trainsplanes

I've done this and had a doctor that was kind enough to consider it. I had some mysterious symptoms and managed to find some things that I thought might fit it, and it helped him get a better idea of what I was dealing with.

He also went through and dismissed most of the more worrying possibilities, which set my mind at ease, and narrowed it down to a more likely condition.

So basically, I threw in a bunch of options and most of them were wrong. Thankfully I didn't walk in convinced that any one of them was absolutely the cause, but I imagine some patients do, and it can be a pain for the doctor.

China managed to build a massive high speed rail network across rough terrain and completely inhabited land in a few years. Their network is safe and reliable.

I've noticed it's becoming increasingly common to just give up and excuse everything in the US. "Well we could build new rails, but..." "Well we could get health care prices under control, but..." "Well we could solve (x problem that most other countries don't have), but..."

It's kind of a sad decline from being the world leader by far like the US was 50 years ago. There's always a billion reasons to not do something, but not much push to actually do something.

That's a viewpoint that's up there with "babies can't feel pain", which was also common until the end of the last century[1], but has completely vanished since then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies

Yeah, some Americans organized BLM protests in Japan too.

They think the whole world is an extension of America, while also denouncing American imperialism and the American idea of looking down on the world, while also screaming at anyone who questioned the idea of dragging American problems into a country that didn’t exist.

People here, more than anything, were pissed that they had a gathering in the middle of a pandemic and called them irresponsible. Which they were.

A lot of those questions would be answered by "I don't know", and I don't know how that could be considered a god or similar to religious thinking. "I don't know" is a concept religions seek to avoid.

You seem to have some motivation to bring non-religious people away from their thinking, or looking down on them in some way, and making strange and spurious arguments in order to do so.

> In a true inflation income rises along with prices so wage earners

So "true inflation" is no different than a "true scotsman."

Wealthy people invest, buy properties, and have assets that grow in value with inflation.

The poor have cash in a bank or in their closet that becomes increasingly worthless with inflation. Their rent, gas, and bread prices go up by large amounts, but if they're lucky, they might get an extra 2 cents an hour for their work.

Schools can go downhill pretty fast, and often do.

Markets also go downhill. If you really went all out with paying for it, you also need to hope that your employment will remain stable. People who are very comfortable with their job and predict no downsides are often the ones getting bitten when the market changes, as it always does.

People who are mute still communicate. They're not merely listeners.

If you're not practicing output, you're not truly comprehending. Output, whether it be speech, writing, or signing, is how you get and demonstrate confirmation that you comprehend.

Living in Japan, I can verify that there are two major types of English students here.

Group one learns to speak casually, and often.

Group two can be handed a Shakespeare text and answer any question about it.

Group one will have a completely natural and fluent conversation with any English speaker. They can write casually and be completely understood.

Group two will be able to identify grammatical mistakes on a test. Many are incapable of even rudimentary conversation. These people did well on college exams and are responsible for the horrible, worse-than-machine translations you see on signs and government reports in this country.

Language comprehension is a two way street. If someone thinks comprehension is a passive activity, then they're likely not fully comprehending. Comprehension requires active engagement.

When you're learning another language, there'll be countless times where you're like "ohhhh, I understand this." Then the moment you open your mouth, you'll get pretty directly told, "No, you completely misunderstood." You'll also encounter people who immediately correct your mistakes when speaking, whether they're grammatical or misusages of words.

As an example that people here might better grasp, learning a language without speaking is like learning a programming language without writing your own code. You might generally recognize the syntax and usage of various functions, but you won't truly grasp it and understand its nuances until you sit down, write, and accept that you'll make mistakes and identify them.

I'm directly stating that they're not, and the implication that any G7 country is socialist is bizarre.

Outside the US, in first world nations at least, it's expected that you get consecutive days off and you don't need to beg your boss for permission to leave town each week. I've never had to schedule a leave from town and don't know anybody who did, because it's plainly obvious that our weekends are our own.

Another problem is companies that intentionally book non-consecutive days off for their workers are also going to do everything they can to discourage workers from taking time off when they want to.

Nobody here is pretending all speech is good.

The point many people here have is that if you only defend non-offensive speech, you’re not for freedom of speech at all. Nowhere on earth bans what they consider non-controversial, inoffensive speech.

Are you trying to claim any G7 country is socialist, while suggesting an administrative division of the one-party socialist People’s Republic of China is a good alternative?

Talk to a person who spent a lot of time in nature 60 years ago and they'll tell you about water was overflowing with fish. Insects basically clouded the skies in summer. Forests and fields were full of animals and they'd regularly wake up to wild animals at their front door every morning.

It sounds like tall tales to a large number of people today, but even in my short life of only 30 years, the change is huge. I remember being a kid and windshields being covered in insects after a 30 minute drive. I remember turning a light on outside at night and the sides of the house being swarmed luna moths, hordes of bats swooping by and grabbing everything they could, and possums scattering away from the porch. I'd walk around the lake and see snapping turtles lazing about in the sun. Fish splashing in the water. Walking in streams, there'd be so many crayfish that they'd slip inside my sandals and I'd accidentally crush them.

Now I see nothing.

Are you implying Ireland, Luxembourg, Bermuda (part of the UK), the Virgin Islands (part of the US and UK), Singapore, and Switzerland aren't western countries part of or at very least allied with and influenced by other western "neoliberal" countries/G7?

Because that's a very, uh, unique idea. Also weird to jump from implying escape from western influence doesn't exist to listing western countries as a way to escape from the west.

There are some countries that you can move to that are generally free of the laws of western nations.

For some reason, people from “western neoliberal and socialist” countries generally don’t move to them, though.

Is it unreasonable to say that bacteria, spiders, and frogs are genetically driven to exhibit certain behaviors? If not, why should the line be cut at humans?

As a kid, I had more fun playing in untamed woods and patches at the edge of the property where plants did their own thing than I ever did on dried out, razor-sharp summer grass.

Kids aren’t too picky about what they play in. They’ll make do with anything.

Reading FAANG employees talk about food prices makes me realize the old "It's one banana. What could it cost, $10?" is something that was written based on reality.

We've only barely detected that planets exist outside of our solar system fairly recently. Our observations are mainly limited to the general size of them, e.g. 1 Jupiter width, 2 earth masses, etc. Telescopic images of other stars in our galaxy are just a couple pixels.

We're essentially blind but saying there's nothing to see. We don't yet have the technology to really observe what's happening in our galactic neighborhood. We don't even know what's going on under the atmospheres of the gas giants in our own solar system and it's mostly speculation.

If another planet had a pipeline linking their planet to a star for pure plasma energy, we couldn't even observe that with today's tools.

Another planet observing earth for intelligent life using our standards would also conclude that there's absolutely nothing here. Artificial lighting is under 200 years old, leaving little in the visible spectrum as an obvious sign of intelligent life for anything over 200 light years away. They could easily brush off oxygen/CO2 production as some sort of natural process. They could also conclude that the idea of life existing on earth for hundreds of millions of years is insanity, because clearly earthlings have planetary rodeos where we'd drag planets around for fun or we'd be using the methane on our gas giants for sustenance.

You'll find countless anglos all over the internet who'd gladly drop everything if they could live in Sweden.

The grass is always greener.

Not trying to be rude, but as with most things, there are scales within the ranges of blindness and paralysis.

A lot of people assume blindness means absolutely no sight whatsoever, which isn't true, because quite a large number of legally blind people have eyes that detect some degree of light. Temporary blinding from illness/injury exists. Flashing a bright light into someone's eyes, rendering them momentarily unable to see, is also a very valid and very old usage of "blind" in the English language. Being metaphorically dazzled by something and temporarily unable to respond ties in with the latter meaning and goes way back in its usage.

Paralysis has a similar scale. Many people assume total lack of movement, and "only" having one's lower body unable to move doesn't even immediately register as paralysis in the mental image a lot of people have. People with severe mental illnesses like depression and some forms of schizophrenia are rendered unable to move (it's not a desire to stay still). People can also be temporarily paralyzed through poison or mental shock (as in they literally, physically cannot move out of fear).

Words have range. Context makes their meaning precise. I really hate to bring this word in here, but denying someone with a mental illness the right to use a word is because it's not "real" enough compared to another person's struggle is "gatekeeping". Suggesting words they use to describe their illness is "insulting" is harmful to them.

There are countless reasons for doing so.

One major one being that people don't/can't drive a massive truck to haul their possessions and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional.

Another one being that they're not driving to the place they're moving to, but instead taking a plane/boat/train/foot/bike to get there. Unless they charter private planes or boats, or pilot them on their own, it's a little unfeasible.

People post a lot of wild stories on forums and places like reddit. Oftentimes they exaggerate or make up crazy events. It's not enough to push me to go after them.

Whenever I see this man mentioned, I always see a comment saying, "This man travels AND has sex!"

It's about as surprising as someone visiting Amsterdam and having the audacity to smoke weed or single guys doing what single guys do when they visit SE Asia.

I've seen way too many plates that have been "washed" yet have grime solidified to them, or worse, still damp on them.

Some people really can be worse at washing dishes. But I'm not sure how I'd define "good" or "average".

As a non-native speaker of a non-English language, I'm often the "translator" for other non-native speakers, helping native speakers understand them.

Really all I'm doing is repeating what the non-native speaker said verbatim, but with an accent that the native speaker is more familiar with.

> 30-50 year old adults outside, alone, in direct sunlight, exercising, dozens of feet away from anyone else are still wearing masks.

This is how it's been in East Asia and spread has been fairly limited compared to the west.

Mask wearing and not clustering in tight groups here isn't really a mental health issue. It's just a hygiene issue, like washing hands. I think most people here grimace when we see someone walk out of a stall and leave without even wetting their hands.

I was one. The role doesn't preclude programming or software engineering experience--it very often includes it.

Satoru Iwata was a notable game designer. He was very much a skilled engineer, but his resume would've been trashed.