I have been exposed to hospitals as a guy who worked on their software, as a friend to a doctor, and as the relative of a patient. What I have seen is that hospital staff are generally well intentioned but extremely overworked, to the point that they can overlook obvious signs of a life-threatening illness. You can’t just assume that if you’re in a hospital then you’ll be taken care of. The doctor can be too busy to pay attention to you or too tired to think clearly about your condition. The doctor might even just forget that you’re there. You have to make sure that you’re getting a doctor’s attention, even if that means acting in a way that makes you feel like an entitled jerk.

Man, this hits close to home. Just yesterday I decided to get in touch with an old friend from college and I found out that she had died in a car accident years ago, not long after I lost touch with her. Don’t put things off, folks.

There’s precedent for it, with West Virginia. The problem is that the way that the Senate works makes what could have been a local issue extremely national.

Yes. Good for him, and for everyone who got to use his road too!

Note that

Despite the Kelston Toll Road not being approved by the local council, Watts hadn’t committed a crime.

The road was in use for 14 weeks before the council asked for retrospective approval and the nearby highway A431 reopened early.

He stopped because there was no longer construction for drivers to avoid by paying his toll.

What fraction is under 18? It’s hard to tell by looking at the graph. I want to calculate what ratio of combatants to civilians killed a number of 70% implies.

If the quotes are accurate then I think my original reply still stands, just without that first paragraph. I don’t understand how anyone could argue that the Israeli army has already achieved all its objectives in Gaza. Maybe it should withdraw because the remaining objectives are impossible to achieve, but that’s a different matter.

I see. That makes this hard to interpret, given that a lot depends on the specific language that he used.

There’s no quote of Gallant saying that the army has achieved all its objectives in Gaza. It’s just something an anonymous source said that he said. What the article quotes him saying on the record is

He reportedly told the families that the idea that Israel must remain in Gaza to create stability was “an inappropriate idea to risk soldiers’ lives over”.

and

“The IDF commander and I said there was no security reason for remaining in the Philadelphi corridor,” Channel 12 reported him as saying. “Netanyahu said that it was a diplomatic consideration; I’m telling you there was no diplomatic consideration.”

That’s strong criticism but far from “nothing left to do”.

(I’m not sure how fighting this war but then withdrawing from Gaza without creating stability would be in Israel’s long-term security interest.)

lemon and sugar

Ah, memories. I can’t drink that any more unless I don’t want to eat for several hours until my teeth stop being sensitive, but during my childhood it wasn’t just delicious, it was a way to bond with my older relatives.

Impra Gold orange peoke. Get the loose-leaf kind that comes in a metal container.

But one time, I was dragged into helping a guy I didn’t know move a couch up stairs. Afterwards his wife (they were an Indian couple) made me some chai tea that was the best thing I ever drank in my life. I would happily carry another couch for one more cup. I was a fool and didn’t ask what that tea was, and since then I have tried different chai teas (including when I went to India) and I never even found one I liked at all.

Do people want to play Warcraft 2? I have a lot of nostalgic memories of when I played it as a kid but unlike the other remastered old Blizzard games, it isn’t very good by 21st century standards.

Finally I could say “m’lady” without shame.

I thought that they checked to make sure people were psychologically stable before giving them special-forces training…

He’s not wrong about the squirrel…

There’s nothing wrong with it in the moral sense, but I’m not sure it was a good idea. This guy was ultimately successful. However, he had to spend years living very modestly, working very hard, and borrowing money. That whole time, he was under a huge amount of stress because the whole endeavor could easily have ended in failure, leaving him with nothing.

That’s not something most people would want to do even if they were capable of it, and I actually wonder if he would have been better off if he had gotten a normal job instead. He wouldn’t have as much money as he does, but he would still be quite comfortable, he wouldn’t have gone through panic-attack levels of stress, and maybe he would have married and had a child (which made him very, very happy) a lot earlier than he actually did.

A caveman would just use his finger and then lick the salsa off of it.

I did a 1000-calorie daily deficit for a few months, in order to lose two pounds a week. I got used to being hungry all the time after a couple of weeks, but having a lot less energy and being sleepy during the day were harder to deal with. My body was trying to conserve calories that way, but pushing through it was possible.

The hardest part was actually accurately counting the calories. It was relatively simple for off-the-shelf food, but a lot more annoying for things someone else home-cooked for me. I had to ask for the recipe every time, weigh how much I ate, and then track the calories per ingredient on a spreadsheet. Restaurant food was effectively impossible to count, but that didn’t matter much because I was so focused on filling food that I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. I’m a vegetarian, so I ended up eating mostly beans, tofu (which is also beans, now that I think about it), and vegetables. Other things weren’t as filling per calorie as those foods.

I talked to a guy who was trying to found a start-up and I asked him why he was doing it. He said “Because I’m unemployable.” Another person I know is working on it because she eventually wants to be in a position where no one can tell her what to do. Not being OK with working for other people seems like it might be a common trait.

I do know one guy who went through with it simply because he thought that the thing that he invented was so cool that he couldn’t stop working on it. I suppose that’s also not something a normal person would do, but it’s more positive.

Are there a lot of Ukrainian Americans voting for Trump? The ones I know tend to be relatively conservative by American standards and a couple of them are voting for him, but most of them support aid to Ukraine and so they support Harris.