#Nonprofit Leader

[selfdiscoverymedia]

BB24-02. Carla Vaughn Financial Well-Being

Building Your Business with Sara Troy and her guest Carla Vaughn, on air from January 9th The phrase “We are only limited by the things that we allow to limit us” highlights the power of our mindset in overcoming internal barriers like doubts and fears. Our potential for success and productivity is like a key in our pocket, representing our innate abilities and strengths. Realizing and using…

[genkishoujo]

if your carceral system allows trans women to get bottom surgery then sends them to male prisons to be raped, you shouldnt refer to them as "leaders in transgender healthcare" even if it's a lead into a reproach.

[sahilbhatti705]

PROJECT ROSE GLOBAL has boots on the ground in Sargodha City, Pakistan ready to serve the immediate needs of a brutalized christian man (and many others) who were attacked due to alleged blasphemy claims. Over 300 people have been injured and it’s risen to a state of crisis.

Founder, CEO & Chairperson of PRG— Adiana Ross & Executive Director of PRG PK— Sahil Masih, along with founding PRG members, have prioritized efforts in providing long term solutions to the families and communities impacted by heinous attacks such as this. Please consider giving what you can to assist us with this mission.

GIVE HERE: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5NCZUXCPFRYJY

Matthew 5:10–12 • Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Please stay updated with us as we share our plans for longer term solutions for Christians in Pakistan. Take time to introduce yourself to our NEW CREATION PAKISTAN project in Lahore, Pakistan by visiting our website.

P ARTNER WITH US: https:/www.theprojectrose.org/project-rose-fund

NEW CREATION PAKISTAN: https://www.theprojectrose.org/ncp

We have major plans that continue to expand as the needs of those we are dedicated do. Please consider partnering with us by clicking the link in our bio.

We thank you,

PRG 🌹

[heswrongshesright]

Free Capitol Tours with Adam Johnson - HWSR Ep 117

In this episode of He's Wrong She's Right Podcast, ‘Free Capitol Tours with Adam Johnson’, hosts Andrew Lemacks and Nona Phelps sit down with Adam Johnson, famously known as the 'Lectern Guy' from January 2020. Adam opens up about the aftermath of the incident, the challenges of regaining normalcy, and how he's creatively navigating life's hurdles. From being unable to seek conventional employment to discussing the complexities of public schooling and current state of affairs, this conversation delves deep into it all. Adam also shares his passion project— a 501c3 charity focused on helping families with incarcerated parents— and his love for carpentry, revealing his plans to make a difference one lectern at a time.

Watch our latest episode here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL143tthLyKksSpobT1DBRCuM83GB-JkEx 

Join the channel to get access to perks:

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00:00 Introduction and Public Perception

00:55 Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome

01:13 Life in the Spotlight

02:35 Wikipedia Edits and Public Image

06:15 Family Life and Personal Background

10:58 Charity Work and Carpentry

18:01 Legal Troubles and Aftermath

31:29 The Dilemma of Content Creators

32:02 Hopes for a Pardon and Future Plans

33:20 Comparing Protests and Riots

35:21 The Impact of Non-Prosecution Policies

37:51 The Role of Politics in Everyday Life

40:45 Personal Reflections and Family Life

53:41 Final Thoughts and Staying Vigilant

55:14 The Importance of Public Schools

01:02:12 Where to Find More Content

#AmericasPodcast #AdamJohnson #TheLecternGuy #LecternLeader #Charity #Nonprofit #Wikipedia #Carpentry #Cabinetry #Building #Prison #Reform #FamilyLife #PrisonRules #PrisonReform #WashingtonDC #CapitolBuilding #PodiumGuy #AndrewLemacks #NonaPhelps #HWSR #HesWrongShesRight #VeteranPodcast 

[andrewjcalvert]

Website : https://www.andrewjcalvert.com/

Andrew J Calvert offers specialized coaching services for leaders, focusing on career transition, life coaching, and sales coaching. With a diverse background in sales leadership, customer service, and sales operations, Andrew brings a wealth of experience to his coaching practice. He emphasizes a personalized approach, helping clients align their careers with their personal goals and motivations. His services are available in various formats, including digital coaching tools and one-on-one sessions.

Twitter : https://twitter.com/Calverta

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcalvert/

Keywords: coaching for executives online sales coaching executive coaching for women online career coach enhance leadership skills online leadership development executive coaching for entrepreneurs leadership coaching for executives digital transformation professional services performance coaching for professionals professional development for coaches career coaching for executives executive coach for startups executive coach for women executive coaching for leaders executive coaching for nonprofit leaders executive functioning coach for young adults online personal development coach online personal development coaching personal development coaching online strategies to enhance leadership skills executive leadership development program online digital coaching tools business coach for creative professionals coaching for professional development average cost for executive coaching career transition guidance best online career coaches find a career coach online career advancement coaching sales performance improvement small business sales performance improvement sales coaching with 1-on-1 online sessions online personal growth personal development coach online enhance your leadership skills online sales performance improvement consulting sales performance improvement consultancy sales performance improvement goals sales performance improvement management sales performance improvement program live online sales coaching online based sales coaching for coaches online new home sales coaching online sales coaching program online sales coaching service digital transformation of professional development growth personal business online online personal growth coaching online personality development coach personal development coaching with 1-on-1 online coaches personal development online coaching enhance leadership management skills enhancing leadership skills affordable online coaching for developing leadership skills developing leadership abilities online developing your leadership philosophy online online leadership development consultancy transition guidance for care leavers transition year career guidance career online coach services corporate career coaching services online leadership career coaching online online academic and career coach advanced career guidance and coaching skills

[fiercemillennial]

Nonprofit Spotlight: 10 Organizations Making a Difference

👑 Let’s talk impact! These 10 African American nonprofits are leading the charge in social justice, health, education, and more. From dismantling systemic inequality to empowering Black women and youth, they’re putting in the WORK. Get inspired and get involved. #FierceImpact #BlackNonprofits #CommunityChange #SocialJustice #FierceMillennial

Powerhouses Driving Change in Communities, Careers, and Beyond Nonprofits are the heart and soul of social change. They are the unsung heroes doing the groundwork to elevate marginalized communities, tackle systemic challenges, and give back where it’s needed the most. For the Black community, African American-led nonprofits are essential in everything from healthcare disparities and educational…

[joshgibson-md]

Tailored Leadership: Executive Coaching for Nonprofit Leaders

Why Is Executive Coaching Critical for Nonprofit Leaders?

Executive coaching, traditionally a resource tapped by the corporate sector to enhance management effectiveness and leadership acumen, is increasingly recognized as a critical tool for nonprofit leaders as well. This specialized form of professional development aims to assist individuals in maximizing their potential by offering tailored guidance, enhancing skills, and facilitating personal and organizational growth. In the nonprofit realm, where resources are often limited and missions are socially critical, the pressures and challenges leaders face can be distinctively complex.

Nonprofit leaders operate under unique conditions, often balancing multiple roles and responsibilities in pursuit of their organization's mission. Unlike their for-profit counterparts, nonprofit executives must navigate the intricacies of donor management, volunteer coordination, and often fluctuating funding sources, all while striving to achieve social, cultural, or environmental goals. These leaders are required to exhibit exceptional emotional intelligence, resilience, and strategic thinking—capabilities that are honed through effective coaching.

Executive coaching can be particularly beneficial in the nonprofit sector as it is tailored to address these specific challenges. It helps leaders develop strategic perspectives and innovative approaches to problem-solving, enhance their communication skills, and manage internal and external relationships more effectively. This preview sets the stage for understanding how executive coaching can be customized to foster significant improvements in leadership effectiveness within nonprofit organizations.

The Unique Landscape of Nonprofit Leadership

The impact of the nonprofit sector on society is profound and far-reaching. Nonprofits often drive social innovation, fill gaps in government services, and respond to community needs that might otherwise go unaddressed. Leaders within this sector, therefore, carry a substantial burden of responsibility, and their effectiveness can significantly influence organizational outcomes and societal impact.

Leadership roles in nonprofit organizations differ markedly from those in the for-profit sector. While for-profit leaders are driven primarily by the bottom line and shareholder value, nonprofit leaders are mission-driven, focused on achieving the organization’s social, cultural, or environmental goals. This fundamental difference influences all aspects of organizational management and decision-making, from strategic planning to stakeholder engagement.

Nonprofit leaders face several specific challenges that set their experience apart from their for-profit counterparts. Resource constraints are often at the forefront; nonprofits typically operate with limited budgets and are heavily reliant on fluctuating funding sources such as donations, grants, and fundraising events. This financial instability requires leaders to be exceptionally skilled in budget management and resource allocation. Additionally, the mission-driven nature of nonprofits can lead to high emotional labor and burnout among leaders, who must continuously motivate teams and manage diverse stakeholder expectations under often stressful conditions.

Core Benefits of Executive Coaching for Nonprofit Leaders

Executive coaching offers a multitude of benefits specifically tailored to address the challenges faced by leaders in the nonprofit sector. First and foremost, it enhances strategic thinking and innovation. Nonprofit leaders need to think creatively to stretch limited resources and achieve their missions. A coach can help leaders identify and leverage new opportunities for growth and impact, encouraging a shift from operational to strategic thinking. This shift is crucial for sustainability and scaling of nonprofit initiatives, allowing leaders to see beyond day-to-day management and focus on long-term goals.

Improving stakeholder communication and engagement is another critical benefit of executive coaching. Nonprofits depend heavily on a broad network of stakeholders, including donors, volunteers, government entities, and the communities they serve. Effective communication across these groups is vital for securing funding, rallying support for initiatives, and fulfilling organizational missions. Coaches work with leaders to hone their communication skills, ensuring they can clearly articulate their vision and needs, and effectively engage with diverse groups. This skillset is essential not only for day-to-day operations but also for crisis management and advocacy efforts.

Lastly, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity is particularly important in the dynamic environments in which nonprofits operate. The ability to adapt to changing circumstances—be it shifts in funding, policy changes, or societal needs—is crucial for maintaining organizational stability and effectiveness. Executive coaching supports leaders in developing these capacities, helping them to navigate uncertainties and lead their organizations through times of change. 

Customizing Executive Coaching for Nonprofit Needs

Executive coaching in the nonprofit sector must be distinctly tailored to address the specific environments and challenges these organizations face. This customization involves adapting conventional coaching programs to better suit the needs of leaders who operate under the pressures of mission-driven goals and limited resources. For instance, coaching in this sector often emphasizes emotional intelligence, resilience training, and strategic resource management, which are crucial for navigating the complexities of nonprofit management.

Techniques and tools that are particularly beneficial for nonprofit leaders include strength-based coaching, which focuses on identifying and enhancing inherent strengths rather than merely addressing weaknesses. This approach is effective in boosting confidence and morale, crucial for leaders who need to inspire and lead diverse teams under often stressful conditions. Additionally, scenario planning tools help leaders anticipate potential challenges and develop flexible response strategies, essential for organizations that must adapt to frequently changing social needs and funding landscapes.

Examples of effective coaching strategies in this context include role-playing exercises that prepare leaders to handle difficult conversations with stakeholders, and systems thinking tools that enhance their ability to oversee complex projects with multiple interdependent elements. These strategies help leaders improve their decision-making processes and enhance their capacity to lead their organizations towards sustained impact. 

The Future of Leadership Development in Nonprofits

The future of leadership development in the nonprofit sector appears promising, with several emerging trends shaping the landscape of executive coaching. The increasing adoption of digital tools and virtual coaching sessions, for instance, allows for greater accessibility and flexibility, enabling nonprofit leaders worldwide to benefit from expert guidance without geographical constraints.

Moreover, there is a growing recognition of the need for culturally competent coaching practices that respect and incorporate diverse cultural perspectives and practices, crucial in a globally interconnected world. This trend is likely to enhance the effectiveness of coaching programs by ensuring they are more inclusive and relevant to a broader range of nonprofit leaders.

Predictions for the future also suggest that there will be a deeper integration of analytics and data-driven approaches in coaching, allowing for more personalized and measurable development plans. These advancements will enable coaches and leaders to pinpoint specific areas of need more accurately and track progress over time, leading to more effective and sustainable leadership practices.

The continuous evolution of executive coaching in the nonprofit sector signifies a committed effort towards strengthening leadership capabilities within these vital organizations. As the sector faces ever-increasing challenges, the role of tailored executive coaching in developing resilient, innovative, and effective leaders remains more critical than ever. This ongoing commitment to leadership development is essential for ensuring that nonprofits continue to drive positive change in society effectively. 

[worldnewsspot]

Jamie Allen Black: A Visionary Leader in Nonprofit Management

In the world of nonprofit organizations and philanthropy, leaders like Jamie Allen Black stand out as visionaries who bring about transformative change. With over 15 years of experience in nonprofit management and leadership, Jamie has left an indelible mark on the sector. As the former CEO of Elluminate, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cutting-edge philanthropy and visionary…

[antifainternational]

Proud Boys Lose Control of Their Name to a Black Church They Vandalized

The Proud Boys no longer have control over their own name. Under a ruling by a Washington judge on Monday, the infamous far-right group was stripped of control over the trademark “Proud Boys” and was barred from selling any merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of a Black church in Washington that its members vandalized. In June 2023, the church won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys after the organization’s former leader, Enrique Tarrio, and several of his subordinates attacked it in a night of violence after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020.

The ruling by the judge, Tanya M. Jones Bosier of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, effectively means that Proud Boys chapters across the country can no longer legally use their own name or the group’s traditional symbols without the permission of the church that was attacked, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. The ruling also clears the way for the church to try to seize any money that the Proud Boys might make by selling merchandise like hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their name or with any of their familiar logos, including a black and yellow laurel wreath. In a lengthy statement, Mr. Tarrio said the church should have its nonprofit status revoked and Judge Bosier should be impeached. “Their actions are a betrayal of justice,” he wrote, adding, “I hold in contempt any motions, judgments and orders issued against me.” The initial judgment against the Proud Boys determined that Mr. Tarrio and other members of the group had climbed over a fence surrounding the church, which is just blocks from the White House, and burned a Black Lives Matter banner it was flying. The episode took place after a violent clash between supporters and critics of President Trump. The church called the Proud Boys’ actions “acts of terror” in its lawsuit and said they had been meant “to intimidate the church and silence its support for racial justice.” A judge agreed, calling the Proud Boys’ conduct “hateful and overtly racist.” When the Proud Boys failed to turn over any money, lawyers for the church sought to satisfy the judgment by seizing control of the trademarked name and by enjoining the group from “selling, transferring, disposing of or licensing” any merchandise using the words “Proud Boys” or any of the organization’s symbols.

The ruling was handed down as the Proud Boys were riding high after Mr. Trump, in one of his first official acts in his return to the White House, included Mr. Tarrio and several of his lieutenants in his sweeping act of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Tarrio, who was serving a 22-year prison term on charges of seditious conspiracy, received a full and unconditional pardon from Mr. Trump. His four co-defendants had their own prison terms commuted to time served. The banner-burning episode had a dramatic effect on the events of Jan. 6. It led to Mr. Tarrio’s arrest on vandalism charges as he returned to Washington on Jan. 4, 2021. As part of the case brought against him, he was kicked out of the city and was in Baltimore when his subordinates took part in the storming of the Capitol. On the night the banner was burned, another Proud Boys leader, Jeremy Bertino, was stabbed on the street during a clash with leftist counterprotesters. One lingering effect of that episode was that it turned the Proud Boys against the police after years of having troublingly close relationships with officers across the country. Another was that Mr. Bertino eventually became a government witness and testified against his compatriots at the trial of Mr. Tarrio and his co-defendants.

[mysharona1987]

Bisan has literally won a Peabody for her reporting from Gaza during the last ten months. She’s most definitely not a terrorist.

Also, she is living through hell, barely surviving, and has even said in videos she considers her life essentially over, knows she’s going to die soon but considers it her duty to show these atrocities to the world with the time she has left.

She’s 24 year’s old.

But her being nominated for an Emmy is an outrage to many.

Debra Messing and Selma Blair, living in their mansions, are the most Karens that ever Karen’d here.

And Selma ain’t beating the Islamophobia and racism accusations anytime soon.

(Yes, Selma, we still remember the instagram rant.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist

Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you're a doctor, chances are you are required to use it, and for every hour a doctor spends with a patient, they have to spend two hours doing clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR.

How could a product so manifestly unfit for purpose be the absolute market leader? Simple: as Robert Kuttner describes in an excellent feature in The American Prospect, Epic may be a clinical disaster, but it's a profit-generating miracle:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-01-epic-dystopia/

At the core of Epic's value proposition is "upcoding," a form of billing fraud that is beloved of hospital administrators, including the "nonprofit" hospitals that generate vast fortunes that are somehow not characterized as profits. Here's a particularly egregious form of upcoding: back in 2020, the Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft Collins, CO locked all its doors except the ER entrance. Every patient entering the hospital, including those receiving absolutely routine care, was therefore processed as an "emergency."

In April 2020, Caitlin Wells Salerno – a pregnant biologist – drove to Poudre Valley with normal labor pains. She walked herself up to obstetrics, declining the offer of a wheelchair, stopping only to snap a cheeky selfie. Nevertheless, the hospital recorded her normal, uncomplicated birth as a Level 5 emergency – comparable to a major heart-attack – and whacked her with a $2755 bill for emergency care:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

Upcoding has its origins in the Reagan revolution, when the market-worshipping cultists he'd put in charge of health care created the "Prospective Payment System," which paid a lump sum for care. The idea was to incentivize hospitals to provide efficient care, since they could keep the difference between whatever they spent getting you better and the set PPS amount that Medicare would reimburse them. Hospitals responded by inventing upcoding: a patient with controlled, long-term coronary disease who showed up with a broken leg would get coded for the coronary condition and the cast, and the hospital would pocket both lump sums:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The reason hospital administrators love Epic, and pay gigantic sums for systemwide software licenses, is directly connected to the two hours that doctors spent filling in Epic forms for every hour they spend treating patients. Epic collects all that extra information in order to identify potential sources of plausible upcodes, which allows hospitals to bill patients, insurers, and Medicare through the nose for routine care. Epic can automatically recode "diabetes with no complications" from a Hierarchical Condition Category code 19 (worth $894.40) as "diabetes with kidney failure," code 18 and 136, which gooses the reimbursement to $1273.60.

Epic snitches on doctors to their bosses, giving them a dashboard to track doctors' compliance with upcoding suggestions. One of Kuttner's doctor sources says her supervisor contacts her with questions like, "That appointment was a 2. Don’t you think it might be a 3?"

Robert Kuttner is the perfect journalist to unravel the Epic scam. As a journalist who wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, he's got an insider's knowledge of the health industry, and plenty of sources among health professionals. As he tells it, Epic is a cultlike, insular company that employs 12.500 people in its hometown of Verona, WI.

The EHR industry's origins start with a GW Bush-era law called the HITECH Act, which was later folded into Obama's Recovery Act in 2009. Obama provided $27b to hospitals that installed EHR systems. These systems had to more than track patient outcomes – they also provided the data for pay-for-performance incentives. EHRs were already trying to do something very complicated – track health outcomes – but now they were also meant to underpin a cockamamie "incentives" program that was supposed to provide a carrot to the health industry so it would stop killing people and ripping off Medicare. EHRs devolved into obscenely complex spaghetti systems that doctors and nurses loathed on sight.

But there was one group that loved EHRs: hospital administrators and the private companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (which also benefited from upcoding patients in order to soak Uncle Sucker):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649706/

The spread of EHRs neatly tracks with a spike in upcharging: "from 2014 through 2019, the number of hospital stays billed at the highest severity level increased almost 20 percent…the number of stays billed at each of the other severity levels decreased":

https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-18-00380.pdf

The purpose of a system is what it does. Epic's industry-dominating EHR is great at price-gouging, but it sucks as a clinical tool – it takes 18 keystrokes just to enter a prescription:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2729481

Doctors need to see patients, but their bosses demand that they satisfy Epic's endless red tape. Doctors now routinely stay late after work and show up hours early, just to do paperwork. It's not enough. According to another one of Kuttner's sources, doctors routinely copy-and-paste earlier entries into the current one, a practice that generates rampant errors. Some just make up random numbers to fulfill Epic's nonsensical requirements: the same source told Kuttner that when prompted to enter a pain score for his TB patients, he just enters "zero."

Don't worry, Epic has a solution: AI. They've rolled out an "ambient listening" tool that attempts to transcribe everything the doctor and patient say during an exam and then bash it into a visit report. Not only is this prone to the customary mistakes that make AI unsuited to high-stakes, error-sensitive applications, it also represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of clinical notes.

The very exercise of organizing your thoughts and reflections about an event – such as a medical exam – into a coherent report makes you apply rigor and perspective to events that otherwise arrive as a series of fleeting impressions and reactions. That's why blogging is such an effective practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The answer to doctors not having time to reflect and organize good notes is to give them more time – not more AI. As another doctor told Kuttner: "Ambient listening is a solution to a self-created problem of requiring too much data entry by clinicians."

EHRs are one of those especially hellish public-private partnerships. Health care doctrine from Reagan to Obama insisted that the system just needed to be exposed to market forces and incentives. EHRs are designed to allow hospitals to win as many of these incentives as possible. Epic's clinical care modules do this by bombarding doctors with low-quality diagnostic suggestions with "little to do with a patient’s actual condition and risks," leading to "alert fatigue," so doctors miss the important alerts in the storm of nonsense elbow-jostling:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058605/

Clinicians who actually want to improve the quality of care in their facilities end up recording data manually and keying it into spreadsheets, because they can't get Epic to give them the data they need. Meanwhile, an army of high-priced consultants stand ready to give clinicians advise on getting Epic to do what they need, but can't seem to deliver.

Ironically, one of the benefits that Epic touts is its interoperability: hospitals that buy Epic systems can interconnect those with other Epic systems, and there's a large ecosystem of aftermarket add-ons that work with Epic. But Epic is a product, not a protocol, so its much-touted interop exists entirely on its terms, and at its sufferance. If Epic chooses, a doctor using its products can send files to a doctor using a rival product. But Epic can also veto that activity – and its veto extends to deciding whether a hospital can export their patient records to a competing service and get off Epic altogether.

One major selling point for Epic is its capacity to export "anonymized" data for medical research. Very large patient data-sets like Epic's are reasonably believed to contain many potential medical insights, so medical researchers are very excited at the prospect of interrogating that data.

But Epic's approach – anonymizing files containing the most sensitive information imaginable, about millions of people, and then releasing them to third parties – is a nightmare. "De-identified" data-sets are notoriously vulnerable to "re-identification" and the threat of re-identification only increases every time there's another release or breach, which can used to reveal the identities of people in anonymized records. For example, if you have a database of all the prescribing at a given hospital – a numeric identifier representing the patient, and the time and date when they saw a doctor and got a scrip. At any time in the future, a big location-data breach – say, from Uber or a transit system – can show you which people went back and forth to the hospital at the times that line up with those doctor's appointments, unmasking the person who got abortion meds, cancer meds, psychiatric meds or other sensitive prescriptions.

The fact that anonymized data can – will! – be re-identified doesn't mean we have to give up on the prospect of gleaning insight from medical records. In the UK, the eminent doctor Ben Goldacre and colleagues built an incredible effective, privacy-preserving "trusted research environment" (TRE) to operate on millions of NHS records across a decentralized system of hospitals and trusts without ever moving the data off their own servers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

The TRE is an open source, transparent server that accepts complex research questions in the form of database queries. These queries are posted to a public server for peer-review and revision, and when they're ready, the TRE sends them to each of the databases where the records are held. Those databases transmit responses to the TRE, which then publishes them. This has been unimaginably successful: the prototype of the TRE launched during the lockdown generated sixty papers in Nature in a matter of months.

Monopolies are inefficient, and Epic's outmoded and dangerous approach to research, along with the roadblocks it puts in the way of clinical excellence, epitomizes the problems with monopoly. America's health care industry is a dumpster fire from top to bottom – from Medicare Advantage to hospital cartels – and allowing Epic to dominate the EHR market has somehow, incredibly, made that system even worse.

Naturally, Kuttner finishes out his article with some antitrust analysis, sketching out how the Sherman Act could be brought to bear on Epic. Something has to be done. Epic's software is one of the many reasons that MDs are leaving the medical profession in droves.

Epic epitomizes the long-standing class war between doctors who want to take care of their patients and hospital executives who want to make a buck off of those patients.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upcoded-to-death/#thanks-obama

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[b1acksh33p999]

Blessings from your Jupiter sign:✍🏼✨

*this is what you have a natural abundance of or area’s that you notice can easily/rapidly expand throughout your lifespan*

🔥Aries: strong drive and ambition towards personal goals, strong natural athleticism, the true definition of “can’t be tamed”.

⛰️Taurus: gifts, property, luxurious treatment, influx in food, naturally good with money, mentors, or older siblings that improve childhood experience. Major “IDGAF” perspective but this works well with them.

🌬️Gemini: sliver tongue, great debater, jack of all trades learning ability, increased ability in learning foreign languages.

🌊Cancer: nurturing, motherhood, or becoming a parent can increase luck, children can bring luck, redefining the home, positive relationship with the mother, painting, and other creative natural inclinations.

🔥Leo: born into wealth, or power, high self esteem, charismatic presence, strong leadership ability, and ability to stand out of a crowd easily, Celebrity energy.

⛰️Virgo: natural healer, strong organization ability, attentive, healing through hypnosis, trustworthy friends, and impeccable“common sense”.

🌬️Libra: naturally beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and naturally sociable demeanor. Good luck in relationships, and marriage. Amazing sense of style, and fashion sense. Good insight for social trends, or what is “new and hot”.

🌊Scorpio: body language expert, strong intuition, a knowing for the unknown, storm magic, Empath ability, expert in pattern recognition, good intuition when it comes to stocks, and profit building opportunities.

🔥Sagittarius: optimistic outlook, open minded to new people, places, and opportunities, incredible skill for identifying upcoming trends among the culture they are absorbed into. Travel catapults transformations, and marks transitions into new chapters in life.

⛰️Capricorn: natural eye for business matters, strong leadership ability, good understanding pressure, lifelong student mentality, strong values that started in childhood, good moral compass, strong ability to accumulate money and property over lifespan.

🌬️Aquarius: strong humanitarian outlook, unique style, the kind of leader people want to follow, strong social impact, people remember you, strong social reach, trendsetter, amazing instincts for nonprofit organizations and charity, natural cult leader energy.

🌊Pisces: strong intuition, vivid psychic dreams, ability to cause ripple effect of change within other people’s emotional states, good luck by beaches, or water, natural intelligence, compassion for others leads to opportunities to build wealth.

[oopsallmabari]

like. if someone is capable of convincing me that having the viper be the black divine is a good idea, by all means. but i struggle to understand it beyond a weird first draft idea that should be treated as just that, a weird first draft idea that isn't canon.

overall i think the game is missing out on really involving the elves in a thoughtful way, and that includes the shadow dragons. so unless your rook is a shadow dragon and an elf, all of the major shadow dragons(i include dorian in this, even though he's technically an ally, i guess) are humans save for lorelei, the merchant? and save for tarquin, they're all mages, folks who have at least some standing in tevinter society. i haven't read the supporting novels/comics so i don't know all of the details surrounding mae and neve's backstories--but even though mae's been stripped of her magisterium seat and presumably faces discrimination in tevinter as a trans woman, she has had some level of privilege as an altus (she was a magister with a magister parent, so i'm assuming that's the accurate social class to put her in). dorian has been harmed by societal homophobia, but he is still an altus with a seat in the magisterium. the viper is, at minimum, an altus. elves are rescued from slavery, aided and supported by the shadow dragons, which is great, but they lack agency. they aren't the leaders of their own movement, they aren't even a strong consideration. a group of people, mostly human mages, can attempt to change tevinter by installing a new archon, theoretically for the benefit of elves (the primary victims of tevinter slavery), without including a single elf in the conversation, or even considering if their opinion should matter.

it is, imo, shortsighted at best to have the group of fantasy freedom fighters/abolitionists to mostly be controlled by the privileged, especially without making any commentary on that and the potential issues with it, especially if the writers' intent (even if not officially confirmed) is to make one of their advisors the leader of the imperial church, which seems to still be relevant and powerful in tevinter society, even with the magisterium. putting aside the logistics of the viper not getting caught, is tevinter just so corrupt that there's no real difference for him to make within his own station? is he unwilling to use whatever political power he has as divine because it'll expose him to personal danger? would it compromise the shadow dragons? why would that not be a problem in itself given the goal is to end slavery in tevinter, if the dragons' ability to take decisive action is stymied by their own leadership? why not keep the viper as an ally, a patron, a sympathizer with means to support with no decisionmaking power (even that has its issues, if you think about corporate capture of regulatory bodies/nonprofits)?

like, to my knowledge this is information people have gotten through datamining, so i don't take it as canon, but like...if we're gonna treat this as canon, i would like to think about the implications of it beyond how surface-level cool it is for fantasy abolitionist batman to secretly be the fantasy imperial pope. consider that yes, these are people with good intentions, but they do not exist absent the power structures they grew up in.

[ms-demeanor]

Job searching is always a fascinating mess because, like, there is a zero percent chance that I'm going to apply to be the associate brand manager working to deliver disruptive innovation for the carrot farm (who are a leader in "distributing high quality, nutrient dense branded products") but I am weirdly excited about applying for the logistics administration job at the mattress recycling nonprofit and I'm going to hear back from neither of them no matter what happens.

[pintadorartist]

Bill HR 9495 still remains a threat to nonprofits and independent news

Bill H.R. 9495, aka the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” was meant to protect US Hostages from tax penalties; the problem is that the bill received an add-on that would give the Treasury Secretary the power to strip any non-profit of their tax-exempt status based on the idea that the nonprofit is a “terrorist supporting” organization, all without due process or a justification.

And although another exemption was added to the bill that would "protect" Non-profits from this by exempting Non-Profits that have approval from the Office of Foreign Assets Control(OFAC). This would still target non-profit organizations since all it would take to attack them is to just rescind that prior approval

This would give the upcoming Trump administration the power to kill any non-profit org, from AO3 to the ACLU. Even local nonprofits and independent news sources could be stripped of their status and be unable to receive funding to stay open, all because they had different views than the government.

Unfortunately, the bill passed the House and is headed toward the Senate, but there hasn't been any update regarding the bill or a date to vote on it; it's probably best to find your Senator and call, email, or fax them to tell them to vote no if it comes to a vote.

Below are some tools and a list of Senate leaders you should call in addition to your senator:

Democrat Senate Leaders:

Chuck Schumer:

Phone: (202) 224-6542

Fax: (202) 228-3027

Dick Durbin:

Phone: 202-224-2152

Debbie Stabenow:

Phone:(202) 224-4822

Elizabeth Warren:

Phone: (202) 224-4543

Mark R. Warner:

Phone: 202-224-2023

Amy Klobuchar:

Phone: 202-224-3244

Fax: 202-228-2186

Bernie Sanders:

Phone: 202-224-5141 Fax: 202-228-0776

Catherine Cortez Masto:

Phone: (202) 224-3542

Joe Manchin:

Phone: 202-224-3954 Fax: 202-228-0002

Cory A. Booker:

Phone: (202) 224-3224

Fax: (202) 224-8378

Tammy Baldwin:

Phone: (202) 224-5653

Brian Schatz:

Phone: (202) 224-3934

Republican Senate Leaders:

Mitch McConnell:

Phone: (202) 224-2541 Fax: (202) 224-2499

John Thune:

Phone: (202) 224-2321

Fax: (202) 228-5429

John Barrasso:

Main: 202-224-6441 Fax: 202-224-1724

Joni Ernst:

PHONE: (319) 365-4504

FAX: (319) 365-4683

Shelley Capito:

Phone: 202-224-6472

Steve Daines:

p: (202) 224-2651 f: 202-228-1236

Find Your Senator:

Or you can call the Congressional switchboard today and ask to be connected with each of your Senators’ offices. Demand they vote against this bill: (202) 224-3121

If you don’t like talking to people, you can call after their offices close so you can leave a message

you can also Text RESIST to 50409 to send your message into a fax and email to your senator

Fax tool:

Here are some call scripts that you can use as fax and email as well:

If you have a Democrat Senator, you can use this script:

“I am calling Senator [THEIR LAST NAME] as a constituent to urge them to vote against the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, when it comes to the Senate floor. This bill would give the Treasury the power to kill non-profit organizations without evidence, and will be used as a sledge hammer to destroy any organization that speaks out against the incoming President’s agenda. No matter who was in power, this bill would be authoritarian and ripe for abuse. Handing this power to a President known to be vindictive, and who has promised to be a “day one” dictator, would be a failure of congressional leadership. Please share my thoughts with the Senator, urging them to vote against this dangerous legislation. Thank you”

If you have a Republican Senator, you can use this script:

“As your constituent, I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495. This bill poses a dangerous threat to the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and must not pass the Senate. It grants any incoming administration unchecked authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations without oversight or due process. Such government overreach is not what the Founding Fathers envisioned for our democracy. This bill undermines the principles of free speech and freedom of association, cornerstones of American liberty.

H.R. 9495 threatens to pave the way for political suppression, allowing the government to selectively target and shut down organizations based on ideological disagreements. This could affect any non-profit, including churches and conservative groups, as well as organizations that champion human rights and civil liberties. Regardless of political leanings, this bill sets a chilling precedent that no American patriot should support.

While situations relating to the hostages deserve careful attention, they can and should be addressed in a separate, narrowly tailored bill. H.R. 9495, however, is a broad, unconstitutional overreach that strikes at the heart of free speech and freedom. It is unpatriotic and incompatible with the values we hold dear as Americans.

I implore you to stand as a defender of liberty and uphold the rights of your constituents. Be a patriot, listen to the voice of the people, protect our God given right to free speech as Americans, and reject this dangerous legislation. Vote NO on H.R. 9495. Thank you, God Bless and God Bless America.”

Here’s that petition again:

[batboyblog]

The budget reconciliation provision would raise eligibility requirements for low-income schools and districts to serve free meals to all students.

The House Ways and Means Committee is suggesting cutting $12 billion in school meal programs over 10 years by adjusting school qualification for the Community Eligibility Provision and requiring income verification for national K-12 breakfast and lunch programs, according to a document on the committee’s budget reconciliation options.

Specifically, the committee proposed raising the minimum threshold for low-income schools and districts to qualify for CEP, which allows low-income schools to serve free meals to all students. To participate in the program, 25% of students enrolled in a school have to be certified as eligible for free school meals. The House proposal calls for a 60% threshold. 

The proposal would strip away 24,000 schools’ ability to participate in CEP, impacting over 12 million children, according to the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit anti-hunger advocacy group.  

The suggested cuts offer an early glimpse into House Republicans’ priorities for school nutrition policy.

A rollback in school eligibility for the provision is being proposed just as Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation, has called for the elimination of CEP altogether. The policy agenda developed in conjunction with some former Trump administration officials also recommended the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees CEP,  work with lawmakers to curb any efforts in support of universal school meal programs.

The federal school lunch and breakfast programs “should be directed to serve children in need, not become an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes,” Project 2025 said.

The committee’s proposals have been released ahead of an expected budget reconciliation, which is part of a special legislative process to fast-track high-priority fiscal legislation that adjusts laws regarding spending, revenues, deficits or the debt limit. 

Reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered in the Senate, “giving this process real advantages for enacting controversial budget and tax measures,” according to the nonpartisan research nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. To pass, these bills only need a simple majority in the Senate rather than 60 votes and don’t require the president’s signature. 

The committee’s move also comes at a time when CEP participation has climbed in recent years, most recently rising 19% during the 2023-24 school year. 

As of last school year, half of all schools in the National School Lunch Program were using the provision to serve free meals to all students, according to a January FRAC report. 

“Taking away this important and effective way for local schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all of their students would increase hunger in the classroom, reintroduce unnecessary paperwork for families and schools, increase school meal debt, and bring stigma back into the cafeteria,” FRAC said in a Jan. 17 statement. 

Unpaid school meal debt has continued to increase for nearly a decade, according to a January report from the School Nutrition Association. In fact, the median unpaid school meal debt was $6,900 per district nationwide in 2024 — a 26% rise from the previous year.

When pandemic-era waivers ended in 2022 for a temporary universal school meal policy nationwide, some schools took on more meal debt. 

Meanwhile, eight states have established their own universal meal programs in lieu of federal action, according to FRAC. Other states leaders are eyeing similar measures this year, including in Alaska, Missouri, Oregon, and New York.