StrangeSox

White House has given 16 senior staffers ethics waivers. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/po...t.co/uqau6lBBiv

That's just the first general summary I googled up. Tort reform has been discussed for years, and the trials in Texas and other states did not show much of a reduction in overall costs or premiums, 1-2% for some plans but no effect for others. These are just some of the top google results, but I used to follow this more frequently. http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/2009no3/w15371.html http://www.statesman.com/news/local/new-st...WdJtVa35WvZCCL/ It's possible that tort reform could help on the margins, but the idea that it's the primary or even a main driver of increasing health care costs just doesn't seem to hold to to the data.

this is more of an "obamacare" post but tort reform has been tried in multiple states and it hasn't been found to drive down costs at all, but it did help drive up profits for doctors. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecohen/201...w/#2e4b205263ea

I was flying across the country today, and I swear I saw another jet pass like 100 yards beneath our plane. I want the only one who noticed, either. Even the flight attendants were commenting on it, and there were audible gasps from a couple of passengers.

Still slipping It's now plausible that Labour and Lib-Dems and maybe SNP? will be able to form a coalition government and kick the Tories out of power, thought it'd be a pretty shaky coalition.

How dare some D-list celebrity be rude and crude! Who does she think she is, Trump?!

There are some widely cited studies out there that have found correlation between ASD and parental age. http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediat...larticle/570033

It's somewhat interesting to see Trump, who was elected at least in part because "we need a strongman to demonstrate American dominance to the world instead of the week apologies by Obama," seriously erode American power and influence around the world in less than half a year. https://t.co/ZiSIjpPsWe

QUOTE (Brian @ May 31, 2017 -> 10:15 AM) She's a dumbass. The right outcry is funny. This is the correct take imo

I thought you hated the PC police, Greg? I thought you were all about people speaking their mind?

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 31, 2017 -> 12:08 PM) I just checked Trump's twitter so see the fall out from the covfefe stuff and realized Baron is his son. Or at least he called him his son. I thought that was his grandkid... That means he conceived the kid when he was like 59-61ish. Totally off topic but wouldn't that kid have been a huge risk for Down's syndrome or some other birth defect? Or does that come from older women only? There's lots of borderline creepy/gross speculation from people that he's somewhere on the autism spectrum based on some of his behavior, but he's an 11 year old child whose privacy should be respected since he didn't ask for any of this. QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 31, 2017 -> 12:13 PM) Why wouldn't the risk be 100% related to Melania, who was in her mid 30's at the time? The age of both the mother and the father play a role, even if the risk increases faster for women than for men.

One GOP leader recently invited Ted Nugent to the White House! I also don't equate some garbage "art" piece to assaulting a reporter in a fit of rage because they dared to ask you about a major political issue.

Exactly. Coal company ceo's have even admitted this. Nuclear plants and coal plants across the country are shutting down because they can't compete with natural gas (unfortunate on the nuclear side given that there's near zero CO2 emissions there). People haven't been building coal plants in this country for decades, and some if the existing ones are being converted to natural gas. I think the will country generating station in lemont has converted three of it's four coal units to ng. And on the mining side, much like manufacturing in general, we can extract a whole lot of coal with only a handful of workers thanks to automation. People and towns that have generational identities tied to coal mining don't want to hear that, though. Even if you reject agw, coal is a really nasty way to generate electricity from start to finish. Edit: shack, I was watching "the smartest people in the room" about Enron the other week, made me think of your line of work.

I wonder where all the pearl-clutching is about free speech we were treated to when some right wing showmen wanted to turn college campuses into national political battlegrounds?

Reactionary politics fueled almost entirely by spite and ignorance. It's also setting a new precedence where previous admin agreements aren't honored going forward, which makes us commitments that much less reliable on a whole host of international issues. What good is spending years hammering out a complex agreement with every single country in the world save Syria and Nicaragua (who thought it didn't go far enough) if it'll just be launched shortly into the next admin? What good is the US's word?

Meanwhile, the EU and China have agreed on a climate deal. https://twitter.com/FT/status/869914490594316288 The US is going to be left behind on a lot of emerging technology and manufacturing because we need to do everything we can to save 50k coal jobs for some reason.

It's pretty funny to me that conservatives are still going to try to complain about decorum and inappropriate behavior after electing Trump, the man who bragged about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it because he's rich.

Gonna be right near Oracle in Thursday, checked out ticket prices on a whim. Lol no. Was fun being in the area last year when they lost. Lots of people got real quiet real quick.

Trump will be withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, costing the world vital time in combating global warming

Bunch of triggered snowflakes who need their safe spaces

Trump has been asking world leaders to call his cell, raising secrecy and security concerns. https://twitter.com/AP/status/869720283674021888

Gary Cohn, who just left Goldman Sachs, is leading a plan to sell off public infrastructure to Goldman Sachs I don't think private companies are our best bet for expensive long-term maintenance. This is just another way to privatize public assets and infrastructure for their gain but the public's loss.

Kafka in Vegas Ugh, reading that story coming off of a recent marathon of "Paradise Lost" trilogy