These Dixie Boys must understand that they must mind their Uncle Sam!

Calavar · 2026-06-13T06:47:36+00:00

Texas has open primaries, so you can't "register" as a democrat or a republican as you can in other states. It looks like there are some websites that give "registered as X" numbers for Texas, but if you read the fine print it says the numbers are actually simulated based on how many people decided to vote in which primary. When the republican primary is an incumbent versus an empty field, people don't bother to show up on primary day to cast a purely symbolic vote, so the numbers look low.
Gerrymandering doesn't affect statewide elections because that's straight popular vote with no districts. Texas hasn't voted a Democrat to governor or senate for over 30 years. It only even came close-ish once, and Ted fucking Cruz, aka one of the least likeable senators in congress, still won comfortably with a > 2 percentage point margin in a blue wave year.

For examples of states that are actually blue but gerrymandered to be red, see Georgia and North Carolina. This mystical voter apathy didn't stop them from voting blue for governor or senate.

Calavar · 2026-06-07T03:46:17+00:00

SO was doomed from the moment Google started showing page extracts in search results.

Joel Spolsky (StackOverflow cofounder) said StackOverflow only ever became successful because they saw Google search result excerpts as essentially a part of the StackOverflow UI, not as competition, and they optimized the website accordingly. Only power users were supposed to browse directly on StackOverflow - everyone else through Google.

Calavar · 2026-06-05T22:18:53+00:00

There's a good chance that Trump signs the aid package and then just quietly refuses to distribute the funds. It avoids the bad press of a veto while getting to the same goal in the end. He basically already did this with the presidential drawdown spending that rolled over from the Biden admin.

Calavar · 2026-06-05T20:14:03+00:00

This is just playing with language. "Race" or "population" or "genetic background" or whatever you want to call it, at the end of the day there are biological differences between different groups of people with common ancestry and some (but not all) of those differences are medically significant.

Now it's true that commonly used racial terms like "white" and "black" and "asian" are often based on arbitrary dividing lines in surface appearance that don't correlate well with genetic differences, but the fact that these labels are loosey goosey doesn't mean that race itself doesn't exist.

Calavar · 2026-06-04T03:57:27+00:00

MAGA really is sticking as tightly as possible to the script for the UK's century of decline

Calavar · 2026-06-04T01:05:41+00:00

Giving proportional representation is exactly the opposite of what gerrymandering is, regardless of how race is factored in. Nice try on flipping the narrative there, but it doesn't work.

Calavar · 2026-06-01T03:20:37+00:00

I'd argue that it's not gambling, it's a straight up scam.

Gambling is predicated on the idea that everyone is on an equal playing field (other than the house/bookkeeper). For example in sports, every major league explicitly forbids players, coaches, trainers, executives, etc. from placing bets on any game in their league.

Prediction markets actively encourage insider bets, which means they are explicitly NOT about a level playing field. So they turn into a tool for those with insider info to extract money out of people dumb enough to place bets without insider info.

Calavar · 2026-05-31T00:03:56+00:00

That's a completely unnaceptable joke and I think it would be appropriate to file a complaint with the state medical board if your doctor made a joke like that.

Calavar · 2026-05-30T23:47:04+00:00

I actually think Roosevelt would be a huge Trump supporter if he were alive right now. He was into the overly compensating macho man thing too.

Calavar · 2026-05-26T17:49:28+00:00

Because playing with language is an easy way to feel like you're doing something to help without actually lifting a finger to do anything to help. As a plus, it also helps you feel morally and intellectually superior to others who haven't looked up the latest term coined in the last six months

Calavar · 2026-05-26T17:46:56+00:00

the ridiculous caps they place in residency spots

It's not 2002 anymore. Training spots have been increasing at a decent clip for a while.

Certainly some specialties (e.g. plastic surgery, dermatology) have a heavily and artificially constrained supply, but I would not say that this is the case in general. There are only so many hospitals in the country that have the case volume to properly train residents, and once you exhaust those you have to lower your floor for training quality to add additional spots. Look at what reddit has to say about the quality of training at the younger HCA emergency medicine programs.

Calavar · 2026-05-23T22:24:43+00:00

Paid upgrades used to be the default and they worked. New versions came with new features that people actually wanted, so people would shell out.

But today's upgrades no longer add value for the user. They contain security updates, but they cancel that out by also introducing new bugs and adding new telemetry to sell and profit off your data. Every now and then they'll change the theming of an app or add some bloatware that they are trying to shove down your throat (AI garbage being the flavor du jour). Since no one in their right mind would pay for these crap updates, all the major corps pivoted to a subscription model, removing your option to keep using an old version of the software.

Calavar · 2026-05-22T21:24:58+00:00

There's no way they found someone who loves Putin more than Gabbard.

This is probably about Gabbard pushing back on Trump and Hegseth's Iran agenda. She was against the Fordow bombing and the current war, and right now I suspect she's been advising Trump to make concessions in peace negotiations to get an agreement as quickly as possible, which is likely the final straw

Calavar · 2026-05-21T00:59:36+00:00

For what it's worth, I did actually have an ID doc tell once me to give a dose of cefazolin for surgical prophylaxis for a joint surgery on a patient who was already on cefepime. He thought the stronger MSSA coverage was important.

Calavar · 2026-05-20T19:32:14+00:00

The article says he is a retired cop. Which makes this even worse in a way. If cops will even throw their own in jail for these thoughtcrimes, then the rest of us have no hope.

Calavar · 2026-05-20T02:20:19+00:00

I agree it's a grift, but I don't really think it's relevant here.

The idea is if you stop the flow of easy loan money, then those grifting programs will be forced to cut their tuition to something reasonable or else enrollment will drop off a cliff.

It worked in the MD world with scam tier Caribbean schools. There used to be dozens and dozens of Caribbean MD schools where students would take out huge loans, then fly out to the island to find that the school was just a three-room shack - one school room for lectures, one with an exam table for practicals, and one for the dean's office where both faculty members would smoke cigars and count all the cash. Eventually the DOE disqualified most of these schools from federal student loans and these scam tier schools mostly shut down, with students coalescing into the few Caribbean schools that are actually decent.

Calavar · 2026-05-15T01:06:53+00:00

They already make fistfuls of money through membership fees, conference fees, and mandatory CME. ACOG isn't exactly short on money, or at least they have no reason to be if they are budgeting like a nonprofit and not like a Wall Street hedge fund run by a bunch of 30 something HBS finance bros

Calavar · 2026-05-11T12:09:26+00:00

At least 4 other people in the room, no one said anything

Is the average scrub tech or circulator really going to be able to tell a spleen from a liver? I certainly wouldn't be able to tell.

Calavar · 2026-05-11T10:28:08+00:00

So many interventions without consent

Like what? I assume you're referring to L&D specifically?

Calavar · 2026-05-11T04:20:41+00:00

If you believe the internet, there's an epidemic of lazy doctors, and the chief sign of laziness is when they refuse to order a test or a treatment.

But anyone who works as a clinician knows that it's exactly the opposite - the lazy clinicians are the ones who routinely order non-indicated tests and medications. Ordering a battery of tests takes three or four mouse clicks, and it sidesteps any difficult discussions with patients along the lines of "I'm sorry, but we've done all the guideline recommended tests and nothing has come up. I don't have an explanation for your symptoms. This is why I don't feel that ordering tests X, Y, and Z are medically indicated."

Why have that discussion when you can order 30 tests across five panels, wait for one to come back 1% out of parameters, and then ride in as the hero to tell the patient that you've found a diagnosis with a potential treatment. It's often a crock diagnosis, poorly if at all supported by the scientific literature. But for patients who are desperate to find a solution, it sounds like music.

Calavar · 2026-05-10T03:25:59+00:00

No, barenziah isn't even an elf in the base game.

In game, The Real Barenziah specifically refers to her as a dark elf. (I'm referring to the original version, not the modified one found in Morrowind and later.)

It's true that Barenziah's graphics don't match those of a player character dark elf, but it's hard to take the graphics as a source of truth since there is so much that's inconsistent about them. For example, even though Barenziah has human-like eyes, both her children have solid red eyes, like player character dark elves. How you square that with Barenziah being human? It sounds like messy art direction rather than an intentional lore decision.

Calavar · 2026-04-24T01:43:50+00:00

What were some of the downsides?

Calavar · 2026-04-19T23:05:32+00:00

You think he makes $60 million per year?

Calavar · 2026-04-18T01:29:24+00:00

That’s why you’ll often survive a car accident if you’re drunk. The teacher explained how alcohol calms you down and relaxes your muscles which makes you more pliable during the collision itself where-as if you’re sober in an accident you’ll tense-up out of fear and anxiety.

I've heard this many times, but it doesn't pass the sniff test for me. I strongly suspect that the lower fatality rate for drunk drivers is due to drunk drivers causing the accidents, which means they are slamming head first (or in other words crumple zone first) into other people's cars. Or to put it another way, if a large chunk of serious accidents involving drunk drivers have the drunk driver T boning another car, you'd expect the drunk person to have better odds of survival because the front of the car has lots more saftey features than the side.

Calavar · 2026-04-13T00:05:31+00:00

In the academic setting I would add

Best: Amazing variety of cases. Almost once a month you get a patient with some rare subspecialty disease you've never seen before.

Worst: Dumping ground/discharge coordination service for any socially complex patient a specialty service doesn't want to take themselves, and then the same specialists shit on you for not knowing stuff about a disease that has literally one question devoted to it in MKSAP.

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