or an emergency circumstance, the covered entity may, in the exercise of professional judgment, determine whether the disclosure is in the best interests of the individual and, if so, disclose only the protected health information that is directly relevant to the person’s involvement with the individual’s care or payment related to the individual’s health care or needed for notification purposes. A covered entity may use professional judgment and its experience with common practice to make reasonable inferences of the individual’s best interest in allowing a person to act on behalf of the individual to pick up filled prescriptions, medical supplies, X-rays, or other similar forms of protected health information.
It doesn’t seem like this exception can be waived. What are emergency circumstances or incapacity? What if I don’t want anything disclosed based on someone else’s professional judgment?
I just still think there is way too much leeway to allow things to be shared based on the ambiguous language of the text.
Also to clarify, under the rules, certain actions may not constitute a breach to begin with and therefore the breach rules may not apply and also the exceptions may not apply.
The big difference is that all those exceptions only apply to an authorized party, i.e. a health care provider authorized to care for the patient. In this case, the doctor in question was never authorized - none of the patients were in his care.
Tesla calls it “Full Self Driving” and it’s a lie. So capitalize it and put it in quotes, rather than call it self-drive mode like that’s an actual thing.
The actual name: Full self driving (supervised) is so shady. Supervised is just a less crappy sounding way to indicate that you will have to take over and drive sometimes. So sometimes the car drives itself and sometimes you drive. So partial self driving, partial human driving. I’m surprised they didn’t call it “Partial Full Self Driving”. That would certainly amp up the trolling factor and really separate the true believers who would come out defending it with Olympic level mental gymnastics.
The larger truck exist b/c of the standards. It’s more economical to change the weight class of a vehicle than it is to make the vehicle more environmentally friendly.
I’m 70% sure that the larger truck exists because exceptions have literally been made to the law on purpose due to lobbying, which is why every company pivoted to them.
As far as I am aware, current fuel economy standards are primarily determined by the size of the wheel base. Some years ago, the EPA went from a reasonably managed chart to a specific formula that gets a little extreme on the ends.
So you end up with craziness like a 95 ranger required to have 60mpg to meet the standard, and a 2024 f35 super mega ultra cab long bed to have like 3mpg to meet standards. (Numbers are made up, but that is the main idea as I understand it)
People buy trucks for towing and hauling, and bigger is better and safer for towing.
The real problem is every other type of vehicle has become so useless and disposable (shittily made) to meet fuel economy standards that you can’t tow anything with them and are forced to buy a raging-mega-huge truck to get a high enough GCWR/GVWR and big enough motor to safely and reliably haul stuff.
You may live somewhere where people constantly tow travel trailers or large boats, but this isn’t the case everywhere. Loads of people buy trucks with the idea the bed will be used every other weekend, then they end up commuting to an office job and getting groceries. If they were primarily used for hauling things around, the average truck wouldn’t have a larger passenger cabin than its cargo bed.
Station wagons can just as easily go to the hardware store and pick up full sheets of plywood, load up the lawn mower and trimmer, and as much sporting equipment as a family could wear. What wagons don’t have is the aggressive design that pick up trucks have come to be.
Most cars could tow a single axle utility trailer if you needed to move what I mentioned - even appliances or furniture. I know a couple that tow a two person caravan with a Mini Cooper. Even when someone does need larger weight or volume capacity on a regular basis, a van has most of the benefits of a pick up truck with better fuel efficiency.
Just to bolster your point, I rented a U-Haul trailer for all my stuff last time I moved, including an enormous 3 piece solid oak entertainment center, and pulled it with a vw Jetta wagon.
Couldn’t put it on the roof? I saw a wagon once with a chest freezer strapped to the roof and couldn’t stop laughing.
U-Haul is a titan of the moving industry, but it’s still surprising how few people would consider an occasional rental, be it a trailer like you used or even a truck, as part of owning a regular car. You spent around $100 to rent that trailer for a day? Imagine spending quadruple that - every month for a decade - just to ensure you have 24/7 access to 24 square feet of cargo space. Not to mention double in fuel compared to your Jetta.
Even ignoring the renting aspect, pretty well everyone knows a couple people that already have a pick up truck. Just borrow it for a day or two when you do a project or buy a new stove, fill the tank, and buy them their beverage of choice. It’s not complicated.
Last time I moved I rented a U-Haul. It was uneventful. Reserved it, picked it up, used it, returned it.
These people spend a years salary on oversized crap that gets terrible efficiency, kills pedestrians, blocks views, just on the off chance they can move something once a decade.
There was this lazy shit that worked at a place I was at once, fairly confident he has antisocial personality disorder. Guy makes a dollar over minimum wage per hour and bought a F250. Yes the person who works maybe 45 minutes a day is going out there moving lumber on the weekend
I agree. A truck can be a good option for some, but as you point out, most people aren’t doing a DIY project each weekend. The F150 can be optioned out to a six figure price tag. It’s inconceivable to me.
I’m acquainted with the owner of a middle sized plumbing company, and he had a close call with a dog that got loose one day. Not his fault, and he was able to stop in time, but nonetheless it bothered him. Couple months go by and he switched all his service trucks out for transit vans.
The newer style vans with the slanted front end gives far more visibility, twice the cargo space without having to climb up into the bed, they don’t weigh as much, and are more fuel efficient. All at the same price point.
An unfortunate side effect of modern life is that many people see purchases like a vehicle or a house as these monthly costs that, on the face of them, they can afford. The trouble is they don’t consider the overall cost of the purchase, let alone the ongoing cost in terms of routine maintenance and unexpected repairs.
It’s a shame, but when something is marketed as though it’ll make you the toughest in town, who wouldn’t pay $181.50 weekly at 0% APR for the first three months.
I am just going to point out that my in-laws (who live in the developing world) run their rental properties, farm, and general store with two motorcycles and a tractor. That tractor btw I want to shot with a gun and put it out of its misery since I am pretty sure it’s diesal ass should have died in the 1980s. I am pretty confident that if two people in their mid-60s can do it the vast vast vast majority of people don’t need an oversized pickup.
Also I have been involved with construction since my uni days and just about every contractor I have dealt with has a van.
I never ever see people towing and hauling with those machines. My Honda Civic is 16 years old and is fine, my car before that was a Nissan Sentra and died at 22 years old.
New cars are kinda shitty. They collect a ton of data, don’t let you actually drive, have a million unecessary features built in to try to reduce the stupidity of drivers who should be nowhere near a motor vehicle and are super ugly to boot.
I do know a lot of people who tow, but I’m in motor racing circles where people are regularly hauling race cars through multiple states every week.
If you think your new truck doesn’t do all the same data collection shit, you’re sorely mistaken. They’re all made to make a profit. If they can collect data and profit off of it after the sale, they’re going to. Trucks aren’t exempt from this.
I love that new vehicles ae more efficient, but everything else sucks. The car market needs to be shaken up. There’s no real competition anymore. A new company could probably make so much money by using modern technological advances, but including all the manual dials and things we used to get standard, and preferably without the data harvesting.
Fuck it pisses me off. The oil embargoes in the 70s were the pants on fire moments we should have put an ungodly amount of R&D into nuclear, fusion, solar, wind, and batteries. And built Metro lines.
Jimmy Carter tried to convince America to move to renewables, but was stymied by the Iran Crisis. Carter put solar panels on the White House, and Reagan removed them. Reagan’s Veep was Texas oilman George HW Bush, who’d called Reagan’s tax cuts for the wealthy nonsense before being asked to join the ticket.
If the US can choose who rules North Korea, sell trillions worth of weapons to them, buy cheap oil from them, and install as many military bases as they want on their lands, then North Korea would’ve been the US closest ally no matter how many crimes against humanity they commit against their people.
That bald fuck who got away with the largest medical fraud in history is wishing he could have destroyed the state as much as meatball face is right now.
In all fairness that bald fuck owns a significant portion of BrightLine which is killing Floridians in South Florida faster than any other rail system.
The average American is 38.x years old. There are a lot of children, but the olds still run this country. China is around 37, Germany is around 39. I don’t think that 25% of America listens to AM broadcasts on a regular basis, but I do think at least 1/4 of the population thinks it should still exist.
I was referring to a quote from the article where someone stated that 82 million Americans listen to AM radio.
Coincidentally, I am above average, think that AM radio has utility, and am not opposed to requirements that it be made available in car stereos - though I do not actively tune in.
I’m opposed to it, if the argument is basically “for emergencies”… then putting an emergency radio in would be better. At that point, just lump into the spare kit or something.
Nobody in an emergency is going to think to use something that they don’t use in every day life. Having AM radio in cars is… not going ti be useful. (EAS goes out on FM amd say radio, too, and there’s the WEA sent to cell phones for people younger than dirt.)
and if SHTF, powering a car is going to be difficult. You basically can only rely on the gas in your tank and what you keep around for the lawn mower (if that.).
Most emergency radios are designed with minimal power from the get go (ie battery operated, recharged via hand crank or portable solar, etc.) and can usually be set to automatically come on if the EAS sends an alert.
The justification of “emergencies” is problematic. Most people aren’t going to hunt for an AM radio in an emergency. They are going to their phone/computer. If they want to prop up traditional communication then they should just require both AM and FM AND require the EAS included. With software defined radio this all can be implemented with a single chip and SiriusXM included probably. Just requires the appropriate antennas.
I’m just going to assume there’s somebody that makes a single part, it’s all they make, but it has to go into every am radio; and that person paid off a bunch of lobbyists so they can keep selling that part.
It’s stupid. For emergency alerts, cell phones are vastly more useful, the Wireless Emergency System is far more featured, cell phones are likely in everyone’s pocket, and the system is as reliable as the EAS is.
Any other justification is stupid, and propping up AM is probably the result of said lobbyists…
And how large is that tower? What happens if say a forest fire rips through the ground station. Tornado. Hurricane. Ooops your entire coverage is gone.
Cell towers are more distributed, meaning loosing any single tower is far less critical. (Typically, phones are in range of 2-3 towers at any given time. Unless you’re way out in the sticks.)
The land under the am tower probably costs more than the entire cost of setting up a cell. (Especially in urban areas where they can go onto rooftops of existing structures.)
But of course this entire conversation is ignoring that it’s am radios in cars. I don’t know about you but most of my day is not spent in a car. Which is turned off when I’m not using it so as to not waste gas or run down the battery.
I have a cell phone inside arms reach practically 24/7. Most people do.
You know, I read this whole back and forth, and the only takeaway I have is that you have absolutely no idea how any of these technologies work. Like at all. I’m not saying this to be a dick or anything -it’s ok to not know things- but it’s painfully obvious in this case because your lack of fundamental understanding is the core of your argument.
And if you did understand how the tech works, you’d probably get why those options are used instead of your layman’s idea of a good idea. Which is not, in fact, a good idea at all for a variety of reasons. Which is exactly why these other things are being discussed and supported by people who do understand them (and I’m not talking about the rest of the Lemmy comments either, I mean in the real world).
There are tons of scenarios where cell towers/fm transmitters for an area would go down, but cars would still be fully operable. But even if that wasn’t the case, why do you want to remove a public safety option that currently exists, even if you don’t and won’t use it? The only people who benefit are big companies (the exact ones whining they don’t want to comply) that don’t care about you, so why do you give a shit if this inconveniences them?
You know, I read this whole back and forth, and the only takeaway I have is that you have absolutely no idea how any of these technologies work. Like at all. I’m not saying this to be a dick or anything -it’s ok to not know things- but it’s painfully obvious in this case because your lack of fundamental understanding is the core of your argument.
The two major systems in question here are the Emergency Alert System (ESA) which broadcasts across FM, AM, Sat Radio; Cable, Broadcast and Sat TV. The counterpart for cell phones is the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA), which broadcasts to cell phones, tablets, and similar devices. They’re both coordinated under the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) managed by FEMA
An EAS message is triggered by FEMA, sending messages to the National Public Warning System (or Primary Entry Point,) stations. The NPWS stations are 77 AM-stations that get a phone call from FEMA. SiriusXM then broadcasts the message across it’s sattelite network… of which those 77 AM-stations are connected into. (they receive it then they relay it.) They also broadcast it across their sat radio network. (that’s been going on for ages.)
the WEA functions a bit like a pager or SMS. it broadcasts on the cell network- a one way transmission from the cellular site. Any WEA-capable cell phone or other device in the range of that transmission and not in Airplane mode (which turns the antenna off,) will register the alert. The previous mention of cell towers getting clogged during 9/11 isn’t a problem, and the WEA system was established under the WARN act in 2008, and the system went live in 2012, so it wasn’t even around for it. that said, it’s relatively immune to mass calling events because it’s a separate service on the tower, and gets priority over both SMS and Call services.
And if you did understand how the tech works, you’d probably get why those options are used instead of your layman’s idea of a good idea. Which is not, in fact, a good idea at all for a variety of reasons. Which is exactly why these other things are being discussed and supported by people who do understand them (and I’m not talking about the rest of the Lemmy comments either, I mean in the real world).
Naw. I understand the tech well enough. there’s more to reliability than the tech working, though. There’s the humans using the tech. of particular note are the people who are supposed to be receiving these alerts. Remeber, the whole purpose of these systems are to saturate an area (or the entire nation) with warnings and alerts, delivering those warnings to as many people as possible.
Lets look at some numbers. There are 336 million people in the US. per the article, 82 million “use AM”. (note that probably includes every kind of receiver, not just car stereos. we’ll go with it because I don’t have a better number.) that’s roughly 1/4 of the US population that will ever be in a position to hear an EAS broadcast on an AM channel.
Even if we assume a quarter of the 326.2 million people who use cell phones receive the alert, that’s still 81 million people.
Do you really think that the 82 million people that use AM at all… are always by a radio? or that, those 82 million people are always driving? Because the car radio only lets you know there’s an alert if you happen to be listening to the radio.
For the vast majority of americans, the WEA alerts are going to be far more reliable than AM-band EAS alerts. Which, is probably why the FCC and congress spent oodles implementing and maintaining the WEA system as well as expanding mobile coverage. they’re not dumb. they can see the writing on the wall for the ~4,500 AM stations that remain.
In terms of receiving emergency alerts… those are going to be far more effective than any car stereo for the simple reason that a car will not sound an alarm unless you happen to be actively listening to the radio. So, this bill is unlikely to improve the advanced warning people get. but what about after a nasty storm? Well. you’d have to drain your car battery to use your car radio. Sure, you could maybe time it so you check in when they’re repeating the messages; but you’re still draining the battery. Or you’re idling the engine to charge said battery.
Either way there, that’s a finite resource you’re using. A resource that might be necessary to get you or someone you love to a hospital, an emergency shelter, or just out of the danger zone.
There are tons of scenarios where cell towers/fm transmitters for an area would go down, but cars would still be fully operable.
So, I’m going to assume this is an honest mistake and you know the difference between a transmitter and a receiver. Because, I mean, your entire comment is basically to tell me I should shut up for being dumb. gonna explain it anyhow.
the broadcast stations- FM or AM- are transmitters. They take a sound source and translate it into radio signal which is then broadcast. Anyone with a receiver (the radio in your car), then translates that radio signal into sound. Cell sites (be they a tower, or just the base station on a building rooftop) are technically transceivers. they go both ways. They’re talking to your phone constantly, as well as to each other- that’s what the “cell network” is. one cell talks to the carrier’s connection to the internet or phone grid, relays that through the network to your phone; and your phone back to the carrier. A WEA message carried on a cell network is one-way communication, though. just to be clear.
But even if that wasn’t the case, why do you want to remove a public safety option that currently exists, even if you don’t and won’t use it?
Getting some real “they gonna come for your Ray-Dee-Ohs” vibes here. nobody is taking anything away. they’re going to stop providing a certain entertainment and communication device in cars. That’s all the car makers were going to do. All this law would do is make them add am radios back in. that’s it. You want to listen to AM or get an emergency radio… those are not going away (probably ever.) and if you really want your AM radio in your car… you can always get an aftermarket deck. but nobody is going to go into your current car and get rip out your AM radio. (not unless it’s a nice radio and you left your car unlocked…but it’s not the gooberment.)
I care because it offends me that politicians are using bullshit excuses to pass bullshit laws. if emergency preparedness was their concern, they could have passed a law requiring cell carriers to be participants in WEA messaging. that would reduce the number of cellphone peeps who don’t get it. (all the big 3 companies are on. I’m guessing their sub-carriers are also.) Another useful law would be one that gives free emergency radios to people. just saying.
The only people who benefit are big companies (the exact ones whining they don’t want to comply) that don’t care about you, so why do you give a shit if this inconveniences them?
the people who benefit from the law are not the car companies or tech companies. which is why the opposed it. the National Association of Broadcasters lobbied hard for this. I think you know who they lobby for. those are companies that paid them to lobby the politicians. (and that also offends me. lobbyists should be outlawed.) these are companies that failed to keep up with uh… half-century old technology… oppps.
Politicians also benefit in the form of loony talkshow hosts repeating their bullshit. (probably a “bothsides” deal, if we’re honest.) Also SiriusXM (whose being paid to maintain the sat uplink to those broadcasters. big contract that.) Also, the advertisers that advertise on AM. There’s a lot of people who benefit from the law.
So. This bill is meant to force manufacturers to put am radios inside new cars.
Right?
New cars that, in a hypothetical emp… will be just as fried as your cell phone is.
And that’s why the emergency prep angle doesn’t hold water. You would literally be better off with a hand crank emergency radio (that can almost certainly survive.)
And if AM is removed from cars (AM's biggest listening base) it will die. If AM radio dies, then the hand crank emergency radio will have no use. Much like the portable UHF/VHF television.
Because there’s no possible way that the government could buy up the 77 stations thst broadcast the NPWS stations.
We’re already subsidizing them heavily because the backup systems to keep them on are expensive.
Edit to add: the demand for AM is going away. Content is cheaper to produce and distribute online.
In stead of passing legislation to bail out a dying industry (what this bill is really about,) they should be looking at ways of resolving the problem.
An easy first step is to buy or otherwise nationalize the 77 critical stations. We can then either maintain them as vital infrastructure or replace them with newer and more capable/effective technologies.
All this bill is going to do is prolong the problem.
Gotcha... And just for funsies, how much money (taxpayer money) have we spent on say... failing banks? I'd say investing zero tax payer dollars to "save" AM radio is a better investment.
Outside of rural areas, AM radio has no advantage over cell based internet services. It’s less expensive for the content producers, and it’s inevitable that they switch to streaming instead of broadcast.
And those rural areas don’t provide the audience necessary to sustain the cost of the broadcast service.
Further this bill isn’t without cost- that cost is being paid by everyone who buys a car.
All of the comments like these don’t understand the word emergency.
There are numerous plausible reasons cell phone towers, computers, and TV will be out in a true emergency.
I mean, hell, cell phone were unusable on 9/11 due to congestion, and even though it was a horrible event, it want an emergency the like of which are possible.
AM is dead fucking simple. Seriously. If you know what you’re doing, you can make a receiver with a wire, a resistor, and a speaker. You don’t even need power to run it.
The WES system that sends broadcasts to cell phones is more like a pager than cell phone. On 9/11, a WES signal was never sent given the extensive media coverage.
The fact that you mention two way communication getting blocked during 9/11 as an argument for a technology that doesn’t allow 2-way communicatio… is kind of amusing.
There is a further, critical advantage to cells. The vast majority of people wouldn’t have to build a cell phone to get that alert. Pretty sure the only am radio in my house is an unplugged and stored hand crank emergency radio.
We all already have phones in our pockets, or at least in arms reach practically 24/7. The hardware to maintain the network already exists and is going to be maintained regardless if it’s used for alerts.
AM is largely going away. There’s only a handful of niche uses (like very rural or remote locations,) where it’s more useful.
To further expound on that…. Are you running your car or truck or what ever 24/7 in case of an emergency broadcast? In an emergency it’s best to have your vehicle be a dedicated vehicle and your receiver a dedicated receiver. You don’t want to find your battery ran down or that you’re out of fuel.
Which brings us back to… this bill is stupid. Unless you’re a trucker, you’re probably not going to be around your car enough to reliably get the emergency broadcast.
And truckers have better systems than AM radios for communication.
It’s more about internal electrical noise. Cars have always been electrically noisy environments. There’s a chunk of questions on the ham radio technician exam about dealing with having a radio in your car.
A lot of sports radio, npr, and conservative radio stations are on AM. I listen to two of those three, though most the stations I listen to have an app or streaming option I use more often then actual radio.
I grew up with a dad who listened to Rush Limbaugh or some conservative jockey (Mike Savage was quite bonkers, still cannot believe he got hired by MSNBC for about 2 weeks before he said some insane racist shit and got canned) on AM anytime I was ever in the car with him.
He’s now a QAnon nut.
I absolutely believe 25% of America listens to AM radio, all the christo fascists and qanoners and magatards on their 3 hour daily commute while they are angry that their kids or ex wives don’t talk to them anymore.
They just morphed into something else now that it doesn’t have the pull it once did. These nutters are still around and still baking the same conspiracies just without Ron Watkins leaving secret messages pretending to be a government insider.
Sadly, it has not so much died out as gone more underground, splintered, but still proliferates.
Take a gander at owen morgan’s telltale youtube channel, he actually covers a good deal of this quite well.
He started off as an Ex JW going over online and real world cults, but as QAnon and Covid and MAGA and then Jan 6th all kind of morphed together, he finally dropped his ‘avoid politics’ stance as it was utterly impossible to cover anything related to QAnon without getting political.
Basically, 8kun, Truth Social and other less well known sort of youtube alternative sites and alternative social media sites have just become an alternative reality fantasy land for completely delusional conspiracy theorists and outright fascists and nazis.
Then youve also got a ton of shitty MAGA/QAnon flavored ‘news’ sites (think infowars and breitbart, there are many others) that post absolutely insane nonsense as real, or report on various things leaving out huge details, misrepresenting situations and such.
Their content is then watched and discussed and meme’d and spread on telegram group chats, facebook groups, an increasing number of either online or radio talk show hosts, and by a number of surprisingly popular evangelical preachers, many of whom have basically megachurches as well as their own video streams.
Thats the link that owen came across that kind of led him to be able to figure out how much of the QAnon related mis and disinfo network actually functions, when he discovered a bunch of, again, surprisingly popular evangelical and or charismatic preachers who have decided that basically they are prophets, God literally speaks through them, and Trump is actually the new annointed messiah who is God’s chosen President.
They had made a bunch of prophecies about Trump winning 2020, so when he lost, they basically developed the idea that Trump is actually the President of God’s annointing… as a cope for losing and being failed prophets.
But this idea has stuck, so now anyone opposing God’s President is a demonic force of Satan, blah blah blah.
So… basically QAnon and its derivatives are still going quite strong, they have just largely abandoned platforms that most people know about, or are in largely private groups on more well known means of communications.
I remember seeing one video on one of these youtube alternatives that explained that nuclear weapons are actually fake, dont work, never have, and thus the end of ww2 and the entire cold war and modern day geopolitics are all an elaborate ruse orchestrated to keep us all compliant and afraid… blah blah blah, somehow, its always liberals, democrats, jews and socialists, or secret versions of those, that have been orchestrating a mass conspiracy for a hundred years or something.
We have also had a number of right wing mass shooters, guys that tried to kidnap the governor of Minnesota, and the person who immolated himself outside Trump’s trial… all with QAnon related or derived beliefs.
We now also have certain preachers just outright calling for a christian nationalist government, and they all can be connected to this wider movement stemming from QAnon.
Just because Q has not posted in a while doesnt mean the movement that was sparked and coalesced by and around his garbage has died out.
I have seen the movie, and it is extremely hard for me to watch.
After years of debunking insane nonsense from my Dad, only for him to come up with some new insane thing, then declare he is done with politics, then mention off hand something he could only have possibly heard from some insane QAnon type nonsense, I finally realized he’s an egomaniac incapable of being wrong, doing any self reflecting, who has no problem knowingly lying to those around him, about himself and those around him.
It was very hard for me to realize that though he says he loves me and has attempted to demonstrate this, interacting with him in any way other than coddling his feelings, entertaining his nonsense … just results in him being classic narcissistic asshole.
Better off without him in my life. So, so much less stressful.
There is unfortunately more to it than that… he’s ruined my life more than once, subjected me to insane medical procedures and treatment multiple times as a child, and covered for other family members who have abused me and lied about me…
It took a near death experience for me to figure out that basically none of my family are good people, they’d all rather argue with me than listen or god forbid actually help me in anyway or make amends for the massive mental trauma, physical danger they’ve put me in, financial burdens I now have from going along with their plans or advice and then that all going to shit because none of them can plan anything or be any kind or reliable.
Same, though my dad was liberal. He just kind of rage listened to these guys. Needless to say, I was young and impressionable and picked up some of their extreme views in my youth, but later got straightened out when I went to college. Fuck AM radio. It is responsible for radicalizing people who spend a lot of time in their vehicles. We should not require it in vehicles. I feel the damage done outweighs the potential benefits from emergency messaging. Everyone has a phone for that these days anyway.
And now you’ve figured it out. This probably has nothing to do with emergency preparedness and everything to do with keeping a propaganda pipeline open. Maybe the D votes are secured by arguing about emergencies, but I just don’t see it.
Recommend people get an AM radio for emergency use, but it doesn’t need to be required for every vehicle.
I know that back in the early 00s I was traveling cross country and was surprised when I reached the prairies and realized there were way more AM than FM stations, but it’s because AM travels much farther even though the fidelity is lower.
That’s the trade off you make with AM. With just about all wireless transmission techs, really. There seems to be an inverse relationship between range and bandwidth. If you want one, you sacrifice the other. Compared to FM, AM radio leans more towards max range, so the audio quality isn’t quite as good, but it goes for miles.
And thats how you get all the people living in rural America who listen to AM nonsense talk radio.
Its also much, much cheaper in general to start your own AM talk show because of the relatively lower costs compared to FM broadcasting, so any crazy angry idiot can do it.
l’d think that the Internet (well, systems built on the Internet) has probably been the most-influential system for lowering the bar to transmit ideas in recent years. I mean, it’s really inexpensive and easy to post on social media, and that can reach a whole lot of people.
In the past, AM radio was a much bigger piece of the pie in terms or right wing nonsense extremism vectors, and now it is still an important segment of it, but yeah the internet is certainly much more important overall these days.
Wdym? SVU copaganda has told me that cops solve all cases in a hard but fair manner, and they don’t stop until they found the perpetrator - and here it is, they got him! Yes he had to confess in his death bed but that’s a minor detail.
Never forget the LA police force had writers on a very popular show called Dragnet. Fuck the police in all their glory filled heads.
“As Alyssa Rosenberg documented in her exhaustive, seminal 2016 Washington Post series on law enforcement in film and television, one of the first popular police procedurals, Dragnet, which premiered in 1951, worked in full collaboration with the LAPD and its police chief, William Parker, on storylines and logistical help, in exchange for script approval by the police.”
Yeah. I’m tired of having these places where cops are not held accountable. I hope her family sues the force, all officers involved, and their captain with all ending in bankruptcy.
For every one you see, there are dozens you do not. Some mod on here is a billionaire apologist, and keeps removing references to guillotines as “promoting violence”.
To my way of thinking, accruing and keeping a billion dollars is a deliberate choice. That massive disparity of wealth brings great harm to all of society. We as a society are empowered to declare deliberate, harmful acts to be criminal, and assign a sufficient penalty as to deter.
Consequently, I suggest that “Being a billionaire” should be made a capital offense.
I don’t actually want to kill billionaires.
I want people who become billionaires to be extraordinarily embarrassed by their obscene wealth, and quickly “refund” the excess they “inadvertantly” collected from previous buyers, or failed to pay to workers.
Barring that, I want the IRS and SEC to confiscate the excess, convey it to liquidators, and keep the proceeds.
You don’t have to cut off a billionaire’s head to rid the world of billionaires. That billionaire no longer exists when you roll back his wealth to $999,999,999.
Taking the whip out of the hands of the overseer and strangling him with it is not an act of violence. It is an act of humanity.
Likewise, the guillotine is not a tool of terror. It is a tool of democracy. It is how the third estate told the first and second to go fuck themselves.
Universal Healthcare is the most visible thing the third estate needs today. The guillotine is for anyone choosing to stand in the way of that need.
The anger that the us in the lower classes has been steadying increasing, year after year. Some of us realize the the ability for certain groups to hoard wealth is a problem. Some people have decided that marginalized communities are the ones to blame for how social mobility has become a pipe dream.
The next recession has a strong potential to get real ugly.
More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.
Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
I’m convinced Musk’s Neuralink thing is an attempt to transfer his consciousness into one of his brood, or into a machine. Bankman-Fried hopes to create an AI version of himself.
And the way they determine "unusual" is by doing this absolutely ahistoric, arbitrary polling of current policy. They cherry pick whatever statistics serve the politics of the person writing the decision.
e.g., when ruling whether it was "unusual" to execute people with cogitative disabilities (Atkins v. Virginia), they did a tally of how many states allowed execution in these cases vs did not but deliberately omitted how many states do not allow ANY executions. Then concluded that slightly more states allow executions of the mentally unfit than don't even though it was absolutely incontestable fact that the vast majority of states did not allow this kind of execution.
Ignore that the ruling technically banned those executions... because it factually didn't, since it left it up to states to define cognitive disability however they pleased and the behavior of the kill-happy states was not affected by the ruling.
When I was really sick and needed regular blood tests, I’d have some nurses take at least a half-dozen stabs at me before getting a usable vein. We’re talking both arms and then moving to the top of the hand.
It happens. I wouldn’t call it cruel or a form of punishment, as they weren’t purposely trying to make my life miserable.
It’s mildly annoying as the patient, and I’m sure a little embarrassing for the person with the needle.
Did you know it was going to kill you if it worked? Because that would be the cruel part. Imagine knowing, for days, maybe even months after your last appeal that you were going to die. You know the exact date and time. You know nothing you can do will stop it.
How did he know that would be the consequences of his actions when plenty of people have been sentenced to life in prison for similar actions? How did he know he wouldn’t be dealing with a hung jury? Unless he was able to predict the future, which he could not, suggesting he knew that ‘capital punishment by lethal injection’ would be the consequences of his actions is ridiculous. On top of that, he may literally not know the difference between right and wrong, something that is entirely possible. In which case, again, he would not have known the consequences of his actions.
And it’s not about his feelings. The law shouldn’t be sidestepped just because a crime is very bad. Otherwise, why not just let police kill people like him and avoid trial completely?
I’m not sure why you think this specific case should be an exception when it comes to whether or not a law is ethical or even legal based on the U.S. Constitution. Even if this specific guy wanted to die, many very clearly did not. Including the innocent people that have been executed.
Should whether or not something is legal be decided on a case-by-case basis or should the law apply equally for everyone? Because I would certainly say the latter.
Friend, I’m not saying I support capital punishment. No doubt that there have been innocent people put to death (often people of colour), and that would be a failing of the justice system. Even the idea of capital punishment makes me sick.
But in the context we find ourselves in, the way Creech has been treated couldn’t possibly have been more humane or compassionate. He’s already tried to kill himself, saying he does not want to be stuck in prison for the rest of his life.
How would you go about making this situation better for this murderer? Or the family of his victims?
Should whether or not something is legal be decided on a case-by-case basis or should the law apply equally for everyone? Because I would certainly say the latter.
Well, sentencing is done on a case-by-case basis. Which is why some people who commit especially brutal types of violent murders are given a harsher penalty vs someone who may have killed in the heat of the moment. This is probably as fair as you can get, since some crimes obviously shouldn’t get the same heavy had as others.
Sentencing is done within the limit of the law and, again this is not about him specifically.
You can’t sentence someone to die by a thousand cuts because that is cruel. Which violates the Constitution. Why is this not cruel? Because it’s faster?
Sentencing is done within the limit of the law and, again this is not about him specifically.
Right. And the limit of the law, in this case, is lethal injection.
You can’t sentence someone to die by a thousand cuts because that is cruel. Which violates the Constitution. Why is this not cruel? Because it’s faster?
I don’t make up the rules, man. But you still haven’t said what would be the ideal in this situation.
Let him spend the rest of his life in jail (something he did not want, and already tried to kill himself over), set him free, or “other”?
You’d still have to consider the victims in this decision, so I’m curious to know how you’d do it.
Right. And the limit of the law, in this case, is lethal injection.
Which is cruel. Even if he specifically wants it. For reasons I explain.
I don’t make up the rules, man. But you still haven’t said what would be the ideal in this situation.
The ideal would be to do what every other civilized country on the planet does and not execute people. Even Anders Breivik wasn’t executed and he killed 77 people, many of them children. And no one in Norway who had any real influence seriously discussed bringing back the death penalty just for him. Because it is cruel.
Even SCOTUS decided it was cruel and halted it until they reversed their decision.
There’s a reason why medical professionals do not assist with executions.
I hate to break it to you, but the article quite literally says that “medical team members” were responsible for assisting in getting the IV line into Creech.
Harvard also says that physicians do assist (SOURCE)
And even this cardiologist says it’s better that they do than not, even though he is against capital punishment.
It’s certainly a debated topic in the realm of ethics, no doubt, but it still happens.
But getting back to my question:
If medically assisted suicide is not cruel, and Creech requested that he wanted to die via lethal injection (medically assisted suicide, since it was at his request), where do we have a problem?
news
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.