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The issue is that in many large countries, the project _must_ be enormous or else they’ll get cut as the political winds shift to and fro. The result is that they become highly inefficient and expensive. The only real solution is political cohesion.

China builds everything at a scale that makes no sense anywhere else in the world. They have total political will, lower cost labor, and lax environmental standards (though that last on is changing). Also, their technical ability to terraform is insane.

<Laughs in Brexit>

Most people will point to banking and finance, but even the industrial sector is highly specialized with much higher margins.

I lived there. The number of trains that go over the top of the mountains is basically zero.

I lived in Zürich for two years and I’ve traveled extensively in the country.

The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit simplistic.

True enough, but the math never works out in their favor either.

This is as ridiculous as asking, “What if we made agriculture illegal?”

You don’t make a planet of 8 billion people work without the trappings of civilization, good and bad. You certainly don’t make it work without commerce and freedom of speech.

Paywall free: https://archive.is/61AqM

Couple do, though long term studies on a few are missing.

RCT-Proven: GLP-1 Agonists, mTOR Modulation (Rapamycin), NMDA Modulators (Ketamine), Metformin.

Speculative/Limited Data: Senolytics, Hormones and Peptides, NAD+, Nootropics and Adaptogens.

Keep in mind that the absence of published RCTs does not mean an intervention is ineffective; it may just be proprietary knowledge. Plenty of rich, private labs out there doing that kind of work today.

Nope. Just stuff they can use right now. No magic required!

This is just the start. Those in the know are already stacking:

GLP-1 Agonists, Senolytics, NMDA Modulators, Hormones and Peptides, NAD+ and mTOR Modulation, Nootropics and Adaptogens…

Forget weight loss. These people are going for immortality.

Oh no, I’d live on an Orbital in a heartbeat. No, it’s just that all of these kinds of posts make me feel like we’re about to live through “The Bad Old Days”.

Great post, but every time I read something like this I feel like I am living in a prequel to the Culture.

Detroit is buzzing because it’s gone through a complete and total deflation. Things are up because they went so far down, not unlike say… Argentina today or the rest of the US in 3-5 years.

Cool. Does that mean Anthropic is not using ATS to scan resumes?

Of course it doesn’t…

“Beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way…”

I didn't say that any women were raped. I said they had more to worry about. The study itself is pretty clear about what is happening.

Sure, it effects everyone’s privacy but women are 99.99% more likely to be raped than men so perhaps they have a bit more to worry about.

It’s not being downvoted due to any inaccuracy, but rather the implied positive sentiment about Musk’s involvement with the government.

A more pessimistic view might be: Musk’s businesses have technological advantages but are financially over-leveraged. Their present success relies on heavy government subsidies while their future success depends on complete privatization of government functions.

Given that he is also an engineer I doubt he cares. Everyone has one.

If those involved are in the US, it’s a trust thing.

This isn’t the fault of medical professionals, but rather a system optimized for minimum risk and maximum billing.

For example, my adult son recently went through a bout of rectal bleeding. He sits a lot in his job and we assumed it was hemorrhoids.

It was a Saturday so rather than wait we met up at the local urgent care. They did an external exam and decided he needed to go to the ER. No, it couldn’t wait. We had to go right away.

So we went across the street to the ER and took up a bed for seven hours waiting for a CT scan and results. The CT scan showed no active bleeding or any other cause for concern.

At this point, it was 2AM. The ER doctor suggested we allow our son to be admitted so that they could accelerate a colonoscopy on Monday or Tuesday. Yes, that’s 2-3 days in a hospital room just so we could avoid outpatient delays.

Now, keep in mind, there are no other symptoms. He feels perfectly fine. The CT scan shows no active bleeding.

To us, admission seems like overkill. The doctor isn’t much help. They are mostly exhausted and also exasperated at “the state of health care in this country.” We try to be empathetic but more or less it feels like they are holding back.

So what to do? Well, my son made his own decision - we left. The next day, I called in a favor with a GI doc I know. We were able to get a colonoscopy 10 days later. Guess what? Internal hemorrhoids.

This is irritating enough, but what is even better is that we could have had that answer in 15 minutes if someone had pulled out an anoscope. Sure we’d likely need an colonoscopy as a follow-up but we could have been out of the system very quickly. We could have freed up that bed in the ER. Heck, we didn’t even need to be in the ER at all. Oh, and 10 days of needless worry would be gone.

I asked a hospitalist I know why no one thought to just have a peek. The answer? Oh, they definitely thought about it, but no one uses anoscopes these days. The preferred route is a colonoscopy. Why? Well, a colonoscopy is a better diagnostic tool, but frankly it also happens to allow for better billing.

And boy, oh boy is the billing good. For the hospital alone, we’ve got upwards of $6K in billing. Who knows what the colonoscopy will run. We have good insurance but to cover the deductible I’ll likely be out $2K.

Naturally, I’ve already called the hospital and asked them to conduct a billing review, which will be followed by a medical review. The result will likely be a claim by the hospital that all procedures were followed correctly, which is technically correct. They did it all by the book, wasted an enormous amount of time and money, and irritated all humans involved.

Anyway, this anecdotal story might explain why well-educated people are suspicious of modern medical practices (at least in the US).

FWIW, I’m in my mid-50s and I’ve not had a colonoscopy either, and I won’t be getting one. It isn’t that I don’t want to take care of myself but rather I can’t afford to actually know if I’m sick. In the end, squeezing a little extra life out isn’t worth the financial tradeoff for my family in the long run.

Archived version: https://archive.is/wbwC2

That’s because Seer Gilligan is about precognition and not mind reading.

Enacting antitrust protections for a select group of companies to pursue collective action against a single player seems a tad unconstitutional and anticompetitive.

Wouldn’t publishers stand to gain more by locking down their content from third parties and creating their own shared distribution platforms (e.g. search engines, aggregators)? As it stands today, Alphabet and Meta make far more money selling actionable data to advertisers than anything else.

I guess if you don’t read that is true.

“ In a reflective and deeply personal essay, the author navigates the evolving landscape of reading, from a childhood adorned with gold stars for fairy tale conquests to an adulthood grappling with the digital age's quantification of literary consumption. Amidst New York's vibrant book scene, a place of lit gossip and subway commutes, the author encounters the double-edged sword of being part of a community that both enriches and, at times, imposes unwelcome pressures. With a critique as much of Goodreads' role in transforming reading into a competitive sport as of the social media-induced urge to keep up, the piece eloquently argues for a return to reading as an unquantifiable, personal journey, a haven from the public eye and a refuge in the joy of books for their own sake.”

Excellent rec. It’s a great book.

At 53 and having lived both lives, I beg to differ.