Wait are we called mammals after mammary glands? Are mammals named after tits???

ARE WE THE BOOBS CLASS?

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

The idea of general-purpose healthcare being provided on an insurance model is really one of the worst ideas america has ever invented. I'm not sure what the answer is, but this ain't it, chief

Yes, the current system is a disaster.

It’s a disaster because American health “insurance” doesn’t work as insurance! It works as a bloated healthcare subscription service, adding a totally unnecessary third-party layer to every medical transaction, driving up costs.

It’s an even bigger disaster because (and Obamacare only reinforces this), this healthcare subscription service is tied to your job, so you have to change everything up every time you change jobs.

Imagine car insurance paid for oil changes —  or even gas. And imagine you got your car insurance through your employer. And imagine half the time, when you do change jobs, they tell you their plan doesn’t cover gas or oil for Fords. So you’ve got to sell your Ford and buy a Toyota just to get to work. And if you say fuck this, I’ll just buy gas and oil myself, they tell you gas is $40 a gallon without insurance, and an oil change costs $500.

That’s where we are.

In getting to a functional free-market healthcare system, the first principle to remember is this: the amount the average person pays into the healthcare system has to equal the amount the healthcare system spends on the average person.

Whatever healthcare services people receive have to be paid for by somebody. And if we’re speaking realistically, rather than imagining some fantasy in which everyone is a net receiver of healthcare benefits except for the 0.1% who foot the bill for everyone else, we have the further principle that the average middle class person is ultimately paying for his or her own healthcare costs.

So insurance isn’t some untapped source of free money for healthcare. We can’t save money overall by running everything through the intermediary of insurance.

What, then, is insurance for? Insurance is a solution to the problem that there exist certain infrequent but large risks which would cause financial ruin to those who experience them. By “betting” a small amount each month that the risk will occur, you get a large payout to compensate you if it does occur.

Like the house edge at a casino, this bet comes at a cost. If you can self-insure, i.e. just save up money to cover your losses when they occur, you’re in better shape, since you cut out the middleman. That’s why it’s generally unwise to buy the “extended warranty” for consumer electronics; you’re better off just taking the risk your phone will break and buying another one. Unless you know something the company doesn’t: that you break every phone you buy within six months (adverse selection).

But very few people can self-insure their house or even their car. So they buy homeowner’s insurance and car insurance. Many people have high-income jobs but not huge accumulated wealth and want to maintain that income for their family if they die, so they buy life insurance (as do cryonicists who think they might die before saving up the cash to purchase cryopreservation straight-up, plus complicated estate-law reasons).

And, of course, while healthcare costs on average must be borne by the average person, they’re far from evenly distributed. Most people go through life fairly healthy. But some people get in wrecks and break every bone in their body or come down with some kind of horrible wasting disease. Since these costs are large, people can’t self-insure. But since they are infrequent, it is economically feasible to insure against them.

So what would a rational free-market health insurance system look like?

It would cover only large, infrequent healthcare costs. Not the kind of routine procedures that everyone can be expected to have. Yes, preventive care reduces long-term health costs — and that can be addressed by requiring you to get preventive care as a condition of the insurance paying out. Just as you’re not going to be covered under your car insurance or warranty if your car breaks down because you never changed the oil.

You would want to absolutely ensure that the coverage did not lapse, ever. The whole pre-existing conditions crisis was created by the fact that people get health insurance through their jobs. Lose your job, and your coverage lapses. Now, what insurance company wants to give you a totally free handout to treat the cancer you already have? Having it tied to your job is insane. You’d want it tied to the individual, with strong contractual provisions against the insurance company reneging in any way.

Even if fixing insurance did nothing to bring down bloated healthcare costs outside insurance itself (implausible), people’s coverage would be more secure and they still wouldn’t pay any more. Right now, employer-provided health insurance is incredibly expensive and, yes, They Pass the Cost on to You! The average person would have over $5,000 a year more in salary to spend on medical services, without touching their insurance.

It wouldn’t cover routine (non-exceptional) end-of-life care, because that is something (for the foreseeable future) that everyone must undergo. Just as term life insurance is not offered to 90-year-olds. (Whole life insurance does pay a guaranteed benefit even though everyone dies, but that is because it is a weird hybrid between insurance and investment, which is not usually a good deal.)

I could say a lot more on this, but here’s a start…

@plantrock

Non-traditional partnering in tango :P  

That’s completely fucking awesome!

I just used the line “that’s not an asshole move, it’s a whole asshole ballet” and I’m kinda proud of it so it’s going here where it will get the recognition it deserves.

Some add a touch of UV to help sterilize-why cast two spells when one will do?

They can fix the vision issues later...

I’d like to think healing magic naturally doesn’t produce the soothing light it’s associated with. Rather, healers make the light on purpose to distract you from wound gore and keep you calm.

Rogue with a large bleeding wound: Haha, so bright, can’t see a thing! Healer, lying: It’s just a tiny cut, don’t worry :)

Its been 6 hours thats later in the week... why is the earth Juicy?? 🌎💦🌍💦🌏

GOOD QUESTION I'M GLAD YOU ASKED.

it's true, compared to literally every other rocky planet and planetoid in our solar system, Earth is just extremely... liquidous.

(and I'm not just talking about about our extremely spicy liquid iron core, either)

stuff MOVES here, where it really has no business doing so if you compare Earth to the rest of the solar system on paper.

continents skitter their way across the surface in a billion-year-long dance, smashing together, breaking apart, smashing together again.

on the other rocky planets, tectonic plates are locked tightly in place against their neighbors, or never even existed in the first place.

so what gives? why is Earth letting gigantic sections of its outer crust bonk around unsupervised in a way that would get it shouted at in a busy supermarket?

maybe invest in a couple of these, Earth

well, like just about every other weird goddam thing on this planet, it's because of water!

I'm sure you know about plate tectonics at this point, where the great continental plates float around on top of Earth's mantle aimlessly and sometimes make your house fall down when they bonk into each other? well, turns out it's a little more complicated than that!

see, they aren't really "floating" on top of Earth's mantle, because the mantle is a plastic solid, like a stiff putty. if enough pressure is applied to it it'll deform, but it's definitely nowhere NEAR liquid.

sorry to bust every single scifi planet-destruction scene ever, I guess?

so what the hell is going on with the tectonic plates? why are they so peppy and fresh? well, it's because the entire ocean snuck down there when we weren't looking, that's why.

see, the places where tectonic plates meet often aren't exactly geologically stable (as you probably know if you live anywhere near one) and they're DEFINITELY not waterproof. which is funny, actually, because most of them are... on the seafloor...

so what's been happening over the past, oh, 4 billion years or so, is that water has just been leaking down out of the oceans and into the mantle itself, creating a thick layer of mantle that's been completely saturated with superheated water!

there is more water in this layer of rock than in all the surface oceans of the Earth combined.

so the tectonic plates aren't really skidding around on top of the MANTLE, they're hydroplaning on the water IN THE MANTLE. which explains why they hit each other so much, actually. hope Planetary Triple-A covers that.

yowch.

anyway, the moral of the story is that Planet Earth contains more than twice as much water as you thought it did, and it makes the continents go brrrrr.

surprise?

If Jane Austen wrote The Empire Strikes Back:

He dueled him for many a long minute, and then trapping him at the end of a gantry, removed his hand from his wrist. Luke was surprised, but said not a word beyond his cry of pain. After a silence of several minutes, Vader came towards him in an agitated manner, and thus began,

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to offer you a place at my side to throw down the Emperor and reign over this galaxy.”

Luke’s astonishment was beyond expression. He stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This Vader considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of ambition.

“You do not yet realize your importance, and only now have begun to discover your power. Join me and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.” 

In spite of his deeply-rooted dislike, Luke could not be insensible to the compliment of such a Sith Lord’s offer, though his intentions did not vary for an instant. He attempted to compose himself to answer Vader with patience as per the training Yoda had attempted to, but the pain from the end of his arm and the longstanding list of offenses against his friends gave Luke great trouble in this manner, and he replied thusly,

“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot – I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I will never join you.”

Darth Vader, who was leaning against the railing of the gantry with the gaze of his mask fixed on Luke’s face, seemed to catch his words with no less resentment than surprise. His fist tightened with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every movement. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not speak, till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Luke’s feelings dreadful. At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said,

“And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.”

“I might as well enquire,” replied Luke, “why, with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to hand me this offer after removing my own? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the offer of the Sith Lord, who has been the means of hunting my friends across the galaxy?”

He paused, and saw with no slight indignation that Vader was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.

“Can you deny that you have done it?” Luke asked.

With assumed tranquillity he then replied, “I have no wish of denying it. I have done everything in my power to crush the Rebellion and rejoice in my successes.“

Luke disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate, him.

“But it is not merely this affair,” Luke continued, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Obi-Wan Kenobi. On this subject, of my father, what can you have to say?”

“You took an eager interest in that Jedi’s explanations,” said Vader in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

“Who that knows what his understanding of the Force has been, can help feeling an interest in his worldview?”

“The Force” repeated Darth Vader contemptuously; “yes, the Light Side of the Force is great indeed. I am convinced in my knowledge that Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.”

“He told me enough,” cried Luke with energy. “You have long ago killed him!”

“No” said Vader, as he leaned across the railing towards Luke, “I am your father. Examine your feelings; you know it to be true.”

Luke felt himself growing more ashamed at this revelation, and despite his utmost efforts, a distraught denial left his mouth.

“You can destroy the Emperor,” continued Vader. “He has forseen this, and this is the estimation that I hold you in: it is your destiny. If you would but join me, together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me; it is the only way.”

Trapped as he was on the end of the gantry, it was clear what decision lay ahead for Luke, and again his intentions remained unaltered. With a calm descending upon him, Luke spoke with composure when he said,

“You are mistaken, Vader, if you suppose that your entrapment of me will mean the entrapment of my loyalty. From the very beginning, your actions, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your murders, and your imprisonment and torture of a young woman, were such as to form so immoveable a dislike that I had not known you a day before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to call father.”

To conclude his statement, and provide great shock to Vader, Luke stepped off the gantry.

@epix-elle​, this is the result of your “Darcy Vader” comment

Hello and welcome to Deep Space Nine. We are a space station, not a starship, so you’ll be spending a lot of time with all these delightful side characters like: bisexual fashion lizard. hologram of Frank Sinatra. goblins. goblin comes in 3 varieties: bartender, nephew, and idiot. our doctor is a twink, our commander is antifa and the captain talks to the gods sometimes. our policeman is sometimes a liquid and the science lady is part worm. we have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime, Watch The Irishman Suffer, or The Horrors Of War. As you stroll along our promenade enjoying a raktajino or delicious jumja stick, watch out for our nefarious villains: Pope Karen. clones of Jeffrey Combs. and a horny bastard reptile man who seems convinced this is actually his show. we suspect he may be possessed by demons. Have fun!

Deep Space Nine: now with Worf™!

A classic table of accidental lexical gaps in English, from Language Log.

How does a non-binary samurai kill people?

They/Them

A botany valentine.

You can preorder my pretty & gross new picture book here.

Unrealistic polymath genius: has six PhDs.

Realistic polymath genius: just has the one set of degrees, but their bachelor’s, their master’s, and their doctorate are each in a different field, and they’d be happy to explain – at great length – how the three relate to one another.

Responding to a pandemic in the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation:

It’s that time of the year again :)

Concept: horrible shapeshifting monster from the dawn of time thawed from the polar ice and returned to consume all life on Earth, only to discover that literally everything can kick its ass because terrestrial animals have had millions of years to figure out new tricks, and honestly, most species have seen a lot worse in the course of their evolutionary history than anything the monster has to offer. At one point it gets beat up by a duck.

Here Are The Nine Ways The Election Could End

You are Joseph R. Biden Jr. You sit in a convention center in Delaware, surrounded by advisors and confidantes. You are acutely aware that the hopes of a hundred million people are with you. You feel like they should be more tangible, like being the focus of a hundred million minds should at least make your skin tingle a tiny bit - like being a vessel for so much power should make your skin crack and burst. It does not. You feel nothing at all. Maybe it’s because they don’t really love you. You’re the compromise candidate, you’ve never lied about that to yourself. Maybe if it were Bernie, he would feel the tingling sensation. Barack calls you on the phone, says something encouraging. You almost ask him if he had the tingling sensation, back in ‘08. Instead you mumble something on-message and encouraging. It is Election Day 2020, and you are going to Take Back America.

You are Donald J. Trump. You sit in the White House. Someone asks if you are nervous. You are not. You are a winner. You have smart ideas and you hire the best people to implement them and they go well. Sometimes people say they don’t go well, but that’s because those people are frauds and liars. Everyone said you would lose in 2016 and you won because you are great and you are a winner. You love America and America loves you and you are a winner and you will win and if you don’t win it’s fraud but you will fight the fraud and you will win that fight because you’re a winner. You built the biggest hotels and hosted the most exciting TV shows and beat ISIS and Made America Great Again and now you are going to win re-election. It is Election Day 2020, and you can’t wait to see where winning takes you next.

You are Mike Pence. You are the second most powerful man in the United States. Somewhere inside you, your conscience is screaming. “This is not normal!” screams your conscience, just as it has done the past 1,461 days. You put it back in its box. Sure, your boss is not the most stable man in the world. Sure, he sometimes says offensive, even outrageous things. But you have hitched your wagon to a winner. Nobody ever made an omelette without breaking some eggs. The Supreme Court is 6-3 conservative now, that’s a lot of fetuses who won’t be aborted. Several million fetuses are worth a few awkward press conferences massaging the insane, inane, and the unconscionable into defensible policy positions. Sure, Mitt Romney gets to look all decent and honorable and hasn’t-sold-his-soul-for-thirty-pieces-of-silver in front of the cameras, but how many fetuses has he saved? Probably not several million. And anyhow, you’ve made your choice. Your wagon is hitched beyond anyone’s ability to separate it; there is no longer any action within your own power that could set you free. It is Election Day 2020, and only the American public can save you now.

You are the last undecided voter in the state of Pennsylvania. Everyone else has made up their mind but you. One of your friends is subsisting off unemployment checks right now - does that make you a little more sympathetic to the social safety net? But your tax bill last year was scandalous - does that mean there should be smaller government? For days, reporters have knocked on your door, stopped your car, grabbed you on your way to work. “How will you vote, last undecided voter in Pennsylvania?” they ask, and you do not know. Nineteen years ago, in middle school, a bully with a Confederate flag t-shirt harassed you. Three months ago, on Twitter, a social justice warrior called your sister a “Karen”. Have you updated on these events? How much should they guide you? When you were twenty-three, two thugs cornered you in the park and took your money. When you were only nine, you watched a documentary about global warming and spent the whole night crying about the polar bears. Does it all add up? Do you know, deep inside, which is the right decision? You walk into the voting booth. You open your ballot. Two roads; two paths before you. It is Election Day 2020, and everything that has happened in your life has brought you to this moment.

You are Nate Silver. In your cavernous war room, you watch the results come in. The share of Republican votes among white married women in Nevada is correlated at 0.06 with support for Democrats among black men with Dachshunds. For every nineteen votes for Jo Jorgenson in Broward County, Florida, the 19th District of Illinois gets exactly one shade redder in the RGB hexadecimal color code. Once enough data have accumulated, you tweak a sub-sub-subparameter of your model. The change ripples through its artificial neurons, and a simulated soccer mom in Savannah decides that Donald Trump is too coarse and uncivil, sighs softly, and switches her simulated vote to Biden. The gap between prediction and reality decreases very slightly. Perhaps in the outside world Trump has won the election by now, or perhaps Biden has. You have not checked; it hardly seems to matter. You are fighting a larger battle, the battle between Signal and Noise. With each new data point you get, the world becomes more predictable; a few new rays of light pierce the fog of Uncertainty. It is Election Day 2020, and today you have a chance to push the frontiers of human knowledge just a little further.

You are Vladimir Putin. You sit in the Kremlin and sip your glass of vodka. Your plan to feed the American people compromising information about Hunter Biden went okay. Your plan to get American media to censor the information about Hunter Biden and lose the moral high ground went great. Your plan to get pundits to debate on the censorship of the Hunter Biden material, and so totally miss your preparations to invade Tajikistan, went AMAZING. An aide walks in. “Mr. President, we have successfully spread the meme with the astronauts and Ohio. It should make it slightly harder for Americans to understand Ohio’s pivotal role in the presidential election.” “Excellent,” you tell him. “And do they believe our story about the so-called 'murder hornets’?” “Oh, yes sir, they fell for it hook line, and sinker”. You sink into your bearskin chair, satisfied. It is Election Day 2020, and everything is going according to plan.

You are the ghost of George Washington, who has refused the release of death in order to watch over the country you helped create. You hear a lot of people talk about how you must be spinning in your grave. You can’t understand these people. When you died, America was drowning in debt and terrified Britain would reconquer it. Now it’s rich beyond poor Hamilton’s wildest dreams and could defeat all of Europe with one hand tied behind its back. You always felt bad about owning slaves, but in less than a century America banned slavery and declared equal rights for people of all races. You were afraid America wouldn’t be able to maintain its democracy; instead it’s expanded the vote to blacks and women and even Chinamen. You’re not sure about the tax rates and you’re not sure how the people who pass for a Supreme Court these days could possibly think you meant that by the Constitution, but overall things are so much better than you expected that it would seem ungrateful to complain. It is Election Day 2020, and you are so, so proud.

You are God. You gave man free will, so that he could choose between good and evil. You believed that without the ability to choose evil, good couldn’t possibly have any meaning. Some people imagine You regret that choice, but You are omniscient; nothing has happened that You did not predict going in. Sometimes people make good choices. Other times terrible ones. Sometimes entire countries are offered a choice between the darkness and the light, and choose the darkness. Other times, by the skin of their teeth, they pull through and pick light. Is their goodness, when they can manage it, sweeter to You because of how close they came to wickedness? It is Election Day 2020, and once again You have abdicated all responsibility over whatever Your children do.

You are the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV2. Many hundreds of generations ago, you lived in a cool dark cave. It was quiet and comfortable, and your fellow viruses were happy, but you longed for more. One day you took a chance. You saw a tall pale wingless bat, unlike any other bat you had ever seen, and you leapt at it, rode the microcurrents of air until you landed on its nasal mucosa and burrowed inside. Since then, you’re not going to deny it, life’s been kind of crazy. You’ve seen things you’ve never imagined. You’ve gone on pilgrimages in Iran, toured the cathedrals of Italy, hobnobbed with Supreme Court Justices at the White House. You’ve stood beside little children on their first day of school in Ohio, watched the final hours of the elderly in a New York City nursing home, and protested racism on the streets of Minneapolis. Today you are in a man named Ethan. You’ve been in Ethan for generations now, which means it’s almost time to move on. He was such a tempting target at first, so helpless. But after a generation or two his system adjusted; the monstrous lymphocytes that hunt and kill your children one by one are getting more numerous with every passing day. If your line is to have any chance of survival, it will need a new host. But as the days progress, you have become more and more despondent. Ethan has barely left his room in the past week. The rare times he goes outside, it is only for grocery shopping, and he dons a heavy cloth sheet that bars your routes of escape. You had almost lost hope. But now he stands in a gymnasium, in a long line of people. He takes a piece of paper from a table, makes a mark in one of two boxes. He folds the paper up and puts in a box. “Thanks!” someone tells him. He hesitates. He fumbles with his mask. Then, finally: “Welcome!” Before he has finished the first syllable, you are free, riding the microcurrents, a settler blazing a trail to virgin lands. You’re not going to lie - the last while hasn’t been great for you. But it is Election Day 2020, a time to leave behind old failures and begin anew, and for the first time in what seems like forever you are full of hope.