Favorites February 18th 2023
From the associated article: "Currently, hospitals that own physician practices ... are allowed in almost all states to charge add-on “facility fees” on top of the (often higher) fees they charge for the physician services they provide". Reminds me of the recent practice of hotels tacking on mandatory resort fees as a way to hide higher prices.
It's a real shame there's been less interest in cash assistance/basic income recently, because this is quite promising. A relatively small amount of money can lift someone out of homelessness.
Turns out, in important fields, research fraud is really really bad.
Really wild the extent to which Russia's actions have reduced long term demand for their number one export. One of many many bad outcomes for Russia, maybe they should give up on this whole thing?
Not sure I have ever heard of trick golf shots before.
Threads
• Thread discussing the unlikeliness that the Putin regime could be challenged by an opposition group. TL;DR: to avoid violent overthrow, successful authoritarians either eliminate or integrate anyone with any amount of money/power. Any overthrow will be from insiders who have similar policy preferences.
• Very short thread about what it would take to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s. TL;DR: it'll take a ton of training.
• Thread arguing that Rome got good at war as an accident caused by non-military focused policy choices. TL;DR: Sparta tried to be warlike on purpose and it was a joke compared to Rome where they were just trying to solve social problems.
• Thread explaining why tropical waters are transparent and how that relates to the reason so many people live in northern Europe. TL;DR: there's more ocean life in places with colder water because deep and shallow water are the same temperature and can therefore mix.
• Summary of Vox article dissecting the internal Fox News emails that came out of discovery in the Dominion Voting case. TL;DR: Fox executives are terrified their viewers will leave for Newsmax if Fox isn't pro-Trump enough.