Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

PROPUBLICA on how just a few BILLIONAIRES HAVE AVOIDED PAYING MEDICARE TAXES and saved over US $1.3B in the process.

The article is both an overview and names names among the billionaire class who abuse this tax loophole.

https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-net-investment-income-tax

#propublica #taxes #republicans #taxcheats #taxevasion #ultrawealthy #irs

With 55 M4+ earthquakes in Ethiopia over the last two weeks, something is definitely going on in the East African Rift. But what?

Read more on our Substack: https://earthquakeinsights.substack.com/p/seismic-swarm-rattles-ethiopia

Most people have never heard of Elizabeth Freeman, but she was an enslaved Black woman in 1781 who made history in Court in a way no one thought was possible or even conceived.

Her example is a lesson for us today on how we fight fascism in 2025: https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/an-opening-thought-on-2025

#billionaires - During last week’s negotiations to avert a govt shutdown, #Congress quietly slashed $20 billion from the #IRS. Republicans have long targeted the #tax agency & their cuts will hurt its efforts to go after #rich #tax #evaders & improve the IRS’s functionality. It’s their second successful cut from President #Biden $80 billion funding boost to the agency in the 2022 #InflationReductionAct as the #GOP took away an earlier $20 billion in a 2023 #budget deal. https://newrepublic.com/post/189672/republicans-cut-irs-funding-government-shutdown

Our seventh most-read story of this year: When companies like #Aetna or #UnitedHealthcare want to rein in costs, they turn to EviCore, whose business model depends on turning down payments for care recommended by doctors for their patients.

Read more (published Oct.): https://propub.li/3Dtvr24

#News #Journalism #Health #Insurance #Healthcare

Mass resignation of the editorial board of the Journal of Human #Evolution. #Elsevier has gone bad. Very bad, in fact.

#academia #science #publishing #paleoanthropology

BREAKING NEWSRep. Thomas Massie has revealed that Congress has secretly paid out over $17 million of taxpayer money to quietly settle harassment, sexual misconduct, and other related charges within Congressional offices..

Insurers’ denial rates are a critical measure of how reliably they pay for customers’ care. But they remain mostly secret to the public.

Federal and state regulators have done little to change that.

(Published June 2023)
https://propub.li/407YqBj

#Health #Insurance #Healthcare #Government #Regulation

In 2024 Elon Musk predicted that 'hundreds of millions' of people will have his brain chips within the next 20 years, so don't forget to hold him to it
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/in-2024-elon-musk-predicted-that-hundreds-of-millions-of-people-will-have-his-brain-chips-within-the-next-20-years-so-dont-forget-to-hold-him-to-it/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into PC Gaming Hardware @pc-gaming-hardware-PC_Gamer_

Lovely how federal agencies (while still under the direction of the feckless Democrats) are spending their time punishing states for giving residents too much food.

So sorry that #Oregon didn't properly check that people were completely destitute before giving them a snack.

https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2024/12/26/oregon-incurs-15-million-dollar-federal-penalty-for-snap-error-rates/76925309007/

#SNAP #FoodAssistance

The Walmart effect. It makes the rich at lot richer and communities a lot poorer.

"....each Wal-Mart store with at least 300 employees costs taxpayers between $900,000 and $1.75 million per year for social services for its workers, such as healthcare, Section 8 housing programs, subsidized school lunches and earned income tax credits."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wal-Mart_Effect

Costco response to their shareholders regarding a request to back down from #DEI It was direct & to the point Costco says, "Our Board has considered this proposal & believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect & inclusion is appropriate & necessary"
diversityandinclusion

Today the Parker Solar Probe will get 7 times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft ever has, going faster than any spacecraft ever has - 690,000 kilometers per hour. WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!

But the really cool part is what the newspapers are barely talking about: what it's like down there. The Sun doesn't have a surface like the Earth does, since it's all just hot gas. But it has an "Alfvén surface" - and the probe has penetrated that.

What's the Alfvén surface? In simple terms, it's where the solar wind - the hot gas emitted by the Sun - breaks free of the Sun and shoots out into space. But to understand how cool it is, we need to dig a bit deeper.

After all, how can we say where the solar wind "breaks free of the Sun"?

Hot gas shoots up from the Sun, faster and faster due to its pressure, even though it's pulled down by gravity. At some point it goes faster than the speed of sound! This is the Alfvén surface. Above this surface, the solar wind becomes supersonic, so no disturbances in its flow can affect the Sun below.

But it's even cooler than that, because "sound" in the solar wind is very different from sound on Earth. Here we have air. The Sun has ions - atoms of gas so hot that electrons have been ripped off - interacting with powerful magnetic fields. You can visualize these fields as tight rubber bands, with the ions stuck to them. They vibrate back and forth together!

You could call these vibrations "sound", but the technical term is "Alfvén waves". Alfvén was the one who figured out how fast these waves move. Parker studied the surface where the solar wind's speed exceeds the speed of the Alfvén waves.

And now we've gone deep below that surface!

(1/n)

Cotton was king, and the lives of sharecroppers and tenant farmers revolved around its harvest. It was backbreaking work, with little reward and fewer options for escape. For generations, they remained, not by choice but by circumstance, trapped in the feudal economics of sharecropping and the relentless grip of Jim Crow laws and the vicious coercion it spawned.

Image: 11-year-old girl picking cotton in Oklahoma, 1916.

3/28

Commercial tea bags release millions of microplastics, entering human intestinal cells

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-commercial-tea-bags-millions-microplastics.html

Americans: The next time your #HealthInsurance company denies one of your claims, use the #ProPublica (@ProPublica) tool to demand a written explanation, including "internal correspondence, recordings of phone calls, case notes, medical records and other relevant information."
https://projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

Israeli football fans clash with protesters in Amsterdam | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/8/israeli-football-fans-clash-with-protesters-in-amsterdam The Israeli fans instigated the violence ...in the city and attacking Palestinian supporters before the match, an Amsterdam city council member said.

“They began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started,” Councilman Jazie Veldhuyzen told Al Jazeera on Friday. (Me: Violence uncalled for by all parties)

If you’re planning on getting pregnant, make sure you’re vax’d and try your best to avoid catching Covid while pregnant

A new study in Nature found that maternal COVID-19 infection increased the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring.

“#COVID infection during pregnancy disrupted the balance of maternal/ fetal immune environments, driving alterations in astrocytes, endothelial cells, and excitatory neurons.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02822-z #press

The Guardian: This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space programme

"Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2024 marks ‘a new milestone’ and should raise ambitions at Cop29 summit"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/07/this-year-virtually-certain-to-be-hottest-on-record-finds-eu-space-programme

#climate #climatedisaster #heatwaves