- Joined
- Jun 11, 2018
As nice as it would be to see all American colleges and universities -- so called institutions of higher learning -- return to their educational roots, it's sadly going to be too
at the bigger schools. The athletic alumni donors have far more clout and control than they should and they've helped turned these schools into the sports machines they've become. Worse, the colleges don't care because athletes, even those on scholarship, bring in money and athletes who play one season and drop out to go pro are easily replaced by more such athletes next year. That said, many universities who haven't been tainted by bigtime athletics run their programs the right way, especially the smaller universities who have reputations for their uncompromisable academic standards that apply equally to student and athlete alike. In recent years, some of the smallest non-NCAA colleges have dropped sports or even their entire athletic programs once they realized that using athletics as an enrollment/revenue boost wasn't worth the costs, financial and otherwise, it created.---
From knowing someone who used to work at a nursing home, the majority are either chain owned or individually owned with the occasional facility run by a local governmental entity. Sadly, many chain-run ones care more about the bottom line. There is/was one chain of homes run by the same family/owner that was notorious for poor working conditions and awful reports on their state surveys (annual inspections). Most people in the industry spread it through their grapevine that one shouldn't work at or put loved ones in those facilities unless there was no other choice.
On the flip side, individually-run homes are dying out (no pun intended). With Medicaid and Medicare rates barely covering the cost of care, especially competitive wages for nurses and unionized wages for aides, housekeepers, and kitchen employees, it's difficult to break even. Even before the last recession, many individually-run homes have either merged with each other in an attempt to stay afloat, been bought by chain operators that have the resources to run them, or simply shut down.
Sadly, many homes are run by administrators that simply DGAF. Most of the homes that reek of excrement odors and/or have grossly inadequate patient care can be traced back to absentee/indifferent administration. Those facilities with staff that do care for their residents' well-being often lack the resources to do as good a job as they could/should, but at least they make an effort to give their residents what dignity and care they can given the constraints and challenges they face.
This isn't surprising. Nursing homes are supposed to be inspected annually. With limited budgets and a limited number of state surveyors (inspectors), however, it's not unheard of for an inspection to come as late as a year and a half after the first one. The survey process can also be subject to surveyor's whims and not necessarily reflect the facility's actual daily conditions. Some survey teams can be lenient, others are more strict, and some arrive with enough of a chip on their shoulder that they look for every single violation they can find as if they're SJWs searching for microaggressions. Any of these can skew the violation report that's made available for public review.
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It's sad that the protest was so uneventful that the media tries to sensationalize someone bringing an axe only to have said person surrender it without incident. At the same time, the powers that be told protestors to behave and they did. But, there's no news in reporting cooperative protestors.
TFW the governor doubles down on blaming gender and identity politics for a lack of cooperation instead of addressing her own lack of the bipartisan efforts she promised to bring into office knowing she'd need the support of the Republican-majority state legislature to accomplish anything.
Not only that, people with older technology could easily spy on mobile phones -- depending on what band they use.
Years ago, it was possible to listen in on random cell phone conversations if one had a dial-operated television that had channels 66 and higher because many of those former channels were reassigned to cellular phone companies. Many channels would produce interference, noise, or multiple jumbled conversations, but an occasional clear one could be found and easily listened to.
I wouldn't even specify a channel number and instead use an alternative predetermined identifier. "Channel Red" might be channel 3 and "White" might be channel 1. That makes it easier to keep eavesdroppers off guard.
Protonmail (and probably many others) FTW.
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I'm not sure if there's a source yet, but I heard tonight Michigan's numbers had a small spike from previously unrecorded cases finally being entered. Sadly, I can see this spike being spun as a reason for restrictions to continue as-is and not as the periodice adjustment it's intended to be.
(Edit: Spelling)
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