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UPDATE: they've moved the deadline to July 13th
so one of the largest open source data communities on the internet, data.world, got bought out by a company called ServiceNow, who has decided to fucking delete all of it by July 11th. they've given users barely any notice, no emails, just a fucking banner at the top and a blog post from June that gives barely a month to download your data before they fucking delete it all.
a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.
i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.
the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)
and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.
an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:
Green Smith was known for her Black maternal health advocacy and midwife care as Black women are three times more likely to die in pregnancy
Goddamn this is so deeply heart breaking and upsetting. While there isn't a lot shared about how she passed in childbirth, there are no fucking words for how devastating this is.
Black birthing parents deserve so so so so so so much better. What was taken from the world with Dr. Green Smith's passing that would have improved this issue for so many others?
You can support her family here:
Dr Janell Green Smith, CNM a respected midwife, scholar, and advocate has died fr… Nichole Wardlaw needs your support for Honoring Dr. Janel
It's been frustrating how most establishment media have been writing about Adriana Smith. Becos yes, systemic misogyny played a role in the terrifying limbo her body is being subjected to, but not many of the establishment media is writing about how her being Black woman played a role in why she was denied critical healthcare in life and why her body is being used as an experiment for conservative pro-lifers in death.
💜 Despite spending the most per capita on health care, the United States has the worst maternal mortality rate of any high-income country. This statistic is even worse for Black pregnant people who are 3x times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women.
Every pregnant person deserves to feel supported and safe during their pregnancy - no matter their identity.
Ready to learn more? Watch the short film, WATER ANGEL for free created by Nijla Mu’min for MTV Staying Alive.
The crisis facing women who give birth is unacceptable; and for black women it is dramatically more outrageous.
The problem isn’t “can” we solve this - the problem is we aren’t mustering the collective will to do so.
I will continue to lead this fight in Congress with some other determined legislators. We must all be a part of the movement to end the high rates of maternal mortality in America.
"As a Black woman who fought hard for my life for 5 days after having a c-section and suffering postpartum hemorrhaging and perioperative hypothermia, I approve of this message! Also, our rates for them giving us c-sections are doubled that of White women, which could also be a contributing factor in our labor mortality rate."
Meanwhile, the state of Georgia just dismissed all of the members of the maternal mortality committee 🤷🏽♀️
Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #31
August 23-30 2024
The Department of Transportation announced $521 million to help increase the number of electric vehicle charging ports. They money will go to projects in 29 different states, DC, and 8 tribal governments. It'll help build over 9,200 EV charging ports. Since Biden took office publicly available EV chargers has doubled, there are now over 192,000 public EV chargers in the nation with about 1,000 new ones being added every week.
The Department of The Interior announced the first ever lease for off-shore wind power in Oregon. When fully developed the two sites in Southern Oregon will generate 3.1 gigawatts of clean, renewable energy, enough to power a million homes. Under the Biden-Harris administration first of their kind off-shore wind power projects have been approved and started in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. In total 13 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind projects, enough to power nearly 5 million homes, has been approved.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland finalized the protection of 28 million acres of public lands across Alaska. In the last days of the Trump Administration protections for these lands were lifted. The Trump Interior Department did not consult with the Alaska natives who depend on these protected lands before lifting the protections. Deb Haaland the first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior declared "Tribal consultation must be treated as a requirement – not an option"
The Department of Health and Human Services announced $558 Million for improving maternal health. This is part of the Biden-Harris Administration's effort to address the maternal health crisis, which has been lead by Vice-President Harris. $440 million of the money will help expand a program of home visiting services for maternal, infant, and early childhood. $118 million, through the CDC, will go to 46 states, and six territories, over 5 years to help build the public health infrastructure to better identify and prevent pregnancy-related deaths.
It was announced that Maine will join the IRS' Direct File program for tax year 2025. Maine joins Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Wisconsin along with the original 12 states. The Direct File program, made possible by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, allows tax payers to file, for free, simple returns with the IRS. The 140,000 tax payers who used the pilot program in 2024 saved a collective $5.6 million in filing costs. Maine's Revenue Services plans to work with the ISR to allow tax payers to file their state taxes by just transferring the info from the ISR direct file.
Women will keep dying, but the GOP is working hard to destroy the evidence
Amanda Marcotte at Salon:
After the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022, there was a robust debate between pro- and anti-choice activists over whether or not banning abortion would kill women. Pro-choicers pointed to evidence, from both history and other countries, showing that abortion bans kill women. Anti-choice activists dismissed the record and pointed to toothless "exceptions" in abortion ban laws as "proof" that women could get abortions to save their lives.
The latter argument was frustrating not just because it was wrong but was generally offered in bad faith. Anti-abortion leaders know that abortion bans kill women. They don't care. Or worse, many view dying from pregnancy as a good thing. In some cases, it's viewed as just punishment for "sinful" behavior. Other times, it's romanticized as a noble sacrifice on the altar of maternal duty. But conservatives are aware that this death fetish cuts against their "pro-life" brand. So there was a lot of empty denials and hand-waving about the inevitable — and expected — outcome of women dying.
We now have another proof point that abortion bans are about misogyny, not "life," as the first deaths from red state abortion bans are being reported. Instead of admitting they were wrong and changing course, Republicans are behaving like guilty liars do everywhere, and destroying the evidence. In the process, they are also erasing data needed to save the lives of pregnant women across the board, whether they give birth or not.
ProPublica has published a series of articles detailing the deaths of women in Georgia and Texas under the two states' draconian abortion bans. They most recently reported the death of Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two from Texas. Ngumezi suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks but was left to bleed to death at the hospital, instead of having the failing pregnancy surgically removed. Multiple doctors in Texas confirmed that hospital staff are often afraid to perform this surgery, however, because it's the same one used in elective abortions. Rather than risk criminal charges, doctors frequently stand by and let women suffer — or die.
Ngumezi's youngest son doesn't fully understand that his mother is dead. ProPublica reported that he chases down women he sees in public who have similar hairstyles, calling for his mother.
A day after this story was published, the Washington Post reported that the Texas maternal mortality board would skip reviewing the deaths of pregnant women in 2022 and 2023 — conveniently, the first two years after the abortion ban went into place. The leadership claims it's about speeding up the review process, but of course, many members pointed out the main effect is that "they would not be reviewing deaths that may have resulted from delays in care caused by Texas’s abortion bans."
This is especially noteworthy because it's become standard after one of these reports for anti-abortion activists to blame the victims and/or the doctors, and not the bans. Christian right activist Ingrid Skop, for instance, responded to Nguzemi's death by insisting "physicians can intervene to save women’s lives in pregnancy emergencies" under the Texas law. If she really believed that, however, she would desperately want the state maternal mortality board to review this, and other cases like it, so they could come up with recommendations for hospital staff to treat women without running afoul of the law. Strop, however, is on the Texas maternal mortality board. She was likely part of the decision to refuse to look into whether women like Nguzemi might be saved.
[...]
But despite claims to be "pro-life," anti-abortion activists do not care. Instead, they are on Twitter griping about how comprehensive reproductive health care access "promotes sexual promiscuity."
Skop also argued last year that abortion bans are justified because "promiscuous behavior declines." It's tempting to point out that all five women whose deaths have been reported by ProPublica were in long-term relationships or marriages. Three of the five planned to bring their pregnancies to term and died because they were denied miscarriage care. But that's the problem with vague terms like "promiscuous." They draw us into debates about how much women are allowed to enjoy sex before their lives are forfeited. Or how many "good girls" should die to punish the "promiscuous" ones.
That is the trap of misogyny. It allows women like Lila Rose or Ingrid Skop to pretend that, if you submit to the sexist order and obey all their arbitrary rules, you'll be saved. But these laws punish all women and girls: mothers and non-mothers, wives and single women, women who've had 100 partners and those who were virgins when raped. Abortion bans make crystal clear that, to the Christian right, no woman's life is worth saving. Anyone can be sacrificed, to protect their cruel patriarchal order.
Want more reason why abortion bans are bad for women? Republicans are working hard to destroy the evidence that abortion bans kill women.
Abortion bans have zip to do with the "sanctity of life", but are a tool for misogyny.
Georgia Dismissed All Members of Maternal Mortality Committee After ProPublica’s Report on Amber Thurman, Candi Miller Deaths — ProPublica
In a letter, the state’s public health commissioner said the action was taken because “confidential information provided to the Maternal Mor
Georgia officials have dismissed all members of a state committee charged with investigating deaths of pregnant women. The move came in response to ProPublica having obtained internal reports detailing two deaths.
ProPublica reported in September on the deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, which the state maternal mortality review committee had determined were preventable. They were the first reported cases of women who died without access to care restricted by a state abortion ban, and they unleashed a torrent of outrage over the fatal consequences of such laws. The women’s stories became a central discussion in the presidential campaign and ballot initiatives involving abortion access in 10 states.
