Shmiggles's recent activity

  1. Comment on ‘We’re hemorrhaging money’: US health clinics try to stay open after unprecedented cyberattack in ~health

    Shmiggles
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    I'm an Australian who lives in the UK, so it would be very easy for me to say something along the lines of guise you should just get the government to run the health system, it's so much better,...

    I'm an Australian who lives in the UK, so it would be very easy for me to say something along the lines of guise you should just get the government to run the health system, it's so much better, but that would be boring and not terribly insightful.

    The entire idea of insurance is that everyone who takes out a policy is pooling their payments and their risk together. Most people never claim as much as they pay in, but some people claim much more than they pay in, and the insurance company handles that risk. A 'socialised' public healthcare system works exactly the same way, but everyone is a policyholder, and it's funded through taxes rather than individual policyholders paying in.

    Of course, Freedom and Choice and Free Markets are foundational parts of the US' national identity, so that isn't going to work for you, so instead you have private companies offering health insurance. Fine, makes sense.

    But as far as I can tell, individuals in America don't take out their own health insurance policies, but instead get it as part of their workplace pay package. This is the bit that strikes me as a terrible idea. It means that instead of taking out the specific policy that meets your own needs and budget, that decision is made on your behalf by your employer. Suddenly your needs are irrelevant, and all that matters is the price. The buyer and the end-user are now different people, who have their own antagonistic relationship going on, so demand in the health insurance market has nothing to do with quality any more.

    And then it gets worse, in this article. It's not entirely clear - I suspect the author doesn't know himself - but I think that Change Healthcare is a payment processing business operating between the insurance companies and the actual healthcare providers. So they're the victim of a cyberattack and can no longer deliver on their contracts, but the market has no incentive to punish them for this. The healthcare providers' solvency is now under threat, the insurers don't care because they have an excuse for not paying out, the employers don't care because they paid for a health insurance policy and that's all that matters, and the policy beneficiaries suffer but don't have a say in what happens because they're not buying anything.

    Is this really a free market?

    62 votes

  2. Comment on UK Conservative party suspends MP Lee Anderson over claims that Islamists have "got control" of London's Mayor Sadiq Kahn and the capital in ~news

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    Further statements he makes no longer imply some credibility within the party. He will not receive Conservative Party funding and support in the upcoming General Election.
    1. Further statements he makes no longer imply some credibility within the party.
    2. He will not receive Conservative Party funding and support in the upcoming General Election.
    10 votes

  3. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Shmiggles
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    If you're not using Windows, stick to NFS for directory sharing - it's just easier. If you're just using this to get the files onto the Pi, forget NFS and just rsync them over. Jellyfin is great -...

    If you're not using Windows, stick to NFS for directory sharing - it's just easier. If you're just using this to get the files onto the Pi, forget NFS and just rsync them over.

    Jellyfin is great - it's a nice, slick Netflix-style UI. It can also handle TV tuners, if you get the Pi TV hat.

    I expose my Jellyfin install to the Internet, with no VPN, so my parents can access it. Jellyfin has password-protected user accounts, so that's fine for my needs.

  4. Comment on What are your favorite no-refrigeration, no-microwave lunches? in ~food

    Shmiggles
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    Buy a small cooler bag and an ice pack that fits in it. You can now keep food refrigerated until lunch time. As for what to have, I've taken to having 'complicated' sandwiches. A bag of salad...

    Buy a small cooler bag and an ice pack that fits in it. You can now keep food refrigerated until lunch time.

    As for what to have, I've taken to having 'complicated' sandwiches. A bag of salad leaves and a pot of supermarket deli filler is enough for four sandwiches, or you can have slices of cheese, and a bit of sweet pickle never goes amiss. (I also go for sliced ham, but you mentioned not liking meat.)

    9 votes

  5. Comment on Battle over a recurrent French national obsession: How Muslim women should dress? in ~life.women

  6. Comment on 'Most privileged nursing home': Nikki Haley takes a swipe at America's ageing politicians in ~misc

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    The article was published in The Daily Telegraph, the house newspaper of the Conservative Party in the UK. The Telegraph's owners are currently trying to sell it. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher's...

    I am not a fan of Haley and this article trying to both sides things

    The article was published in The Daily Telegraph, the house newspaper of the Conservative Party in the UK. The Telegraph's owners are currently trying to sell it.

    In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government introduced the 'Right to Buy' reforms, in which which low-income households renting government-owned homes could buy them at below-market prices, as a ploy to win over the then-young-and-fractious Baby Boomers. Since then, British governments of all political persuasions have felt a need to inflate property prices, by not replacing the sold-off government housing and restricting house-building by the private sector. Consequently, the old class-based division that shaped British politics (the working class voted Labour, the middle class and aristocracy voted Conservative) has been replaced by an age-based division (the homeowning Baby Boomers and Gen Xers vote Conservative, the renting Millennials and Gen Zers vote Labour, Lib Dem, or Greens, according to the tactical voting situation in their constituency).

    The owners of the Daily Telegraph have recently announced an intention to sell the newspaper. The British newspaper market is notoriously competitive (all newspapers of note are distributed nationally), so nearly all the papers are loss-making, and their only value is in their ability to shape public opinion. As the house newspaper of the Conservative Party, the Telegraph's readership is mainly Conservative members and voters, who are, to an increasing extent, exclusively elderly.

    If you're trying to sell a newspaper, 'Everyone who reads this paper will be dead within twenty years,' isn't a great selling point. Over the past couple of months, there has been a spate of 'Boomers have stolen the Millennials' futures' articles submitted to the UK subreddits. The comments on these articles on the Telegraph website are the usual avocadoes-and-Netflix nonsense that one expects from a generation that is becoming an increasingly unbearable economic burden, but the comments on Reddit are cynical jabs at the role that the Telegraph has played over the past decades in creating this crisis. However, the persistence in the probably paid for submissions indicates that the Telegraph is desperate to increase its market value by acquiring younger readers, whose 'natural' progression from renting Labour voter to homeowning Conservative voter has been disrupted by the housing crisis.

    The Telegraph's core readership (and owners) are politically aligned with the US Republican Party - most still support Liz 'Lettuce Lady' Truss's disastrous premiership (and her subsequent claims that the markets are controlled by the International Communist Conspiracy). They have no issue with Haley's role in the Trump administration, and the readers that the Telegraph wants to recruit don't care; Haley just happened to be the person who provided the skeleton of the intergenerational justice story the Telegraph wanted to run.

    The people in this article are American, but the story is British.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Favorite "chow" meal? in ~food

  8. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk

    Shmiggles
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    The payment processors shy away from anything that has a higher proportion of chargebacks, since those cost the processors money. Anything sex-related gets a lot of chargebacks, probably due to...

    The payment processors shy away from anything that has a higher proportion of chargebacks, since those cost the processors money. Anything sex-related gets a lot of chargebacks, probably due to buys trying to cover their tracks. ('Honestly, I never bought that - it must be a scammer.')

    31 votes

  9. Comment on I'm about to move away from my family. What should I know about living alone that no one told you before you started? in ~life

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    An interesting approach I heard is to buy cheap tools at first, and then replace them with quality ones when they break. That way, you only splash out on things you need to splash out on.

    An interesting approach I heard is to buy cheap tools at first, and then replace them with quality ones when they break. That way, you only splash out on things you need to splash out on.

    12 votes

  10. Comment on Sexual harassment still pervades science in ~science

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    That's the mechanism; it's always the mechanism. Churches, the Armed Forces, schools, orphanages and other care homes... whenever there's institutional sexual abuse, there's a power imbalance...

    These figures are really disheartening, especially when you take into account the power dynamics of university researchers as opposed to a private sector job. Knowing that your mentor has complete determination on your career trajectory, funding, tenure, etc. you can certainly see how it may drive those affected to not speak up for fear of retribution.

    That's the mechanism; it's always the mechanism. Churches, the Armed Forces, schools, orphanages and other care homes... whenever there's institutional sexual abuse, there's a power imbalance between abuser and victim.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Headteachers warn UK facing ‘dangerous’ teacher shortage as recruitment crisis deepens in ~life

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    Academies have the same Ofsted inspection requirements, but have more flexibility around staffing and curriculum. Academies can employ teachers who don't have Qualified Teacher Status, but are...

    Academies have the same Ofsted inspection requirements, but have more flexibility around staffing and curriculum. Academies can employ teachers who don't have Qualified Teacher Status, but are wary of doing so, and have the same party scales as maintained schools anyway. Academies face the same problems as maintained schools.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Unexpected, but great mashups in ~music

    Shmiggles
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    BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has been doing this since the 70s. I'm Horny to the tune of Blowing in the Wind Bob the Builder to the tune of 'I Dreamed a Dream' from Les Miserables...

    BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has been doing this since the 70s.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Headteachers warn UK facing ‘dangerous’ teacher shortage as recruitment crisis deepens in ~life

    Shmiggles
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    As a former physics teacher, I can shed some light on why this situation is so bad. Teacher pay has been flat since the Conservatives came to power, making teaching less and less viable as a...

    As a former physics teacher, I can shed some light on why this situation is so bad.

    1. Teacher pay has been flat since the Conservatives came to power, making teaching less and less viable as a career; it's now more of a thing to do between getting your degree and working out what you really want to do with your life.
    2. Pandemic lockdowns have caused an awful lot of bad behaviour. Early in primary school (Reception and Year 1), children are taught how to behave in a school environment, and teachers rely on the regular reinforcement of these norms that comes with regular school attendance to manage student behaviour. Teachers are too stretched thin to cope with these additional behavioural problems.
    3. The cost of living crisis has made teachers' personal lives more difficult, but also causes additional stress, mental health issues, and subsequent behavioural problems amongst students.
    4. The pandemic motivated early retirement amongst many older workers, including teachers.
    5. During the pandemic, many working parents (usually mothers) had to leave their jobs to homeschool their children. In doing so, many found that the cost of childcare exceeded their wages, and so didn't return to the workforce when schools reopened. Many teachers will be amongst this group.
    6. The government has increased teachers' pay without increasing school budgets, forcing schools to cut back on resourcing and teaching assistants (some of whom have left for higher pay in supermarkets). This has increased teachers' workloads.
    7. Schools have also been forced to spend a greater proportion of their budgets on energy (especially for heating) and on food.
    8. Ofsted has insisted that everyone pretend that none of this has been going on, and has inspected schools accordingly.
    14 votes

  15. Comment on Silly sports in ~sports

  16. Comment on Boris Johnson stands down as a member of UK parliament with immediate effect in ~news

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    Boris Johnson has been described as the sort of person who follows you into a revolving door and comes out first. This is the end of his time as an elected politician, but he has sufficient...

    Boris Johnson has been described as the sort of person who follows you into a revolving door and comes out first. This is the end of his time as an elected politician, but he has sufficient recognition and connections to wangle any number of important positions for himself. He thrives on attention more than actual power, so he'll probably go back to journalism, rather than taking on substantial business roles or lobbying. It's unlikely that he'll get himself elevated to the House of Lords.

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Petition for a UK Group in ~tildes

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    As a non-American who finds US-defaultism extremely irritating, tildes isn't big enough for country groups. If you want to discuss a particular country, put it in your post title. If we start...

    As a non-American who finds US-defaultism extremely irritating, tildes isn't big enough for country groups. If you want to discuss a particular country, put it in your post title.

    If we start seeing explicitly non-US posts filled with US-flavoured irrelevance, then country-specific groups are warranted.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Cheques will be phased out in Australia by 2030 as mobile wallet use sky-rockets in ~finance

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    My mum was the first person to use a magnetic stripe bank card in Australia - she tested it in the R&D department at Westpac. They explained the new technology to customers with a TV ad showing a...

    Australians are traditionally early adopters of technology. We embraced ATMs in a big way. We took up EFTPOS quickly. We're using contactless payments at an incredibly high rate.

    My mum was the first person to use a magnetic stripe bank card in Australia - she tested it in the R&D department at Westpac. They explained the new technology to customers with a TV ad showing a bank teller working inside the machine (as a way of saying it does everything a human teller does) and mum had to reply to the people writing in to apply for the job.

    The fact that Americans still use cheques (or "checks") to the degree they do amazes me. How can such an advanced country lag so far behind?

    America is a populous country with a strong culture of self-reliance, vouch leads to am awful lot of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' decision making, whereas Australia is a culturally conformative country, with few industries, all of which are dominated by a few big businesses that can change things fairly quickly.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on What's your go-to mono font? in ~tech

    Shmiggles
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    Iosevka. It also has non-monospaced variants, so I use it as the default UI don't on my desktop environment.

    Iosevka. It also has non-monospaced variants, so I use it as the default UI don't on my desktop environment.

    14 votes

  20. Comment on Cheques will be phased out in Australia by 2030 as mobile wallet use sky-rockets in ~finance

    Shmiggles
    Link Parent
    I went with my granny to help her but some furniture from Harvey Norman. (I know...) When granny said she wanted to pay by cheque, the shop assistant had to go find a manager to find out how...

    I went with my granny to help her but some furniture from Harvey Norman. (I know...) When granny said she wanted to pay by cheque, the shop assistant had to go find a manager to find out how handle that.

    1 vote