How does the World view America these days?

[Rubin Farr]

this is fucked up

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9367327/transgender-shadi-petosky-twitter-orlando-airport

[LimpyLoo]

Damn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

just cut myself on all that edge man. We gotta step up and stop being sheeple.

 

he's saying "thumbs up to Islam! oh wait, I live in Texas that could get me killed. nevermind"

 

the 'clock' looked like a suitcase bomb and the father of the child is a known agitator against what he perceives as anti-islam. The media have given this lots of airspace and obama immediately invited the kid to the white house (unlike the kid that got suspended for having an american flag t-shirt and innumerable examples like this of arbitrary illogicalness from educators against students across america) . It is clearly a psy-op guys, come on, stop being so easily manipulated and on top of that angered by the people pointing this out to you. Get angry about something real for once or else what really is the point of your existence if you're just a retweeting device for government propaganda. The same government killing muslims all over the world, holding them in bondage in guantanamo, secret prisons and the dungeons of third party countries, training and funding muslims of isis to kill other muslims and christians.

 

heh, /watmm

On the one hand

We (should) want teachers et all to be vigilant about possible threats

(Which I fucking *hope* would include cases with makeshift electronic guts and an LED display)

 

On the other hand

The cops showed up and acted like dicks (surprise)

 

The way this sorta stuff gets framed as 'you're either on this side or that side'

Think about how you want teachers to generally respond to these sorts of situations:

Do we wanna err on the side of false positives or false negatives?

 

It bums me out how my fellow lefties think about certain issues sometimes

How the superficial details of a case will automatically determine what side they take

 

For instance

During the epidemic of white cops shooting unarmed black civilians

What would've happened

If one of those dozen or so shootings was actually justifiable?

Would anyone have noticed?

I always had my doubts about the Michael Brown shooting

And I was a little bummed that it was part of that conversation

As fucking douchey as that cop seemed...

 

Anyway...c'mon lefties

You're better than this

Embrace the complexity

Resist easy superficial judgement

[chenGOD]

Edit: sorry Limpy, that was rude of me.

 

Here's a peace offering

 

[hello spiral]

CEO who raised price of old pill more than $700 calls journalist a ‘moron’ for asking why

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/21/ceo-of-company-that-raised-the-price-of-old-pill-hundreds-of-dollars-overnight-calls-journalist-a-moron-for-asking-why/

[LimpyLoo]

Edit: sorry Limpy, that was rude of me.

 

Here's a peace offering

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgcszZNaCfo

I didn't see it

What'd you call me?

[LimpyLoo]

P.S.

 

I forgot to say:

Fuck Texas to death

Seriously

No doubt he was treated like shit because he has dark skin

Not a fucking doubt in the world about that

That kid should move up here

Before Texas makes him retarded by osmosis

 

But again

We should still be cautious in these scenarios

We can set our 'threat assessment threshold'

to either register false positives or false negatives

Edited September 22, 2015 by LimpyLoo

[goDel]

CEO who raised price of old pill more than $700 calls journalist a ‘moron’ for asking why

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/21/ceo-of-company-that-raised-the-price-of-old-pill-hundreds-of-dollars-overnight-calls-journalist-a-moron-for-asking-why/

 

 

yeah, that's ridiculous. isn't necessarily a us thing either, btw. just the way the pharma industry tends to make money. i do hope the next us president will be doing something about it though.

[Audioblysk]

It just seems like you have to have no soul to make money like that asshat. Man, that's low.

[goDel]

Supposedly he's a former hedge fund manager, so the soulless part is right on the money.

[Nebraska]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHGae8-70zs

[Rubin Farr]

CEO who raised price of old pill more than $700 calls journalist a moron for asking why

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/21/ceo-of-company-that-raised-the-price-of-old-pill-hundreds-of-dollars-overnight-calls-journalist-a-moron-for-asking-why/

The media blogosphere tagged it an "AIDS Drug" which then got relinked by all the other media sites, when it actually treats Toxoplasmosis, an infection originating in cats I believe that can be fatal to a range of people from infants and elderly, to anyone with a compromised immune system, including HIV infected patients.

 

He does seem pretty douchey "how do I sleep at night? You know, Ambien".

 

[chenGOD]

Relevant:http://gawker.com/lawsuit-scumbag-pharma-price-gouger-stalked-and-harass-1732357240

[Rubin Farr]

apparently, they backed down after the uproar on the interwebs:

http://news.yahoo.com/u-drug-industry-distances-itself-company-5-000-223434247.html

[goDel]

apparently, they backed down after the uproar on the interwebs:

http://news.yahoo.com/u-drug-industry-distances-itself-company-5-000-223434247.html

Lol @ the big pharma lobby group distancing themselves from turing ceo. Couldnt be more hypocritical.

 

This guy basically does what every producer of new drugs does when defining the price of a pill. It's got hardly anything to do with production costs and everything to do with optimizing return on investment. The only thing that's different is the language and the lack of transparency. If it's about a new treatment nobody will notice the therapy costs X*1000 of it's actual value. (And you can safely add the actual financial risks into this actual value)

 

http://youtu.be/U-he3_hUWLk

 

In a way we can be thankful for the pricehump, because it makes transparent whats already a widely used practice

Edited September 23, 2015 by goDel

[Rubin Farr]

it seems like he was counting on the American medical insurance industry to absorb the cost increase, then maybe got a rude awakening. He went on a few news shows and tried to justify it with "the cost increase will help us increase our R&D budget, which will benefit the American people with better drugs". yeah right shithead, you just wanted another hoverboard.

[goDel]

Exactly. Just like any other pharmaceutical company does. The payer will magically absorb the cost increase. And because in the end the entire society pays, you can create huuuuge increases of prices for low volume products without anyone noticing. Thats their logic. Only they will use terms like "creating value for society by saving lives". Its a very cynical industry.

[Candiru]

I work for a biotech company making drugs derived from mammalian cells and I'll just say it is often a one billion (sometimes two billion) dollar gamble and 10-15 years of work from a very large organization to develop a therapy for, say, Alzheimer's and everyone does get paid.

 

That said, this guy isn't doing jack shit. Let an angry mob fuck his shit up.

[goDel]

Those billions are often parroted by people. No offense to you particular, candiru. Because these are the only "transparent" numbers which come from a single research which just happened to be funded by the industry itself. So whenever people want to talk 'facts', these are the only available numbers to discuss. Regardless of their value. Fact is, developing drugs costs money. Absolutely. But another fact is, the industry average "return on equity" (=profit) is roughly 20%. Measured over a period (2008-2012) where the global economy shrank because of a financial crisis. (source in dutch can be found here - in linked pdf at the bottom: http://www.nefarma.nl/nieuwsberichten/website/2014/05/deel-van-kritiek-op-farmasector-niet-op-feiten-gebaseerd).

Which means that for every dollar the industry spends, it makes $1,20 on average, each year (it adds over more years, like inflation!). This includes any development costs of products which didn't make the cut. The industry often talks about the long times medicines need to develop and the financial risks involved, but in reality, they often have many potential products in the pipeline so they are perfectly fine in spreading their risks (as the average return on equity shows).

 

Also, one of the reason they came up with that billion (it started as 800mln, btw), was that they also calculated 11% return on investment in the costs. So for any dollar spent on R&D, the virtually put that same dollar on a bankaccount with 11% interest and took the amount of money "lost" on developing with respect to putting it on a bank account. The interest is pretty arbitrary (standard in industry) and comes from a time before the global financial crash. Although the pharma industry might use 20%, as that what seems closer to the truth. O, and actual interest rates since the global financial crash are closer to zero. So please take the billion with a huge grain of salt. (It also doesn't take into account the huge variability between different medicines and technological progress which actually might make development cheaper!)

 

[Candiru]

I take samples that cost more than millionaires houses and live in an apartment.

 

But you do realize how big a company needs to be to pull this shit off and it isn't easy.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Candiru

[LimpyLoo]

But you do realize how big a company needs to be to pull this shit off and it isn't easy.

Again, we should just do it ourselves

[goDel]

I take samples that cost more than millionaires houses and live in an apartment.

 

But you do realize how big a company needs to be to pull this shit off and it isn't easy.

 

Absolutely. Society needs companies to be able to do those things.

 

But that is no justification for the amounts of profit made and the way pricetags are being put on pills (read: peoples lives). This is a generalisation from my side, and not every company and not every drug is the same. But on a whole, the way big pharma currently pushes their pills is something that needs to change. The way big pharma is doing business is in no way different to Apple selling iPhones. And they're at least as profitable, if not more than Apple. And besides the activity of pricing their pills like iPhones, they're also in the tax-evasion business. Just like Apple. And meanwhile their excuse for the high prices is that they bring so much value to society. Well, yes and no. They also destroying society, because they're making profits from taxpayers money. Money which could have gone to all kinds of things. Education, safety, roads and bridges. All those other things tax is used for. Instead, it goes largely to a happy few.

 

I don't necessarily blame those companies though. They 'play' within what is considered 'legal' (ok, not always and those tax evasion schemes are an entirely different discussion). And the rules essentially allow them to play the game as they are currently doing. It's those rules that need to change. But I'm afraid those transatlantic partnerships are going to do the opposite.

Edited September 23, 2015 by goDel

[olo]

Ben Carson (GOP Presidential Candidate & noted neurosurgeon)

 

In a speech delivered in 2012, Ben Carson said the big bang theory was part of the “fairy tales” pushed by “highfalutin scientists” as a story of creation.

Similarly, Carson, a noted creationist, said he believed the theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil.

“Now what about the big bang theory,” said Carson at speech to fellow Seventh-day Adventists titled “Celebration of Creation,” about the theory for the origin of the universe.

“I find the big bang, really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization.

“So now you’re gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, ‘Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there’s enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion,” continued Carson. “So I say what you’re telling me is if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times over billions and billions of years, eventually after one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly.”

Carson added that he believed the big bang was “even more ridiculous” because there is order to the universe.

“Well, I mean, it’s even more ridiculous than that ‘cause our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized, to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming,” he said. “Now that type of organization to just come out of an explosion? I mean, you want to talk about fairy tales, that is amazing.”

Later, Carson said he personally believed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil.

“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct,” said Carson.

“Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they’re afraid to say anything,” Carson added, saying he would be writing a book, “The Organ of Species,” that shows how the organs of the body refute evolution.

 

 

uhm....maybe...

[Nebraska]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgQzGkHgR_k

[Audioblysk]

Yeah, your god doesn't love you. Cherrypicking bible verses to suit your point is a silly way to live life it's like extracting morals from Moby Dick or Chicken Soup for the Soul or the Iliad and holding others who don't see the same way to your faith. Just as insane.

 

Bet she eats shellfish, I bet she eats meat on the weekend, I bet she's gotten drunk, she's had 3 failed marriages. But yeah, god will punish you because you let a pair of dongs or clams marry legally. Fuck off.

[LimpyLoo]

Yeah, your god doesn't love you. Cherrypicking bible verses to suit your point is a silly way to live life it's like extracting morals from Moby Dick or Chicken Soup for the Soul or the Iliad and holding others who don't see the same way to your faith. Just as insane.

 

Bet she eats shellfish, I bet she eats meat on the weekend, I bet she's gotten drunk, she's had 3 failed marriages. But yeah, god will punish you because you let a pair of dongs or clams marry legally. Fuck off.

 

I fucking hate when people say 'God has forgiven me'

Like Marky Mark after he blinded that old dude

Or that anti-gay marriage Christian YouTube vlogger who had an Ashley Madison account

 

There's kinda nothing more arrogant

Like, not only do I talk directly to God

But also he told me that I'm not accountable to the people around me