domain:cafeamericainmag.com
phailyoor
18hr ago
You might assume they only try to interview patients who survived the procedure. Though that also would imply the procedure was botched extremely badly.
Browser
18hr ago
Yeah but the medical doctor who's likely spending significantly more time in the company of the hospiced and hospice-adjacent probably has a better bead on this than a layperson.
Can't remember the Scottpost but the stats on medical professionals opting out of end of life interventional care at a highly elevated rate are likely relevant here.
Children are often nigh-unkillable
"...and believe me, folks, I've tried." :P
I take your point. My intuitions could be wrong. But I think also 'assisted dying' was marketed as being for much more specific freak cases where people have an absolutely certain and very short life expectancy, and were in horrible pain that could not be alleviated through even strong pain medication. I would be willing to bet that if you raised the figure of "5% of all deaths" before this stuff was legalised you would be dismissed as a scaremonger if anti- and if pro- you would be taken aside and given a stern talk about staying on-message.
Browser
18hr ago
Yeah people massively underestimate how good modern medicine is at prolonging that last 6 months to a year now. My father who's in good shape for mid seventies now had successfully-treated skin cancer a few years ago and some of the people he and I saw clinging to life whilst visiting oncology were medical miracles.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
18hr ago
I think Gaza is in the reference class of "A government which is willing to commit genocide and has access to tanks and bombing planes can defeat an insurgency regardless of however many small arms the insurgents have."
All these years of Israel genociding the Palestinians, and yet there's more of them than ever.
Browser
18hr ago
Especially these days when the medical apparatus is increasingly good at keeping people alive when they probably shouldn't be
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
Really? Okay? What if I say 5% is massive, or not massive? You can make the same fuss either way. There are people who are categorically against the euthanasia of even a single person, and people who think that every human should be euthanized. What do you have to say to them?
Do you have an intuitive or even an intellectual understanding of how miserable the average death is? Did you remind yourself that euthanasia is meant to replace that inevitable, often painful and undignified death, with one that doesn't draw out the inevitable and lets people go out on their own terms?
Please, if you accuse me of being miscalibrated, then produce your own ISO calibrated standards. I remain in earnest anticipation, and until then, this is probably the queerest objection in the thread.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
18hr ago
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - I'm Gonna Booglarize You, Baby (1972)
During their 1972 European Tour, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band appeared on the German TV show Beat Club. This song is quite the performance, even by Captain Beefheart standards. Some of the other tracks took multiple takes for various reasons, but they nailed this one. It sounds like chaos until the 3 guitarists and the drummer hit the groove. I would make some of Beefheart's vocalizations my text notification on my phone if I were more tech-inclined.
2rafa
18hr ago
I was surprised by someone I work with occasionally who I know only by their very ambiguous first name. For years I had assumed they were some kind of Southeast Asian in terms of descent, they could have been Indonesian or something. They have a half English, half American accent and grew up between the two countries but are originally American by citizenship.
Today we spoke about ourselves for the first time and I found out their parents were from a South American country, with a very Hispanic last name. They were and are just indigenous. I guess I have encountered so few ‘pure’ native Americans that the combination of tan skin and Asian features just fit immediately to SEA in my mind.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
18hr ago
The origin of the meme "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" is that various WW2-era generals (of whom Montgomery was the first to go on the record in 1962) thought that Allied assistance to China in WW2 had been a mistake - presumably because Chiang and Mao preferred to use the aid to fight each other and not the Japanese.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
18hr ago
· Edited 18hr ago
Re. hanging, I did a deep dive into the biomechanics of hanging on a morbid curiosity kick a while back. My conclusion was that (to not put too fine a point to it) it's possible to set things up such that only a relatively painless blood choke is applied and conciousness is lost in 8-10 seconds, but the standard method of hanging puts much more pressure on the trachea and inconsistent pressure on the carotid arteries, causing a far more painful and likely drawn-out death.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
Far more illnesses become terminal when you're old and frail. A flu you might walk off becomes fatal pneumonia. A mild UTI or stomach upset in the young becomes the cause of septic shock. A scratch becomes cellulitis and gangrene, becoming too weak to toss and turn becomes suppurating bed sores.
Children are often nigh-unkillable. The elderly are the exact opposite, it's a goddamn miracle life expectancies are where they're at.
Maybe something around 0.1% is your intuition for how many people are in such a state right now. It is closer, in terms of magnitude. The issue is when you lack firm intuitions for how that stacks up over the longterm, at least over a year. I probably tend to overestimate the figure that dies miserable deaths, because the peaceful desths at home don't come to me. I am, however, aware of that bias and try to account for it. It remains to be seen how successful that is, but I see 5% as fine.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
18hr ago
If 10% of Gazas preward population had owned an AR, Israel never would have invaded.
IIRC at the point Israel invaded Gaza the alternative was not "abandon the campaign and go home", it was "continue bombarding it until there wasn't anything left standing large enough for a Hamasnik to hide behind".
I think Gaza is in the reference class of "A government which is willing to commit genocide and has access to tanks and bombing planes can defeat an insurgency regardless of however many small arms the insurgents have."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
Anyone up for a motte fantasy football league? I know we have some NFL fans, and we all love making bets and predictions.
Tree
18hr ago
Novo Nordisk's glory days are behind them
All the pharma companies’ chart look like that though. I’m not sure these drugs and their implication have really arrived on the street. Cremieux makes a good case for regeneron, I’ll add it to my scattershot leaps package.
There's also attacks on the patent regime (might be lost in Canada which might be a backdoor into the US) and also the borders seem quite porous to gray market sources entering the country.
I’m going to go with the nothing will ever happen heuristic. I’m not really concerned about risks like that since these are deep oom calls, the stock(s) either blows up or not, I’m not trying to conserve its value.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
18hr ago
talking to people
If by "talking to people" you mean dealing with unreasonable felonious clients, their unreasonable families, obnoxious and occasionally unethical prosecutors, unhelpful court staff, belligerent judges, probation officers, police officers, and a bunch of others, then yes. And of course, most of the court staff, probation officers, police officers, clients, and their families all believe they're lawyers and know more about the law than I do.
None of that includes the administrative side of things.
Isn't the point of training and experience so you can autopilot most of the time?
lol. lmao, even.
Are you talking about being a corporate attorney?
No, criminal defense.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
For once, the Brits are better about this. Living wills and Ancticipatory Care Plans are quite common and actively encouraged. You get to have people make these decisions before they become infirm or lose decision-making capacity. Then the family and doctors do their best to follow along.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
My wackiest theory is that when a drug like semaglutide comes out that essentially everyone wants, the government should be able to nationalize the patent for licensing, and in exchange the drug developer gets a one-time Get Out of Liability Free Card, where if they have a drug go wrong they can just get out of Liability for it.
This would lower drug prices, improve drug availability, and encourage labs that are producing good products to take risks; all things we want to do.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18hr ago
Columbia County's online application states that an applicant's references must call the sheriff's office within five days of the applicant's applying.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
In PA the sheriff is allowed to ask for references, and it's on the standard form, but not allowed to contact them. I can't speak of other counties, but in Allegheny County the (Democratic) sheriff doesn't require them and the form they distribute has the fields pre-filled as "Not required".
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
I'm more interested in the raw numbers of dead Russians, plus the severe life-ruining casualties on top of that. Maybe it's been a very bad year so far, but I haven't gotten that impression, across the course of the war that's gonna be something like half a million dead so far out of about 30 million Russian men between 14-45?
Ukraine is probably in even worse shape, though it says something if Trump is repeating pro Ukraine fake news these days.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
18hr ago
In year 2025, the appeals panel reverses. The city charter grants to the city personnel director, not the power of establishing holidays, but merely the power of establishing employment regulations regarding holidays. The power of establishing holidays is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the charter, so by default, in accordance with state and federal practice, it inheres in the legislative body—the council. Therefore, this executive order is a usurpation of legislative power. (This analysis applies to substantive holidays that are days off for city workers. The mayor still may declare temporary, symbolic holidays that have no effect on anybody.)
Somewhat similar to the history of MLK Day in Arizona.
In 1983, then-president Ronald Reagan signed the bill that made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday, the first to commemorate the life of an African American, according to the U.S. Senate website. Three years later, the Arizona House of Representatives created a bill to recognize the holiday. One vote defeated the bill, but nine days later, Gov. Bruce Babbitt issued an executive order to create a paid MLK holiday.
Subsequent governor Mecham gained national attention several days after his inauguration by fulfilling a campaign promise to cancel a paid Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday (MLK Day) for state employees. The holiday had been created in May 1986 by executive order from the previous governor, Bruce Babbitt, after the state legislature had voted not to create the holiday. Following the creation of the holiday, the state Attorney General's office issued an opinion that the paid holiday was illegal and threatened to sue the incoming governor over the cost of the paid holiday, as it had not been approved by the legislature. Despite the issues of the legality of how the holiday was created, Mecham replied to comments from civil rights activists and the Black community after the cancellation by saying "King doesn't deserve a holiday."
The decision turned to the voters in 1990, when two separate ballot measures for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday were put on the state ballot, according to the Pima County Public Library. Both measures failed to pass, once again drawing outrage and boycotts against Arizona. Notably, the National Football League stripped the state of its right to host the 1993 Super Bowl. Musicians refused to perform in Arizona.
The loss denied Phoenix a projected $200 million in revenue. An agreement was made that Arizona would host the 1996 Super Bowl, with the condition it passed a referendum to celebrate the holiday.
The holiday was finally inked into state law in November 1992. Voters passed a Martin Luther King Civil Rights Day holiday, making Arizona the last state to formally install an MLK holiday
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
Is it inexcusably awful that I think we should be utilizing the "wants to and is approved to die" demographic for experiments like that?
Fuck it, harness them up and toss them off a bridge. Let them drive dangerous car races, or play airsoft with live ammunition. See if it alters their feelings about death.
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
how do I make the quote one continuous block I don't know how to internet
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will yield
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On the topic
Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why in a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while the people have nothing but their limp dicks.
I think that your model of tyranny is very different from my model of tyranny. Your model seems to be that the government will be replaced by some entity universally loathed by the civilian population. I think that this exceedingly unlikely to happen -- the ayatollah will not become the US president through some legal loophole and a bad SCOTUS ruling.
Any tyranny which will happen will have buy-in from one of the big political tribes. Probably they will have at least 10% enthusiastic supporters, 20% who still prefer it to whatever the previous status quo was, 40% who are indifferent to uncomfortable and 20-30% who are very opposed. Of course, they also need enough legitimacy so that the military will not oppose them, so all three branches of the federal government will have to back whatever tyrannical actions they are taking.
Possibly tyrannical actions could include violating freedom of speech by making all the arguments of the opposing side illegal hate speech ("mentioning Epstein/migrant crime is illegal"), de-naturalizing and deporting 5% of citizens, effectively abolishing democracy (i.e. an amendment to the effect of "like the pope appointing cardinals, the president can appoint any number of congressmen for life, who will vote alongside their elected colleagues") and so forth.
The 10% strongly in favor of whatever tyrannical acts the feds are committing can probably be recruited as brown- or rainbow-shirts -- earning a nice federal paycheck and fighting with state of the art weapons and sleeping in guarded camps while fighting for your beliefs seems appealing enough.
For the anti-tyranny side (which will still mostly be fighting for tribal object level goals rather than against tyranny per se), things look different. Neither tribe has much of a culture of shooting federal officers or servicemen. The rebels will not make much money, they will fight with civilian weapons and sleep either in the woods (and hope that they are not spotted by thermal drones) or in the houses of sympathizers (who are risking their lives for them).
Also, fighting a guerrilla / protracted war is extremely stomach-churning. Basically, it is a competition of who is better at terrorizing the civilian population into compliance. The government will have an advantage here because they can rely on the trappings of legitimate power. Their goons can afford to have nice show trials where people who provided material aid to the rebels are convicted and then executed -- or just disappear people. It is a lot easier to make a non-psychopathic man arrest a random civilian countryman and put them on a truck than it is to make them shoot them on the spot. To out-terrorize the tyrant, the outgunned rebels would have to murder civilian collaborators without any of these trappings of legitimacy.
(Then you have the problem that tyranny typically comes in thin salami slices, and there is no good Schelling point where most potential rebels would agree that shooting at feds is indicated. Especially since every dictatorship aims to make it hard to create a common knowledge that a certain fraction of the population is willing to violently oppose the government. One might argue that this kind of coordination problem has been solved with the internet, but the internet will be the first thing to go when things heat up. I do not think that most of the population being addicted to their smartphones and social media is going to be helpful for an uprising against a tech-savvy government which can turn the former into bugs and the latter into a database of political leanings. And then coordination of uprisings would have to byzantine fault tolerant, because it is in the interest of the state to lure the most gung ho rebels to start early because they are mistaken about the level of support they have and take them out.)
The US won their independence war and the Taliban won against the US because the loser was in a position where they could afford to lose. If the fall of Kabul had meant that the top 1k people in the US government were beheaded, the US would have paid whatever price required in money or brutality to keep that from happening.
A domestic rebellion is such an existential threat to the people in charge. A federal government could not decide to pull out of California or Texas the way the US pulled out of Afghanistan, especially not due to irregular warfare -- once they have established that states can get rid of them by being a pain in the ass for a few years, people in other states might try to emulate that. Better to set a precedent where they glass the cities and turn the rest of the state into Gaza before retreating.
So while I agree that small arms are ultimately essential to control a country, I also think that any likely tyranny could also field enough goons to outcompete the very small fraction of citizens who are willing to give up their creature comforts to fight ruthlessly in an uphill battle.
--
A different argument can be made that uprisings can also serve to deter unpopular measures even if they are ultimately crushed simply by imposing costs. This might be a steelman of BLM: property destruction, unlike peaceful demonstrations hit the government where it hurts them (a bit, at least -- it is not like the US would declare bankruptcy over one or two billion dollars). The convictions of the four cops involved in the Floyd killing (whatever you think of their culpability) certainly was helped along by the fact that any verdict other than guilty would have resulted in another billion dollars going down the drain.
Still, I would argue that gun ownership was not central to the George Floyd protests or their prevention. 19 people killed is an extremely small number when compared to a billion of property damage. The state was not interested in escalation because they (correctly, IMO) feared a snowball effect: shooting looters would have fanned the flames. BLM, for their part was also happy to stick looting. Mostly unopposed looting is much more lucrative than deciding to murder cops or whites and bleeding to death after a shootout.
Have you heard of three branches of government:
They teach that factoid in the US, the UK, and even in India. Some parts of the government exist to exert checks and balances on the others. The judiciary doesn't cease to be part of a functional government because that's rhetorically convenient.
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