What’s the threshold for something being ‘a thing’ as opposed to ‘it happens’?
Five ‘it happens’ = one ‘thing’?
Anecdotally, I can say that back when I visited my local public library on most days, it would be a rare day (certainly in winter) when there was not at least one person in the library who I would guess was homeless.
Either that or they were way ahead of the trend of wearing 5 coats on top of each other, not washing for several days and mumbling to yourself.
That may well have changed now that many libraries seem to have got rid of anywhere to sit (and indeed many of the books).
On the other hand many libraries are now designated as places for the homeless and unemployed to access government services so there may be rather fewer homeless people sleeping in the library and rather more trying to work their through the universal credit application system on one of the library computers.
Doctors making “huge piles of cash” has become a deeply ingrained myth in the US, at least in primary care. Insurance dictates what we are paid for our services, and the economy largely dictates our expenses. We have no control over either and as a consequence income for primary care docs has been in decline for a while. Not that we are starving or anything, we are making above average salaries, but when you take into account the years of schooling, esp if you consider the years of sub-minimum wage residencies, anyone who goes into the field for the money is too stupid to be in the field.
From last December, and a local news source rather than a sensationalist tabloid.
Also: How library services used to help the homeless will be affected by closing libraries across the UK.
As of December 2017, 450 libraries had been closed since austerity measures were introduced in 2012, averaging a hundred closures a year so far. That level of closures hurts everyone.
this covers a wide array. so to stop this mindset start by not voting for gazillionaires just because they are successful at making money. there’s some really nice poor people out here.
Last year the president of my university gave a speech to the faculty in which he said, repeatedly, “Students are our customers, and the customer is always right.”
What’s particularly frustrating about it is that there are already objective methods to evaluate outcomes. (As you know) that’s how clinical trials are done. But that takes work, and apparently, hospitals and medical networks would rather use flawed metrics that are slightly easier to implement (but yield the wrong results) rather than data-driven outcomes measurement.
Yet another thing that can be better implemented in a single-payer system.
The homeless are still patrons, until and unless they start bothering the other patrons or staff. Then it becomes “You need to leave now; once you take care of your issue and aren’t a nuisance any more, you are welcome to return.”
For me this is a complete subversion of democracy. One person, one vote; not one dollar, one vote.
One of the big problems is the economics is just wrong about everyone. Incentives get people to do things except when they have the opposite effect. Higher prices mean selling fewer units except when higher prices mean selling more units. Etc.
They think they can wave everything away by saying “other things being equal” but that contains a hidden assumption that the “other things” are completely independent. As if the fact of having one economic policy or another doesn’t change anything.
I said it elsewhere, but recently I’ve started to think that we aren’t even products to social media companies. I think we may be part of a “Big Store” con. That is, the entire operation of having users and selling to advertisers is just there to make the operation look large, make the operators look like important people. They’re real game is fleecing investors. Which makes sense, since investors have all the money.
I just came across another great word for our times in the Guardian the other day: ironicidal. Something is ironicidal if it is killing the possibility for satire/parody by being so outrageously stupid.
Confession - the only Brin I’ve read to date is Kiln People, which is pretty shameful given how much I enjoyed it. One post, two recommendations: challenge accepted!
I’m doubtful I’ll get there, sadly. I suspect that (in my field at least and in the humanities more broadly) tenure track are going to continue to go away to be replaced by lower paying, less secure lecturing and adjuncting positions. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started Hunger gaming tenure track positions!
And people who’ve managed to get the tenure track are going to see that be less meaningful than it once was (with regards to job security and the like).
