I still think it’s crazy that, as a researcher who has to read a lot of PDFs, I can barely find any usable alternatives to Acrobat that have basic annotation features. This is especially true for Android platforms, where I do most of my reading.
Slight rant coming up. This is what I’ve learned from my friends who work(ed) as vets and how they experience(d) the profession.
You spend your whole young adult life working towards a profession strongly tied to your identity, which is usually focused on wanting to care for animals. We’re talking 6 years of university study in the UK, preceded by several years of work experience alongside school to get on the course. The drop-off rates for mental health reasons are insanely high. I observed ~1/3 leave before graduating and among those who did, the final exams almost broke them (2nd year is pretty bad too).
Then you graduate and benefit somewhat from the high demand vets are currently in by mostly having your choice of practice. Interestingly though, your salary isn’t anywhere near as high as what most clients expect. Large franchises that buy out smaller vet practices, benefiting from economies of scale, pay your salary. You could work for a smaller practice, but few of them offer a full hospital service where you get to do more than just give vaccines/boosters.
Said franchises are often backed by venture capital and have investors that include large (pet) food corporations (nestle). Their idea of good business is to persistently harass your managers for performance milestones and, depending on how pliable those managers are, they pass that pressure onto you. These companies also hire a whole retinue of middle management staff to push these KPIs. They are frequently less qualified than you and know nothing about veterinary care. We’re talking regional directors, applications and transfer coordinators, and presumably whoever manages them and many more besides. Bearing in mind that the work you do as a vet also pays their salary. Between that and the expensive equipment, you can see why vets don’t earn much despite the huge turnover the industry must make.
On the other side of that pressure is dealing with the general public who are justifiably disgruntled at the huge expense their little animal has incurred them. Many (often insured) understand that you don’t set the prices as a junior vet. Many others call you money grabbing or worse (much worse). That’s not getting into the deluge of conspiracy theories around pet ownership that you need to constantly battle, as well as the literal shit, condoms, sanitary towels and God knows what else you need to extract from Snowy this week.
The hours are appalling. There is generally no paid overtime, but if an animal is about to die you can’t just clock off. If something does die unexpectedly, you might get threatened with legal action. The amount of second-guessing and what-ifs alongside self-flaggelation I’ve seen my friends go through is really sad. The expected deaths and euthanasia aren’t much easier though, because you see the heartbreak it causes the owners. My friends have offered consolation and emotional support to humans almost as much as they have medical care for animals.
There isn’t much recognition for the hard work you do and little to no vertical progression in your career. Once you’re a clinical vet that’s pretty much it, unless you open your own practice at some point or direct one of the ones that have already been bought out. You mostly get your sense of self worth from feeling that you’ve made a difference for the animal, but that’s not what your KPIs measure. Owners will blame you for not being able to afford the expense of treating their pet, while your boss tells you you haven’t been bringing in enough business. When you’ve spent your life working towards something that turned out to be a complete fantasy and is openly despised by so many, is it that surprising to consider suicide as an option?
I’ve left out a lot and this is necessarily anecdotal. There are good bosses, rewarding cases, wholesome workplaces, and grateful and well-insured owners. But I’ve also left out a lot of the bad, so do yourself a favour and don’t become a vet. Do it as a job if you have to, but don’t make it your identity.
There’s a lot of hate here that I can empathise with and I’m trying to not take calls for her to commit suicide or be murdered/ tortured in prison literally. It’s difficult to express hate verbally without reference to physical violence that underscores it. There’s sentiment here that life in prison isn’t enough and I tend to agree, but not in a way I’ve seen talked about here or anywhere else.
Letby should be imprisoned for life, no question. But that shouldn’t stop us asking more questions about what happened here. Do we treat Letby’s murders as isolated, unique cases and expect them to never be repeated? Lock her away and continue business as usual? It’s possible that things aren’t so simple and we need to look into how somebody like Letby got away with so much for so long and maybe also why she began doing something quite so horrific.
Mental illness is an unfortunate reality to come to grips with because we are steadily recognising that it is caused by relationships an affected person has with their environment. That means there is a share of responsibility in all of us and the systems/ institutions we have built to make sure this does not happen again and that we identify it before it’s too late.
It’s entirely likely that Letby will turn to self harm, or other extreme outcomes of poor mental health. We can’t ask anyone to sympathise with her after what she has done, but we can hope to treat mental illness better in the future and offer help to those who need it, before it’s too late. And I don’t mean too late in the sense of killing people, because that’s not what all mentally ill people do.
Does anyone have figures on subscription hikes to other fediverse systems? Mastodon is probably the best like-for-like switch for casual birdsite fans, but I wonder if there’s also an emerging desire for something a little different.
Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:...
The power of the panopticon lies not in being able to see and punish all deviant activity, but to encourage self-correction in all potential deviants who must always assume they are being watched.
PSA: I struggled to add my lemmy.world account to Infinity for Lemmy and received the “cannot fetch user info” error. I found the solution online and needed to use my username, not email for the login. Other Lemmy apps ask for your email instead. Hopefully this helps somebody else too. Password character length could also be...
whenever I bring the app back from the background it automatically jumps to the beginning of the feed. same, when I go to my profile tab and then want to go back to scrolling the feed. back to where I started from 🥹ios
Dangerous heatwave hits US from Texas to California with grim records expected (www.theguardian.com)
Millions of Americans are sweltering as experts warn early heat could herald next record-smashing summer...
Capitalism says keep working! (lemmy.world)
Gimme like $300+ per year, chump. (lemmy.world)
What is that movie you saw at too young an age that still haunts you to this day?
Mine is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Popular gay YouTuber deletes online presence after video accuses him of rampant plagiarism (www.lgbtqnation.com)
James Somerton was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...
They should believe in themselves more. (monyet.cc)
Why not? (media.mas.to)
It's always been true. (lemmy.world)
may it be... (feddit.de)
Birds are cool. (lemmy.world)
Vice City was my favorite one (startrek.website)
Pet owner ‘bill shock’ worsening the mental health crisis among Australian vets, inquiry told (www.theguardian.com)
Father of veterinarian who took own life calls for more education on how much it really costs to own a pet
Uh huh. Uh huh. (lemmy.world)
I love overnight ferments but it's so hard to keep them from overproofing in the summer (programming.dev)
They’re still tasty but the boules are too short to make decent sandwiches with....
So the voices are the tablets! (lemmy.world)
Lucy Letby will die in prison after receiving 14 whole-life sentences (news.sky.com)
As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.
Removal of piracy communities
Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:...
Cannot fetch user info (login error)
PSA: I struggled to add my lemmy.world account to Infinity for Lemmy and received the “cannot fetch user info” error. I found the solution online and needed to use my username, not email for the login. Other Lemmy apps ask for your email instead. Hopefully this helps somebody else too. Password character length could also be...
liftoff keeps jumping to top
whenever I bring the app back from the background it automatically jumps to the beginning of the feed. same, when I go to my profile tab and then want to go back to scrolling the feed. back to where I started from 🥹ios