Yeah, I grew up in a small American town and my cousins were more like my siblings than my actual sister because they were the same age as me. We all fled that small town, so the next generation are all growing up not surrounded by extended family.

I think there are good and bad sides to it. It was nice to grow up surrounded by family with a strong sense of belonging. But my cousins' children are growing up knowing people from far more diverse backgrounds than I ever had access to, which is good for them in a different way.

Overall, I think the effects are probably neutral

I'd miss you guys. I've jumped in on conversations on your instance a couple of times and it always seems like a nice place

Dark healthcare provider humor incoming: When considering these kinds of questions regarding CPR, we actually say, "Well, they ain't getting any deader."

CPR actually reverses death. That's why it only works sometimes and only if provided in a very short window of time after you've died. Nothing that is done during CPR is going to make that worse. So yeah, the reality is that it's a little bit of a controlled free-for-all. It's called "heroic measures" for a reason.

I knew a lady involved in a rollover accident in one of those old, flawed Ford Explorers back in the day. When she recovered, her solution to deal with her trauma and make herself feel safer on the road was...to buy an even bigger SUV with an even higher center of gravity.

free speech and government oversight

That's not what I read into this at all, but something far more sinister that I see happening in the world right now. Certain power players using "government oversight" as a disingenuous excuse to attack the means for regular people around the world to speak directly to one another without the filters that favor narratives that the power players prefer, and for regular people to coordinate with one another.

The Arab Spring and BLM protests scared some people and it's showing.

Of course no one believes that, don't make hyperbolic strawmen. But you can't deny that poverty definitely drives a nontrivial percentage of crimes, and we have plenty enough resources to end poverty. Let's do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life. (But also let's make prison no longer a place where we torture and enslave people.)

You know, I work with a LOT of extremely mentally ill patients, and the vast majority of them manage not to commit any terrorist actions.

You know why? Because they're not fucking terrorists.

Mental illness doesn't inherently make one violent and it doesn't instantly render you completely incapable of self control. Any mental illness that might be present is not an excuse for doing terrorist things.

Every day is Shut The Fuck Up Friday

Making price per unit mandatory on all retail items sold would go a long way toward making shrinkflation transparent for the customer

I'll just copy my comment from another post of this article:

History lesson time: This wasn't done on purpose. It's an artifact of decisions made by Congress during World War II to support war production.

So many young men were away at war that it created a labor shortage, even with some women entering the work force. This led to spiraling increases in wages that were threatening the viability of critical war manufacturers.

In an effort to protect this manufacturing sector, Congress capped wage increases. But those corporations were still competing for workers and now they were no longer able to offer them higher and higher wages. So instead, they started offering them "perks" like health insurance, pensions, and paid time off.

THEN:

"In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had one year earlier introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls."

Emphasis mine. And guess what? When those young men returned from war and re-entered the work force, they wanted those perks too. So which company was going to be the first to deescalate the arms race and NOT offer health insurance?

And those perks being so ubiquitous meant the government never had an incentive to provide health coverage directly to anyone of working age, so we only have Medicare for retirees.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/#:~:text=In%201943%20the%20War%20Labor,of%20maneuvering%20around%20wage%20controls.

As an old person, can confirm it never existed. People have always been like this.

Healthcare strikes are complicated. It's weird because it's not like a retail business that can safely shut down. If we shut down a hospital, it could endanger people's lives, and that's the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.

So we strike with compromises. A three day strike is like a warning shot. It gets public attention and it can be extended into an indefinite strike, if needed. Just a couple years ago here in Massachusetts, there was a nursing strike that lasted almost an entire year. That was accomplished by forcing them to staff the hospital with expensive travel nurses.

It's a controversial tactic. It can prolong the strike, but it maintains the trust and support of the public, which is more intrinsic to healthcare than other businesses.