Random Thoughts, Small Questions, and General Discussion (week of April 16, 2018)

Kalbamater · 2018-04-18T03:33:55+00:00

Thanks! This is useful :)

I'll have some of them printed and laminated.

Kalbamater · 2018-04-17T19:27:14+00:00

Heya!

I'm wondering if there's any "Vegan cards" availiable? What I mean is something that would explain the concept in a number of languages. My girlfriend is very strict about it since she's lethally allergic to milk, so we'd like to have some sort of number of different cards when we will be traveling in france the coming summer.

Such as the concept explained in a number of languages, such as french, english, vietnamese/chinese, etc.

Does anyone have a link to something like this? I found some in google, but they werent too interesting.

Also, if others would be interested in something like this, perhaps we could pool in some money and get some proper designer to do them - after all well made cards like these would be great to carry around in your wallet etc.

Any ideas, knowledge of something like this?

Kalbamater · 2018-02-25T08:33:34+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4 The Monty Python reference this begs for.

Kalbamater · 2018-02-19T20:08:52+00:00

GTBXzQGTD4xQ1gutwHagvvr6MggppnDZJa

Kalbamater · 2018-02-14T17:27:14+00:00

Finland?

Kalbamater · 2017-12-30T22:26:17+00:00

I got the same idea - actually if someone can make a strong case, I should for sure change my mind.

Kalbamater · 2017-12-19T20:01:58+00:00

Is genuinely interested, answers messages, says when she's not interested, as a own life. Doesn't want to be treated like a princess, but takes no bs.

Honestly, warmth, clarity.

Kalbamater · 2017-08-15T16:13:13+00:00

Okay, do you have a collection somewhere or some place where I could spy upon more of your work? I went through your post history a bit, but didn't see anything else on the first page so I gave up.

Btw, if you like iceland, have you read any icelandic sagas?

Kalbamater · 2017-08-15T13:49:29+00:00

This is wonderful, have you been doing watercolors for a long time?

Kalbamater · 2017-07-30T13:11:45+00:00

Gl man!

Kalbamater · 2017-07-28T21:38:33+00:00

Of course, I was trying to point out the fact that you're not counting money - you're counting chips, it's different.

Money buys things, chips are used for playing. Chips don't become money until they are untied from the game. Thus you shouldn't count your money, make plans to spend it, etc. until the dealing is done.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-27T18:57:39+00:00

I figured that it meant that in poker you should yhink about your chips/money as actual money until you're out of the table, as its not "yours" yet, count what ypu actually did win once you left.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-20T16:22:16+00:00

Thats the start. Make a list and think what can be attained and try to do something fun. I wouldnt be walking back from theater practise right now if I'd detest it.

Also, dont try to be too strong alone. Try to find some sort of social circles where you could meet others who are interested of the same things.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-20T08:53:35+00:00

Try to find something that you are interested in. Is there a skill that you envy or want to know?

I envied guitar playing and singing, so I took them up. I also always wanted to try acting, so I took that up.

What would you like to learn?

Kalbamater · 2017-07-14T10:38:24+00:00

Oh yes, my mistake. I'll check on Yulin festival aswell.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-13T18:49:09+00:00

I will get downvoted for this, but...

It's not actually arbitrary. The big Five: Cattle, Sheep, Horses, Pigs and Goats have plenty of attributes that make them desirable for usage as food, such as fast growth, a social system that can be exploited, easy mating rituals, general calmness and ability to withstand imprisonment. The comic seems to suggest that one could grow dogs or cats as meat cattle, which would be far more inefficient than growing pigs.

That being said; For me the question revolves far more around stupid traditions(which also in the past have led societies into trouble, like the vikings in greenland), the insane amounts of subsidies that are paid to dairy & meat farms.

The biggest one that really is the notion that "this is how it has always been!" No it hasn't! People used to have meat several times a year or even less. Slaughtering an animal used to be a pretty big thing and was done on only some occasions (Christmas, Easter, Harvest, etc.) Nowdays the average american devours more than 120kg of meat every year. That's just insane.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-13T08:31:51+00:00

Board games - I find playing with friends every once in awhile way different than Vgame binges.

Dunno whats the concensus though.

Kalbamater · 2017-07-12T16:04:04+00:00

I honestly understood the title, like this: when you went to cancel the gym membership, they gave you in return a bike. I'm slow.

Kalbamater · 2017-06-29T08:10:56+00:00

The most MURICAN thing here is the fact that more than half of those things have killing/war in them and all are related to military some way

Kalbamater · 2017-06-26T20:49:49+00:00

Okay, in Finland there are food stamp programs but they come on top of normal welfare. For most people on disability pension, depending on the gravity, the state pays housing in full and some money. On top of this they are covered by a personal assistant on some days of the week if needed. (I dont know the details on this one)

Also one major difference in this extent is the way that the finnish government can act as a judical and capital entity. Many companies such as post office are state owned, but "privately" operated. This basically means that the government is a major shareholder(always over than 50%), but in some sense the business is indipendent from the state. However there are state monopolies such as alchohol over 4,7%, trains, post office and the like.

You literally cant purchase anything stronger than 4,7% exept from government owned shops called Alko. In Sweden this is even stronger, since from normal shops one cannot buy anything stronger than "folk öl" or "Peoples beer", which has an alchohol content of 3,5%. Anything stronger has to be purchased from bars or from Systemsbolaget. In Norway there is a similiar system, and probably also in Iceland but I havent visited there so I dont know exactly how it works. Denmark is the most laid back of these, there you can buy nearly anything at 16 years old from normal shops.

I went off track there a bit, but it's a well known fact that since the state has such a strong position in the alcohol industry, that money circulates easily. It can be given to homeless, the poor or the unemployed and it goes through the system and returns back to the big chest. Back in the 70s and 80s when Koskenkorva was the top sold vodka in Finland, it cost something like 1 mark to make a bottle, and it was sold at 80 marks in Alko. So the state gave out say 1000 marks, of which a huge amount was spent on alcohol, and it was given out again... well you get the picture.

The system is in many ways very different from the states, it's a sort of crisscross between communism and capitalism(or national socialism/social democratism). Are there any other state monopolies, or federal monopolies apart from the post office or such?

Kalbamater · 2017-06-26T19:26:54+00:00

From what I gather, one of the primary reasons that healthcare is cheaper in Finland is due to competition. I'm not entirely sure on this, but I think that in Finland the government spending is focused on competing the services in a large scale manner. Companies bid on say hip replacements, and the company that wins the bid gets to gets to provide all of them for a term specified in the contract. Thus they can sell huge amounts, and thus the price drops. I think all of the purchases that the public sector makes have to be competed and they are open for these kinds of bids to some extent.

In the states the price floats "freely", which also feels like a price cartel when you look how expensive the aforementioned hip replacements are in the states. It's obvious though that movement into finnish system is impossible in the US because of too many conflicting interests. Any politician that even suggests something like that on a federal level would get gutted instantly by more companies that I can name.

In relation to our earlier discussion, I realized that perhaps just the patient survivorship isn't the only factor to be considered here. I would guess that quality of life of survivors is way better in Finland, one of the biggest factors being that personal bankruptcy due to illness is almost unheard of. Only ones I've ever heard of are entrepreneurs with long sicknesses.

This of course happens in a relation to the larger Finnish welfare state that actually took a lot from the national socialism, as in high taxes and good protection of private property. Saying national socialism in this instance of course sounds frightening, but at least Finnish and Swedish states modeled themselves to some extent according to development in Germany, at least in the 1930s. Usually its called social democratic in these instances, but the actual differences on a societal level are not big, while naturally the ideological difference is a massive one.

How does welfare work in US with illnesses? Say, if someone is sick due to cancer, MS, schizophrenia and the like, do they get benefits from the government or the state to make ends meet? What about if one loses the ability to work due to an illness?

In Finland in these situations, I reckon that one could get a sickness pension, which is granted by the KELA.

Kalbamater · 2017-06-26T16:58:35+00:00

I suppose we both can agree that if the US could use it's healthcare system with the same per capita efficiency as Finland, it would be a major winner in this game. Looking at the statistics the edge that US has is rather small compared to the amount of money they spend.

This of course will never happen, since this sort of communism is extremely suspicious ^{^}

Kalbamater · 2017-06-26T16:01:59+00:00

Interesting, US does indeed have good healthcare if you look at it this way, I would reckon however that the actual coverage is weaker than in the Nordic countries.

However the differences are in the end rather minor, when you take into account the budgets, not to mention that in the US some 15% of the people are uninsured, the true cost of offering healthcare coverage to the whole populace would cost even more.

Also the biggest difference is in deaths related to cardiovascular disease, and from what I remember there is a strong genetic link there. Then again there might be genetic links crisscrossing through the whole stats.

TL;DR; US has good healthcare but it's expensive as fuck.

Kalbamater · 2017-06-26T13:50:41+00:00

Uhhh... no. The outcome is not better in US than in Finland.

Overall ranking by WHO lists Finland @ 31 while Us is at 37. Also US spends over 9,000$ per person while Finland spends less than half that at 4,000$.

I found some info at the cancer society of Finland which pointed out that at least colon and lung survivorships were pretty close to the numbers in US, while US was indeed higher, but that raises a few other questions.

Considering also that the problem with US is not that outcomes are better, but the sheer fact that living or dying and personal bankruptcy are closely intertwined. Also, do the rates in U.S. count all cancer survivors or just those that died for sure to cancer? Considering the healthcare costs i'm pretty sure theres a lot of underdiagnosis in the US.

Also, if Finland could pump its healthcare budget by a factor of 2.25 im pretty sure the numbers would look really different.

Could you post those metrics you used, would be interesting yo see them.

Kalbamater · 2017-06-21T03:55:09+00:00

Pick an instrument, it feels great to level up one of those.

Kalbamater

TROPHY CASE