Kale

Regarding the 2017 comment: I was at work and read that quote “nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated” and I laughed hard for a while. Then sighed. Then I had to go for a walk. Deep down I had really doubted someone could get that far in life and be as dumb as he appeared to be. That statement shredded that thought. He wasn’t acting. He was really that dumb, and the next three years were going to be rough.

Within the Democratic party, there’s debate about how to handle climate change. There are people who advocate for slow, cautious changes and still see fossil fuels having a small role to play in the future. There are others within the Democratic party that want more drastic action, and make a huge government spending program to try to rapidly move the US energy to renewables (even naming it after one of the biggest US government programs made during the depression). That’s normal politics. And it’s all within the Democratic party.

The GOP mostly deny climate change exists. A few GOP members suggest that climate change is happening, but is a natural event not caused by man.

The recent house drama from the speakership battle was caused because 10 nutjobs didn’t want to fund any social programs and wouldn’t approve the budget. Most GOP compromised and made a TEMPORARY budget proposal that the Democratic reps would vote for. This caused the hardliners to remove the speaker. Because he had the audacity to compromise on a TEMPORARY budget.

Removing policy aside and just looking at behavior, many GOP members do not believe in compromising to get things done. There’s attempts to not hold elected officials accountable (unless they are from the other party). It’s very little cooperation and more retaliation.

A single GOP senator didn’t like that the US military would reimburse a servicemember’s travel for medical care if they lived in a state where some reproductive treatments weren’t available. This one senator has single-handedly denied 360 military promotions and nominations to military positions. The Senate has historically tried to make it where being the minority party still had some power, so the rules let this happen (the other GOP senators on this committee weren’t blocking, just the one guy).

The Democratic senators became so fed up they decided to change the rules to prevent a single committee member from blocking promotions. While most GOP senators publicly condemn this guy, many said this rule change was too much. So it looks like the rule change vote will be along party lines, although the #1 GOP senator has said it might be necessary to vote through to get the military back on track.

The last GOP senator really known for being reasonable and wanting to work collaboratively (McCain) died. He was respected by both parties until Trump came along, and now the GOP don’t really hold his legacy in high regard.

Sorry, a lot longer than I intended, but it’s a pattern showing no desire to try to govern effectively. Putting all issues of policy aside, I think it’s a bad idea to vote for the GOP.

I’m a mech E in the medical field. We’re consistently understaffed. If I validate an Excel worksheet in Excel '08 or a Python program in 3.5 with a specific version of NumPy, we’re probably sticking with those versions for a while. Every time I bring up re-validating with the latest version, keeping one old system running the old software requires fewer resources than me or a colleague re-validating.

My whole department is stuck on one version of Python because that was the most recent version when I had an emergency project and developed a data analysis algorithm. We validated it, then as new members were added to my team, they needed a copy, so we had to keep using it. I’ll probably re-validate it to the next Python release. It’s not only unit tests, or we could automate validation. Unit tests are a tiny part of validating software for making medical decisions. And software that directly runs a medical device (like firmware on an insulin pump) is an order of magnitude more rigorous than what I do.

Side note: there are people who somehow root their insulin pumps and run algorithms on them. There’s a group that can get a PID control loop on an insulin pump that has a more simple control scheme on it (because that’s how the FDA approved it). The company has been trying to get approval to use PID control in the US for years.

What about dropping the tax rate by a meaningful amount and raising the income cap to $1M?

I realize that most CEOs get modest salaries and almost all of their income from capital gains, but a move like this could bring in more revenue and be popular by reducing the tax burden on middle class and working class Americans.

I don’t think NY splits electoral votes. To get any NY electoral votes, he’d have to carry the whole state.

Will this leave him off the ballot for the primary? He is expected to win the primary and this will pump the numbers for another GOP candidate. If enough states do this, it could give the convention the cover to select someone else.

I love MPFC, but some of the sketches are “meh”. For every “Battle of Pearl Harbor”, there’s a “Confuse-a-cat”.

Fawlty Towers is great. Mildly racist against the Spanish and Irish.

It takes 4 episodes to really build into the complexity. Then season 2 turns it on its head.

Red Dwarf is pretty good. Fawlty Towers is great. Someone recommended “Yes Minister” and the first season is awesome. The Hallmark of great comedy writing is if it holds up, and Yes Minister still is hilarious 40 years later.

Dark is a German Netflix show. It unfolds into something akin to “Lost” over the first four episodes. The ending doesn’t suck, and they set up the end to where it’s almost impossible to get it right. It’s not an amazing ending, but it’s impressive that they managed to make it not terrible, since it builds up to a near-impossible ending.

Squid Game is pretty great but gory. Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys are quirky comedies with some rough language throughout.

Melting tundra releases methane, accelerating the increase in temperature. Rising temperature reduces polar ice, making oceans absorb more heat, accelerating heating. Climate pattern changes cause more frequent and larger wildfires, accelerating heating.

There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases that I’m not aware of, but there are a lot of positive feedback processes which is concerning.

I believe the IPCC 1.5C was criticized because it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s pretty optimistic.