Instigate

Why does there even need to be a bill (in the sense of keeping track of costs on a per-patient basis) to begin with?

There doesn’t need to be a bill that the patient sees or has access to, but the costs need to be tracked so that governments can adequately budget for healthcare. Governments need to be able to make educated assumptions about future costs so that they can align their tax schedules to ensure that the monies are there to pay for the costs involved in healthcare. Individualising the costs per-patient and per-issue assists with forecasting costs when governments also have access to good data about prevalence. It also assists with ensuring that the correct number of specialists are available for a given issue.

A non-lethal stroke would just make him more of a Republican and more appealing to Republican voters.

While I take your point and agree with the merits of power imbalances inherently muddying the waters of consent, at what stage are we infantilising adults with the capacity to consent? Without knowing the particulars of the circumstances, it’s very difficult to say that she acted in a predatory manner towards these people. In your comment, you suggest the idea that Boebert was the one ‘making moves’ on her staffers. Is there any verified information to suggest this was the case?

My broader question is this: are there any circumstances in which an employee can truly consent to sexual activity with their employer? I worry that answering ‘no’ to that question unfairly infantilises people, while I simultaneously worry that answering ‘yes’ justifies abuse of power to extract sexual favours.

It’s a very difficult puzzle, and one that I would personally argue heavily relies on context and the accounts of those who we fear may have been sexually abused. I’m reminded of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky saga which posed very similar questions, and to which you’ve also alluded in your comment.

I’m not the same person you’ve been replying to, but I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’d just go one step further to suggest that a lot of people instinctively or subconsciously know this but aren’t willing to be one of the ones who dies or is maimed before it’s all over. Hell, if I were USian I’d probably feel that way, but the US populace has been so deeply fed a propaganda diet of individualism that they’re even more susceptible to that way of thinking.

I never understood the concept of the phrase “underage girl” or “underage boy” as they’re completely tautological. Once a girl comes of age she becomes a woman, and ditto for boys being men. You can’t have an “overage girl” in the same way you can’t have an “underage woman”. English denotes the difference between childhood and adulthood without needing qualification.

He really doesn’t strike me as someone who has the capacity to guide AI picture models to get the sort of results he posts. This leads me to presume that there is some underpaid staff member, expected to work whenever Trump wants one of these, on-demand generating images for Trump to post.

What a life.

That will be the real Liberation Day.

https://aussie.zone/post/34009816/23629202

https://aussie.zone/post/34788654/24037514

https://aussie.zone/post/34745780/24008930

https://aussie.zone/post/34745780/24008953

Just a handful of examples I found lazily searching for a couple of minutes - and that’s only specific to criticising Mamdani. If you want a list of .ml users encouraging people in the US to stop voting altogether, that list would be much longer.

My “comrades” are like people who signed up to the same email server, were not all familiar with each other.

Of course you don’t personally know everyone from .ml but you’ve been here long enough to know exactly the kind of person that maintains and posts from an account on .ml. Tankies spouting No True Scotsman, anti-voting, leftist-dividing, Russia/PRC dick-sucking rhetoric are par for the course. It’s why as soon as someone comments from a .ml domain the rest of us collecvitely sigh and brace ourselves before we read what you have to say.

I’m not denying that there are reasonable and rational people from .ml - you yourself seem to be one of them - but there is so much bad faith whataboutism and tankie nonsense that people like yourself who continue to maintain a .ml account end up getting lumped in with them.

I’m not the same commenter as the one you’ve replied to, but I’ve definitely seen tankies shitting on people who support Mamdani. I didn’t save any of those comments so I can’t directly point to any right now, but many of your comrades over on .ml are continuing to sow dissent on the left; pushing anti-voting rhetoric; and suggesting that even Mamdani doesn’t pass the purity test. It’s unhelpful at best and actively helping Republicans at worst.

Sorry in advance for the rant, but it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when someone asks a question and gets an answer for a completely different question. They specifically asked for salads made by decent companies and you’ve told them to go and buy the ingredients at a market. They basically asked what wattage of lightbulb would be best for their lamp and you’ve recommended a great candlemaker.

I get that in a perfect world we’d all only eat locally-grown produce from small farms and suppliers or grow our own food, but we don’t all have that luxury. Because of economic and social pressures, we often have to make choices we wouldn’t like to make.

Maybe this person doesn’t have the time and energy to travel to a market just to buy lettuce or to make their own salad; maybe that’s cost-prohibitive for them; maybe they live in a food desert; maybe the local grocer is 5 minutes away while their nearest market is an hour’s drive; or maybe they’re looking for a type of lettuce that isn’t grown locally so that they can make dishes that are culturally appropriate for them.