I don’t think the problem is that the government “wasn’t the best ever,” I think it’s that it hasn’t changed. And the US hasn’t done a lot to enforce some of the groundwork beliefs of the framers.

I still think the idea and balance of power of the US government is one of the best—but it was created to change with the times and address practical flaws (amendments) and hasn’t.

Yeah, so the decision is actually counter to the evidence.

I’m so sick and god damned tired of corporations and governments making sweeping decisions with no evidence base to back them up. I work in a field where there is no option for remote work, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point that most non-service industries can be just as effective via remote options. All of this is just about control and it’s so stupid.

Agree. It was fun to hear. The bit around 37 mins about what it’s like being dead was fun

Mostly tech items like TV’s, but I saw it with some furniture, too.

I just worry that UBI won’t do enough to redistribute wealth without concomitant systematic change. I honestly think those in economic power probably need a good degree of is stripped away for society to really move on and heal from rampant, unchecked capitalism.

You can set the prices if they are well known at a federal level—look at the number of disparate vendors who charged exactly the price of a stimulus check for goods when they were being given in 2020.

So true

Most posters are talking about what natural disasters they experience and less about preparedness, so I’m going to take the preparedness angle:

1. We have a go bag with medical supplies, very basic survival equipment, and non-perishable food.
2. We have enough non-perishable food at home for my wife and I for about 3 months
3. We have enough water for a week, and lifestraws to use local water supplies after that.
4. We have basic survival things like hand crank chargers/radios, solar batteries, thermal blankets, etc.
5. In the case of man made disaster (nuclear war) we have iodine pills.

My take on survival stuff is to be prepared but not be a prepper. Some folks take this way too far. I feel everyone who builds a bunker and has a years worth of food is going to have someone fall flat on their house and it won’t matter anyway. That being said, I want to have enough to comfortably survive a week-month, and then after that things would be so fucked that all bets are off anyway.

The sad thing about UBI in places like the US is they further systematic change needs to happen prior to UBI being implemented.

If you have UBI added on to our current capitalist hellscape (since UBI rates will be publicly known) landlords and corporations will just hike prices to make life cost just as much as UBI—therefore forcing people to work for any scrap above that. So essentially UBI will be fed back into corporations/the elite, who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities.

Lots of the sub comments addressed this well, but I see no reason this couldn’t be the case with Crohn’s as well—maybe even more so than Lupus given the gut brain axis and microbiome effects. Likely there are a lot of different undiscovered pathways and molecular variants involved.

Random side comment (and this is completely anecdotal) but I’ve diagnosed more new onset Crohn’s and UC since COVID than I had in my entire career previous to COVID. It makes me think there may be a component of COVID that’s similar enough to GI mucosa to cause autoimmune effects afterwards. Just need to wait to see the studies and incidence down the line.

Yes—IBS is a good example of something that’s likely a constellation of different disorders (aka why it’s a “Syndrome”). There’s some promising preliminary data that a lot of IBS may actually relate back to the insecticides that are used on commercial crops (hence one of the reasons why people get relief from going “gluten free”—it may have less to do with the gluten and more to do with the chemicals on the wheat itself). Stay tuned for more.

I may not be answering this right, but the classification of autoimmune diseases—it’s likely a lot more complex than rheumatology would have you think.

Take Lupus for example. Yes, there are bio markers that tend to be positive in cases of Lupus. However, there are varying degrees of positivity and a massive realm of variant symptoms. Prior to use of molecular assays in medicine we grouped these “somewhat similar” presentations into a single disease entity (lupus), but in reality it likely represents a cluster of similar diseases that are slightly different ways of the body attacking itself. The same is likely true to many other “vague” autoimmune diseases. It’s also true for the crossover between neurology and psychiatry. For example, based off of modern imaging we can tell that schizophrenia has an obvious organic root (massive brain structural changes), and this means it would probably be best owned by neurology like other neurodegenerative disease. Despite this, it is still owned by psychiatry and viewed by many (including some professionals) as a “chemical imbalance.” Schizophrenia is no more a dopamine excess than Parkinson’s is a dopamine lack—and we very much treat Parkinson’s as a neurodegenerative disease, not a psychiatric one. This difference is obviously due in part as much to historical classification as it is to the health equity problems surrounding schizophrenia patients.

Also mid-30s, and it took us this long.

We are going to give it a shot, but no way are we going into debt over it. If we can’t get pregnant at this age with minor medical intervention then we are going to adopt. I have colleagues who have spent >$100K on multiple rounds of IVF. I honestly think that’s insanity for the sake of having generic children. My genes aren’t that important.

Refusing to be admitted to the hospital despite life threatening illnesses. Or trying to talk family members out of treatment/being admitted.

Happens all of the time. You have no idea. And the worst part is that the system doesn’t have your back—it’s roughly a 200% increased chance of being sued and losing by a patient who leaves AMA and experiences a bad outcome. So you generally spend a significant amount of time trying to convince someone to stay and that you want to help them while they spit and cuss at you.

Wedding and engagement ring ARE WHAT?!? $35,000!!

The breakdown betrays how the folks who calculate the American dream are out of touch—many of my generational peers would never spend that much on a ring/wedding.

Yeah, for me it’s more like I somehow ended up working in the right environment that curtails with my ADHD (the ER). In this realm the task switching and hyperfocus actually makes me more efficient than a lot of other folks, but I would be absolutely trash working in a different area.

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