#public hearing

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The saga of San Juan Hill, cont'd (for Part I, see this post)

On September 11, 1957, residents of San Juan Hill, the integrated, predominantly working-class neighborhood on the West Side between 59th and 65th Streets and West End and Amsterdam Avenues, showed up at City Hall. They were protesting the destruction of their homes for the purpose of building an arts complex called Lincoln Center.

The public hearing lasted nearly 11 hours, with 24 speakers supporting the project and 36 opposed. The issue was framed as housing vs. culture. They also pointed out that the housing units that Robert Moses had reluctantly agreed to build as part of the redevelopment would be out of the price range of current residents.

Two weeks later, West Side Story opened on Broadway. It took place entirely in San Juan Hill, although the community was never referred to by name. Although it's hard to believe now, the show received generally cool reviews; critics were taken aback by its grim realism and aggressive, jazzy score (by Leonard Bernstein).

Many neighborhood residents were offended by the portrayal of their home. Puerto Ricans, who made up 24% of the population who lived there, objected particularly to the line in the show-stopping number "America" that called Puerto Rico an "island of tropical diseases." (They ignored the context, which is a back-and-forth between a Puerto Rican girl who romanticizes the island and another who mocks her dreamy outlook.)

On October 25, the Board of Estimate, which was then the city's main decision-making body, held another hearing on the redevelopment project. This one lasted 18 hours, but it seemed that the Board's minds were made up. In late November, they voted unanimously to go ahead with Lincoln Center. Next June, the first residents of San Juan Hill were relocated.

In 1960, as the last of the brownstones were being demolished, a film crew moved in. It was the (first) screen version of West Side Story.

Photo: Gothamist

[thoughtportal]

SB 42 in Missouri

https://linktr.ee/PROMOmissouri

[hwy95eh]

[vicforberger]

Public hearing on unemployment in 2024

The Department has scheduled a public hearing on unemployment benefits and taxes for Thursday, November 21st, at 2 to 4 pm and 5 to 6 pm. This public hearing is online only (via webex) and requires prior registration for both sessions: registration for the 2 to 4 pm session and registration for the 5 to 6 pm session. Comments can also be submitted in writing via [e-mail message](mailto:…

[laurenfoxmakesthings]

[reasonsforhope]

A new treatment combining ReCET and semaglutide could eliminate the need for insulin in type 2 diabetes, with 86% of participants in a study no longer requiring insulin therapy. The treatment was safe and well-tolerated, and further trials are planned to confirm these results.

Groundbreaking research presented at UEG Week 2024 introduces a promising new treatment approach for type 2 diabetes (T2D) that has the potential to greatly reduce or even eliminate the need for insulin therapy.

This innovative approach, which combines a novel procedure known as ReCET (Re-Cellularization via Electroporation Therapy) with semaglutide, resulted in the elimination of insulin therapy for 86% of patients.

Globally, T2D affects 422 million people... While insulin therapy is commonly used to manage blood sugar levels in T2D patients, it can result in side effects... and further complicate diabetes management. [Note: Also very importantly it's fucking bankrupting people who need it!!] A need therefore exists for alternative treatment strategies.

Study Design and Outcomes

The first-in-human study included 14 participants aged 28 to 75 years, with body mass indices ranging from 24 to 40 kg/m². Each participant underwent the ReCET procedure under deep sedation, a treatment intended to improve the body’s sensitivity to its own insulin. Following the procedure, participants adhered to a two-week isocaloric liquid diet, after which semaglutide was gradually titrated up to 1mg/week.

Remarkably, at the 6- and 12-month follow-up, 86% of participants (12 out of 14) no longer required insulin therapy, and this success continued through the 24-month follow-up. In these cases, all patients maintained glycaemic control, with HbA1c levels remaining below 7.5%.

Tolerability and Safety

The maximum dose of semaglutide was well-tolerated by 93% of participants, one individual could not increase to the maximum dose due to nausea. All patients successfully completed the ReCET procedure, and no serious adverse effects were reported.

Dr Celine Busch, lead author of the study, commented, “These findings are very encouraging, suggesting that ReCET is a safe and feasible procedure that, when combined with semaglutide, can effectively eliminate the need for insulin therapy.”

“Unlike drug therapy, which requires daily medication adherence, ReCET is compliance-free [meaning: you don't have to take it every day], addressing the critical issue of ongoing patient adherence in the management of T2D. In addition, the treatment is disease-modifying: it improves the patient’s sensitivity to their own (endogenous) insulin, tackling the root cause of the disease, as opposed to currently available drug therapies, that are at best disease-controlling.”

Looking ahead, the researchers plan to conduct larger randomized controlled trials to further validate these findings. Dr. Busch added, “We are currently conducting the EMINENT-2 trial with the same inclusion and exclusion criteria and administration of semaglutide, but with either a sham procedure or ReCET. This study will also include mechanistic assessments to evaluate the underlying mechanism of ReCET.”

-via SciTechDaily, October 17, 2024

--

Note: If it works even half as well as suggested, this could free so many people from the burden of the ongoing ridiculous cost of insulin. Pharma companies that make insulin can go choke (hopefully).

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[tenth-sentence]

At such hearings qualified supporters and opponents of the bill expressed their opinions.

"Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists" - Robert Jungk, translated by James Cleugh

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

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/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[onenettvchannel]

COMELEC will hold a Negrosanon-wide Public Hearing on the proposal to postpone BSKE 2023 in Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental

(Prepared by Chzianelle Salazar and Anthony Maguinsay / Faculty Teacher of U.E. or University of the East & Radio Reporter of DZXL-AM 558khz's RMN: Radyo Trabaho Manila, along with a separate male contributed news writer and news anchor of DYWC-AM 801khz's Radyo Bandilyo Dumaguete)

DUMAGUETE, NEGROS ORIENTAL -- The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will hold a joint coordinating conference related to the proposed postponement of the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections 2023 (BSKE) in the town of Dumaguete and a municipal province of Negros Oriental were all presided with COMELEC chairman named George Erwin Mojica Garcia, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Benjamin Casuga Acorda Jr. and chief of staff in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) - Gen. Andres Castor Centino.

A localized public hearing will be held from June 27th-29th, 2023 starting at 8am and 2pm (Dumaguete local time) in some selected places in the province.

Cluster 1 begins to Canlaon, Vallerhermoso, Guihulngan, La Libertad and Jimalalud. Cluster 2 will be implemented in Tayasan, Ayungon, Bindoy, Manjuyod and Mabinay. There will also be a public hearing for Cluster 3 in Bais, Pamplona, Tanjay, Amlan and San Jose. Cluster 4 includes Sibulan, Dumaguete, Valencia, Bacong and Dauin; while the last one ends in Cluster 5 are the municipal places in Zamboanguita, Siaton, Santa Catalina, Bayawan and Basay.

Here in Cluster 4, the scheduled public hearing on the postponement of the BSKE will begin locally at 2pm at the Lamberto L. Macias Sports and Cultural Complex in Brgy. Taclobo, Dumaguete, Negros Oriental and it will be streamed LIVE and exclusive on Facebook. This is to give way to give voices and to end public election violence per the assassination of the late Dumaguete governor Roel Ragay Degamo against a suspected murder mastermind and suspended Negros Oriental congressman Arnulfo "Arnie" Alipit Teves Jr.

The rest of our nation will continue to vote for BSKE, once its later approved by the COMELEC.

PHOTO COURTESY: COMELEC via FB PHOTO BACKGROUND PROVIDED BY: Tegna

SOURCE: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZn7UL6xWYI [Referenced News Item via RMN News (skip the timestamp of 15m55s to listen this news item)] *https://www.facebook.com/100064675240177/posts/651504900348679 [Referenced FB Captioned Photo in Public Hearing Schedule Listings via COMELEC National] *https://www.facebook.com/100069326464967/videos/651710710163795 [Referenced FB LIVE Video via Police Regional Office 7] and *https://www.facebook.com/100068668860878/posts/561460372819587 [Referenced FB Captioned Photo via COMELEC Sibulan]

-- OneNETnews Team

[rodspurethoughts]

Join Metro's Public Hearing on FY24 Budget - Give Your Feedback!

Shape the future of transportation in LA! Join Metro's Public Hearing on FY24 Budget for community feedback. #Metro #LosAngeles #transportation

Kinkisharyo P3010 train at Highland Park Station. Image Credit: By Waltarrrrr The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) has announced a public hearing on Wednesday, May 17th, at 1:30PM to gather input on the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The meeting can be attended in person in the board room on the third floor of Metro headquarters adjacent to Union Station.…

[never-looked-so-good]

HELLO?!

📷 @/leclercsletters @/uzuhiikoo

[hwy95eh]

[28-06-2023]

I'm not one for public speaking, so I was chuffed to see that so many other locals were not only up to the task of stepping up to the mic at last night's Public Hearing at McKim — BUT — they also had intelligent, charming, thoughtful, & passionate things to say that hit a whole bunch of nails right on the head!

And when combined with all of the 'intelligent, charming, thoughtful, & passionate' written communications that have also been sent to council in regards to this specific proposal (not to mention the city's own staff reports and our town's OCP), it really does feel like the case to say "NO" has been made pretty loud & clear (to those listening).

Of course, there is still the phone-in hearing to be held tonight (June 28th) at 7pm + the public still has until 2pm today to send in any final written comments… so I would strongly encourage anyone feeling up for the task to get their voice/opinion added to the public record (as the accumulative public record of written comments + public hearing feedback is a powerful & useful thing to be able to refer back to until the final decision is made by the 7 people who vote on our behalf).

As far as I can tell, the video from last night's public hearing has not been shared yet, so I figured I would just share my notes — which is basically just a 'For vs Against' tally of all the speakers:

• Those who spoke AGAINST this proposal: 47

• Those who spoke FOR this proposal: 3 (and 1 of those people was the person proposing the proposal)

• And then 2 were undecided/unclear (although 1 undecided wanted more data/studies, which we don't have, so I think that technically would be 'against' the upcoming vote — the other 'unclear' seemed to say council was being given a hard time about things council shouldn't have to think about)

I would also say that the general vibe of the people who showed up at McKim was audibly AGAINST (I'm bad at estimating crowd size, but I'd say around 200-ish people??), although everyone was very respectful to all who spoke.

All in all… it was a mix of inspiring & encouraging and I hope it's an energy the community can build on for other challenges/concerns that we have to collectively face ✊

** UPDATE: the recording of last night's McKim public hearing has now been uploaded to the City of Kimberley youtube page — it's been split up into 6 videos, so I have put things into a playlist if you fancy watching one after the other.

[vicforberger]

The November 2022 public hearing

At the January 2023 meeting of the Advisory Council, the Department presented the public testimony from the November 2022 public hearing. As has happened in the past, there was no discussion or examination of that testimony. Note: Examination of the last three unemployment public hearings and the testimony provided in 2020, 2018, and 2016 are available: Recap of the 2020 public hearing, Advisory…

[mickedy]

I love the headcanon of toons being able to innately speak in Dings. although I think maybe only the older toons can do it, at least the ones made before sound in movies was a popular thing and they had to learn English. Mickey and Os probably do it they want to be mysterious, heh