pixelbill

I'm planning on visiting to get some dental work done in the coming months. I have a lot of issues and have never been able to afford proper work here in the US. To get the work done I need here would be in excess of $50,000 but my friend in Taiwan said it would cost at most $1,000 there.

Every time in the past I suggested something like that to my current dentist they had the same reaction, basically: "Oh I would never do that! You're going to get an infection and/or they are going to do such bad work that no dentist here in the US will want to touch you afterwards."

Doctors in the US are so arrogant, thinking they are the best in the world because they are the most expensive. I would love to move to Taiwan, but I suffer miserably in the jungle weather (hence why I am going in winter).

Edit: As someone with chronic health issues in the US, I have a laundry list of horror stories about doctors here. They are far, far from the best in the world.

I think you nailed it, you are lucky.

Most jobs do not function like this, to think otherwise is delusional. At every single employer I've ever worked for, if you left early or came in late despite accomplishing all your work, you would get in trouble. I have seen it happen over and over again.

Typically, they will claim that you could have accomplished more work if you were only there for the extra time, regardless of the reality of the situation. Your time outside of work is worthless to the company, and they would rather waste your time so that they can (possibly) squeeze another drop from you.

I'm curious, this article spins the whole "lower rates of ambulance usage" as a positive thing, but is there enough evidence to say that?

From the article:

_______ With demand for ambulances decreased by available Uber drivers, emergency personnel have been able reach critical patients faster while also applying necessary treatment on the way to the hospital, according to a new economic study from the University of Kansas:

"Given that even a reduction of a few minutes can drastically improve survival rates for serious conditions, this could be associated with a substantial welfare improvement."

The study investigated ambulance rates in 766 U.S. cities from 43 different states. Taking into account the timelines of when Uber entered each city, the researchers found that the app reduced per capita ambulance usage rates by around 7 percent. _______

Okay they claim the study says "emergency personnel have been able reach critical patients faster" but decreased usage does not necessarily equal faster response time. It would have been much more solid if they actually looked at the ambulance response time, not just how many are being used. (My skeptical side leads me to think this is because that data-set didn't match their narrative.)

There is also the question of: Is this actually a good thing? Are those 7% less people using ambulances all not having serious health issues? Especially when something is wrong, you are often not a good judge of your own health.

How many people having chest pain thought it wasn't too bad so they called an Uber instead of an ambulance and died on the way to the hospital? Might not have turned out that way if they just called an ambulance in the first place..

Need more data to decide if this is an Uber propaganda piece.

They have a HUGE bias, I doubt anything coming out of them is the actual truth.

There are around 500,000 minke whales (the type they hunt) in the Antarctic, Japanese whaling kills approximately 300 whales per year.

Please explain to me why you think this is such an issue?

Are you serious with this? You are just as clueless as these idiot politicians.

More often than not people are NOT responsible for their outcome. It is a genetic lottery. Will you be born into money? Then you're set for life. Not born into money? You're going to struggle and have to work much harder just to survive, let alone get ahead. That's unlikely to happen.

So a big old FRAK YOU to the arrogant assholes who claim poor people just need to work harder and be smarter, when I promise you they work much harder than yourself. Friends with that piece of human garbage Jason Chaffetz? He tells people they need to stop wasting their money (that they don't have) while he gets everything in his entire life paid for by rich donors who control his vote. Fuck. You.

I've never used twitter, am I deserving of some sort of reward or recognition too?

Yup, this. And given that he states twice in his spiel that he "had no reason to suspect the package would be lost" it is almost laughable. Has any single person in history sent a package and said "Well I expect this will get lost in transit!" ?

How dare I call out a power user like yourself, have fun with that.

These terms were coined before the Americas were discovered by Europeans.

Europe was the West, then you have the Middle East, then the Far East (China, Japan). That was the whole world to them pretty much. When the Americas were discovered they were known as the New World, and eventually became known as the West as well (Due to the fact that most of our culture comes from Europe, eg. Western Culture).

No one is debating the sporty performance of your VW. You dismiss all criticisms of them immediately and go on to talk about your lovely driving experience, making it seem like you either work for VW or have a vested interest in them, so your opinion instantly counts as worthless in my book. If a person had done what VW did they would be in jail, but because we as a society have determined that rich people are much more important than poor people, this will never happen.

Nope.

Diffusion of gasses in the air is an extremely rapid process. In a minute the concentration would be the same throughout the room.

No one demonizes you for being addicted to potato chips and reality TV, so maybe try some empathy.

Heroin is already safer than tobacco and alcohol.

Deaths per year from Heroin: 13,000

Deaths per year from Alcohol: 88,000

Deaths per year from Tobacco: 440,000

Hmm...

Sorry, but what are you talking about?

Yes, CO is similar to air's molar mass (it's actually slightly lower), meaning it will diffuse evenly through the vertical space in the room. The concentrations at the ceiling will be the same as the concentrations on the floor.

Stop spreading misinformation.

Whale hunters in Japan (where they have gotten a lot of criticism in recent years) most certainly do use the whole whale, or at least most of it. They eat the meat; so it's no more wasteful than eating a cow, pig, chicken. It may have been the case that they used to just harvest the blubber, but don't think it's cost effective to even do that any more (crude oil is way, way cheaper).

I'm not sure where I ever said no animals should be killed, quite the opposite in fact. I don't have an issue with ANY animal being killed. However I realize that some people DO have an issue with only certain animals being killed and not others; that is the hypocrisy.

It seems the basis of your entire argument is that you just want to do what the majority says is okay to do. That's a cool way to live your life I guess, but at least try to think for yourself every now and again.

The GDP of the entire content of Africa is $2.39 trillion, just the USA alone has a GDP 7x their entire content. It would be roughly equivalent to bringing in $1.4 billion into the US economy.

Do you have any actual evidence to add to your argument? Or just more ignorant sarcasm?

Sure.

http://www.africanwildlifeconservationfund.org/wp-content/up...

Trophy hunting alone brings in over $200 million USD a year to Africa's economy.

Whales are not endangered. Some types of whales are endangered. In fact, most Humpback species were removed from the endangered list.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/07/492976575/...

Good for you that you're disgusted by someone else's culture, I'm sure they feel the same way about you. I am just sick of the hypocrisy that so many people show. Ever kill a mouse in a mouse trap? That's a life gone for no reason, you should be ashamed.

Seems like everyone has an opinion on just which animals are okay to kill and which aren't. That's cool if you want to think that, but you are basically saying "I think its okay to kill these animals but not these." and everyone has a different line.

You obviously didn't do any research into the subject you are talking about, or are just ignoring it, so let me inform you.

You know what's even more messed up than killing an animal? Humans suffering and dying due to extreme poverty.

Rich hunters come to these countries with lots of money that they pay to the locals and government in order to hunt these animals. The locals then use that money to help conservation efforts with animals as well as help provide food, shelter, and clean water to the population.

Yes, your favorite looking animal that you've never actually seen in real life will die, but the lives of thousands of humans will be improved because of it. People who vehemently speak out against these things like yourself just come off sounding like ignorant children.

So is there any reason in particular that the thought of eating something containing shark fin "disgusted" you, but all of the other animal parts on the menu were just fine?

The level of hypocrisy in this thread is incredible. Save the elephants, save the sharks, save the whales; I guess because we think those animals are coolest/cutest they get a pass. Guess what other animals are smart? Pigs. They can do math and make good pets and we mow them down by the millions. How about cows? They are sacred in some countries, I bet someone from India would be "disgusted" that they sell dead cow in American restaurants!

Oh I'd forgot to mention that were were charged a $10 re-connection fee each time, in addition to being charged for the days when service was not available.

Basically any time they want they can take extra money from you and you have no recourse.

This happened to myself and my housemate recently, this draconian practice is still alive and well in the USA. We have Service Electric, who uses PenTeleData as their provider, and I can honestly say they are the worst service imaginable.. I'd rather have Comcast.

Neither of us use torrents, we prefer streaming services that have everything we need. Regardless, our internet was turned off without notice two months ago. The most frustrating part was that they didn't tell us, it just went off.. so it took us nearly a day to figure out what was even going on. This included a dozen calls to the ISP trying to figure out what was going on, and the surprising part is that they didn't know! There's more to the story including absolutely most incompetent tech support I've ever seen, but a little over a day later we had it turned back on. We asked what we could do to avoid this in the future, and were told not to torrent.

Fast forward to a few weeks back, our internet turns off again. I call and find out that our internet has been cut off for 72 hours due to torrenting, which turned out to be a TV show. A TV show neither of us watches, so the circumstances are suspect.

When I questioned the operator about this, she flat out called me a liar, with no evidence to support her argument. When I suggested that we might cancel our service because of the poor treatment, she said go ahead. Of course, she knew that there are no other ISPs where we live (out in the woods).

So here we are again, our internet may get turned off permanently and without warning for no wrongdoing on our part. Rather strange times we're living in where scumbag companies can get away with this, ruining peoples lives so they can increase their own profits by 3.2%

Burn in hell, PenTeleData, I'm sure you're monitoring this as well.

Why have there been so many washingtonpost articles lately? Pretty annoying to those who don't want to deal with paywalls to get their news.