Dr. Bob

What are your iron levels in your blood work? Have they looked O2 sats?

God at that price please tell me the screw mechanism works to adjust it.

We just call that a donation. And it goes through a PAC and it’s legal. The supreme Court has removed all the guard rails so unlimited donations and direct coordination with a PAC is now possible.

Ignorance is not knowing. Stupidity is not applying what you know. Think of the friends meme…

What good is bribing a candidate? And by bribe do you mean blackmail?

There is a lot of nuance that gets lost in the discussion of asylums, particularly if you know about them primarily from fictional sources. Historically they were actually a great improvement over the model that existed up to the late 1800s. That model threw the mentally ill into a general prisoner population which included debtors, criminals, and anyone else deemed appropriate. There wasn’t a keen understanding of mental illness or how it differed from cognitive dysfunction or how either of them differed from bad morals. It didn’t matter because there wasn’t really any treatment anyways.

There were attempts to separate out those who couldn’t care for themselves from those who wouldn’t. Bethlehem Hospital is an example of this and that did not work out particularly well. It gave us the word bedlam in english which means loud confusion. It was a popular tourist attraction as well with the well-to-do paying fees to watch the capers of the mentally ill while they suffered. So prison or a sideshow.

Against this backdrop the asylum model was pretty humane. By the early 20th century medicine was getting a hand in mental illness, and there was general agreement that we shouldn’t make their lives miserable for our own amusement. At its best, an asylum would be in a rural location with an associated farm. Residents would work if they were able tending animals or gardens, or maintaining the buildings or working in the kitchen. The produce would provide some income and partially supply the kitchens. What developed then was a self contained community with some residential staff.

One of the best documents for this model is Erving Goffman’s Asylums published in 1961. It examines the asylum model in great detail. It is worth mentioning that there was anti-psychiatry movement at that time that continued build steam through the 1970s. Goffman writes with an eye towards that movement that often portrays the staff as being the beneficiaries of the institution. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shows this in a setting reminiscent of bedlam like torture. Inherent Vice portrays it in a humorous fashion with psychiatrists dining on linen table cloths and eating gourmet meals prepared by patients. Both are fictionalized exaggerations, but it’s true of any institution that lacks strong oversight that they will be highly variable depending on the specific adminstration and culture at a locale. This is true of prisons as well.

So that was kind of the situation in 1980 when Reagan came into office closed them all down. The mentally ill now live on the streets. I worked in this area for many years. It’s funny to me how a modern best practice would have a stable community setting with residential staff and meaningful work for people according to their capacity. Sound familiar?

That’s me lurking until I have something to contribute.

Any of us can ask AI and throw slop into a conversation. If you don’t have anything substantive to add maybe read and learn.

I don’t carry it with me. I also used to work swing shifts when I was younger so my circadian rhythm is entirely fucked. If I close my eyes, I sleep.

Always been like that. I fall asleep on planes before take off and wake up when we hit tarmac.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kFnBXwj6iUI

Glycogen depletion and the associated water load will take care of the first 5-7 pounds if going the fasting route. So a little less but still crazy bad. And it will go back on the moment feeding resumes.

You misunderstand what a theory vs a fact is. If a fact is a lego brick,a theory is a what you build.

A theory collects facts and builds a cohesive narrative to explain why they are. Most importantly there will be gaps, so a theory makes predictions about facts that we don’t have yet. When a new finding fits expectations, then the theory is supported. When a new finding is unexpected or doesn’t fit, it’s time to reclaim the bricks and build a new structure.

So black holes were predicted and fit the theory very well. It increased our confidence that the theory was moving in the right direction.

Pitbulls are the hollow points of the dog world. There is nothing wrong with them per se but the consequences of one being misused are so much worse.

Get bitten by a lab or a Yorkie and it’s not so bad. Pits have the bite strength of an alligator and the instinct to hold on, so if you try to pull free or shake loose you are losing muscle or maybe a limb.

The ones I’ve always seen seem to be targeted to remote workers and solo practitioners - people who need some support space on a regular basis so there are service tiers and payment plans. I just need someplace to sit when the bat phone goes off. And yes I use headphones.

ITT people with jobs where they have to be available vs those who do not.

They do, and neither work in most cases.

I have used libraries before and they are great for this when they are close by. I’ve never used a co-working space - do they have drop in desks where I can just slip in to one in a strange city and give them $10 to sit for 30 minutes?

My need typically comes when I’m travelling and something comes up. Coffee shops are quick and convenient and they have always been used for this kind of thing. Right back to their historical origin as trading houses.

Sorry my dude. Sometimes there ain’t no option. If internet cafes were still a thing I’d do them there.

He was proto-MAGA in the film. We just didn’t have a name for it then. He was a engineer working for a defense contractor whose life fell apart because he was an asshole, and there was a peace dividend. Instead of embracing change, or reflecting on macro-level impacts, he goes apeshit and takes it out on fellow citizens who he views as being out of step with his vision of the world.

This is related to what I used to study. I’d say the difficulty with the question lays with how we interpret “biggest high”. Stimulation of those systems produces a qualitatively different user experience, and even more so depending on the dose, mechanism, and selectivity of the agonist. So serotonergic activation can produce experiences that range from relaxation to full blown psychedelic experiences. Activation of the opioid system can produce warm comfort to catatonia.