This is retarded.

1. It isn't for profit healthcare that is the problem, it's THIRD PARTY PAY.
2. I don't use third party pay, ever, for healthcare. I've been insured nonstop for over 30 years, and NEVER ONCE has my insurer paid my doctor.
3. Even when I've had emergencies, I still called around, negotiated a fair cash up front rate, paid cash up front, and billed it to my insurer. My cash up front rate was sometimes below any co-pay negotiated with my insurer, lol.

I just recently had some elective surgery that would have cost me about $2000 on my annual deductible, but I was able to cash pay a negotiated rate of $400 including a follow-up "free". I submitted the $400 to my insurer and they reimbursed me.

Third party insurance exists because YOU VOTERS demanded the HMO Act of the 1970s, which tied health care to employment, and then employers outsourced it to third parties.

Health care is remarkably cheap in the US (cash pay, negotiated) and I don't have to wait months to see a doctor when I call and say I am cash pay. They bump me up fast.

What Linus is complaining about is a git patch that has a link to the same patch in LKML. But, presumably, in the future that will be useful to people looking back and seeing that link who will be able to see not only that patch but the entire following discussion on it. Linus is looking at it with a "what does this buy me today", which is admittedly nothing. But this buys other people information tomorrow, which is how foresighted people are looking at it as they include the link.

You can downvote all you want, label as trolling all you want. But the facts are that there is plenty of evidence that the UK Met Office is doing a terrible and unprofessional job of maintaining a network of up-to-standard weather stations. And, from the testimony of people living and staying in the UK this summer, this was not an especially hot summer.

You can't stop people knowing this, saying it. You can affect how its rated on /., and thus somewhat affect how many people read it here. But you can't affect the facts, and you can't stop general publication of them. All you can do is destroy the credibility of the institutions you are trying to defend by banning crticism of them. Not that there is a whole lot left to destroy!

I posted this below, and promptly had it downrated and graded as troll. I think this is completely irrational. What I said is correct, it really has been just a nice UK summer. I spent the warmest part of it in the UK and can tell you that is all there has been. Quite unlike the summer of a couple of years ago, when I was also in the UK, and that was genuinely very hot. This summer I have not felt any need to restrict outdoor activity at any time of day, and haven't heard of anyone who did. Unlike a couple of years ago. Nights warm enough to be uncomfortable are a usual feature of very warm UK summers - I have not heard anyone mentioning that. Though they have in the past about other summers.

People pour scorn on Homewood, who I cited, and on the Daily Sceptic, who have produced some rather amazing material critical of the Met Office station management and site quality. However, if you look at the material they put up, and their arguments (which I notice no-one has addressed) there really is good reason to be concerned about the professionalism and trustworthiness of the Met Office's historical records.

Why, for instance, are there still readings being supplied fot the town of Lowestoft in East Anglia, when the station has been closed for a decade or more? How can those readings be based on extrapolations from nearby stations when all the nearby ones have also been closed? What about the cases and material cited by Homewood and Daily Sceptic? Its not enough just to dismiss them with a few personal attacks. There really is a case to answer, and the Met Office has not improved their credibility by refusing to explain what stations are being used to extrapolate the readings of the closed ones.

There may be a valid answer to these issues, if so I would like to see it. Go through the links cited and do a critique, if you can. Meanwhile I can only say that personal experience and behavior of the local population, at least in the parts of the UK where I have been this summer, does not bear out the claim that anything much is happening, other than a pleasantly warm summer.

+++++++++++++++++ Original Post +++++++++++++++++

Its been quite a nice summer. Not particularly hot, but consistently dry and pleasantly warm. The beaches and parks have been full of people taking advantage of it.

Is it the hottest summer ever? Very doubtful. If so, only by the tiniest amount and on some very odd selection of parameters and weather stations. Unlike some other hot English summers the nights have been pleasantly cool. Its certainly not as hot as the summer a couple of years back where there were a few weeks of genuinely exceptional heat. It has been consistently warm, without the usual interruptions of cool rainy spells.

The Met Office? You have to look carefully at which stations are being cited for claims that they have recorded super high temps, and what their quality rating is.

https://dailysceptic.org/2025/... [dailysceptic.org]

and there is a whole lot more from the same source. Paul Homewood also has posted extensively on the subject.

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha... [wordpress.com]

The UK has very variable weather. Its the consequence of its position. On the west it has a great ocean, on the east a continental landmass. To the north you have the Arctic and to the south the great desert of the Sahara. Weather systems blow across from the west all the time, but their mobility is affected by changes in the jet stream. So on a thirty year time period you sometimes bet long hot summers, and sometimes cool damp and rainy ones and sometimes ones with continuous variability. It depends whether a blocking high forms to the southwest, or if the pattern of the jet stream this year just blows one low after another across. Every now and then you get a hot air mass from the Sahara being carried up. Sometimes this leads to sand and dust deposits.

The really striking thing about this summer, and indeed summers over the last few years, is that there is a combination of two things. One is the hysterical warnings from BBC and Met Office about dangerous heat and precautions to be taken. You might think the UK has turned into Dallas or Phoenix. You would be wrong. They are talking about temperatures which reach 80 or 85F for a few hours in the afternoons!

The other is, at the same time, the clips of the crowds at the beaches getting their clothes off as quickly as they can and having a good time.

Read Paul Homewood and the Daily Sceptic, look at the pictures of the crowds, consider the total lack of any stories of heat prostration, and figure out who you believe.

They can't both be right.

Its been quite a nice summer. Not particularly hot, but consistently dry and pleasantly warm. The beaches and parks have been full of people taking advantage of it.

Is it the hottest summer ever? Very doubtful. If so, only by the tiniest amount and on some very odd selection of parameters and weather stations. Unlike some other hot English summers the nights have been pleasantly cool. Its certainly not as hot as the summer a couple of years back where there were a few weeks of genuinely exceptional heat. It has been consistently warm, without the usual interruptions of cool rainy spells.

The Met Office? You have to look carefully at which stations are being cited for claims that they have recorded super high temps, and what their quality rating is.

https://dailysceptic.org/2025/...

and there is a whole lot more from the same source. Paul Homewood also has posted extensively on the subject.

https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

The UK has very variable weather. Its the consequence of its position. On the west it has a great ocean, on the east a continental landmass. To the north you have the Arctic and to the south the great desert of the Sahara. Weather systems blow across from the west all the time, but their mobility is affected by changes in the jet stream. So on a thirty year time period you sometimes bet long hot summers, and sometimes cool damp and rainy ones and sometimes ones with continuous variability. It depends whether a blocking high forms to the southwest, or if the pattern of the jet stream this year just blows one low after another across. Every now and then you get a hot air mass from the Sahara being carried up. Sometimes this leads to sand and dust deposits.

The really striking thing about this summer, and indeed summers over the last few years, is that there is a combination of two things. One is the hysterical warnings from BBC and Met Office about dangerous heat and precautions to be taken. You might think the UK has turned into Dallas or Phoenix. You would be wrong. They are talking about temperatures which reach 80 or 85F for a few hours in the afternoons!

The other is, at the same time, the clips of the crowds at the beaches getting their clothes off as quickly as they can and having a good time.

Read Paul Homewood and the Daily Sceptic, look at the pictures of the crowds, consider the total lack of any stories of heat prostration, and figure out who you believe.

They can't both be right.

Something does seem to be happening, though its hard to tell from the linked piece what it is, just because sexual activity declining must be an indicator of something. But what?

A start is where the decline is happening - and the answer from the article seems to be everywhere in the US - married, single, all ages.

The logical next step would be to find whether its happening across all countries, all religions. Is it happening to gays as well as heteroxexuals? Is it different in gay men and gay women? Is it related to declines in other kinds of social interaction? Is it related to a decline in marriage? Is it related to differences in more general attitudes of men and women to each other?

Sex in our species is a basic aspect of marriage and the family, and not simply because its required for procreation. So a decline of the proportions shown in the charts is interesting and important and deserves proper investigation.

Never visited either of the organizations that are bringing this suit.

But the deeper issue is what is happening to the regulation of speech in the UK. It is that recent legislation has enabled the selective enforcement of bans on politically incorrect speech in a way that was never possible before. It has enabled the repression of public dissent.

There have been a large number of piecemeal pieces of legislation on speech which interact in perhaps unexpected ways with an environment of heightened sensitivity to speech. Taken as a whole they empower the authorities to intervene on speech deemed to be offensive.

But the issue is, they empower and enable, they don't mandate action. Because the definitions of offense are so wide and vague the legislation enables intervention on speech which would previously have been considered normal if a bit extreme. Enables, however, it does not require it. This means that the UK is now set up with all the apparatus required for selective banning of speech which is deemed to be inconvenient or politically incorrect. And its being used.

To appreciate the ramifications you need to look at some specific cases. Go to the Free Speech Union site.

https://freespeechunion.org/

And consider how police recording of non-criminal hate crime incidents is working. Look up the case of Alison Pearson

https://freespeechunion.org/aw...

And as another example, remember the wonderful case of Harry Miller

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...

Miller had posted in the tradition of Monty Python about gender issues, culminating in the deeply offensive remark that he might have been born a mammal but identified as a fish, so do not mis-species him!

He was called on by the police who explained that this would be recorded and filed against him as a non-criminal hate incident. The BBC story explains how in this case the courts ruled in his favor. That was before recent legislation however. Don't know what the outcome would be today.

You have in the UK a perfect storm. There is the Online Safety Act, the Public Order Act, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act and a few other pieces of legislation or amendments. There is no 1st Amendment. And there is corporate and police practice.

Let me give one final example which will make the implications clear. In Parliament an MP called Katie Lam gave a speech on the grooming gang scandal. X imposed age restrictions on viewing quotations from it, in accordance with their view of the requirements of the Online Safety Act. So we end up with a situation in which legislation written vaguely and widely to prevent minors from accessing harmful content can in practice be obliging someone to prove they are over 18 in order to see remarks made by an elected MP in a session of their own Parliament. Now ask yourself how the Online Safety Act could interact with the various other Acts on the subject of speech, and you will see where the real problem lies.

Incidentally, consider also the implications of having to prove you are over 18 to access something. You give your proof. To an unknown third party. And what do they do with the information they now hold on you? How do you know what they do with it? 4Chan or whoever is not the issue, there are far more serious issues with the UK speech regulation situation. You don't have to be a free speech fanatic to find this disturbing. The end destination of this is a Great Wall of Britain, and a ban on VPNs. Which are now attracting great interest in the UK.

Nah.

Iâ(TM)m 51. Iâ(TM)ve had health insurance continuously for 35 years and have used it exactly ZERO TIMES.

I am self pay. For everything but true life threatening emergencies, which Iâ(TM)ve had zero.

Even the ER is cheaper when negotiated self pay.

My urologist is stunned that I pay $85 for his visits. Self pay. Including labs. My colleague goes to the same urologist and his insurance pays $550 for the same visit and naturally it comes out of his deductible lol.

Insurance is a scam. All insurance is legal gambling and gamblers never win.

Supply and demand dictate this is exactly the case.

If something is valuable to everyone, it should only be accessible to those who have enough saved value to acquire it.

The poor fucked themselves. My parents are poor but worked hard so I wouldn't be.

I do it every day. So do you. Chances are wherever you live a biofuel or some sort of ethanol blended conventional fuel is being used to generate electricity. It's an almost certainty your car is running on an ethanol blend, so every time you plug your device in your car that's what you're doing. Already 10% of the entirety of North America's gasoline supply is ethanol.

Who cares how much CO2 is being emitted if 100% of it was captured CO2 to begin with.

So stop fucking around with techy techy that might work 20 years from now and move forward seriously with what we already have. We already have solar collection and concentration techniques that can be deployed to use non plantable areas to concentrate solar energy. We already have vertical farming techniques with mirrors that can deploy that concentrated solar over multiple levels. Plant corn, make ethanol and methane from the parts we can, burn the rest in CHP where some of the siphoned heat dries the biomass.

We have this tech TODAY.

We already have such solar panels. They are called "plants". Amazing things that will self replicate under the right conditions and make all the fuel we want. What's even cooler about them is that they can make it in the form that people can consume directly, or where we can use other amazing little bio-factories to turn it into fuel for machines! And no matter how we use that fuel, by using it so created we make it into a closed cycle where no new CO2 is emitted.

Amazing, huh? Fuel we can use in existing infrastructure without adverse effects, making use of the most efficient solar photic energy capture ever discovered. All using today's technology.

Being compensated for it means it wonâ(TM)t get wasted and will always have a fair valuation.

Compensation is as cooperative as it comes because nobody can hoard it.

Can you imagine the horrible security breach of not just every Google/Amazon speaker but literally every computer sending every word it hears to "cloud" servers? Jesus.

To get this in proportion, from Grok: "Los Angeles consumes approximately 71,233 MWh of electricity per day, on average. This figure is derived from data indicating that the city uses over 26 million MWh annually. Dividing this by 365 days yields the daily average."

How much battery storage was that, again?

It would be amazing if there was a document that stated in very clear terms just how limited our federal government is and what it can't do at all no matter what.