ShittyBeatlesFCPres

If it was the best healthcare in the world, we’d have the best outcomes and we don’t even have that for rich people. We have a (non-metric) shit ton of world class research universities and highly respected agencies like the FDA and NIH but Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, can’t even get the mental health services he obviously needs.

I’d obviously rather go to an American hospital than a hospital in most of the world but spending a lot to cover up a shitty system isn’t as good as a functioning system.

Edit: I originally had NHS instead of NIH but the NHS, is, obviously, where British people get their brain medicines.

I’m a developer posting on Lemmy so maybe take this with a huge grain of salt but I think we need to focus less on STEM/finance and more on humanities education. Definitely in the United States but probably most of the world considering India and China focus on tech too.

When I was learning to code (in the 90’s and 2000’s unless you count a 9 year old making BASIC do loops), my mentors basically all had majored in something besides computer science because there wasn’t necessarily even a computer science major available if your college didn’t have “Tech” in the name. It was a lot of hippies who spent their weekends making pottery and got into IT or software development almost by accident; it was a job to fund their non-lucrative hobby or passion.

Basically, we lost something when being a programmer became a goal and not a way to reach some other goal. I’m not sure we can return to a time when it was tinkerers and hobbyists coming to the field with different backgrounds but more creatives should learn to code and more coders should be forced to make art.

I hope I’m not being too cynical but I suspect Israel’s largest police union is going to have to arrest Netanyahu for there to be a ceasefire/hostage deal. He definitely seems like he’s clinging to power to avoid jail and if the negotiators come to an agreement, he’ll tack on additional demands until it’s unacceptable and then blame Hamas for the deal collapsing.

Apparently, there’s an obsolete English word “smitham” that means (or meant) “small lumps of ore random people found.” They were exempt from taxation by English nobility so large mine owners started breaking up large chunks into “smitham” to avoid taxation. Apparently, the Duke of Devonshire put a stop to that in 1760 and the word fell out of use.

So, I think rhythm still counts as weird. Noah Webster was 2 years old in 1760 and the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have it.

“Rhythm” doesn’t rhyme with anything and doesn’t contain a letter that’s always a vowel.

Like two or three generations ago, they fired female teachers who had kids. Also, he’s Catholic. I know he’s an adult convert and so mega weird — adult converts are usually just attracted to the hierarchy and lore instead of the charity and service parts — but he should at least know about nuns teaching school.

I’m glad police in the U.S. don’t protect corporate interests even at the expense of basic civil liberties. That’s just fucked up.

I got a relatively inexpensive espresso machine for like $100 with the main downside being it’s not very tall (so putting a mug under it is out). It’s been perfectly fine for like 8 years, though. I’m sure for $500+, I’d get a slightly better espresso but I’ve found buying good coffee beans and grinding them fresh — basically getting the other steps right — makes more of a difference than the machine.

I imagine the expensive machines are more foolproof or consistent or flexible? But it was just me making espresso before work basically every day. It didn’t take long for me to get the timing and stuff down. (I have a De’Longhi one, for the curious, but I don’t necessarily want to steer anyone to that particular brand since it’s been so long. The brand might be owned by some Private Equity firm or something called like “Guangzhou Plastic Manufacturing Concern” and the quality parts were replaced by lead pipes with arsenic in them.)

I don’t know what kind of neighborhood it is but sprinkling cat food or something like that everywhere would probably attract something. Your friend could even do it to his own yard. I’d be weirded out if my neighbor moved and suddenly his yard had 25 raccoons in it.

In addition to the historic reasons mentioned in the other comments, there’s places facing famine right now that aren’t getting much help and several more countries where we should be preparing for mobilization and aren’t.

Source for that image is the World Food Program’s early warning report: https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000153539/download/

Big Pharma doesn’t really do as much basic research as they claim. They do a fair bit but I’d guess it’s mostly universities funded by NIH (and other governments’) grants making the most important discoveries. Then philanthropists, investors, more government grants, etc. often fund the early stage clinical trials and the creation of the small company. Big Pharma does obviously invent a lot of medications in house but it seems like the more typical path is that they buy a small company in later stage trials and provide the marketing and manufacturing/distribution at scale.

Which is fine. They aren’t pure evil or good. The discoverer, university, people who took financial risk get paid. But there’s other ways for scientists, universities, and early investors to get their return (which usually funds the next round of research). Government “bounties” is one idea. Like, if you create a miracle cure, rich governments buy the IP rights for x amount and release all claims on the patents so it’s generic from the start. If done correctly, the savings to national healthcare systems (and the 17 systems the U.S. has duct taped together) would cover the bounty and then some. Big Pharma’s manufacturing and distribution would still be important in that system and they could focus on things without bounties.

Honestly, I’d like to see that anyway, especially for diseases that are sort of ignored by capitalism. It’s perfectly ok if the bounty system loses money curing things Big Pharma isn’t so interested in (like less famous third world diseases). It’s not like bombs and roads are profitable for governments.