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Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
Monday, July 4, 2022
Census Bureau Profile America Facts for Features: The Fourth of July - 2022
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Fertility Rates: Declined for Younger Women, Increased for Older Women (US Census data)
Stable fertility rates 1990-2019 mask distinct variations by age. Learn more in this America Counts story. |
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Friday, December 24, 2021
News Literacy Project --> a concise one-pager to better understand and avoid misinformation
"New from @NewsLitProject -- a concise one-pager with key insights, takeaways and reminders to help you and your loved ones better understand and avoid misinformation:
More about misinformation -> https://t.co/8UTBmli8NO
One pager -> https://t.co/3FyPn4Wg4a"
News Literacy Project --> a concise one-pager to better understand and avoid misinformation |
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
"Whoever controls big data technologies will control the resources for development"
"President Biden came away from his summit with China’s President Xi Jinping on Nov. 15 committed to prosecuting what he called “simple, straightforward competition” with China. Yet Beijing is already beating the United States and its allies in one crucial domain: data.Data is the oil of the 21st century, the indispensable resource that will fuel artificial-intelligence algorithms, economic strength and national power. The wellspring of this data is all of us: our health records and genetic sequences, our online habits, the supply chain flows of our businesses, the terabytes of imagery guzzled by phones, drones and autonomous cars.The competition for global influence in the 21st century will require protecting and harnessing this data to achieve commercial, technological and military advantages. So far, China is winning, and the West is barely even engaged."
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Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez; Photographs by Alessandra Benedetti - Corbis, MEHAU KULYK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, and Peter Dazeley via Getty Images |
Sunday, October 24, 2021
MA city/town COVID-19 daily new cases
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MA city/town COVID-19 daily new cases |
Monday, October 4, 2021
60 Minutes "a betrayal of democracy" leads to decision that Franklin Matters Facebook page to go away Dec 1, 2021
"The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world," says former Facebook employee France Haugen. She points to Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to launch a genocide.
“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” says former Facebook employee France Haugen. She points to Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to launch a genocide. https://t.co/WU4IumjHkO pic.twitter.com/cy9Ed9MgbH
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 3, 2021
Note: this is a continuation of the revelations about Facebook since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. in 2018 I attempted to remove Franklin Matters updates from Facebook at that time and the readers, followers on Facebook created an uproar so I stayed reluctantly.
As a data security and privacy professional I can no longer condone the Facebook business model. Effective Dec 1, 2021 the Franklin Matters Facebook page will go away. You are given notice to find one of the other options to obtain the valuable information shared but not longer directly by me on Facebook.
- You can subscribe via email to the daily update (an easy way) https://www.franklinmatters.org/p/welcome.html
- You can subscribe via RSS and get everything as it posts (actually the best way) The 7 best RSS Readers for 2021 (I personally use Feedly) https://bloggingwizard.com/free-rss-feed-readers/
- You can follow Franklin Matters on Twitter https://twitter.com/FranklinMatters
Someone can also set up a way to take what I share and share it themselves to Facebook. I have no way to stop that. Folks occasionally do so on their own today.
- Franklin Matters attempt to shut down in 2018 was announced with this post -> https://www.franklinmatters.org/2018/04/fixing-companys-problems-will-take-years.html
- Data leak reported in April 2021 (actually occurred during 2019) -> https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/facebook-data-leak-explained/
- Data leak in 2017 -> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-data-breach-affecting-50m-users/
- Cambridge Analytica aftermath -> https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/25/cambridge-analyticas-former-boss-gets-7-year-ban-on-being-a-business-director/
Sunday, September 19, 2021
CHIA Report: "‘Frequent flyers’ account for 9.4% of ER visits"
"As state policymakers seek ways to slow the growth in health care costs and improve access to care, a new report by the Center for Health Information and Analysis on emergency department usage highlights some areas policymakers may want to look at.
The report, released Thursday, is the health policy agency’s first statewide report on how emergency rooms are being used. It analyzes data from 2016 through 2019, before the COVID pandemic. CHIA executive director Ray Campbell said it is meant to provide a baseline for government, health care providers, researchers, and insurers to better understand how the emergency room is being used. "
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/the-download/frequent-flyers-account-for-9-4-of-er-visits-2/
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CHIA Report: "‘Frequent flyers’ account for 9.4% of ER visits" |
Thursday, July 29, 2021
Redistricting Data: What to Expect and When?
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Tuesday, January 26, 2021
CommonWealth Magazine: "State slow to improve criminal justice data collection"
"A WELL-KNOWN management maxim warns, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. By that reckoning, those trying to better the state’s criminal justice system are often flying blind.
How long, for example, does the average probationer in Massachusetts stay on probation? Or how many people last year had their probation revoked?
State Probation Commissioner Edward Dolan has no idea. While each probationer has their own physical case file, the Massachusetts Probation Department has no computer-based case management system that would let state officials or researchers track information on an aggregate basis.
“A lot of things we do, we do manually,” Dolan said."
Monday, January 25, 2021
New DLS Data Visualization Tool Now Available: Municipal Finance Snapshot
Saturday, November 28, 2020
"Number of high-risk communities rises to 81"
From CommonWealth Magazine we share an article of interest for Franklin:
"THE NUMBER of communities considered high-risk for COVID-19 rose from 62 to 81 on Friday, as cases statewide continued to grow rapidly while deaths from the coronavirus grew more slowly.
The numbers followed what has become a predictable pattern during the second surge. Four weeks ago the Baker administration revised the metrics it uses to determine a high-risk, or red, community, causing the number to fall from 121 to 16. But since then the number of red communities has grown rapidly week by week, rising from 16 to 31 to 62 to 81.
Between November 8 and November 21, there were 36,194 new cases of COVID-19. More than half – 55 percent – of those infected were less than 39 years old, while those 70-plus accounted for just 7.6 percent of the cases. Deaths followed the opposite pattern: 83 percent of deaths were among those 70 or older and only 1.4 percent were 39 or less.
Deaths have been growing far more moderately than infections during this second surge. From November 8 to November 21, there were 357 deaths, up from 319 between November 1 and November 14. The deaths in the previous two-week intervals totaled 280 and 241. The Baker administration’s dashboard for Friday, which covered Wednesday afternoon through Friday morning, reported 4,464 new cases and 29 deaths."
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Franklin Community data as of 11/25/20 |
Friday, August 14, 2020
"Data indicate spread of COVID-19 accelerating" in MA
From CommonWealth Magazine we share an article of interest for Franklin:
"THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 in Massachusetts appears to be accelerating, with the number of communities considered moderate or high-risk jumping by 40 percent and the state as a whole moving into the moderate risk category.
Gov. Charlie Baker released a breakdown by municipality on Tuesday that indicated four of the state’s 351 cities and towns were high risk and 29 were moderate risk. That information was based on the two-week period ending August 5.
On Wednesday evening, the Department of Public Health issued new municipal data based on the two-week period ending August 8. That new breakdown indicates the number of communities at high-risk had jumped from 4 to 11 and the number of communities considered moderate risk increased from 29 to 35. The state as a whole jumped from low risk to moderate risk.
The rankings are important as a barometer for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, but they have also taken on additional importance this week because the Baker administration is urging communities in the low-risk categories to send their children to school for in-person learning this fall. Communities are trying to decide between in-person and remote learning, or some hybrid combination of the two, by this Friday. The fast-changing information is making those decisions even more difficult."
Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required) https://commonwealthmagazine.org/health/data-indicate-spread-of-covid-19-accelerating/?
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"Data indicate spread of COVID-19 accelerating" in MA |