I can't remember the last time I witnessed a hospital demonstrating general competence

Where do you live where it is so bad there?

Unfortunately in the past 2 years...ive had to make a number of visits to the ER and one major surgrery....and I could NOT be happier with the doctors, nurses and general staff of the hospitals I've been too....

And my insurance covered most of all of it...didn't put me in the poor house like so many seem to claim will happen in the US if you get some much as a hang nail....this is private medicine I'm talking about with me, not VA.

My 16 year old daughter just got advice from her Pediatrician on how to get into Medical School - go to a small college where the Profs know you and you can convince them to inflate your grades, there is too much competition in big schools and no room to influence your grades outside your work So basically, try to cheat a little. Thanks Doc.

Well, being female, gives her an advantage for Med School....AND if she's a minority female, that really helps mover her closer to the top of the list....

It's only one semester, and a semester of the least important material of their university time.

Err...where did you go to school where 1st semester/year wasn't important stuff?

I was in all the weed out classes....chemistry, calculus 1...etc....

Hell I didn't get any "easy" classes like sociology or one English reading classes (sci fi books) till like I was a Junior or maybe senior.....

"In order to salve the mental health of freshman student..."

JFC...are you fscking KIDDING ME?

Is this just the next natural progression from everyone getting a participationi trophy in grade schools?

Why is it today's kids are so mentally deficient in ways that all other generations till the past decade haven't been troubled with??

Look, not everyone is cut out for college ....and those early classes, are weed out classes like others have said...at least they used to be.

Stress is a real part of REAL LIFE and this is a good time to learn these lessons.

Learn them early if they aren't college material....and let them get out before racking up massive debt in a degree that won't pay shit in the end.

I read the other day where incoming freshman these days, I think in the 5%-8% range had to take remedial math?!?! Our 1-12 schools aren't preparing them.....

If we keep lowering the standards....we're not helping anyone, we're hurting all them in the long run.

Let's re-think educations....some kids SHOULD be left behind for higher education, but that doesnt' mean we don't teach them some real skills where they can earn a living and contribute to society.

But for God's sake, let's quit coddling these little fuckers...they're going soft in ways that never even occurred to previous generations....

One of the requirements to become a US Citizen is you have to show some proficiency in American English.

Other countries have an official language, we need to make it official here.

We want people coming into the US to assimilate and the greatest tools for that is common language.

You rarely go to other countries and hear commercials in different languages ......certainly the signage for streets, etc is not in multiple languages...etc.

There is nothing bigoted about expecting someone trying to live in your country to speak the common language ....

The USA doesn't have an official language.

We need to fix that...other countries have official languages.....why not us?

Here in the US, audio recording without consent is prohibited by wiretap laws, but not video recording... sigh.

That's not quite true....

That's ONLY true in states that mandate both parties consent to and know they're being recorded.

Many, if not most states...allow for one party consent, so usually the person recording knows its recording and therefore legal.

If you record in public without consent, the only thing you should be allowed to do with that video is maintain it in private and use it for security or investigative purposes for a fixed time window. Any other use should be prohibited, and yes that this includes use by the media.

News reporting?

And anyone can be a news reporter potentially.....

This is the USA.

Speak fucking English!!!

You didn't get it. This is speeding tickets issued by fully automated systems. No court has ever seen this.

The solution is to stop treating it as a money-printing system. Punish people who speed in front of kindergardens, and leave people alone who at the city edge in the industrial zone on a Sunday evening didn't decelerate quite fast enough coming in from the highway.

I literally have no clue why you're saying that or who you think you're talking to.

Not at all. Because COMFORT is the key word here, not processing.

Which is often intentional.

We live in 2026. You can order an artillery or drone strike in Ukraine from a tablet and it'll be delivered within minutes. Data processing speeds are essentially instant for data sets not on LLM sizes. We have automation everywhere when it suits the right people. e.g. that speeding ticket you received for going 12 km/h over the limit? No human ever so much as saw that. Full automated process. Takes 6-12 weeks. Why? Because otherwise you might still remember how fast you were actually going or that you weren't even in that street on that day, and fight it. Same principle here: The slower the bureaucracy, the more people will just give up and go away. It's a self-regulating system to reduce the number of inquiries to the amount that the public servants can comfortably process.

that's a per-character stat.

If your average license plate has, say, 6 characters, you get a 78% total probability that it reads them right.

If you have 8 Flock cameras in your town of let's say 100,000 people, sitting at busy roads or intersections, 10 to 20 thousand cars per day is a reasonable estimate, which means you get 62,400 to 124,800 mis-read license plates. Per day. Every day. Under optimal conditions.

That's more false readings than you have people.

I wonder if just randomly assigning traffic tickets to license plates in your register wouldn't get you a lower false positive rate.

They stopped recycling here for years, but I think recently they brought it back, BUT you have to pay extra for it, and I don't really see anyone in my area apparently paying for it, as that I don't see anyone recycle bins out for pickup....

This means you're likely throwing some things in the trash that shouldn't be there.

Well if they take it away, then it is OK to throw it away with them, eh?