The situation with the ambulance service is obviously disgusting and immoral in a civilized society. But the article fails to address the elephant in the room - her chief complaint was severe pain in her knees due to RA. If she had been taken to the ER she almost certainly would've been given some short term pain meds and sent home unless she was showing some very obvious signs of cardiac issues. The system had already failed her because she really needed skilled nursing or assisted living help, being immobile due to chronic disease. It happens all the time. Several years ago my elderly father fractured an ankle - no surgery required, just a boot - and was sent home even though he was unable to stand or walk on his own. Fortunately he had savings and I was able to talk him into paying out of pocket for a stay in rehab (to the tune of about $18,000).
It's also likely that she ended up in this position because she couldn't afford proper treatment of her RA, resulting in it destroying her knees. I also have RA, diagnosed 3 years ago and my treatment costs $15,000 per month. Losing my job and/or having insurance that won't cover it is a terror that knaws at the back of my mind because without the treatment I'll start suffering debilitating symptoms in 3-6 months.
Well, unfortunately there's a herd of elephants in the room when it comes to American healthcare.
We spend the most on healthcare vs any other nation while getting results comparable to nations like Cuba (not hyperbole. Go look up infant mortality of Cuba vs US). I mean, no joke, the main thing that harms Cuban healthcare is the US embargo limiting medicine and medical supplies from going in.
An awful lot of corporate workers are stuck with Copilot as their only approved chat option, so some of them are probably trying to learn how to get the best results they can from it.
I've been working off and on on a vibe coded FP language and transpiler - mostly just to get more experience with Claude Code and see how it handles complex real world projects. I've settled on a very similar flow, though I use three documents: plan, context, task list. Multiple rounds of iteration when planning a feature. After completion, have a clean session do an audit to confirm that everything was implemented per the design. Then I have both Claude and CodeRabbit do code review passes before I finally do manual review. VERY heavy emphasis on tests, the project currently has 2x more test code than application code. So far it works surprisingly well. Example planning docs below -
The RAV4 Prime is extremely hard to get if you live outside of SoCal and maybe a few other areas. I'm in the southeast and a few years ago the local dealer told me that this entire region is only allocated a few Prime's each quarter. Even today I've never seen one in the wild.
Not only that, but it sounds like dealerships are still hardcore ripping off people who want to buy a RAV4 Prime. $20k over MSRP, refusing to sell without add-ons / warranty, etc.
My dad died at the end of last year, and was not too different from your grandma. For him the main problem was chronic pain from his failing body. Even fairly powerful opioids from a pain management doctor only helped a bit. Basically all he could do was sleep, eat meals, and sit in his chair in pain.
I feel similar to you, but I wonder if it's one of those those things where age changes your perspective. Dad was in assisted living and had several stints in rehab/nursing home facilities, and in both there were quite a few people with what I'd call poor quality of life who were still holding on to life.
Something we youngsters (I'm 69) may not realize is that people in assisted living still have friends and frequently even sex lives while they are there. They read, play games, and watch movies, just like us. They might not be able to do all the things they could when they were younger, but their lives are not necessarily over.
Any idea what kind of games you'll want to play by then?
I suspect it won't be hair-trigger combat games in dark dungeons where every strike results in a blizzard of gems and stars flying around the screen while teenagers scream into the mic.
But if you like Sudoku and crosswords you'll probably be good. That's my jam anyway.
I've been playing Factorio and the base game is 100 hours easily, there are mods that ratchet it up to 500+. It's great brain exercise too, constantly refactoring, solving for bottlenecks, etc.
Of course, some truly do “live” there, and good for them.
And others just sit there waiting to die, unable to even feed themselves.
I saw plenty of examples of both when my grandmothers were in assisted living homes. Unfortunately my grandmothers both tended towards the latter case.
I am close to what you describe about your dad, and I am 42. I have no idea what to do. I don't want to live this way. And I don't want to die, not really, although I am at peace with the idea. I can't find what is wrong with me, except for the fact that it is related to pain regulation mechanisms somehow. This has been going on for 10 years already.
The only thing that helps now are opioids in dosages nobody would prescribe. I was prescribed opioids at some point during these years, and I still don't know if this was a mistake by the doctor. Now I am in pain AND opioid-dependent. But I am not sure I would not have ended my life sooner if not for the temporary relief I had.
The government does not allow me to get a few years of better quality life in return for dying early from an overdose, etc. I am bitter about it, and often wish government officials had the pain I do. Maybe I did not do enough, or people close to me could have been more pressing in asking to do more earlier. That's a consequence of a culture where people don't get into other people's business. I sometimes hope it is not too late still, but everything is harder now, and I still don't have any good ideas or the willpower to execute them.
I've been using Claude Code with Opus 4.5 a lot the last several months and while it's amazingly capable it has a huge tendency to give up on tests. It will just decide that it can commit a failing test because "fixing it has been deferred" or "it's a pre-existing problem." It also knows that it can use `HUSKY=0 git commit ...` to bypass tests that are run in commit hooks. This is all with CLAUDE.md being very specific that every commit must have passing tests, lint, etc. I eventually had to add a Claude Code pre-command hook (which it can't bypass) to block it from running git commit if it isn't following the rules.
I haven't seen it bypass my hook yet (knock on wood). I have my hook script [0] tell that its commits are required to pass validation, maybe that helps push it in the right direction?
There probably isn't much structural damage to the plane aside from the scraping/grinding on the bottom. Don't misunderstand, that's going to be bad damage - we aren't just talking about scratched paint. But it looks like the pilot set it down soft as a feather, they're definitely a pro.
Planes are so expensive that it's worth putting a lot of money into saving them. A replacement airframe comparable to the B-57 would probably cost $10 million, then you'd probably spend that much again to customize it for NASA mission. Even if they need to spend a couple million dollars fixing the WB-57 it beats the alternative.
Edit: It occurs to me that rather than use a different plane they'd probably reactivate another B-57 from the boneyard - but B-57's have been retired for > 50 years to restoring one would still be a significant project.
Do you seriously believe that you should have the right to demand access to the private medical records of every teacher, soldier, judge, cop, etc. in the country because their pay comes from taxpayers? If yes I'm not quite sure how to respond, IMO that's an utterly absurd position. If no, why are astronauts being singled out for this treatment?
In the .Net space log4net is horrifically outdated and there's zero reason to use it today. Logging for modern .Net apps and libraries should be built on the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging abstractions which provide the type of features covered in TFA. They also provide a clear separation between generating log events in code and determining where & how logs are stored. For basic needs you can use simple log writers that tie in directly with MEL, or for advanced needs link MEL with Serilog so that you can use its sinks and log processing pipeline.
Yes. As described in the article, the TypeScript compiler understands type annotations that are written in JSDoc syntax. So you can use `tsc`, just like you would to check `.ts` files.
It's also likely that she ended up in this position because she couldn't afford proper treatment of her RA, resulting in it destroying her knees. I also have RA, diagnosed 3 years ago and my treatment costs $15,000 per month. Losing my job and/or having insurance that won't cover it is a terror that knaws at the back of my mind because without the treatment I'll start suffering debilitating symptoms in 3-6 months.
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