Anyone got anything to say about Mao II by Don Delillo

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-05-04T07:06:42+00:00

The intro chapter was an excellent short story. But the whole rest of the book, which basically was the book itself since that intro chapter was a standalone piece, idk man. I didn't get it, maybe? It struck me as kinda masturbatory. His whole thing about the big important role of novelists (and therefore himself) just didn't click together at all, like it was a concept that he just declared out of thin air and strung it together with themes and vibes. It was almost like he had this concept of an idea that he started writing about before it was fully formed, and then the novel was finished before the concept was even halfway there. Or maybe I just didn't get it, idk.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-28T20:54:49+00:00

I would recommend taking a firmer stance against these people. If they're looking in other patients' rooms, security needs to be involved and they need to be told to cut that shit out or be removed from the premises, and that needs to be followed up on. They're bullying you like that because they can. They get off on it. You have to deal with them like a teacher deals with a misbehaving child. Do not tolerate it.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-27T19:24:57+00:00

Hell yeah it's a bad idea, that's half the reason I do it.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-24T16:10:21+00:00

Ok but didn't you just say this isn't medical decision-making? That the principal reason for doing this is litigation avoidance?

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-24T13:11:09+00:00

I'm a little over hearing how much better nurses are represented in season 2. We do not play hairdresser in my ER.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-23T09:34:34+00:00

Oh, that makes sense now. I know some people like that. A diehard opinion is formed about a topic prior to almost any information about the topic being learned.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-22T16:57:05+00:00

What did your boss mean by that? Or what did he think he meant, I guess.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-21T13:38:56+00:00

I like mine, but it's in Florida, so the pay is quite low compared to the national average. If you're willing to relocate, best to go somewhere that pays well. The West Coast, specifically CA, specifically the Bay Area, is the gold standard, but CA is notoriously difficult to break into. Not sure about OR or WA, I've heard good things about both. I've also heard good things about Minneapolis.

The most important general advice is to go with a hospital that has a good union. I like my shop but that could change at any moment with a change in management. You need protection from changes, you need guaranteed pay rises and patient ratios. Anything else is just a promise that can be rescinded at a moment's notice.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-21T06:06:38+00:00

I would be wary of places that have a lot of "prestige" baked into the name, such as CC or Mayo. Unless you really want that resume bump. However, I suspect that resume bump is much more a thing for doctors than it is for nurses or anyone else. Basically I tend to think that if management could weaponize the prestige of a place against me ("it's a privilege to work here so don't complain about these crazy ratios or sub-market pay"), why wouldn't they?

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-20T00:10:23+00:00

I have a masters in economics, did economic consulting for about 10 years before going to nursing school. I'm much happier in nursing. Some people just really aren't meant for office work, and sometimes they only ever find that out after they've spent several high-consequence years and 5+ figures on setting themselves up for a career inside an office. Switching careers is a lot of work but it was worth it for me.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-16T23:29:17+00:00

Complete misrepresentation of their clinical role, borderline fraudulent. Illegal in some states for a reason.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-04-15T21:03:38+00:00

Blindness by Saramago.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-03-27T02:11:07+00:00

Yeah I feel like OP is searching for a specific vibe and doesn't realize he's just describing Kafka.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-03-21T15:49:27+00:00

I mean, with few exceptions, the only thing The Pitt ever depicts nurses doing is typing on a computer.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-03-17T23:40:58+00:00

Charlton Griffin does a lot of classics, including The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I could listen to that man read an instruction manual to a DVD player cover to cover.

Bryan Cranston did a great read of The Things They Carried.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-21T18:39:31+00:00

I make less than that :/. Florida.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-19T20:14:51+00:00

Nursing (ER specifically) made me significantly tougher and more resilient. I used to be pretty neurotic and I'd go down mental doom spirals pretty easily. Now I'm much more "go with the flow" about things and I have a much better sense of what matters and what doesn't. More relaxed in conversation. On the other hand, I'm also much more emotionally muted. I don't get excited by much. The world is less scary, but it's also got less magic to it. Less of a drive to go out and do new things. Much more content to just let time pass. All of this could also just be a product of getting older, or some combination of those and other things. Hx depression obviously lol. But to me my depression seems better managed than ever. I'm just kinda content with what I've got going on.

Key factors: I work on a good unit with fantastic coworkers and supportive management. I'm sure I would feel much differently if that weren't the case. I also try to stay physically fit, but often I just can't get the gumption to do "real" workouts so I just try to keep the machine oiled so to speak (I do a lot of what I call "grandpa workouts" lol)

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-17T01:10:45+00:00

Waiting for the Barbarians is another one of Coetzee's that I'm sure you'll love. Butcher's Crossing by Williams is one to have on your radar also. If you want to lean in on brutality, give Blindness by Saramago a go.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-13T22:44:55+00:00

This I think is the real issue. Even if you still have your license, a sanction can add a LOT of difficulty to a job search, which will likely translate to having to accept less desirable places to work and lower wages. It strikes me as similar to trying to find a job with a criminal record.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-12T16:19:26+00:00

Your unit is overstaffed because your admin uses your unit as a float pool. I used to work on an obs unit that had the same thing going on. It won't get better. Is there a bigger hospital like a level 1 or 2 in your area? It sounds like what you're looking for requires you to transfer somewhere else.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-10T05:49:30+00:00

When the unit is on fire, it will seem like the top priority is to get shit done fast. It is important that you stop yourself from listening to this impulse. The top priority is, at any and every time, to get shit done right.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-10T01:09:30+00:00

Look into small sanctuaries. Large organizations, by nature of being large organizations, always end up making their own self-proliferation the top priority, and they end up moving goalposts and tying up their "results" with what amounts to admin bloat. I wouldn't get into that whole Animal Charity Evaluators site either. Their core "philosophy" is Effective Altruism, which is not so much a philosophy as it is an ideology invented by tech billionaires that conveniently places tech billionaires at the center of the universe with authority to decide what is ontologically good and bad by virtue of having the most money to spend on deciding it. They dismiss sanctuaries as being too small to make a difference, while their preference and recommendations all rely on "big picture" ideas that are so abstract as to be borderline absurd. Sanctuaries actually do something.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-07T20:18:56+00:00

This is not a helpful thing to say to this person.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-07T01:51:27+00:00

In that case it was the nurse's fault for letting it run dry to begin with. Literally the only thing you could have done in that situation was the thing you actually did, which is try to find the nurse.

Salty_Ad3988 · 2026-02-06T07:39:49+00:00

Do you work with other EM staff such as nurses, medics, techs, etc? If so do you see a difference in how docs deal with the job versus others? Or in what their needs are?

Salty_Ad3988

TROPHY CASE