Oh boy....

- https://www.researchsquare.com...

Parents report their kids don't like to wear masks. O.k. Hell, even the editorial note says, "Due to
multiple limitations, this study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask wearing and
the reported adverse effects in children..."

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

Children who can't see faces behind masks are not good at facial perception. News at 11:00

- https://www.hhs.gov/about/news...

As near as I can tell, the word "mask" doesn't even appear on the website.

- https://japantoday.com/categor...

This junk isn't even worth commenting on.

- https://www.theatlantic.com/id...
- https://www.theatlantic.com/id...

These appear to be behind paywalls, but if the first links are any indication, I see no reason to think these are any more credible.

So no, these articles offer no proof that masking approaches anything related to child abuse, or long-term (or short-term for that matter) consequences of masking in children.

"...as he sits at the center of the base of the growing virality of the internet itself..."

No,

this was the guy from 10 years before "double rainbow" guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahir_%C3%87a%C4%9Fr%C4%B1

He was a sensation when there was barely an internet to speak of, and most people who did know of the internet were still on dial-up connections. Everyone was sharing this guy's website.

"...AirBnB...has slashed costs and raised emergency funding, and on Tuesday it laid off 1,900 employees, about 25 percent of its staff...."

I'll be the first to admit I don't know a lot about AirBnB. But I can't fathom how a company that is essentially a matchmaking service for vacation rentals and vacationers could possibly need 8000 employees. That's a staggering number of employees. What on earth are they doing that they need that many folks on the payroll?

I'm really asking.

"...Medicare will only pay for a percentage of what something is worth. Usually about 25%. So providers have to list their prices at an exuberant amount so that 25% is closer to 100%. Insurance companies know this, so they are able to negotiate down..."

Um no. Not really. Generally speaking, Medicare reimbursement is not tied to what providers say things should cost. So no, providers don't quadruple the price of things so that medicare reimbursement is closer to what they want to earn. A provider could charge a million dollars for something. How much they get from Medicare has nothing to do with that.

Here is a not bad primer from KFF on how Medicare reimburses providers, at least from a high level.

https://www.kff.org/report-sec...

Not disagreeing with the post, but from the Wikipedia article you cite:

"In literature, Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, wrote a memo for Disney Studios on the use of The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a guide for scriptwriters; this memo influenced the creation of such films as Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), and Beauty and the Beast (1991)."

So, it does seem there was a time where the same influences were in fact in play at Disney.

"...First president in my lifetime not to start new conflicts..."

Don't know how old you are, but what *new* conflicts were started by any of the following in their first 3 years of office? We certainly got involved in conflicts, that were already happening. But I don't recall any of these presidents starting a new conflict, let alone in the name of "imperialism".

Obama (2008-2011)
We'll skip Bush II
Clinton (1992 - 1995)
Bush I (1988 - 1991)

"...As far as your other claims about asking for Russian help: the e-mails were already on Wikileaks for 4 MONTHS before the President's witty joke about Hillary losing things..."

You're missing the point here. Of course Trump's "witty" joke (and I'm not sure it was all that witty) had nothing to do with asking the Russians to hack the emails, at least not in a meaningful way. Ok, sure, who knows exactly how long Wikileaks and/or the Russians were sitting on these things.

The issue is that someone, or someones, in Trump's orbit (and perhaps even Trump himself) knew about the hack. And instead of going to, I don't know, some sort of Law Enforcement(?) reporting that a foreign government was hacking into our politics (literally) , they decided to keep it to themselves. Papadopoulos was so dumb he shot his mouth off about it, to the point where someone in the Australian (?) diplomatic corp brought it to our attention.

So Trump's people know it. They didn't ask the Russians for help in getting the emails. At least as far as we know. What was charged was that the Trump campaign knew about the hack, was interested in the hack, and when it all came to light, lied and obstructed about their knowledge of the hack. Which, as you point out, did not meet the evidenciary threshold to say a crime of actual obstruction was committed.

How is this modded at +5? There is a very real chance that the House of Representatives will impeach the President. A few weeks ago, not so much. Now, public opinion has swayed sufficiently for the Democrats in Congress (they do have a majority you know) to no longer fear voting for Articles of Impeachment, and losing their seat in congress as a result.

Now, remove Trump from office after the Articles of Impeachment? Highly unlikely unless this really goes sideways (and really, erratic as the President and those around him are, who knows where this goes?). The Senate has to vote for removal from office, and that ain't happening. Oh, they'll get around to voting I'm sure, just to stick it in the Dems face, but they'll never get to the numbers (2/3rds) for conviction and removal.

It's why Pelosi was so reluctant in the first place. She figured it would be political suicide for the Democratic majority in the House to pursue Impeachment, knowing full well the Senate would do nothing. But, as I said above, the winds have changed.

Articles of Impeachment is like a grand jury hearing evidence on whether a crime has been committed. If they decide evidence is sufficient for a crime to have been committed, it goes to the Senate for trial and adjudication.
   

I can't begin to follow how you're coming up with all these back-of-the-envelope calculations (or the assumptions you are making to get there), so why don't we just go to the KFF Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator and get real numbers (for a Silver plan).

- A family of four (2 adult, 2 children, non-smokers), living in Illinois
- Mid 40s for the adults, young teens for the children
- No employee insurance, so I have to get it through the exchanges
- $65,000 annual income

My annual premium expenses are $467/month = 5604.00

After that premium cost, my out-of-pocket expenses are capped at $7900, *for the entire family*.

So, if everything goes fine, yes it's gonna cost me $5600 and change, which is a lot to be sure (effectively 8% of my income).

And if the shit really went sideways, I'd be in for a total out of pocket expense of $13,504

Which is also a lot. But it's a lot less than if there wasn't the ACA and I'd be staring bankruptcy in the face w/o access to insurance coverage.

Now, you seem to be citing an example where employee insurance is available and that the employee responsibility is $10,000 in premiums, with another $9000.00 in deductibles. That seems grossly out of wack, and (assuming your citing an actual scenario) has to be an edge case. You're talking about a high premium, high deductible plan. You either have high deductible/low premium, or high premium/low deductible. I've not seen the case you're describing.

Data from the annual Milliman Medical Index shows the most common health care plan for a family of four costs on average $28,166 in 2018. This estimate includes employee and employer contributions as well as out-of-pocket expenses such as co-pays and deductibles. So, scrub your $9000.00 deductible out and you're left with $19,000.in premiums. KFF says the average employer contribution is 71%. So, you're looking at some $5500 in premiums. So, if the shit goes sideways in this case, you're looking at $14,500 in total out-of-pocket expenses. A $5500 premium plan for a family of 4 with a $9000 deductible would be a low premium, high co-pay plan.

As someone above pointed out,

there is a big difference between 20,000 subscribers and 100,000 subscribers when it comes to negotiating contracts with movie theatres. If I have a databank of 100,000 people, all interested enough in going to the cinema to pay a subscription, i can do all sorts of marketing, analytics, and the like to get those people into your cinema's seats, buying your concession stand food (where I imagine margins are quite good).

Except, lets not talk about 100,000. What if they could have kept this thing going for a bit more, and grown to 250,000+ subscribers. Now you're really talking some big numbers, and a unique ability to put the butts in seats.

Plus, once you get people locked in to a subscription, at scale, you will get folks who use the service little, floating those people who use a lot.

I have no idea what the plan was. Of if there was a plan. I wasn't a member, and didn't really follow the story. But it makes sense that the key was to increase warm bodies, and then work from there to get the financials in order.

NPR, Planet Money, did a piece on reCaptcha recently, and they certainly report that reCaptcha was, and is, in fact used to train AI image recognition.

https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

I suppose you could characterize it as infrastructure, but not necessarily in a bad way. Because these sorts of temps/conditions are hardly normative, the infrastructure doesn't need to be there to manage extended periods of heat. Living in the southwest, everything is built around it being hot, more days than not, for many many days on end.

It's like living with snow in the upper-Midwest. We routinely get inches of snow, sometimes for days on end. Aside from slower traffic, you don't give it a second thought. An inch of snow hits the south Mid-Atlantic, and it seems as if the whole place shuts down. There is no reason to have the same infrastructure to deal with snow down there, because it's such an infrequent event.

I don't know,

but shouldn't the punishment be proportional the crime? I didn't follow the case, am not on FB, and do not own shares. Maybe they should have been fined a trillion dollars. Maybe they should have been fined a dollar. But I'm not so certain they should be sued and fined based on the amount of money they have.

Of course this happens; all the time. But I don't know that its the right way for things to work in principal.

I don't believe it was that the rich could pay the workers better, and still be rich. The rich are rich because they can never be rich enough. Therefore they have, and will, always look to exploit resources. It was true then and it's true now.

I think the bigger reason is that, in the time you cite, there was a greater middle class with the potential for upward mobility than we have today. Therefore, you simply had less workers in these lower tiers, and couldn't afford to lose them. Now, we effectively have a 2 tier system, the knowledge based workforce making 6+ figures, and everyone else. As a result, we have a much larger supply of folks to work these lower-skilled (not unskilled, but lower skilled) jobs. "Don't like it? Leave. We'll find another 10 people right behind you."

My model for how to manage congressional testimony, in the face of questions that rarely, if at all, mean anything other than an opportunity to self-agrandize, as the original poster mentioned.