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GENERAL INTEREST
Twilight of the Taj
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/twilight_of_the_taj
Why we stopped trusting elites
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/29/why-we-stopped-trusting-elites-the-new-populism?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xODExMjk%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
Spawn of the dead: a history of strange zombie movie mashups
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/nov/29/zombies-anna-and-the-apocalypse-overlord?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xODExMjk%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
HEALTH
'They are disrupting forearms, elbows and heads': ER doctors report sharp increase in injuries from riding electric scooters as sharing services expand to nearly 100 US cities
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6440187/ER-doctors-report-sharp-increase-injuries-electric-scooters.html
Amazon Makes Inroads Selling Medical Supplies to the Sick
See the first Wall Street Journal article, below.
Amazon Selling Software That Mines Medical Data
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/amazon-medical-data-mining-software/2018/11/27/id/892204/
Discover how clean should feel.
https://washlet.totousa.com/
PARENTING
How overparenting in America has created a generation of snowflakes
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-overparenting-in-america-has-created-a-generation-of-snowflakes-2018-11-28
PROGRESSIVES UNHINGED
Crazy, Woke
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2018/11/29/crazy-woke-n2536644?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=&bcid=3cb4e56ddeac8885c78e874bb1d8f1a4&recip=27077809
BUSINESS
What Facebook Really Doesn’t Want You to Talk About
https://www.yahoo.com/news/facebook-really-doesn-t-want-171409525.html
Internal emails show Facebook considered selling user data
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/internal-emails-show-facebook-considered-selling-user-data-2018-11-28
New York to consider banning shops from going cashless
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/28/legislation-bans-cashless-business-policy-discrimination
ENVIRONMENT
Updates from the Cool Green Science Blog
https://blog.nature.org/science/?src=e.nature.loc_h&lu=3300273&autologin=true&ds=y&sus=n&md=n
Trump's opponents hope his climate report will undermine him in court
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/trumps-opponents-hope-his-climate-report-will-undermine-him-in-court
Apocalypse when?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas112818.php3
ENTOMOLOGY
The Insect Apocalypse Is Here
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
TECHNOLOGY
Remember When Technology Was Supposed to Mean Freedom?
https://townhall.com/columnists/laurahollis/2018/11/29/remember-when-technology-was-supposed-to-mean-freedom-n2536689?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=&bcid=3cb4e56ddeac8885c78e874bb1d8f1a4&recip=27077809
FOREIGN POLICY
Panama the new flashpoint in China's growing presence in Latin America
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/28/panama-china-us-latin-america-canal?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xODExMjk%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
LAW AND THE COURTS
How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
Blind Man Sues Playboy Over Its Website
http://www.newser.com/story/267917/suit-demands-playboy-cater-to-the-blind.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=att&utm_campaign=rss_media_syn
BIG BROTHER
In China, your car may be spying on you for the government
https://nypost.com/2018/11/29/in-china-your-car-may-be-spying-on-you-for-the-government/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=mail_app
CARAVAN
MSNBC Reporter: Most People in the Caravan Are Non-Asylum-Seeking Single Men, And Some Are Already Heading Home
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/11/29/msnbc-some-caravan-asylum-seekers-have-given-up-and-are-heading-home-n2536656?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=3cb4e56ddeac8885c78e874bb1d8f1a4&recip=27077809
MS-13 gang member caught traveling with migrant caravan: Border Patrol
https://nypost.com/2018/11/28/ms-13-gang-member-caught-traveling-with-migrant-caravan-border-patrol/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=mail_app
IMMIGRATION
Cliven Bundy rebukes Trump over attack on migrants: 'We should have a heart'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/28/cliven-ammon-bundy-criticizes-trump-immigration-border-wall
CHINA
China specialists now warning of Beijing's efforts to influence American society
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1118/beijing_influence_america.php3
TRUMPGATE
Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty to Lying to Congress About Moscow Building Project
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/michael-cohen-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-congress-about-moscow-building-project/
POLITICS
Stopping the Socialist Resurgence
See the second Wall Street Journal article, below.
-- "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to Lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." - VAdm James Stockdale, USN (1923-2005)
FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (without permission)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-makes-inroads-selling-medical-supplies-to-the-sick-1543487401
Amazon Makes Inroads Selling Medical Supplies to the Sick
Privacy experts say an app for patients, and Amazon’s involvement in it, raise new issues in digitized medical data
An app developed by Xealth Inc. enables doctors to choose medical supplies to recommend to patients and to direct them to a website that links to Amazon.com. Photo: Jim West/Zuma Press
By
Melanie Evans
Nov. 29, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET
A growing number of doctors around the U.S. can direct a patient to Amazon.com Inc. to buy blood-pressure cuffs, slings and other supplies via an app embedded in the patient’s private medical record—a change creating convenience but also raising privacy concerns.
Hospitals that use the app say the goal is to replace the handwritten shopping lists doctors often hand people, which are easy to lose, and to spare frazzled patients lengthy searches through pharmacy shelves.
“We’re looking for ways to make that more convenient,” says Glenn Updike, an obstetrician at the UPMC health system in Pittsburgh who has sent the digital referrals and is a technology official at the health system.
Online or In the Store
Medication, personal health goods and vitamins account for a growing share of the fast-growing online retail market, which is outpacing brick-and-mortar drug store growth.
Privacy experts say the app, and Amazon’s involvement, represent the latest example of new and unanticipated issues arising as doctors, retailers and software developers take advantage of the digitization of medical data and tap patients’ growing comfort with the internet.
The app, developed by a separate company called Xealth Inc., enables doctors to choose which supplies to recommend, then email the list of products to a patient. The email directs the patient to a website with photos of recommended products, descriptions and links for purchasing on Amazon.
The app alerts patients with a pop-up disclaimer that buying products is a recommendation only. Amazon outlines how it collects data from users in its privacy policies. Xealth says the app doesn’t share with Amazon any information in a patient’s medical records or about the doctor treating the patient.
Privacy experts express concern that patients could unwittingly share personal and potentially sensitive health information with Amazon, giving the retailer more data points about a shopper that it could use to tailor how it sells.
“We do not want companies to know intimate knowledge about us as they can manipulate us or use it when it is not in our interest,” said Kirsten Martin, a George Washington University associate professor who studies privacy and technology.
Knowing a consumer viewed blood-pressure cuffs recommended by a doctor, for instance, could help Amazon infer the shopper has high blood pressure, especially if the retailer combined that information with its data on the person’s browsing history and past purchases, privacy experts say.
Xealth Chief Executive Mike McSherry said he isn’t aware of Amazon targeting ads to customers who have used his company’s app so far.S
Amazon has been trying to expand its footprint in health care. The market for medical supplies is a lucrative target for Amazon. It bought an online pharmacy this year, and is stepping up efforts to sell medical supplies to hospitals. The retailer is starting to sell software that will mine patient medical records for information doctors and hospitals could use to improve care and cut costs.
And it has been expanding its business supplying medical products to hospitals and clinics.
Online sales of medicines and medical supplies, totaling $40 billion last year, are growing at an average annual rate of 17%, compared with 2% revenue growth at bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, according to research firm IBISWorld.
Federal health-privacy law, enacted in 1996, was never intended to address patients unwittingly sharing sensitive medical data while shopping online, privacy lawyers say. The law, known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, covers doctors, hospitals and health insurers and limits what those providers can do with a patient’s medical data, the lawyers say. But it doesn’t cover information a patient might share with other parties, such as a health app or retailer like Amazon.
The medical-supply industry, working with software developers and health systems, has begun to explore apps that plug into patients’ electronic medical records, industry officials say. These apps sometimes steer patients to a website, often run by the doctor or hospital, stocked with products made by a specific manufacturer or sold by a single distributor, according to industry officials.
Is Amazon Going to Rule the World?
Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, anywhere in the world. But the e-commerce giant faces several challenges in its pursuit of a global empire. WSJ's Karan Deep Singh breaks down the basics with the help of an Amazon delivery box.
The technology developed by Xealth, a privately held company based in Seattle, steers patients to Amazon instead. Mr. McSherry says its business could expand to other e-retailers and medical-supply manufacturers.
Its software plugs into electronic health record systems, according to Mr. McSherry. Then a doctor can call up a list of potential products, select the specific products for referral and then send the email that ultimately directs the patient to Amazon.
The patient can make the purchases on the website, or take the list and shop for the items elsewhere.
Companies that work with Amazon usually get fees from the retailer for driving traffic to the shopping website. Mr. McSherry says Xealth won’t get any referral fees. Rather, it plans to make money by selling its software to health systems. Doctors and health systems said they also wouldn’t get fees from the referrals to Amazon.
Health systems only recently began trying out the Xealth app, so there is little data on how patients have used it so far, according to the company and doctors.
Doctors at Providence St. Joseph Health of Renton, Wash., and UPMC in Pittsburgh—health systems that are investors in Xealth and were testing out the technology—have sent patients the email referrals.
Providence, which has sent the referrals to several orthopedic patients, is considering broadening to maternity, cancer and neurology patients, says Chris Neighorn, program manager for Providence’s Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Institute.
UPMC has expanded use to all its obstetric clinic staff after a small group of its obstetrician gynecologists tried it out, Dr. Updike says.
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Stopping the Socialist Resurgence
Republicans need to fight the wild ideas of the Democratic Party’s left wing.
By
Karl Rove
Nov. 28, 2018 6:40 p.m. ET
Sen. Bernie Sanders knows what he wants. In a Washington Post op-ed last week, the democratic socialist from Vermont laid out a legislative agenda for the 116th Congress’s first 100 days. Among the dizzying array of proposals Mr. Sanders pushed were his signature “Medicare for All” bill, tuition-free college, student-debt relief, tax increases requiring “wealthy people and large corporations to begin paying their fair share” and a $15 minimum wage indexed to “median wage growth,” not inflation. See wsj to continue.
