Congratulations, you're a sensible human being who has figured out that listening to your body and intuition works much better than all these "optimal" solutions everyone is chasing after. I've suspected for a long time that much of ergonomics is just snake oil and hardly based on any evidence at all. If sitting upright or in some specific allegedly ergonomic position is making me feel tense and wears me out, how is that helpful? I prefer to go with what millions of years of evolution have coded in me. Fortunately I don't have a desk job anymore so it's not of much concern to me.
The death toll of nuclear energy is only a minute fraction of the casualties brought about by coal and oil. The most pessimistic estimations of deaths caused by all nuclear power accidents that ever occurred and waste that has been produced utterly pale in comparison to the insane human cost of the fossil fuels. And thanks to their greenhouse gas emissions the worst of it is likely yet to come.
And the sun generates its energy output as a result of nuclear fusion, not the nuclear fission of a chain reaction. We'd very much like to bring the sun to earth because controlled sustained fusion could potentially solve the majority of our energy troubles. Unfortunately thus far we've brought it in the form of thermonuclear weapons.
My dad had a workshop where he made woodwind instruments. For some applications he required lead. I recall entertaining myself as a kid by melting some small pieces of lead with a welding torch and looking at the pretty liquid metal. It was in the outside air, but I can't help but wonder what I may have done to my brain that day. Thank god he didn't have mercury.
The vapor pressure of lead when it melts isn't anything ridiculous, afaik. It shouldn't have released that much lead gas unless you were really burning it. (See leaded solder) Also, liquid elemental mercury isn't as scary as the organic mercury salts or something that's been concentrated though bio-accumulation. People like Cody's Lab on youtube have tasted liquid mercury for fun
When you state "in this country", please specify what country that is. Despite the use of English as the lingua franca here we're amongst a geographically diverse group. I'm going to assume you mean the US. If that's a correct guess, as a European the US work standards frighten me. Health insurance so tightly coupled to work that if you get into an accident shortly after being laid off and don't have (expensive) private insurance you could be bankrupted by it. Two weeks vacation per year seems to be common and I've repeatedly heard that employees are being pressured to not actually use their full paid time off. Maybe I've just been too coddled by the working conditions here in Belgium but I simply can't imagine working in the US without going completely mad or sinking into a depression. I know that I pay incredibly high taxes, but a higher income at the cost of living in such a cutthroat environment simply doesn't seem worth it to me. And to be honest I consider my standard of living to be very high and comfortable, both in spite of and thanks to taxes.
This is a forum run by a US VC firm talking about US startups. One could almost forgive the assumption that people would understand that I was referring to the US. ;-)
It's tough to be an expert, to be well informed on how US medical care gets paid for. I'm no expert, but I know a little more than nothing:
So, for "bankrupted", yes, sort of ....
But the US has Hill-Burton hospitals, likely named after two guys in Congress who got the bill passed. With the Hill-Burton act, if are starting a hospital, then can get funding via the act. BUT: Have to accept all patients independent of ability to pay. Soooo, a large fraction of city hospitals are Hill-Burton. Then there are the medical school teaching-research hospitals -- again commonly or always, patients are accepted independent of ability to pay.
If someone really is broke, then they can qualify for Medicaid -- "never receive a bill for medical care."
For people old enough to be retired, there is Medicare. Part A covers a major fraction of hospital charges and is free. Part B covers physician charges, and is not free, maybe a few $hundred a month. There is another part for drugs.
For poor people, there is the HRSA (Federal Health Resources Services Administration) or some such -- clinics with sliding scale charges based on ability of patients to pay.
It goes on this way. It's a patchwork system. Not all the important details are really clear. E.g., there is a lot of over billing, that is, charging too much, and in this case the insurance company has a talk with the physician/hospital and negotiates lower charges. For drugs, the prices can vary enormously based on whatever.
There has been at least one effort to get the medical providers to publish a price list, i.e., to clear up the lack of cost information.
I don't know all the details, but my understanding is that it is very rare for medical care charges actually to bankrupt someone.
E.g., one approach is for a patient who owes big bucks to pay, say, $10 a month for 6 years -- then by laws of debts, the rest owed is forgiven, that is, not owed.
One way and another, in summary, from 50,000 feet up, generally, the US tries really hard not to have all of medical care run by the Federal government, or any level of government. E.g., there could be a system single payer where the there is only one entity that pays for anything about medical care; of course, that entity likely is run by the Federal government and gets a lot of tax money. Single payer has been proposed 220,872,879 times and rejected by that many times.
Some of the scare is that single payer would result in some or all of (a) taxes way too high, (b) too much just wasteful, silly, and unneeded medical care, (c) low quality of care and, thus, too many people hurt or dead, (d) too little capacity where too many patients die from waiting too long for care, etc. I don't know what if anything is right/wrong with (a) -- (d), but these are concerns commonly voiced.
Maybe the US could borrow from, at least learn from, Switzerland, England, ....
But actually bankrupt from just losing a job? I suspect that is actually not very common.
Oh, by the way, if fired, then commonly get to continue medical insurance coverage for some length of time.
> Oh, by the way, if fired, then commonly get to continue medical insurance coverage for some length of time.
tell me then, why do a bunch of my US friends not have health insurance? even the ones who left their jobs during the pandemic?
to be frank, it sounds like your income is too high for you to actually know what happens when dealing with this 'patchwork' (as you call it) shitshow system in real life, to try to get the care you need to survive.
> Some of the scare is that single payer would result in some or all of (a) taxes way too high, (b) too much just wasteful, silly, and unneeded medical care, (c) low quality of care and, thus, too many people hurt or dead, (d) too little capacity where too many patients die from waiting too long for care, etc. I don't know what if anything is right/wrong with (a) -- (d), but these are concerns commonly voiced.
why state all these downsides and try to play this sort of 'neutral' card by saying "I don't know what if anything is right/wrong"? all of these so called reasons (or fears/scares) are just completely irrelevant when we can see that all other global north nations have single payer systems.
let me repeat that: the US is the only country that doesn't provide universal healthcare to the working class.
can you help me understand why you posted this comment? to me it just looks like a laundry list of the many failed strategies used by the US govt and huge pharmaceutical corporations that have helped them scam the working class out of trillions of dollars in the form of medical debt and pharmaceutical drugs, etc.. i could probably find all this on some wikipedia page about the history of the US medical care system.
> tell me then, why do a bunch of my US
friends not have health insurance? even
the ones who left their jobs during the
pandemic?
I don't know anything about the
circumstances of your friends.
> to be frank, it sounds like your income is
too high for you to actually know what
happens when dealing with this 'patchwork'
(as you call it) shitshow system in real
life, to try to get the care you need to
survive.
Without going into my "income", it turns
out I know something about the US HRSA
system: They run clinics that can do
well providing primary care and then can
refer patients to more advanced care
when needed.
Charges vary but generally are low: At a
clinic, the really poor pay nothing. If
they have a little money, maybe the cost
is $20 a visit. With a little more, the
cost is $75 a visit.
> can you help me understand why you
posted this comment?
> If that's a correct guess, as a European
the US work standards frighten me. Health
insurance so tightly coupled to work that
if you get into an accident shortly after
being laid off and don't have (expensive)
private insurance you could be bankrupted
by it.
So, I wanted to add some information to
the issue of "bankrupted by it".
For your
> why state all these downsides and try to
play this sort of 'neutral' card by saying
"I don't know what if anything is
right/wrong"? all of these so called
reasons (or fears/scares) are just
completely irrelevant when we can see that
all other global north nations have single
payer systems.
The "fears/scares" I listed really are
"commonly voiced". Soooo, take this list
as the POLITICAL answer to why the US does
not have single payer, etc., not the
rational, economic, financial, moral,
medical, etc. but just the POLITICAL
answer for the post of user
using only what is rational, economic,
financial, moral, medical, etc. and
instead must at least include some of the
politics. Here define politics as using
false information, cherry picking
evidence, quotes out of context, lies,
manipulation to fool people!
This was an informative counter-argument to what I normally read about US healthcare, thanks for taking the time to share this info.
This site gives several survey findings related to medical bankruptcy. The data is complex and conflicting at times (like you would expect given something as complex as 300+ million people’s healthcare) but the number that the stats seem to fluctuate around is 1 million people. 1 million people declare bankruptcy a year due to medical-related costs. That’s 0.333% per year.
So there are a lot of people (1 million if you believe the data in that link) per year being affected by this.
That's really just a failure of input sanitation or not properly escaping special characters or putting the comment in CDATA when constructing the XHTML. Basically that blog allowed an injection attack. Not XHTML's fault, the same software would have allowed any comment to do god knows what in HTML.
Not really. Tests with two lines generally have one "control" line and one "test" line. If the control line fails to appear, then the result is invalid and you should try a new kit, regardless of what the other line said. If the control line appears, then the result is valid and the test line shows a negative (no line) or positive (line) result. So "pregnant" should only appear if both lines show up. It's a very simply boolean AND condition, but that's something that would be challenging to have done purely by chemical reaction. Probably a lot more complex than having a simple check by a circuit. Using a microprocessor, you can have "pregnant", "not pregnant" or "invalid" show up to give an unambiguous single result. Trying to achieve the same through chemical means only is likely also more prone to failure. Even if the outcome is clear, there are still false positives and negatives. Of course you should expect users to read the manual and be capable of interpreting a very simple system with only 4 combinations and 3 outcomes, but apparently that's beyond many people. Which is exactly why some test producers go to this length.
Consent is too often treated as this magical concept that makes everything right when it's present in some form. Many people seem to think of consent as a "yes" when often it's more a lack of "no". Someone not protesting or going along with something doesn't absolve the other party of responsibility. Heck, even explicit consent doesn't do that. Would you accept someone repeatedly offering another person in their company drugs when that person hasn't outright refused them but not really shown interest either?
When someone goes along with something but ends up feeling uncomfortable or even resentful about it, they can talk about it with the other party. And that party should acknowledge it. They may have meant no harm or even be surprised or feel hurt, but a decent person would consider the other's feelings and admit they may have had poor judgement. This Jon Pretty guy allegedly has a pattern of maneuvering women into vulnerable positions, inappropriately bragging about his "conquests" and from what multiple sources confirm shows a bunch of telltale signs of an emotional abuser and manipulator. It wasn't one instance of them being drunk, it was an extensive period of pushing boundaries, coercion and probably gaslighting.
You'll always hear questions along these lines. "Why did she stay around him if she was uncomfortable/mistreated/abused?" "Why did she wait so long to talk about it if it bothered her so much?" "Why didn't she collect proof?" "Why didn't she just say no?"
These questions interpret the situation as far too simple. Abusers are great at creating doubt. They do something wrong, they make their victims feel as equal accomplices. Good and fun times are alternated with bad ones. They don't outright break the law or force someone but will push boundaries and wear someone down repeatedly to get their way despite the discomfort of the other.
That's why it's so hard for a victim to come forward. It's exactly because everyone says "well you didn't set hard boundaries, did you?" It's because maybe no crime was committed according to the letter of the law so they don't feel like they really have a case to make. It's because the victim initially feels like they share as much responsibility or it's their own fault and they should have known better. Abusers are great at walking that line where they get what they want while still maintaining plausible deniability, making it impossible to fully dismiss the argument that the other person is responsible too. It lets them justify their actions to themselves and others, believing it was as much the agency of the other party as their own. Meanwhile they're constantly using a position of power and a victim's weaknesses to manufacture precisely the situation they want.
They call them predators for a reason. It's cause they seek out prey. They know what to look for in a potential target. Don't blame a victim for being possibly naive, inexperienced or easy to sway when those were exactly the preconditions to be taken advantage of. It doesn't justify someone doing just that.
There are of course the ways to share your digital collection. Your games list on Steam, books on Goodreads, music on services like Spotify and last.fm. On the one hand it's less immediately visible but on the other people can see it without visiting your home. As for what has replaced it in the home, no idea.
I'm glad to hear this perspective and know it's not just me. I live in Europe and parking in a garage here always raises my heart rate. I don't think I'd make it without parking sensors. Some people I know just slam their car in there in one quick swoop. I don't know how they do it. Even driving past parked cars makes me feel like not hitting side mirrors is just an act of faith.
