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top of the heap to third world status in one generation

Gry

Gry

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armedoldhippy said:
love cave art! thinking of a tattoo of an image i saw from a cave in France, a hunter aiming his bow as a bison ran past...
Click to expand...
A bridge of sorts across time and culture. Enjoy learning of similar here left by various and overlapping cultures.
 
Gry

Gry

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Thom Hartmann presents The Hidden History of American Healthcare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Jdj_Wt7Ds

In his new book, The Hidden History of American Healthcare (Berrett-Koehler), popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality. For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people — one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s. Other countries have shown us that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient. Taiwan's single-payer system saved the country a fortune as well as saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down the economy. This resulted in just 10 deaths, while more than 500,000 people have died in the United States. Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current "sickness for profit" system. Modern attempts to create versions of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn, including Obamacare. There is a simple solution: Medicare for all. Hartmann outlines the extraordinary benefits this system would provide the American people and economy and the steps we need to take to make it a reality. It's time for America to join every industrialized country in the world and make health a right, not a privilege.
 
Gry

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Breaking Down the ‘Wellness-Industrial Complex,’ an Episode at a Time




The “Maintenance Phase” podcast interrogates the science behind health food trends, fad diets and popular nutritional advice.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/d...=pocket-newtab


Aubrey Gordon collects vintage diet books. She has amassed almost 100 titles, including the 1973 volume “Slimming Down,” written by Johnny Carson’s sidekick, Ed McMahon. “Slimming Down” — which featured chapter titles like “The Breadstick Conspiracy” and “Two Martinis Into Connecticut” — is the book that began Ms. Gordon’s collection.
And while the idea of mixology as nutritional strategy might seem absurd to a reader today, Ms. Gordon said that so much of the current thinking about what is now known as wellness is just as “hilarious and wacky.”
On the podcast “Maintenance Phase,” named after the concept of sustaining post-diet weight loss, Ms. Gordon and the journalist Michael Hobbes spend each episode exploring what they call the “wellness-industrial complex,” debunking health fads and nutritional advice.
While health, weight and wellness are important issues, much of what Americans understand about them is actually hollow marketing, Mr. Hobbes said.

“Most of us have confidence that we understand these wellness issues, but we don’t realize that we’re literally just regurgitating things that we saw in a Nike commercial,” Mr. Hobbes added. “And wellness is the perfect encapsulation of that. A lot of the things under wellness are just rebranded or misconstrued data being sent back to us by a company, basically.”


Wellness has two definitions, Ms. Gordon said: One is new language being used by weight-loss companies that have figured out that “dieting is less popular than it used to be,” and the other lives as “a very amorphous term that we attach all kinds of things to.”
“Vitamin companies are selling wellness,” Ms. Gordon said. “Mattress companies are selling wellness. Your work now has a wellness program. It’s sort of seen as this uncontroversial way to talk about health.”
The show is No. 1 in the health and fitness category on Apple podcasts. Episodes investigating the obesity epidemic and the problematic history of the body mass index led the podcast to its first million downloads on the listening app last month.


Since the podcast began in October 2020, the hosts have examined popular diet foods, like SnackWell’s Cookies, Moon Juice and Halo Top Ice Cream (which is the 2010s’ answer to SnackWell’s, Ms. Gordon said on that episode). They’ve done deep dives into anti-fat bias, eating disorders and the roles both Dr. Mehmet Oz and Oprah Winfrey have played in the weight-loss industry. They have also investigated popular diets, such as keto, Weight Watchers, celery juice and the master cleanse (“You’re basically drinking very tart, very spicy sugar water,” Ms. Gordon said). One episode even explored how the quest for good health can lead people to QAnon and other conspiracy theories.


In the show’s introductory episode, the hosts talk about how few health-focused podcasts are skeptical of wellness. For Ms. Gordon, 37, her skepticism grew out of her personal experience of “20-plus years of straight dieting and mostly staying the same size.”
“Being a fat lady and trying to do all the things that fat ladies are supposed to do took me right there,” Ms. Gordon said. “I’ve been doing all the things, and it’s not really producing the result that I’ve been promised for, you know, the majority of my life. And I’m also seeing other people who have been in search of that promise for the majority of their lives also not getting what they thought was going to happen. At a certain point, you kind of got to go, well, maybe it just doesn’t work.”
For Mr. Hobbes, 39, who has done extensive reporting on obesity, watching his mother’s struggles led to an interest in weight fixation.
“It was, like, this defining thing of my childhood that she was always on some completely nuts, unsustainable diet,” Mr. Hobbes said. “She was always trying so hard, like swimming five times a week and eating a bowl of carrots. The discourse around obesity was always like, well, they’re not trying hard enough. I know other people that are trying pretty hard and not succeeding.”
The show presents “relatively radical ideas about this issue,” Mr. Hobbes said, but still tries to avoid alienating listeners. One way the hosts do this is by turning the narrative on themselves, taking on topics and ideas they have personal experience with.


“At some point we’ll do CBD,” Ms. Gordon said. “I have been a CBD person, and I’ll be made uncomfortable by my own research. It feels important to the show and important to me as a person, to be like, we’re not actually above anyone. We’re not smarter than this. We’re not better than this.”



Ms. Gordon and Mr. Hobbes said they receive lots of positive feedback, but the emails they get from researchers and clinicians are some of the most meaningful.
Lisa DuBreuil, a clinical social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, also operates a private practice in Salem, Mass. She uses the weight-inclusive Health At Every Size approach with her clients, who include people with substance-use disorders, eating disorders, mental health issues and those who’ve developed problems after weight-loss surgeries and chronic dieting.
She heard about “Maintenance Phase” on social media, and became a regular listener. She’s not hearing anything she doesn’t already know, but said she loves how the show makes those topics more approachable and “really fun to listen to.”
“To be able to have these kinds of resources and get information in an entertaining, interesting, but also very factual way is wonderful,” said Ms. DuBreuil, who is in recovery from an eating disorder.

Ms. DuBreuil added that the ideas and research on “Maintenance Phase” are concepts that many women, people of color and L.G.B.T.Q. people have been talking about for more than 20 years, but that “it is delightful to see new people discover it.”



Caitlin McDonald, a nonprofit administrator in Salt Lake City, said that when she started listening to the show, it felt like being seen for the first time.
“It was just sort of a revelation,” she said. “It was such a relief to be in a space where I was being talked about as a human, and not a number or a statistic.”
Scott Cave, who lives in the Appalachian Mountains region of Virginia with his wife and infant, is a historical researcher and stay-at-home father. He started listening to “Maintenance Phase” after learning about it on Mr. Hobbes’s other podcast, “You’re Wrong About.” As someone with a doctoral degree in history, Mr. Cave said he appreciates the way the podcast examines and evaluates primary sources in a way that’s fun.
In an episode on the obesity epidemic, the show laid out some of the consequences of weight stigma, including people’s delaying medical care for fear of doctors’ offices. That resonated for Mr. Cave: Once, after injuring his finger, he went to an urgent care clinic where he said he was told: “We don’t think your finger is broken. It might be, but you’re very fat, so you should probably deal with that.”
As a result, Mr. Cave said he spent years ignoring the symptoms of his autoimmune disease, just to avoid another doctor visit. “So I left with a big swollen finger and a real blow to my self-regard and my relationship with the medical profession,” he said. “When they brought it up on the podcast, I realized, ‘Oh yes, I didn’t complain about my symptoms for a long time because they were wrapped up in the shape of my body, in fatness.’”
The pandemic has only intensified America’s decades-long moral panic about fatness, Ms. Gordon said. But it has also intensified a counternarrative. She has noticed more conversations centered on body positivity and more health professionals spreading the message that “it’s actually OK if you gain weight while you’re surviving a pandemic.”

“It’s been a really fascinating moment of everyone sort of processing their own body image stuff and their own weird beliefs about fatness and health in this very public way.
 
Gry

Gry

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Thom Hartmann: The Hidden History of the Oligarchy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YibDwEDzU0k

The United States was born in a struggle against the oligarchs of the British aristocracy, and ever since then the history of America has been one of dynamic tension between democracy and oligarchy, asserts author Thom Hartmann. And much like the shock of the 1929 crash woke America up to glaring inequality and the ongoing theft of democracy by that generation’s oligarchs, Hartmann believes that the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has laid bare how extensively oligarchs have looted our nation’s economic system, gutted governmental institutions, and stolen the wealth of the former middle class. Pulling from his book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, Hartmann joins us via livestream to trace the history of this struggle, from America’s founding to the United States’ war with the feudal Confederacy to President Franklin Roosevelt’s struggle against “economic royalists,” who wanted to block the New Deal. While the oligarchs lost the battle in all of those cases, Hartmann argues that increasing right-wing control of the media, unlimited campaign contributions, and a conservative takeover of the judicial system means we’re now at a crisis point. Hartmann lays out practical measures we can take that he contends will break up media monopolies, limit the influence of money in politics, reclaim the wealth stolen over decades by the oligarchy, and build a movement that will return control of America to “We the People.” Thom Hartmann is a progressive nationally and internationally syndicated talk show host. Talkers Magazine named him America’s most important progressive host and has named his show one of the top ten talk radio shows in the country every year for over a decade. A four-time recipient of the Project Censored Award, Hartmann is also a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five books, translated into multiple languages. Presented by Town Hall Seattle. https://townhallseattle.org/
 
Gry

Gry

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Logic Problems to Challenge Your Bored Brain


They’ll make the time pass lightning fast.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/l...=pocket-newtab

There’s nothing more painful than watching the time pass. Instead, occupy your mind with these logic problems. Then whip them out on video chats and socially-distant hangs, and watch your friends scratch their heads. Answers are below each question, but don’t cheat!
Time Trials


Q: A kindergartner, a fifth grader, a high school track star, and an Olympic sprinter are all waiting in line at a track-and-field meet’s food stand. Suddenly, the storm of the century starts to roll in. The only way back to the safety of the stadium is across a wobbly bridge in critical need of repair. The rickety old thing can handle only two people crossing at one time. Three runners or even a strong burst of wind could knock it away entirely. To make matters worse, the tempest’s dark clouds have blotted out the sun completely. Luckily, the kindergartner has a flashlight keychain attached to his backpack that provides just enough light to travel across safely.

The winds that will take down the structure begin in 17 minutes. The Olympic sprinter can race across in just one minute, and the high school track runner can manage in two. But it takes the fifth grader a plodding five minutes and the kindergartner an even slower 10. Given that the dilapidated bridge can handle just two people at once and one of the travelers must always have the flashlight in hand, how can the group get to safety in the allotted time?

Hint: The Olympian crosses the bridge three times.

A: The Olympic sprinter and the high school track star cross together first (two minutes). The Olympic sprinter rushes back, light in hand (one minute). Then, the fifth grader and the kindergartner run across, with the light (10 minutes). The high school track star, waiting on the other side, rushes back with the flashlight to grab the Olympian (two minutes). Together, they run across just before the bridge collapses (two minutes, for a total of 17 minutes).
A calculated trip


Q: An amateur engineer plans to circumnavigate the equator in an airplane he ­designed himself. Unfortunately, when he built it, he hadn’t planned on using it for a flight of this nature. So, the plane holds only enough fuel to make it halfway. Intent on making this feat a reality, he built two more identical planes and convinced his two friends, Jen and Dan, to pilot the spare planes and help him along to achieve his goal. The planes can transfer their fuel midair at any point during the trip, but there’s a catch: Only one airport on Earth will allow these homemade airliners to take off and land—and it ­happens to be located along the way.

The engineer wants to travel the entire globe without stopping, and Jen and Dan have agreed to stop, refuel, and follow the engineer in whatever manner necessary to help. It won’t be easy: Each plane holds 180 gallons of fuel and can travel 1 degree of longitude (it takes 360 degrees to circle the world) in one minute for every 1 gallon of fuel. How can Jen and Dan help? When should they stop, transfer fuel to the engineer, and head to and from the airport?

Hint: Jen and Dan both make one airport pit stop.

A: All three planes take off at the same time and head west for 45 minutes, making it one-eighth of the way there. At that point, Dan gives 45 gallons of his fuel each to Jen and the engineer. Jen and the engineer press on, and Dan returns to the airport. When they reach the 90 degree mark, Jen gives 45 gallons to the engineer and heads back to the airport; the engineer keeps moving. When the engineer hits the 180 degree mark, Dan leaves the airport heading east and meets the engineer at the 270 degree mark. Dan gives him 45 gallons, turns around, and heads west with the engineer. At the same time, Jen heads east to meet them. They all meet again at the 315 degree mark. Jen gives 45 gallons to Dan and the engineer, leaving each plane with 45 gallons—enough to make it back to the airport.
Claire Maldarelli is the Science Editor at Popular Science. She has a particular interest in brain science, the microbiome, and human physiology. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, and Scholastic’s Science World and Super Science magazines, among others. She has a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from the University of California, Davis and a master’s in science journalism from New York University's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program. Contact the author here.
 
Gry

Gry

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Global Capitalism: US Capitalism’s Decline Accelerates [September 2021]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJMGihBTUJs


US Capitalism’s Decline Accelerates [September 2021] In this lecture, Prof. Wolff will discuss the following: 1. Medical (Covid) and military (Afghanistan) defeats deepen social divisions 2. Exploding debt bubbles (gov’t, corporate, and personal) 3. Threats of inflation 4. China’s rise as a US competitor: its “surprise” strategy
 
Gry

Gry

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When a P-47 Pilot Aided a Japanese Aviator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxTXVDkSJE0

Neel Kearby in his P-47 Thunderbolt the “Fiery Ginger IV” was close to beating the record for victories. Many considered the Thunderbolt inferior to the nimble Japanese planes. But in the hands of Kearby and his friend Bill Dunham , it’s excellent diving capability and heavy guns proved to be deadly. The newer P-38s and P-51s were being replaced and Kearby knew, if he could beat a 26 victory record then the resulting press coverage could save his beloved P-47 to the end of the war. Bill Dunham witnessed the downing of Kearby but went on to commit an incredible act of chivalry in the otherwise incredibly tough Pacific Theater. Huge thanks to our Patron, Ace, who appears at 04:02. If you would like to appear in our videos please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/yarnhub Thanks to all our other patrons for helping us continue to make videos like this. Red Barons: Joel Richard, Kevin Chiao, KP, Richard Gardner, Francis DiStefano, Wren Darkcloud, Chris Davis, Elijah Ecclesia, Omar Al Mousa, Sami Leskinen, Jordan, Alan Samanta, Chase Feola, Falcon02, Onyx, Holden Hathcock Calico Jacks: DC, Nathan Dafoe, UBERDEATH, CodyHawk Caster, Farhod, Jim Kaspar, Charles, Ben Large, Zin Zinussan50, Ian Neville, Storm Heg, Alyssa, Mr Dinkelwinkel, Trish Short, Lewis, Jurrian Tromp, Benson Adams, Samuel Chew,Juusoz We sourced most of this information from the excellent book, Mustang and Thunderbolt Aces of the Pacific and CBI by John Stanaway and also this article from War History Online https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-...
 
Gry

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When a BF-109 spared a B-17, the reboot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQe4roNR8Nc

December 20th 1943, a badly shot up B-17 struggled to stay in the air, at the controls Charlie Brown. Passing low over a German airfield, it was spotted by Franz Stigler who raced to intercept, just one victory away from receiving the Knight's Cross. What happened next would be called one of the most incredible acts of kindness between enemies. Thanks to Adam Makos for allowing us to use the footage of the first meeting of Stigler and Brown. You should also read the full story in the book 'A Higher Call' by Adam Makos & Larry Alexander.
 
Cannavore

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Stunning new report ranks US dead last in health care among richest countries—despite spending the most

“If health care were an Olympic sport, the U.S. might not qualify in a competition with other high-income nations.”

https://thehill.com/changing-americ...g-new-report-ranks-us-dead-last-in-healthcare




The U.S. health care system ranked last among 11 wealthy countries despite spending the highest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.

Researchers behind the report surveyed tens of thousands of patients and doctors in each country and used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Norway, the Netherlands and Australia were the top-performing countries overall, with the U.S. coming in dead last.

The U.S. ranked last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes despite spending 17 percent of GDP on health care, but came in second on the measures of care process metric. The nation performed well in rates of mammography screening and influenza vaccination for older Americans, as well as the percentage of adults who talked with their physician about nutrition, smoking and alcohol use.

Half of lower-income U.S. adults in the report said costs prevented them from receiving care while just more than a quarter of high-income Americans said the same. In comparison, just 12 percent of lower-income residents in the U.K. and 7 percent with higher incomes said costs stopped them from getting care.

The U.S. also had the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy at age 60 compared with other countries.

“The U.S. has two health care systems. For Americans with the means and insurance to have a regular doctor and reported experiences with their day-to-day care are relatively good, but for those who lack access, the consequences are stark,” Schneider said.

The poor performance is nothing new, as the U.S. has landed in last place in all seven studies the Commonwealth Fund has released since 2004.
 
armedoldhippy

armedoldhippy

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a "quarter of high income Americans" are too damn cheap to go to the damn doctor. "we pay taxes, and by God, this shit should be free! well, for us anyway. not all of those "others" that don't deserve it..."
 
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