well, the new york deadline is sunday so i am finally applying for health insurance today. (i wouldn't be able to use the insurance until february 1st anyway, so i put it off.) i played through demon's souls FOUR TIMES in the past month and i still don't understand this system

the psychopaths in charge talk about how valuable "choice" is, though literally all of the plans offered to me have a three out of five star rating. except the "new" plans, which i guess will be three stars next year. also notice a column for an attribute which is ALWAYS "no" lol
this baroque, bizarre, unreadable-on-a-mobile-phone website logs me out automatically seemingly every three minutes, always without warning, usually while i'm entering data. click "next," get an error. it took me two months of such trials to get all my info plugged in for today.
i don't understand the differences between any of these plans. i have been on the phone regularly with my doctors these past couple months, trying desperately to find a plan they all agree on. i narrowed it down to four plans. three are $1200 per month. one is $957
i have a higher IQ than any sitting US senator. more importantly, i have beaten BERWICK SAGA for playstation 2 more than twice. i still don't exactly understand what a deductible is lmao
i cannot for the life of me tell what the difference between this $957 plan and these $1200 plans. they have all the same everything. dental, etc. it's just, i have experienced my healthcare provider turning me down for a spinal tap (etc) on the day of the procedure, etc
i have probably already received a reply or two telling me to shut up because i can afford it, though i just wanna remind everyone that my Very Publicly Visible Income goes to multiple people--not just me!! however according to the health insurance people, it is All Mine
so i'm over here looking at spending a Rent-Sized Portion of my income on healthcare that probably isn't going to work half the time for pursuing treatments of my chronic condition which probably won't be more than 12% effective, medical science being what it is
yet of course i can't just . . . Not Get Insurance!! what if there's an emergency?? i've seen the looney-tunes-like pre-insurance price on an emergency room visit! you could buy multiple hyundais for that money, jerry!!
meanwhile i desperately need a surgery to remove a cyst from a nerve in my wrist. every mouse click feels like being struck by lightning. i haven't done a single push-up in almost two years. without insurance, it's Mercedes-Benz money. however, the insurance rejected it last time
so am i about to let myself get roped into spending the equivalent of three decent used toyota priuses this year for health insurance that, according to my doctor, will probably fight the nerve surgery three times over six months before finally caving? you bet i am!! well bye
actually, not "well bye": there is no reason we can't have real, good, free healthcare. i have been to countries where they have it. they also have high-speed trains connecting their major cities. some of them have airports that are more comfortable than most american hotel rooms
seriously this health insurance website is legit just a dark souls inventory menu
i told myself i can't have the ice-cold sugar-free @redbull that is currently just Taking Up Space in the fridge until i pick my health insurance! why is it taking this long? i have twelve browser tabs open. i am agonizing over this like it's a crucial turn in BERWICK SAGA (2005)

More from Society

Brief thread to debunk the repeated claims we hear about transmission not happening 'within school walls', infection in school children being 'a reflection of infection from the community', and 'primary school children less likely to get infected and contribute to transmission'.

I've heard a lot of scientists claim these three - including most recently the chief advisor to the CDC, where the claim that most transmission doesn't happen within the walls of schools. There is strong evidence to rebut this claim. Let's look at


Let's look at the trends of infection in different age groups in England first- as reported by the ONS. Being a random survey of infection in the community, this doesn't suffer from the biases of symptom-based testing, particularly important in children who are often asymptomatic

A few things to note:
1. The infection rates among primary & secondary school children closely follow school openings, closures & levels of attendance. E.g. We see a dip in infections following Oct half-term, followed by a rise after school reopening.


We see steep drops in both primary & secondary school groups after end of term (18th December), but these drops plateau out in primary school children, where attendance has been >20% after re-opening in January (by contrast with 2ndary schools where this is ~5%).

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]