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It’s bad enough that Republicans believe poor Americans should be allowed to die without health care. But if you ever need a hospital, whether or not you have insurance, this could kill you, too. “ That’s because each node of the system is interdependent. If the   190 rural hospitals estimated   in a recent Center for American Progress report as collateral damage of the Republican cuts close, all of their patients must find treatment at the remaining health care providers. Many of these new-arrival patients are likely to be uninsured (many thrown off Medicaid or Obamacare by Republicans), crushing hospital finances and potentially adding more closures on top. “This means overcrowded hospitals and overburdened staff, in addition to the serious hardships for patients traveling long distances for care. “The Republican Senate budget accelerates the rural hospital collapse that is under way, like jet fuel on a fire,” said Alex Lawson of Social Security Works, who works directly on ...

  Here’s the headline in the Boston Globe: “ Medicare and Social Security go-broke dates pushed up due to rising health care costs, new SSA law”   Read further and you find this: “ The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.   “Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.”   *snip* “ Once the fund’s reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients’ hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.” So “broke” doesn’t really m...

In its latest attack on Iran, Israel has resorted to bombing and assassination to convince Iran to capitulate on its nuclear program*. What’s the track record of success for bombing and assassination campaigns? Bombing “ Unless an enemy army takes Tehran, as the US military took Baghdad in 2003, this four-branch government cannot be gotten rid of by a foreign power. Bombing the capital won’t do the trick.”   *snip*   “The US bombed Vietnam for a decade and still lost the war, despite having 500,000 troops on the ground. The US bombed Afghanistan for twenty years and still lost the war despite at some points having 100,000 troops on the ground. Air power alone would have produced even less impressive results.   “So even if President Donald J. Trump takes the unwise step of joining Israel in its bombing campaign, it is difficult to see what military victories that might bring.   “Iran is a Shiite country with a strong devotion to martyrs, and martyring Shiites will not...

I’m a frequent user of what passes for AI on Google. I used to just Google key words, but now I’ll Google questions. Google AI answers those questions. Usually, they’re simple questions like “When did ___ happen?” or “How old is ___?” For anything esoteric that I care about, I can follow up with my own search. So far, I’ve only caught Google AI in one mistake. But thanks to internet pollution caused by ChatGPT, that could change: “The rapid rise of ChatGPT — and the cavalcade of competitors' generative models that followed suit — has polluted the internet with so much useless slop that it's already kneecapping the development of future AI models. “As the AI-generated data clouds the human creations that these models are so heavily dependent on amalgamating, it becomes inevitable that a greater share of what these so-called intelligences learn from and imitate is itself an ersatz AI creation.  “Repeat this process enough, and AI development begins to resemble a maximalist game o...

Trump valorizes loyalty over competence. For Trump, flattery is evidence of loyalty: “ Trump’s FAA Nominee Lied About Having a ‘Commercial’ Pilot License “Bryan Bedford, CEO of Republic Airlines, falsely claimed to be licensed to fly commercial aircraft on the company's website for more than a decade.”   Color me unsurprised.   https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-faa-nominee-lied-commercial-pilot-license-1235365087/  

Though it feels weird to say it, RFK Jr and I agree on something: curtailing direct-to-consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals. “ The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.   Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.   “The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to d...