handrous

12 ms·

61.
by handrous 5y ago
> I see no difference between private insurance and government run except the government is constantly lambasted for overspending and medicare seems to have the lowest operating costs and payouts to healthcare providers. Contrary to popu
62.
by handrous 5y ago
It's possible that would work, but I'd prefer to try a system that's successfully in use in any other advanced economy, than to gamble on that. Meanwhile, if you can convince some other country to try "be very free m
63.
by handrous 5y ago
Bingo, see my post elsewhere in this thread :-) I'm no expert but have been reading about this for a couple decades now, and the consistent element in every non-US system in developed countries, despite a vast variety of approaches,
64.
by handrous 5y ago
None that I'm aware of. My guess would be that this is because if you do it poorly, it doesn't help a damn thing, and if you do it well, it's just single-payer with extra steps. This is because to do it right you'd eff
65.
by handrous 5y ago
I've noticed that an awful lot of insurers around here seem to always be crying about "losing money" on seemingly every plan, now, and so demanding huge rate hikes every year. I don't believe that they're actually
66.
by handrous 5y ago
> This is what happens when the buyer doesn't care what the price is because its not their money and the seller doesn't publish prices to allow comparison. The norm in most systems (in developed states, anyway) is that the buye
67.
by handrous 5y ago
The single tool that AFAIK every other advanced-economy state (OECD, if you like, but even some outside that) uses, despite all the different approaches in the wild, is: price controls. The more-free-market ones simply dictate prices on
68.
by handrous 5y ago
I do wonder why simple products are often expensive. I think our microwave cost like $30-40 new, but it's got probably 20 buttons and a clock and the spinner and all that junk, and at the time I couldn't find any cheap options t
69.
by handrous 5y ago
As far as I can tell, the political class decided that no cost was too high to avoid being the one left standing when the music stops, after the '08 crash. So we'll just inflate until someone gets unlucky and is the one stuck with
70.
by handrous 5y ago
We don't know what sorts of other free (volunteer-led) or paid services would replace these, if they went away. For maps in particular, it seems to me providing high-quality mapping and traffic data should be a government service, wi
71.
by handrous 5y ago
TIL that not every imaginary number is just "i" with optional scaling applied. Was taught "the square root of negative one is i".
72.
by handrous 5y ago
My favorite microwave oven is one my Grandma owned for decades, probably purchased in the 70s or early 80s. Two dials. No buttons. Pull to open the door, not even a button for that. Didn't even have the spinny-plate thing (did OK regar
73.
by handrous 5y ago
Off-topic, but as a former serious politics nerd (did most of an IR undergrad degree, way back, in fact) who's now a less-serious politics nerd and quite a bit older, what are some entry points to this world for someone with a career i
74.
by handrous 5y ago
Two phone-related ones: 1) Phone calls sounded better when they were analog. Even today, after some improvements, this is still true. 2) Long distance charges turned out to be well fucking worth it for keeping phone spam from being a thin
75.
by handrous 5y ago
Thank you, this was very helpful. > The axis of rotation is actually the vector "u". Ah, I thought the vector was what we were rotating.
76.
by handrous 5y ago
It's bad enough that I'd say 75% of my joy from vacations to even very nice places is that it nudges me to all but completely stay off the Web for a few days. The rest of the time I hardly go an hour without looking at a glowing r
77.
by handrous 5y ago
It's batshit crazy that we'd fill our houses with extremely bright nighttime lighting and entertainment that out classes the most lavish, exclusive medieval or Roman imperial festival, all available on-tap every single night in
78.
by handrous 5y ago
They're banned on some stretches of interstate (maybe where they cross federal land? Not sure) and damn, it's nice. Even relatively dull and shitty landscapes are so much better without that blight.
79.
by handrous 5y ago
Yes, because that's totally what I wrote. Anyway. No, but if you actually go teach a class of real children in this world of ours, today in the year 2021 when none of them have ever seen a card catalog and may literally not know how
80.
by handrous 5y ago
> Quaternions are hypercomplex numbers of the form I'm gonna guess "hypercomplex" means "involves imaginary numbers" due to the rest of this. > Where w, x, y, and z are real and i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = -1 and ij = k
81.
by handrous 5y ago
Huh. I didn't find the first hundred pages of The Name of the Roes notably boring or difficult or anything. I do think literature generally selects against readers who aren't prepared for it. Like how it's hard to get into
82.
by handrous 5y ago
I think the US generally is especially about this, and I think it explains a lot of behavior we have that may seem odd or nonsensical to outsiders. There's a Russian photo-blogger I read a bunch of posts by years ago, and he pointed
83.
by handrous 5y ago
Sure, but heavy artillery might not survive a loss of air superiority over "friendly" territory. A deep-buried super-heavy nuke does, and forces the invaders to slow down and try to deal with it while using other, worse routes tha
84.
by handrous 5y ago
> other people's fake and perfect and amazing lives Uh, if that's what we're supposed to be using movie and TV streaming services for, I've been watching precisely the wrong things. Seems more like a description of so
85.
by handrous 5y ago
> EDIT: Bigger bombs could be made, but the question of "how to deliver" the weapon to our enemies becomes a significant question. There's always the Dr. Strangelove approach of building an infinitely huge bomb in your own
86.
by handrous 5y ago
> Perfect connectivity options, two USB C (PD, Thunderbolt, ethernet), 2/3 USB A, HDMI, microSD, SD. I miss USB-A ports on MacBooks. Every indication is I'll still miss them in 2025. Perhaps by 2030 it will seem like an OK choi
87.
by handrous 5y ago
> It starts in the schools. Public school teachers train the children which news sources are "authoritative". They basically don't have a choice but to teach them this if they don't want to grade a bunch of papers abo
88.
by handrous 5y ago
Even Apple doesn't have a "show only actually-free" toggle on their store for free apps with no IAP and no ads. Which sucks.
89.
by handrous 5y ago
> Although I love the idea of HTML-native inputs all the way through, I tend to immediately run into issues where using a native interface instead of a JS-based implementation harms the user experience. The way HTML forms (in particular,
90.
by handrous 5y ago
> Design in the browser with browser technology, it’s just boxes, gradients and shadows for industrial level web design at the moment. You really shouldn’t even be designing in a tool like Photoshop or Figma given the current design para

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