We can argue actuarial tables all day, but the point is that replacing Sotomayor with a younger liberal justice has zero downside. It’s as close to a free lunch as one can get in politics.
The most likely best case scenario is a frozen conflict. But Zelensky doesn’t want this because such an outcome would call into question everything he did politically up to now. As for Putin, I’m not sure.
I think there’s a widespread implicit hope among Western policy makers that if they keep propping Ukraine up, and get Ukrainians to hold out long enough, Russia will suffer a sudden internal collapse and be forced to withdraw. That may be, but it seems equally (more?) probable that Ukraine will be the one that suffers a collapse.
I hope so, they’re in it for the long haul. The Vietnamese basically sacrificed two generations to beat back the US; Ukraine will need a similar level of long term commitment. The recent wobbling over mobilization is not a good sign in this respect.
A little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, an engineer named Matthew Gallelli crouched on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, pulled on a pair of ear protectors, and flipped a switch....
This cloud-brightening stuff seems finicky compared to stratospheric aerosol injection. Clouds are hard for climate models to handle as it is, so it would be hard to predict the impact on climate change ahead of time. If you want to do geoengineering, this seems pretty far down on the list of alternatives.
At one point, one of the six attendees showed Biden printed photos of malnourished Palestinian children, according to NBC News. The president said that he had seen the pictures before, but that was unlikely: The attendee, a doctor, said the photos were from her own phone.
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can’t count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with...
<span style="color:#323232;">Into my heart an air that kills
</span><span style="color:#323232;">From yon far country blows;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">What are those blue remembered hills,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">What spires, what farms are those?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">That is the land of lost content,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I see it shining plain,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The happy highways where I went
</span><span style="color:#323232;">And cannot come again.
</span>
This is the flip side of the US achieving a “soft landing”, bringing down inflation without triggering a recession. Not having a recession is good, right? Yes, in the main, but one consequence is that asset prices, including housing, will remain elevated for the foreseeable future. These tax credits that Biden’s proposing amount to no more than tinkering around the edges of the basic economic situation, at best. At worst, they could ruin the Fed’s inflation-fighting campaign at the last stretch.
The unanswered question: why are there Allah socks in the first place?
I am imagining a clothing supplier in China receiving an order for socks for a bargain store chain in Malaysia. “What design should we put on it?” “I dunno, anything that appeals to the customers.” “What do Malaysians like?” “They’re Muslims, right? Guess they like Allah.” “Aight let’s go with that.”
In 2017, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress tried to eviscerate the A.C.A. and almost succeeded in passing a bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have left 22 million more Americans uninsured by 2026. There’s every reason to believe that if the G.O.P. wins control of Congress and the White House in...
The US spends more on healthcare because it spends more on everything. I don’t think people have a good sense of how much Americans consume even compared to their peers in other rich countries.
If you plot healthcare consumption per capita versus individual consumption per capita, you can see that the US is on the trend line. Americans are not spending inherently differently from Europeans, despite the differences in healthcare systems. They just have more of everything, including healthcare.
Just look at the Wikipedia page on List of countries by household final consumption expenditure per capita. Americans consume much more than anyone else on the world, and it’s not even close. Americans even consume at a higher level than the “ultra-rich” countries that exceed it in GDP per capita, e.g. 30 percent more than Luxembourg (which is number 2 on the list)!
This covers all forms of consumption, in which healthcare is only a fraction. The discrepancy is so great that it can’t be explained by US healthcare being expensive. It’s the other way round, it’s healthcare consumption that is being pulled along by the rest of the consumption.
It’s not as if healthcare costs have some inherent reason to increase along with wealth.
Well, there are several big reasons. For example, doctors and nurses in the USA have much higher pay than those in Europe. Part of this is because of policy differences (e.g., the supply of US doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA). But part of it is simply that educated professionals are paid much more in the USA than in Europe, and it’s nothing specific to healthcare.
The point is that when making comparisons between US and other rich countries, the first thing you have to do is to account for the fact that Americans (i) have higher GDP per capita, and (ii) have higher levels of consumption even after compensating for GDP per capita. That should be the first-order effect, with stuff like the public-versus-private issue as second-order effects.
I do agree with the benefits to the US not being proportional to the cost, to a point. Lots of healthcare spending goes into things that don’t really benefit aggregate outcomes, like heroic interventions that end up extending end-of-life by a few months, or treatments that only benefit one-in-a-million conditions. But this is not just an issue for the US; for example, the UK spends 18x on healthcare per capita compared to Thailand, for 2 extra years of life expectancy. And those individuals who get their lives extended by a small amount, or get their rare condition treated, may have different views on the matter.
While I don’t disagree with the premise of this article, it does a piss poor job at rebuttal. It tries to explain that migrants and asylum seekers won’t get to vote in this next election, don’t draw SS/Medicare benefits today, and anyway the census is only every ten years, etc. But the “great replacement” stuff is about fears about changing the population over the long term, so this kind of counterargument either falls flat or will be interpreted as gaslighting.
I disagree. That is precisely the thing that needs to be unpacked and rebutted, because it’s the actual thing these people are worried about. Not the financial sustainability of Social Security, or whatever.
This is a composition effect. Democratic candidates who run for safer, more left-wing constituencies feel free to propose more radical left-wing policies, especially if their main threats are other democrats during primaries. They then go on to win because they’re not running in competitive elections. You can use the same reasoning to conclude that Republicans who attack abortion and socialism do better in elections.
“We are basically seeing the Hong Kong government trying to slam shut the really last vestiges of room for criticizing it,” said Kevin Yam, one of 13 overseas pro-democracy activists accused of national security offenses by Hong Kong authorities....
Not just an issue of military forces. The New Territories were where all the water supplies for Hong Kong Island were located. It would have been a completely untenable situation once the 99 year lease ran out.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group....
Lots of RPGs allow rest cheesing. Even if you don’t let players rest in random locations like BG3 does, the players can always hoof it back to town to rest. Attempts to prevent this kind of cheesing often end up feeling unduly punishing and un-fun. It’s not a tabletop vs computer issue.
I find Pathfinder 2e (and D&D 3e before it) way clunkier. Maintaining a level-appropriate power level requires stacking buffs like the Overlord meme, and if you decline to do so, you’re just crippling your character. It’s bad enough that auto-buffing mods are considered mandatory for the Pathfinder CRPGs.
One of the World’s Richest Women [Truong My La Lan] Sentenced to Execution (www.thedailybeast.com)
Sonia Sotomayor's retirement is a political IQ test (www.natesilver.net)
Japan sorely needs separate surnames (eastasiaforum.org)
Zelenskyy straight-up said Ukraine is going to lose if Congress doesn't send more aid (www.businessinsider.com)
President Zelenskyy warned that Ukraine would lose the war if the US didn’t send it more aid....
The Beginning of the End for Africa's Last Colonial Currency? (www.global-developments.org)
Warming is getting worse. So they just tested a way to deflect the sun. (www.nytimes.com)
A little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, an engineer named Matthew Gallelli crouched on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, pulled on a pair of ear protectors, and flipped a switch....
Biden's Meeting With Muslim Community Leaders on Gaza Was Disastrous (www.rollingstone.com)
Gameplay mechanics were also a lot better with more replayability. (lemmy.world)
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can’t count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with...
A federal judge says migrants can sue the company that flew them to Martha's Vineyard (www.npr.org)
You can’t afford to buy a house. Biden knows that. (www.vox.com)
Malaysia mini-mart outlets attacked after 'Allah socks' outcry (www.reuters.com)
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Obamacare Is in Grave Danger, Again (www.nytimes.com)
In 2017, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress tried to eviscerate the A.C.A. and almost succeeded in passing a bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have left 22 million more Americans uninsured by 2026. There’s every reason to believe that if the G.O.P. wins control of Congress and the White House in...
Elon Musk has fully bought into the ‘great replacement’ (www.theverge.com)
Congress Continues UNRWA Funding Cut Until 2025, Enforcing Famine in Gaza (truthout.org)
Democrats who attack the rich do better in elections. The party should take notice (www.theguardian.com)
Hong Kong Article 23: Basic rights threatened as law enacted, critics charge (www.nbcnews.com)
“We are basically seeing the Hong Kong government trying to slam shut the really last vestiges of room for criticizing it,” said Kevin Yam, one of 13 overseas pro-democracy activists accused of national security offenses by Hong Kong authorities....
Israel announces largest West Bank land seizure since 1993 during Blinken visit (www.washingtonpost.com)
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group....
Larian Started Work on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC, Then Canceled It: "The Studio Was Elated" (www.ign.com)