Interesting Links for 10-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Russia using Wagner in Africa to displace the West and erode democracies

(tags:russia africa corruption )

2. Global warming increases ocean temperatures, stripping the seas of oxygen

(tags:oxygen ocean fish doom )

3. People are publishing AI books with real authors' names.

(tags:ai writing publishing fraud )

4. Covid testing in Scottish hospitals, care homes and prisons to end

(tags:scotland pandemic )

5. Norway fines Facebook owner Meta $100k/day over privacy breaches

(tags:norway facebook privacy regulation )

6. SUSE, the German Linux company, appear to be deeply anti-semitic

(tags:Jews linux OhForFucksSake )

7. Inside Keir Starmer's plan to 'annihilate the left' and appoint 'middle-class and dull' candidate MPs

(tags:labour politics )

8. The electoral breach in the UK was all Microsoft's fault

(tags:uk hacking microsoft )

9. Complex ape-man culture, with burial practices, may have existed in Africa 300,000 years ago

(tags:africa humans evolution society culture death )

10. Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness

(tags:cancer divorce gender )

Comments

[haggis]

10 I have seen that sort of statistic before and it's absolutely horrible and depressing.

Especially as mathematically it must mean that some women are sticking it out in marriages that they would otherwise have left to balance out the men who scarper.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I heard about similar things when my first wife got cancer. I was aghast that people would do that.

[nancylebov]

I tried looking up #6 to see how much could be verified. I didn't find much.

Dunluke actually did publicity for SUSE.

There was a SUSEcon that ended the day before Yom Kippur in 2017. I'm not even sure it was the same one he was talking about.

I wouldn't mind hearing more about the two managers who were fired.

[andrewducker]

I'd also like to understand more!

[bens_dad]

10 I wonder how big a part the US health insurance system plays in this ?

[andrewducker]

When my first wife got cancer I heard that it was relatively common with husbands. So probably pretty bad over here too. May be worse in America of course!

[bens_dad]

I guess it must be an old problem since the Church puts "in sickness and in health" into the vows.

[hairyears]

I read your question as: does the US health system provide a compelling incentive to divorce a terminally-ill spouse before they are bankrupted by medical bills?

[bens_dad]

Partly, but more specifically, I am assuming a substantial gender-skew in single-income couples, and suspect that that will create gendered incentives for anyone considering divorcing a terminally-ill spouse.

If you rely on your spouse's health insurance, even if they are sick you may find it too expensive to leave, whereas dropping a sick spouse from your insurance might be personally financially beneficial ?

Thinking further, I realize that I have been assuming that it is the healthy partner initiating divorce.
It could be that being faced with a life-expectancy of months or a few years rather than decades, the sick partner decides that the spouse doesn't fit their new plans for the rest of their life.
However, at least on a partial reading, the paper doesn't say anything to suggest this was true for these patients.