421–430 of 535 posts
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It amazes me that, in wealthy countries, there are significant homelessness problems due to economic displacement. I consider it an existence-proof of the idea that a free market cannot solve all problems. I think homelessness due to other causes-- mental health for example-- are more complex but similarly demonstrate fundamental flaws in the framework of society. Only once was I able to give a homeless person a meal…
Yeah the preoccupation with “how will the person use this money” I’ve done away with. I donate money to people. If it’s a scam or they use it for “unhealthy” ends, then I consider that is on them, not me. I gave the money with good intentions. I’m not tied to the outcome.
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Isn't this usually attributed to the Reagan administration's repeal of Mental Health Systems Act? Not that the situtation was necessarily all that great before it was repealed, but my understanding is that the federal government making this change ended up putting a lot of people on the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1...
Yeah they did, we have had similar problems in Australia The thing is, it's still a lot better than the mid-century horror stories of institutions; electrotherapy, lobotomy, people being drugged into a permanent fugue state, sexual abuse, etc. Those concerns are what drove these changes to the system.
ECT[1] (Electroshock Therapy) has an extremely bad rap (One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest didn't help), but there's quite an important use for it in modern psychiatry.
Notably severe depression, where normal meds don't help, or where there's an urgency to do something immediately (psychiatric meds usually take a few weeks to work and finding the right medication and dosage can be very difficult) ECT may be the last viable option for a patient.
Nowadays an anesthetic is applied before the treatment and (except in very rare cases) informed consent by the patient is required.
There's no doubt that it was massively abused in the past (and let's not even get started on lobotomy) and I'm pretty sure it's still abused in countries run by totalitarian regimes.
But it can be really the last hope for a patient with severe depression, despite the fact that it still has a very bad image.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy
E: clarifications
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More specifically, a North American thing. They also exist in some other markets, but generally not in Europe, as you noticed. I have no idea if they are required by some obscure law, or if it is just tradition. Probably the latter. I don't know anyone who has ever used the panic button in a panic, but almost everyone can remember hitting it by accident.
Depends on the range, but if you're inconsiderate and can't remember where you parked...
> Car theft rates have been since declining ever since, going from about 1.6 million annual incidents in the 1990s to around 800,000 in 2014. > Cars have gotten impossible to steal I’m confused how he makes this claim given his own statistic. So are all car thefts done with sophisticated hacking given the RFID tech is 25 years old? Still seems like a problem to me.
I really wish there was a way to disable the panic button on my key fob. It has a hair trigger and only requires one click to activate. I regularly trigger it by bending over with my keys in my pocket.
Are panic buttons a US thing? I never saw one on a fob in Europe?
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Many people weld a cage around the cats, or across them. Of course, the cage can be cut just like the cat, but it makes a 3 minute job turn into a 10 minute job, which may be riskier for the thief.
The current technology is to weld or rivet a specially shaped flat steel shield over the cat. It is more secure than an cage and actually improves the car's aero-dynamics.
I'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of the vehicle. This would allow law enforcement to track the vehicle, and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold. In the United States we have "LoJack" but it's not a standard feature rather a dealer upsell.
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It amazes me that, in wealthy countries, there are significant homelessness problems due to economic displacement. I consider it an existence-proof of the idea that a free market cannot solve all problems. I think homelessness due to other causes-- mental health for example-- are more complex but similarly demonstrate fundamental flaws in the framework of society. Only once was I able to give a homeless person a meal…
General advice: do not give money to the homeless, just give them food. There are of course exceptions in life like with anything, but if your city has a homelessness problem then you and others will only gradually make it worse by giving money.
Was your housing status critical in that decision?
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You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.
At least in Spain* it does not work like that, there are very stringent limitations on what you can record on the street, e.g. through dashcams or tesla sentinel mode: https://www.aepd.es/sites/default/files/2019-09/informe-juri... For example, you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial. * And I don't want to spend a bunch of time reading law but quite sure this is very tied in with GDPR, so I'd say tha…
What's the rationale to that? Concern over manipulated videos? That would seem dumb if the video files are transferred at the accident (which happens in USA).