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Rebecca Heineman has died

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Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#111

Post by simondotau »

7952 wrote: post #90
simondotau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The fact that you need intimate knowledge is evidence of the Kafkaesque nature. It describes a world where virtue doesn't exist except for the case of financial planning (which often equates quite well to luck).

> evidence of the Kafkaesque nature

Based on my understanding of Kafka, to fit the definition, funerals would be essential goods whose costs should be socially guaranteed. In reality, a funeral is a discretionary event about the deceased and for the living. Crowdfunding for the benefit of the crowd is not an inversion of responsibility, it's simply voluntary collective spending.

You could say it's an inversion of societal norms, but that's not Kafkaesque.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#112

Post by wk_end »

geenat wrote: post #80
squigz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that? You're making assumptions based on nothing. You know people die of cancer in Canada too, right? You know people die of preventable illnesses in Canada too, right? Stop pretending we're perfect. Anyway it simply does not matter if you are right - this is not the time or place for it.

My mother had it detected well in advance, and is currently being treated, the cancer is in remission now. I doubt Rebecca ever got that chance. Sure, surprise late stage cancer happens, but it's often caught when you get semi-annual checkups.

“Routine visit”? “Semi—annual checkup”? Where I live in Canada (Victoria) the health care system is so overburdened that this reads like a sick joke. The cost of living is too high and the government doesn’t pay enough to get family doctors out here, so we mostly just have the ER. This is with an NDP government for nearly the past decade, mind you.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#113

Post by Tade0 »

superultra wrote: post #40
Dedime wrote: post #11

Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.

The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet according to Forbes, richer than the subsequent three nations combined. It’s a tragedy that our own citizens are not the direct be beneficiaries of that wealth. I think a lot about the scene in Star Trek IV when McCoy is in a hospital and says “what is this the dark ages?” Gofundme is like a kafkaesque tragic absurdity that - hopefully - will be looked at as an…

> The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet according to Forbes, richer than the subsequent three nations combined.

This framing by Forbes (any many others really) is insidious because it doesn't take into account the population number and how unevenly wealth is spread.

For instance, Switzerland is not a huge economy - around the 20th in the world, but its citizens enjoy an extremely high quality of life because both income inequality and incomes overall are significantly better that in the US.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#114

Post by CrazyStat »

pm90 wrote: post #106

Im inclined to blame the US healthcare system. It looks like a gofundme was setup to pay for her cancer treatment. A sensible system a) wouldn’t need patients to pay for treatment and b) might have caught it earlier through regular screening

Do you have any evidence that the cancer is a type that would have been caught by a screening regime currently in place in other countries which is not in place in the US?

Without such evidence your post reads more like propagandizing a death for political purposes than an honest argument.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#115

Post by nathan_compton »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #110
superultra wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in both Canada and the US. My grandma in Canada had to wait 9 months for a hip replacement. Even though the government provided help with paid aids, it was not a great situation. My mom here in the states needs a hip replacement and she can’t afford it because she’s maxed Medicare. You mentioned ambulance. My wife called an ambulance for our kid who tripped on something at a park and a rather hysterical pe…

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Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#116

Post by geenat »

wk_end wrote: post #112
geenat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother had it detected well in advance, and is currently being treated, the cancer is in remission now. I doubt Rebecca ever got that chance. Sure, surprise late stage cancer happens, but it's often caught when you get semi-annual checkups.

“Routine visit”? “Semi—annual checkup”? Where I live in Canada (Victoria) the health care system is so overburdened that this reads like a sick joke. The cost of living is too high and the government doesn’t pay enough to get family doctors out here, so we mostly just have the ER. This is with an NDP government for nearly the past decade, mind you.

If you're young, schedule an appointment and go in, get your blood work done. Does not require a family doctor. Last time there was barely any wait time for me.

The annual scheduled vists are for older people / seniors.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#117

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Huge loss to the community. She was, by all accounts, an amazing programmer. I remember when she uploaded the source code of her Doom 3DO port she indicated that she had to write her own string lib because the base one sucked:

> I had to write my own string.h ANSI C library because the one 3DO supplied with their compiler had bugs! string.h??? How can you screw that up!?!?! They did! I spent a day writing all of the functions I needed in ARM 6 assembly.

https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do

I can't even imagine the level of skill required to just say, "Fine, I'll write MY OWN string lib!" while chasing a deadline.

As an aside...I wonder what will happen to her personal artifacts. There was a media blitz awhile back when Tim Cain said he doesn't have the original source code to Fallout because he was "ordered to destroy it" by Interplay when he left. But Becky then chimed in to say that she did have a surviving copy, because she was a founder. [0] I hope someone else on her behalf would be able to continue that effort, but I worry that with her death, Bethesda would assert that no one else has "legal standing" to do so.

[0] https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/fallout-1-2-source-cod...

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#118

Post by wk_end »

geenat wrote: post #116
wk_end wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Routine visit”? “Semi—annual checkup”? Where I live in Canada (Victoria) the health care system is so overburdened that this reads like a sick joke. The cost of living is too high and the government doesn’t pay enough to get family doctors out here, so we mostly just have the ER. This is with an NDP government for nearly the past decade, mind you.

If you're young, schedule an appointment and go in, get your blood work done. Does not require a family doctor. Last time there was barely any wait time for me. The annual scheduled vists are for older people / seniors.

You can’t “schedule an appointment” in Victoria. There are walk-in clinics, but the only way to access them is to call the very instant they open (as in within the first few seconds) - they immediately book up for the day, and they won’t book appointments for later dates.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#119

Post by simondotau »

squigz wrote: post #104
simondotau wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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No, because I'm not going to get into a debate about whether capitalism is good or not on a memorial post. Even if I were so inclined, I'm not the one making grand claims about every economic system in the world. You're the one who has to prove your claim.

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