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poirot2

52 karma · joined April 2, 2022

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poirot2··on GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS
Americans perception of themselves always baffles me. You have police brutality regularly, ICE raids shooting protestors and deporting people (inc those with the right to be there) to El Salvador, people who write critical articles of Israel denied visas, servicemen dying in the Middle East, your president openly stealing from your government via slush funds and his sons, and so little accountability that the only people facing consequences for Epstein are in Britain. Your news is owned by oligarchs who openly buy it to divide you and push their agenda not yours, your views barely matter as your politics is bought and paid for, your elections are rigged by gerrymandering so few incumbents ever lose. Then call yourself a democracy.

Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it?

Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.

poirot2··on Cysteine depletion triggers adipose tissue thermogenesis and weight loss
Funny because cysteinuria doesn’t do this (pee out cysteine)
poirot2··on Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards
I disagree with this strongly. Isolated individual facts don’t give you an overview or macro-structure to place the facts within. It’s very inefficient. Can only speak for medicine but using another persons deck is ‘quicker’ but performance is so much worse. Even in just learning how to summarise the info for yourself you gain a lot.
poirot2··on Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29
Sorry what? The NHS is free. There is no Medicare. Private health insurance is a luxury, it’s basically a queue jump to see the same doctors often in the same hospital as the NHS offers. Pricing is transparent because they just send you to the NHS for non profitable stuff. And if the test were necessary + urgent you’d get it free in the NHS anyway. In fact the awful incentives it creates mainly just lead to lots of unnecessary tests. That’s why insurance often won’t pay.
poirot2··on The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)
Completely true. Killer stats on this: 1 in 7 U.K. trained doctors work abroad The number of GP training places are up 2000 and number of qualified GPs hasn’t changed due to poor retention. I could go on and on. U.K. medicine is a shitshow of poor pay and poor retention. Even the cheap imported doctors are only staying a short time due to the chaos of the system and better ops back home once NHS training is on your CV
poirot2··on The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)
This implies PAs are at half the level of an MD but the difference is astronomical. Those 4000 MD hours are training to be a physician, the 2000 are training to be a PA which is a much simpler role. If PA school went to 8000h doing what they do currently to train wouldn’t get you near an MD (not to mention the talent of the intake, rigour of exams and depth/ breadth of knowledge required).
poirot2··on Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
Glad this worked out for you, well done.

For anyone else who’s drinking at this level (a litre a day of vodka) please don’t quit cold turkey without seeing a doctor. It genuinely can be lethal. There are temporary medications that dramatically mitigate that risk.

poirot2··on “Amateur” programmer fought cancer with 50 Nvidia Geforce 1080Ti
Misunderstanding here. The question is at what age is the base rate in the population sufficiently high that a test with a certain sensitivity and specificity useful net risks. Multiple studies have shown that these screening programmes don’t have a huge impact on mortality - excluding lead time bias etc. and noting the c. 10 in 100k extra cases of cancer caused by the screening. Here’s a review for prostate screening that’s even more damning about its usefulness - https://med-fom-urlgsci.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2007/06/P-ca-...
poirot2··on Doctor fired from ER warns about effect of for-profit firms on U.S. health care
This is an ill informed take. It’s common when someone doesn’t know what X role does from the outside to think they are interchangeable. Medical school takes candidates that are already on average much stronger than NP trainees and then trains them more rigorously. Further, the specific training pathway after medical/ nursing school is v different. NPs are trained in seeing ‘textbook’ or standard cases and a flowchart of management for them. Which is great if you are one of them. And since most people present ‘typically’ for that clinic you can use NPs to filter through people and get them seem quickly/ cheaply. However, they don’t have the toolkit to handle greater complexity that is outside the flowchart and don’t generally know how recognise when a standard flowchart approach to management shouldn’t apply.

It’s rather tough to explain in lay terms other than via analogy - you’ve basically said all software engineers should be replaced by data analysts.