- A rural town banded together to build a hospital. A larger hospital — and the government — stopped them.
- Social media’s opaque response to evidence of bias.
- Theranos, the multi-billion unicorn that billed itself as a revolutionary blood-testing company is closing its doors, valued at nearly nothing. (You want to read a really good book about how easy it is to fool lots of smart people? Check out Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, the WJS reporter who exposed Theranos and its cultish leader, Elizabeth Holmes.)
- One percenters plan to ride out their doomsday in New Zealand. (Amusing that one of the scenarios of dread for rich Silicon Valleyites is “a French Revolution-style uprising targeting the 1 percent.”) (H/T MJR)
- There is much talk about the absurd luxuries and indulgences produced by late-stage capitalism. But what about the absurdities produced by late-stage socialism?
- Let’s hope the new book by Lukianoff and Haidt wakes people up before we become so fragile we shatter. (Here’s an Amazon link for it.)
- Desserts you might not want to cut into.
- Expert camouflage (H/T LA)
- Ten historical figures remembered for the wrong thing.
- Lessee. It’s illegal in Oregon to drive while cellphoning. So the Oregon State Patrol has just devised a new number that cellphone users on the highway can call to report other drivers’ unsafe behaviors. Yeah, that makes sense. Sure. (Tip o’ hat to BD)
- Battery drain from The Oatmeal.
Except for their draconian gun laws, I’d consider bailing to NZ right now.
I’ve watched Holmes keenly while being interviewed on the biz channels. She is cultish for certain. It seriously looked like she believed everything that she said.
As to the Oregon cell phone law, there’s a joke in churches in which a little daughter rats out her brother. It goes something like; “Daddy, Micheal had his eyes open while you were saying grace.”
Camo is an art but I have found that if you have a good foundation of plainness (drab colors) and by adding what is local to where you intend to hide, grass in the grass and dirt in the dirt you tend to blend in pretty good, the big problem is hiding from thermal which can be done with mud at least for Arnold that is;
“It seriously looked like she believed everything that she said.”
The one oddity in Carreyrou’s book is that he seems to accept that might actually have been the case. To me, she appears to have been an absolute, conniving fraud. But he leaves open the possibility that she really, truly believed that if she just threw enough money, hope, and influential backers into the mix, she could eventually produce a product to match her exorbitant claims. For sure he paints a picture of a company that operated in a very cultish way, based more on vision and secrecy than real tech.
“Daddy, Micheal had his eyes open while you were saying grace.”
LOL! Nailed it.
Part of the problem with Cluster-B types (sociopaths, psychopaths, narccisists, hysterics, borderlines) is that they’re remarkably prone to believing their own bullshit. South Park even had an episode about it. They really, truly believe their nonsense, because the nonsense feeds their delusions and they’ll buy into anything which preserves those delusions and illusions about themselves. Zero empathy, near-zero impulse control, and a complete ability to believe anything flattering- that’s a Narc for you.
[…] We start with Clair Wolfe’s Friday Links. […]
It takes about two weeks to excavate the land and bury the average bunker, Lynch said. It’s all done secretly so local residents aren’t aware.
“Aren’t aware?” These are not people who live in the country.
I’m sure the good people of New Zealand will be – thrilled – to have them helicopter in, expecting GPS to work and their bank accounts to be worth something.
We have a local no-phone-while-driving ordinance. It has an exception for snitching.
“We have a local no-phone-while-driving ordinance. It has an exception for snitching.”
I believe the Oregon law has an exception for emergencies. But this new number is apparently specified to be a non-emergency number. Weird.
That first article about the hospital misses the major cause of the problem until the very end. Florida is among the 35 states that have a “certificate of need” law. In Idaho, if somebody wants to build a hospital or other medical facility, they find an investor, buy the land, and build it. There are still permits and codes of course. In Florida, they must apply to the state for permission before starting. The commissar of health needs to agree that there is a need for the facility. If it will upset the status quo, the CON will probably not be granted. That is a soviet-style type of central government planning. It stifles competition. “After years of work and spending about $400,000 from a family trust on lawyers, consultants and state filing fees, Dr. Braden submitted a 2,000-page application to Florida’s health care regulators this spring, seeking a critical state approval called a certificate of need.” That is the crux of the matter. Nobody should ever have to apply for such a thing as a certificate of need to build a hospital. The article derides the denial of the certificate, but not the need to apply for it in the first place.
I wonder how much coddling goes on at the University of Raparin, meaning uprising, and named after one.
Well, I sent an email to the NY Times describing how the author of the hospital denial article missed the crux of the matter, along with a reference to a study on the harm that certificate of need laws has done. I will see if a get a substantive response.
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