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jimmy1 commented on How much can forests fight climate change?   nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/ramraj07
lovemenot · 7 years ago
For the sake of argument, even if what you say is 100% applicable, and every single person expressing concern about overpopulation is just focused on their own lifestyle, it shouldn't make any difference.

Overpopulation is something that, if real, will have an impact regardless of the motivation for people's concern. It's not purely a social construct like say the wearing of tattoos.

It's lazy to dismiss such serious concerns with appeals to hypocrisy. Even if 100% of the people making such claims now are actually hypocrites, your voice could improve the ratio to only 99.9999%

jimmy1 · 7 years ago
If you were really trying to engage in a thought experiment with me honestly, I don't think starting with a mischaracterization and inventing a fallacy ("appeal to hypocrisy") to tear it down is a good place to start. That also seems, to me, lazy.

> Overpopulation is something that, if real, will have an impact regardless of the motivation for people's concern

"If real", that is the key, and I am glad you pointed it out. For the sake of argument, we would first have to define why overpopulation real. It seems to me most people start off with the assumption that it is real.

Who is defining overpopulation? What is the criteria? Not enough food? Well that's not true at all, we know that the US for example wastes more food daily that could feed the entire continent of Africa with 1/3rd of a pound of food. Not enough land for people to expand to? Well even a 5 year old knows that one is false. Is it not enough natural resources? Despite the fearmongering about water and energy resources drying up, we seem to be doing just fine. Capitalists reaping the country to sell to a nation of consumers? This is the most insidious form of the argument, but again, very wrong. Plus it assumes greedy capitalists somehow wouldn't exist with 5 billion people, or 3, or 2, or even 1, that wouldn't cause some kind of destruction to natural resources. The final one is one made more by hard left academics in favor of socialism. They need an easy explanation for why socialism always sounds so great in theory and never works in practice, so they point to overpopulation. If we simply had less people, then socialism would work!. Except, as we now know, this was in part one of the rationales behind the gulags and gas chambers.

So what is the criteria? Not comfortable enough for you and me -- that seems to be the essence of the arguments left after eliminating the ones above.

Plus, even if the above were remotely true, why rule out technological solutions? Seems to me pretty crazy people on a technology focused board would rule this one out (not singling you out, "overpopulation is a problem" is an opinion expressed here often, unfortunately), especially since it was technology that has allowed us to easily achieve our current population levels at the exploding standard of living the globe is currently undergoing.

People who think overpopulation is an issue by just pointing to some things "drying up" or some places "crowding" is by definition engaging in a lazy form of argument. So to me, until there some hard facts and figures on what overpopulation means, please excuse me if I take it for a hypocritical statement, as the great Carlin said, made by bourgeois liberals that have never experienced actual hardships and live in such an advanced society they have nothing better to do than ponder the scenarios where their cushy lifestyles could be threatened.

When you don't have any actual enemies to fight, you have to invent some in your head to keep you busy.

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jimmy1 commented on Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake   theoutline.com/post/7315/... · Posted by u/aaronbrethorst
Retra · 7 years ago
I don't think people would be complaining nearly as much if they simply added the touchbar above the existing keys rather than replacing them. Or left the esc and power keys while putting the touchbar in between them. Lots of things they could have done.
jimmy1 · 7 years ago
The replacing the existing keys is a good point. I don't feel the pain of the ESC key since I remap caps lock to it, I always thought "Function" keys were relics of a bygone era, (and unergonomic to use), and the little black doodad functions just as well as a power button as any other one I have ever used.
jimmy1 commented on Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake   theoutline.com/post/7315/... · Posted by u/aaronbrethorst
nrjames · 7 years ago
I have a 2016 MBP and love the keyboard. I've never had any problems with it. That's not to dismiss people who have experienced quality issues. I don't mind the touch bar, but it's not particularly useful.
jimmy1 · 7 years ago
I'm adding onto this -- I have a 2017 edition of the MBP for work, and I have a faulty keyboard. I hated it. "The touchbar is stupid", I proclaimed.

I recently bought a 2018 edition for the wife because she has always expressed a desire of owning one of her own (my work always provided me with a mac). The keyboard is much improved.

Additionally, watching a "normal" user interact with a Mac and a touchbar, versus me, a developer was eye opening, and I suddenly realized there is a lot more to the puzzle we are so blind to. She loves it. Sure, it is an "emoji bar" when she is in iMessage, but she also loves the scrolling functionality it provides in Photos.

I still don't see much use for it personally, but I am no longer a rapid opponent of it as I once was. There's always been extra ports and features on other laptops I've used in the past, and I never seemed so critical of those as well. Maybe I bought into the mob mentality? Going back to my wife, her work provided her with a Thinkpad Yoga. It has a touch screen, and a stylus. Ok touch screens I am not the biggest fan of, but I happen to think the stylus is cool! I am sure there were many users of the previous Thinkpads at her company that were going "What!? A stupid stylus? Who needs this!" I realized I was doing the same thing with the new MBP.

Touchbar or not, it is still the most quality, aesthetically pleasing, well built laptop I use, and it still remains miles beyond any PC I ever used as well, Inspirons, XPSes, Surfaces included.

jimmy1 commented on Facebook Bans Far-Right Groups and Prominent Hate Figures   digit.fyi/facebook-far-ri... · Posted by u/digighoul
gambiting · 7 years ago
>>Are you serious? Lies are and should be protected under free speech.

Certain lies definitely shouldn't. Denying holocaust happened is illegal where I'm from and it should be.

jimmy1 · 7 years ago
That's because the US made you as part of the Marshall Plan (assuming where you are from is Germany)

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jimmy1 commented on People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly   peoplespolicyproject.org/... · Posted by u/mkane848
dwater · 7 years ago
My partner has been employed with the same large international company for 8 years. She had an elected procedure done that is required by law to be fully covered by insurance. She had 3 calls leading up to the procedure with her health insurance company each time asking them if they were certain it would be covered 100%. I thought that this was overkill but she was worried to the point of being paranoid about it. They assured her each time she would not have to pay any money at all for anything.

The procedure was in December. After the procedure she received a 6-figure bill, which she then had to follow up with hours of phone calls back and forth to the insurance company, hospital, and doctor's office. They sent her a revised bill for somewhere around $8,000, and then another revised bill for around $4,000.

The insurance company says it's because the doctor coded the procedure incorrectly. The doctor says the hospital coded it incorrectly. She has had to file an appeal with the insurance company, and the only reason it looks like it will work out is because the insurance company records all phone calls and was able to get records of her original calls before the procedure asking if it would be fully covered. She has still been told to expect that they will deny her first appeal and she'll have to appeal a second time in order to get it covered. This has been causing her immense stress for the past 4 months as she does not have enough money to pay even the $4,000 bill out of pocket.

My experience is that your experience actually is extremely uncommon in America today. Most people who have to interact with the health care system beyond annual checkups have to deal with something like this.

jimmy1 · 7 years ago
I am fortunate to have had the experience of growing up with a rabid Greek mother who would get to the bottom of any shenanigans with any sort of insurance agency, bill collector or anything. I now have my own experience. Yes the first time was stressful, but reading your story, trying to put myself in your partner's shoes this would not have ended up causing me any stress, especially if I knew the law is on my side. I certainly wouldn't paid any bill until it was all sorted out. I also have experience where a medical charge that was suppose to be covered as a legitimate procedure was not and charged off onto my credit (because again, I refused to pay). I was easily able to negotiate with the credit reporting agency to remove this negative mark on my credit. (Negative marks due to medical bills affect your credit much less than say missing a credit card payment, IIRC, I was still able to obtain credit cards, get loans, and generally had decent overall credit).

My father currently undergoing treatment for lung cancer. He has medicare and supplemental coverage through Humana. Bills are still in excess of 150,000, so I definitely understand the other side of it.

jimmy1 commented on People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly   peoplespolicyproject.org/... · Posted by u/mkane848
aNoob7000 · 7 years ago
Health insurance in the United States is a shit show. The Medicare for all that Bernie is proposing is a reaction to the inability of Congress to meaningfully fix the issue.

I personally would prefer a market based approach to fixing the issues with obtaining medical care, but Congress can't do anything because there's just too much money and influence involved.

jimmy1 · 7 years ago
I don't mean this to be snarky, but if what you are saying is true (Congress can't do anything), why do you think the governmental disfunction will not carry over to an expanded medicare-for-all program? Medicare is not without issue and is wrought with fraud that needs decisive congressional action to help fix, yet they have shown inability there as well.
jimmy1 commented on People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly   peoplespolicyproject.org/... · Posted by u/mkane848
helen___keller · 7 years ago
The point of health insurance is to pay into a risk pool as a collective so that the small percentage of people who end up needing the largest percentage of health care, nobody dies or goes into monumental debt. This can be done via taxes but insurance is a private market solution which should in theory make it more efficient for the sake of maximizing profit.

So then if it's supposedly more efficient, why do I waste multiple hours dealing with insurance bullshit literally every few months?

Start a new job at a startup, need to go to trainings to understand the health care options and choose one, get new cards and website logins, update my info at every provider

New dentist is having difficulty getting my routine care billed to insurance and calls me every week asking for my insurance information again.

Wifes doctor didn't do something correctly when I updated insurance so now I need to call and deal with this big medical bill that I shouldn't have gotten.

Startup got acquired so I get another training for the new insurance options. And get new cards and logins and update with all providers again

Planning to get a surgical operation but nobody can tell me how much it will cost, doctor says "probably whatever your deductible is" except I have a high deductible plan so is it really going to cost me $2500?

Etc cetera. There's no end to the nuisance. If I could choose to just pay more in taxes (hell I'll pay way more than my current premiums) and never deal with insurance again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

jimmy1 · 7 years ago
I think your phenomena might be due to startups? Obviously this is a startup focused board so I am not saying this to mean go one way or another, but I ditched the startup, job hopping life a little while ago, and had to deal with "insurance bs" roughly two times in 7 years.

I am either the luckiest person alive, or maybe there is additional benefits not obviously well represented here to working for a stable, revenue producing organization, but I don't seem to encounter what seems to be the well-represented insurance pains documented here (probably a little bit of both, in my guess).

u/jimmy1

KarmaCake day1377February 12, 2018
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