WTF-Beta

Mehdi Hasan doesn't think Charlie Kirk was practicing politics "the right way"

https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3lylrglnjtk2r

No, Ezra Klein, Charlie Kirk was not practicing politics "the right way"

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/charlie-kirk-legacy-ezra-klein-2020-election-trump-turning-point/

https://bsky.app/profile/gtconway.bsky.social/post/3lylcqnlicc26

Nazi shmazi...

Not new, but I hadn't seen it before.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/charlie-kirk-legacy

One can hold two thoughts simultaneously.

1. Political violence is a problem, not an answer.

2. Charlie Kirk was a totally rotten, bigoted, fomenter of gross hatred ... making millions $$ at it. He was a perfect example of what is terribly wrong with our society.

I looked at this topic title and wondered, "what is Big Al" plundering?

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shot-utah

As the governor of Utah said, "we are a broken nation."

At least he mentioned Melissa Hortman in his emotional comments, unlike most GOP "leaders."

Whatcha doin today?

Were you eating "children's cereals?

Not a surprise that Lucky Charms and the like are nutritional nightmares.

Original Cheerios probably better.

Yep. Exactly what I said about ten posts up ...

@AndyD said in Nobel Peace Prize - nomination for Trump:

From what I've seen of Trump's dealings with Putin, he should get the Noballs Peace Prize

Ahhhahahaaa!

No system will satisfy everyone. We're trying to balance the cost effectiveness of treatment against the "flat of the curve" approach most physicians and patients want. If you're not familiar with the flat of the curve argument, it's an inherent problem in 3rd party payer systems like ours.

Patients pay a co-pay and have out of pocket caps, so once they're done with those the marginal out of pocket cost of more treatment is zero. The incentive, then, is to push till the marginal benefit of treatment is zero as well. That's privately good but socially bad. Society pays the high marginal cost (to doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals) for further -- often useless -- treatments. Doctors and patients are essentially in cahoots against the 3rd party payer (insurers, including the government via medicaid and medicare). This is why we have these reviews. It's an expensive attempt at finding the right balance where the marginal cost of the treatment (to society) is close to the marginal benefit. (to the patient).

A good system should err on the side of treatment, within reason. United Health suggests that the erring is often on the other side, especially if the patient has little free choice (competition) and even less information.

I can see a case for AI in the first round because that should save money by letting a lot of humans whose jobs are mechanical find more productive employment. But the AI is only as good as the incentives of the people programming how it evaluates cases.

And speaking of AI, Google's AI does a very thorough job of explaining the flat of the curve argument in a healthcare system with 3rd party payers...

@Mik said in The Greatest Movie Villain of all Time:

Mightg be fun to go together if that's possible. The Sphere is pretty cool.

I will let you know what our plans are when I know them. My wife may be the only one who goes out for the birth because we don't want to impose on them while they are already very stressed. She plans to stay out there and help out for a few weeks afterward. I would not be staying in any event. Work calls back in Virginia.

If we're all out there at the same time we should indeed get together for something. Sphere, dinner, something.

We went to the Darren Aronovsky video that inaugurated the Sphere. Pretty impressive, even if I thought that narrative of the film was preachy preachy and shallow.

You know, by those standards, Gandalf was a bit of a baddie too!

My wife (at least) will be out in Vegas between Christmas and New Year's for the birth of a grandkid. She (or we) might pop in to the sphere as well to take a gander at what they have done with Oz.

The problem is the incentives those humans face. When private companies get a percent of the value of the denials, denials will rise. Many people will not know how to contest or push back, and we can guess who those folks will be.

Ahahahhaaaa.

Well, in Santa Fe the opera surely isn't dead ... yet.

Happy B-day to both of you!

I'm still working, so I won't have to face politicized medicare ..... for a few more months.

This is totally dumb. These averages tell you nothing about the political (red/blue) drivers of financial stress. Poor states have more people in distress than rich states. Just so happens that there are more poor red states than blue states. Duh.

The people who write this stuff are usually weak journalists who have a shiny degree in communications or literature. The kind of people who will nod when they hear "correlation isn't causality" without having a clue what that means.

I just found out that it's Farage like garage rather than Farrage like marriage. He's a schmuck either way.

Send your professionals over to the US to oversee brand new multi-billion dollar investments and watch them, and your company, get harassed by ICE to keep the headlines off of Epstein and off of another stinky jobs report. Maybe they'll pick up some "undocumented" Germans in Spartanburg next.

I wonder if the acting head of the BLS, a career labor department employee, will now be summarily hanged for overseeing the bad jobs report.