Sen. Roger Wicker on the recent US/Russia prisoner exchange: "This exchange speaks volumes about what our two countries value. Vladimir Putin is getting back a crew of thugs, murderers, and low-life criminals. The United States is welcoming home journalists, voices for democracy, and former service members."
New chariot burial unearthed in Italy, dates to c. 700 BC.
"Old Growth," great series of tree photographs by Mitch Epstein.
Amusing alternate birthstone lists from 1925.
A claim that 2009-2024 has been the best 15 years in US economic history, (Twitter/X). This guy's whole feed is an attack on bizarre notions about how bad the US economy is.
Recap of a 2023 conference on Europe in the third millennium BC, focusing on the Bell Beaker phenomenon, lots of fascinating data on how different things were in different parts of Europe. (37-minute video) Brings out that various European archaeologists see this phenomenon very differently. Also, this is one area in which the new genetic data complicates the story rather than explaining it.
Kevin Drum takes a look at why the US has fewer doctors than other rich nations despite spending more on health care.
Interesting eco-modernist "destination coffee shop" in Thailand.
Scott Siskind argues that liberalism is a compromise between Nietzsche's "master morality" and "slave morality": "A final secret of this compromise is that master morality and slave morality aren’t perfect opposites. Master morality wants to embiggen itself. Slave morality wants to feel secure that everyone agrees embiggening is bad. The compromise is that we all agree embiggening is bad, but leave people free to do it anyway. So half of Western intellectual output is criticisms of capitalism and neoliberalism, yet capitalism and neoliberalism remain hegemonic. Everybody agrees to hate billionaires; also, billionaires are richer than ever."
The curious diet of the speckled mousebird.
There is now an antiviral drug that prevents HIV infection with a semiannual injection.
A scholarly paper has been published arguing that before modern water treatment, it really was safer to drink beer than water.
Lynchings and other violence against Italian Americans in Louisiana around 1900: "Italian Americans became targets for mob violence precisely because of their connections with, and similarity in social position to, Black Louisianians."
Thorough but not too technical summary of the CrowdStrike debacle. Also a good primer on the metaphors used by computer security experts.
The origins of the personal diary in the 16th century.
Fascinating compendium of data on how people spend their time, and how much they enjoy it. Interesting that "playing with a child" scores near the top for pleasure; playing computer games come out significantly more pleasurable than watching television.
Some new data and new thinking about the migration of Homo sapiens sapiens from Africa and our interbreeding with Neanderthals.
Some primers on Assembly Theory, which purports to be a physics for the origins of life, and a way to distinguish life from non-life: short news article, big technical paper, NY Times, wikipedia, video from the Bergruen Institute. This Substack post is long but the best explanation I have found, lays out how the argument has evolved over the past seven years.
Why a potentially dangerous bird flu is spreading in cows.
Massive protests underway in Nigeria against price increases and general government mismanagement.
Review of US defense policy ordered by Biden finds that current spending is inadequate to confront the threats poised by China, Russia, and other potential enemies: "The U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare." Also says that in terms of national security, "the trends are getting worse, not better." (news article, Rand Corp summary, report)
The next time you meet somebody who says there has been "no accounting" of US aid to Ukraine, refer them to this 183-page GAO report.
US arms sales are soaring, what with everyone around the world buying weapons and Russian weapon systems failing in Ukraine: "The US Air Force is forecasting $46 billion in Foreign Military Sales this year, up 60% from last year's $28.7 billion." (Twitter/X, Defense News)
ISW update on a failed Russian armored assault near Kostyantynivka (south of Donetsk city), July 24, may have been the largest such assault since last October: "The Russian military command's continued willingness to suffer high armored vehicle losses for minor tactical gains instead of conserving armored vehicles for operations that pursue operationally significant objectives will impose increasingly significant costs on Russian forces."
Colby Badhwar on Ukrainian air defense: what they have, what they need, and why the best thing would be to attack Russian bases before the missiles are even fired.
3 comments:
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Kevin Drum takes a look at why the US has fewer doctors than other rich nations despite spending more on health care.
Drum gets the reasons right, but doesn't quite get around to the reasons for the reasons.
We pay doctors and nurses more than other countries.
This is true. But one aspect of it isn't acknowledged is the cost that our doctors and nurses have to deduct AFTER wages to pay for medical malpractice insurance, which is insane in this country. Higher pay is frequently in name only, because if it wasn't that high, doctors and nurses couldn't afford the insurance necessary to perform their jobs and still make any kind of money at all.
We pay specialists fantastically more than other countries.
Malpractice insurance is, again, at least part of the problem here. The more specialized the medicine, the more expensive the insurance for it. A surgeon might pay $50,000 annually for their coverage, as opposed to a general practitioners who might pay $7,500 annually. That $50,000 has to come from somewhere, so these doctors charge more for their services, just to be able to pass along the difference to the bloated insurance companies.
We pay more for pharmaceuticals than other countries.
Again, insurance is a major culprit here - although health insurance rather than malpractice in this case. The other factor is the pharmaceutical industry itself, which is in bed with the insurance companies. They have created a captive market, particularly with regards to people who need chronic medication or care, in which the customers have no real choice in suppliers (due to industry collusion and a virtual monopoly), and are faced with the choice of either paying whatever price is demanded of them, or simply going without.
Other countries have laws protecting their citizenry from such things. Only in America could someone buy up the rights to manufacture insulin and then raise the price one hundred fold - from $10 for a month's supply to $1,000 - and get away with it.
Only in America do sufferers of diabetes have to ration their supplies of a hundred year old medicine that costs mere dollars to manufacture. Only in America do people who ought to be able to live ordinary lives have to live in constant suffering and anxiety because they are forced to underdose themselves in order to survive until they afford to buy more of the medication they cannot live without.
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We pay more for machines than other countries.
Again, the culprit is largely the greed of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. You need a cheap, effective, simple, reliable machine that was invented half a century or more ago? Well, you'd better hope you qualify for coverage!
Oh, your insurance plan isn't expensive enough to cover it? Well, then you get to enjoy being overcharged for the privilege of buying the device without insurance! Sure, it gets manufactured in China for $12, but now you get to spend $650 on it! And since you can't legally obtain one without a prescription, your choice is either poverty or death! America! The richest country on earth! Land of the free, home of the brave!
We pay a cut to insurance companies.
We don't just "pay a cut". The insurance companies ARE the medical industry. They control every aspect of it behind the scenes. They are massive, absurdly rich, and shockingly powerful. Their lobbies quietly rewrite our nations laws on a daily basis, ensuring that they can continue to extract rent from the sick and dying at every turn. They are the cancer that is eating away the health and vitality of our people - seeking only to grow, and grow, and grow, at the cost of human health and life.
Other countries don't allow this kind of exploitation. Other countries view medicine as a necessary resource which they work to ensure remains abundant and readily available. Other countries value the health of their citizenries.
But not us. We view our citizens as disposable. We value our people only in terms of how much money can be siphoned out of their pockets. We value medicine only in terms of how much profit it can make - not how much health it can create. We don't want healthy citizens - they get sick less often, and thus are less profitable. We want a society of chronic sufferers, who have no choice but to pay their exorbitant medical bills in perpetuity. That's how you please the investors!
Fascinating compendium of data on how people spend their time, and how much they enjoy it. Interesting that "playing with a child" scores near the top for pleasure; playing computer games come out significantly more pleasurable than watching television.
As someone who grew up at the same time that computer / video games did, this doesn't surprise me. Older folks in my life always compared video games to television, but they're wildly different kinds of activities. Television is passive - you largely just sit there without having to think, just absorbing what is being presented to you. But video games are active - you have to take part, have to think, have to plan, have to react and make decisions on the fly, all of it.
You'll notice that "Watch TV" ranks right next to "Relax / Do Nothing". Note, also, that reading is just barely above both of those - it, too, is a passive behavior.
Now, not all passive behaviors rank lowly, of course - "Arts, musical" and "Listen to Music" both rank higher than physically active tasks like "Walk dogs". And the very top of the chart is "Theatre, concert", leading by a massive margin. But I think, in general, the more mentally engaging a behavior is, the more people tend to enjoy it. (With obvious caveats like "Sleep" ranking very near the top.)
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