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Daily Archives: January 28, 2018

New on LLRX – Caged Humanity: Conditions of Confinement and Death in Custody

Via LLRXCaged Humanity: Conditions of Confinement and Death in Custody – Unseen, confinement is where society’s unspent rage takes its toll on human lives. It reduces existence to a room that grows smaller with each degradation. A house of pain and trauma, its concrete walls and steel doors enclose people in jails and prisons, juvenile facilities, solitary, immigration detention and civil commitment. Incarceration intersects punishment, dignity, and end of life. And fear of its horrors are the bludgeon of interrogations, plea bargaining, and retributive justice.” This comprehensive, deeply researched and significant article by Ken Strutin compiles recent and notable reports, scholarship and news concerning the devastating spectrum of prison life and mortality. Through the perspective, insights and voluminous documentation of this leading expert on criminal justice we are given a deeper, more encompassing and meaningful understanding of a complex institutional structure that impacts the lives of millions of Americans. Strutin’s article is not only a critical legal resource but it is also a body of knowledge that calls out for understanding as well as action to ensure that civil liberties, social justice, and our belief in a just society includes the incarcerated, their families, and all of our communities.

The Global Risks Report 2018

The World Economic Forum: “Each year the Global Risks Report works with experts and decision-makers across the world to identify and analyze the most pressing risks that we face. As the pace of change accelerates, and as risk interconnections deepen, this year’s report highlights the growing strain we are placing on many of the global… Continue Reading

Cybercrime In America – Which State Is Most At Risk In 2018?

Website Builder Expert: “Cybercrime is the fastest growing type of criminal activity in the United States – and it’s affecting more and more of us each year. Whether it’s credit card fraud, identity theft, email hacking, ransomware, account stealing or any other number of activities – you’re in the midst of an online war you… Continue Reading

The Dark Side of the “World’s Most Admired” Companies

POGO: “Fortune magazine recently released its 2018 list of the World’s Most Admired Companies. From a pool of roughly 1,500 candidates, Fortune picked the 50 “best-regarded companies in 52 industries.” Apple topped the list for the eleventh year straight. General Electric plummeted in the last year from number 7 to number 30. Lockheed Martin and Adidas… Continue Reading

How public libraries are reinventing themselves for the 21st century

Coding workshops. 3D printers. And books. Far from extinct, today’s public library is about access to technology as much as to knowledge: “On any given day, in one of the world’s busiest urban library systems, 50,000 people come through the doors of the Toronto Public Library’s 100 branches, while 85,000 make an online visit. The… Continue Reading

Civil Rights Groups Sue Ed Sec DeVos over Campus Sexual Assault Guidance

MotherJones: “…SurvJustice, Equal Rights Advocates, and the Victim Rights Law Center—are seeking to reverse [see a copy of the suit filed in the Northern District of California] an Education Department decision in September to roll back Obama-era guidance on how colleges should handle campus sexual assault cases and replace it with new guidelines that provide more protections for accused students. In particular,… Continue Reading

Advance care directive for dementia seeks to fill gap in standard advance directive

The New York Times: The New Old Age: One Day Your Mind May Fade. At Least You’ll Have a Plan: “…Dr. Barak Gaster, an internist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, had spent three years working with specialists in geriatrics, neurology, palliative care and psychiatry to come up with a five-page document that… Continue Reading

NIST Report on Blockchain Technology Aims to Go Beyond the Hype

“Beguiling, baffling or both—that’s blockchain. Aiming to clarify the subject for the benefit of companies and other organizations, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a straightforward introduction to blockchain, which underpins Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Virtual barrels of digital ink are flowing in the media nowadays about these cryptocurrencies and… Continue Reading

Two new books focus on the injustice of algorithms

The difficulty with talking about the technology industry is that it’s increasingly hard to define. “A tech company can be a giant data-mining operation turned advertising platform, like Facebook or Google. But it can also be a design-heavy producer of phones, computers and software. But it can also be a design-heavy producer of phones, computers… Continue Reading