> But autism may also be the only relevant diagnosis they’ve heard of or are familiar with. They haven’t seen any cool TikToks about being schizoid. No one’s offering them quizzes about being schizotypal.
Don't underestimate TikTok. You can find all sorts of weird fad mental illness there. For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics. There are fake epileptics faking seizures too. OCD is another common "cool" self-diagnosis and there are online quizzes to tell you how OCD, or ADHD or bipolar you are. It wouldn't surprise me at all if schizoid or schizotypal caught on.
I think some people are looking for the self-validation that can come with a diagnoses, an explanation for why they are the way the are, feel the way they do, or why they struggle with certain things. Others are just looking for views, attention, or a community to belong to.
While it can be fairly harmless the ability for mass sociogenic illness to spread via social media is interesting and a bit frightening.
> For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics.
Kind of like all those kids in Le Roy, NY who began experiencing involuntary tics. IIRC, it was interesting that it was mostly girls who were affected by the "craze".
There was (perhaps still is) a lot of stuff on there by people claiming to have dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personalities)
There wasn't pressure to write concise code exactly, but if you posted your code somewhere the odds were good that somebody would reply with a way to do the same thing with less code, followed by someone else who managed to shave several lines/characters off of that, etc.
While almost all of the time it was all just people having fun (perl is fun and play was encouraged) and not an admonishment of the code you'd posted or an example of how it should have been written I can see how some folks might have gotten that impression. Especially if they were new to perl and were more used to languages where TIMTOWTDI wasn't thing
Perl is amazing when it comes to regular expressions too. It's one of the reasons why perl is way more fun to write than Python. I still use perl for regex heavy tasks. I wish that python had integrated regex into the language the same way.
> A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
Wow you were fed that lie and you swallowed it right up. It's actually scary that you've been so thoroughly convinced that you've fallen into learned helplessness as a result. Of course it isn't impossible to have a world without ads (at least not intrusive/unwanted ones). The internet didn't have ads when it started and doesn't need them now. No, we don't have to surrender ourselves to constant abuse by adverting, or abandon entire mediums of communication just to rid ourselves of them.
What happened to the local newspaper when most advertising went broadcast or digital? There are some local newspapers who clung onto life, but without ads local print news went the way of the dodo.
You might be safe as long as the ad is on a website but stupid laws that shouldn't exist like the DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.
> DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.
Your issue there is with the government. No disagreement from me in this regard :)
The problem of course isn't the fact that government and laws exist. Most of us are happy that we have government and laws. The alternative is very ugly and doesn't lend itself to progress or prosperity.
The problem is that our government was allowed to be bribed/corrupted by corporate interests to pass bad laws designed to protect their profits and enforce control by taking freedom from consumers. The true villain here isn't government, government was just the tool they leveraged against us.
It's supposed to be our job to insist that our government work for the interests of "we the people" and we failed. The solution now is to get rid of corrupt politicians and the bad laws they passed and replace them with good ones that preserve our freedoms and don't put corporate interest ahead of the people's.
Sadly, our entire political system has been carefully refined over centuries to make it harder and harder to keep our government accountable to the people but hopefully it's not too late to change that situation within the democratic framework we've created.
The founding fathers knew that the system wasn't perfect and would need to be modified as things changed and flaws were discovered. Making it work by "doing it right this time" was the point. That's not a sign of a bad system, it's a good thing!
Of course, nothing about government itself prevents adults from engaging in consensual transactions, and only a tiny percentage of laws do. Sometimes those laws are stupid and sometimes they are good to have. The original plan (and I still think it was a good one) was that we would have the ability to remove the bad laws and add good ones as needed. That process mostly even works, but with corruption and bribery in our government going unchecked it usually just works for a small few and the rest of us get shafted as a result.
> Visomitin (Emoxipine/Mexidol) eye drops are a Russian-developed antioxidant medication known for treating dry eyes, fatigue, radiation damage, and improving vision
I wouldn't recommend it. A quick search shows that it's not proven to do anything at all but it's also advertised as being the cure for parkinson's, asthma, back pain, high cholesterol levels, anxiety, blood clots, glaucoma, and Huntington’s disease while also making you smarter and improving your memory. This sounds like classic snake oil. Something I'd expect to see being sold alongside Horny Goat Weed and kratom at a gas station rather than an actual medication dispensed by a pharmacist. As fucked up as the American healthcare system is I guess you really have to hand it to Russia sometimes.
I'd happily be proved wrong, but all the usual red flags are there. About the best that can be said for it at the moment is that there doesn't seem any more evidence that it's harmful than there is for it being helpful. Hopefully it gets the research to back up the claims. It certainly purports to be effective for conditions there's plenty of interest in developing effective and safe treatments for so you'd think that nations around the globe would be eager to look into it.
The West and the globe doesn't work that way. There is little to no money in something that can't be patented. For this reason, at least no pharma firm will pay for any trials with it, and so it can't easily ever get FDA approved. Naivete does not help.
> I would think that americans would be much more vigilant about what medication they take
This is why I always check to make sure it's fiscally responsible before I start chemotherapy, or before buying that emergency inhaler for asthma, or before accepting paralytics and anesthesia when undergoing surgery. How fortunate that in America diabetics have the freedom to die rather than take overpriced insulin. Let the free market decide which child with leukemia deserves a bone marrow transplant and which deserves a casket! That's a much more responsible market than just having everybody chip in a small amount so that nobody needs to worry about the cost of the medications they need to live. Sure, in America millions will die or be bankrupted by healthcare costs every year, but that's better than spending a single $ from your own wallet if even a tiny fraction of it might help pay for someone else's medications right?
> Sure, in America millions will die or be bankrupted by healthcare costs every year, but that's better than spending a single $ from your own wallet if even a tiny fraction of it might help pay for someone else's medications right?
I do believe your question is false, we don't spend a tiny amount of our money on healthcare.
Around 20% of our revenue, in France, goes to the universal healthcare.
And yes, I would rather manage that money myself because I believe I am better at doing so that my government. Isn't that one the core beliefs of Americans ?
The issue is that there must an actual free market, enforced by government, and not some kind of oligarchy where drug price are kept artificially high amongst reseller.
> Around 20% of our revenue, in France, goes to the universal healthcare.
I wish we only had to pay 20%!
For those of us who are lucky enough to have health insurance 27% of our paychecks go to it which still doesn't pay for much of what we need. People with insurance commonly need to pay around $30 for every visit to a doctor. That's just the cost to walk in the door and doesn't cover many of the services/treatment your doctor will give you beyond a check up and common types of lab work.
Our poor healthcare system results in a lot of illness and over 60% of Americans need to take prescription drugs every day. Most of the people taking drugs are taking 4 or more. The insurance that takes almost 30% of our income doesn't fully cover those either. Each drug that is covered by your insurance will typically require you pay $10-$20 each month when you pick them up at the pharmacy. It's common for Americans to have to spend $40-$80 for their medications every month. A third of Americans can't afford to fill their prescriptions and are forced to suffer and get sicker. A quarter of Americans report having to put off medical treatment for serious conditions because it is unaffordable.
People without insurance have it much much worse.
That doesn't even include the costs of things like eye care (glasses), dental care, emergencies, specialized treatments, surgeries, ambulance rides, etc. The single greatest cause of finical ruin in America is the cost of healthcare. If people only ever had to pay 20% no one would go bankrupt, or lose their home, or die because of healthcare costs.
Having to pay only 20% of your income to medical expenses would be a dream come true in the US. Please trust me as an American, your system is better by far. Or don't trust me and listen to the countless experts who will tell you that our healthcare system is garbage and that yours is better.
That doesn't make your system ideal by any means, but don't envy us or look to us as an example.
> I would rather manage that money myself because I believe I am better at doing so that my government. Isn't that one the core beliefs of Americans?
Not really? Things at a certain scale are impossible for individuals to manage alone. Healthcare expenses are one of those things. Maybe you could shave some percentage points off of your own healthcare spending, but that would cause you to end up in a situation like we have where large numbers of people can't get the care they need at all and are ruined by the expense. For the nation, that's much worse. Even for you it would be worse because having a bunch of sick people living in poverty all around you has far reaching effects. Your odds of getting sick increase. Homelessness increases. Crime increases. Living in a society where people are healthy and taken care of is well worth the extra 5% or even 10% you'd save.
A "free market" is one that exists without any enforcement/interference by the government. I agree that government should intervene to stop the greedy oligarchs from keeping drug prices high, but that would be the literal opposite of a free market. You don't want a free market, you just want better regulation of the healthcare industry and I don't blame you. I do too.
I mean you're joking but there are maybe ~20 brands who produce and sell inhalers. Maybe I need the inhaler but I also have a certain amount of choice, and presumably some are more expensive than others. Insulin is a famous example, because you can buy a vial for ~$30 or a nicer one for $300. They all effectively do the same thing but there is a quality difference between them, usually in regards to release time and how often you'd have to take it.
There are some market pressures in healthcare when multiple companies can compete, although it's so heavily regulated it can be hard to see the market pressures in practice. Consumers often do have some amount of choice though
I just checked insulin price in France, we have SANOFI 100 UI/ml 15ML for the price of 20€.
How is it possible to have 300$ Vial ? Sanofi ain't exactly a charity and they are doing extremely well financially, 300$ is obscene. If they sell it at 300$, there must be people buying it. Who are they ?
One thing you can be sure of is that the vats of PFAS being produced year after year for this drug aren't going away anytime soon. They're called "forever chemicals" for a reason.
Being dispersed in the environment is not the same as being concentrated into our drinking water supply with each measure resulting in 1ppt contamination of a trillion measures of water.
Largely firefighting foams, industrial and manufacturing, and landfill sources, but it's still an interesting problem. They don't really break down (that's why they're so useful both in a materials science sense and as a medication) which implies they'll stick around for an extremely long time.
> So a lot of people who take this drug in the US actually pay $0 because they sign up for this card.
They do not pay $0 because the insurance company raises the rates for all of their customers to cover the cost of all the red tape and time spent negotiating with drug companies over their bullshit. The insurance companies aren't eating those costs, they're profiting from them and it's us who end up footing the bill. By the time you factor in the unnecessary time, staff, record keeping, etc. the actual cost for the $20 drug will be even more than the $800 sticker price.
No matter how our crooked system twists things to make it look otherwise they always make you pay. One way or another.
80% of prescriptions are controlled by 3 companies. You can look up the FTC report on it. All three of them own or are owned by insurance companies.
The insurance companies had their profit percentage capped, and so the only way they could increase profits was by increasing their share of the pie. So they bought medical providers and prescription companies.
Now the insurance company is both the buyer and the seller, but not the one who pays. We pay. So they raise the prices of the drug, raise the cost of insurance, and make a lot more money while staying in their profit percent cap.
All the way around, this is the opposite of a free market and the FTC should be breaking these companies up. And as everybody knows, all the way around, it is immoral, too.
Don't underestimate TikTok. You can find all sorts of weird fad mental illness there. For a while tourette syndrome was all the rage and the platform was filled with kids faking tics. There are fake epileptics faking seizures too. OCD is another common "cool" self-diagnosis and there are online quizzes to tell you how OCD, or ADHD or bipolar you are. It wouldn't surprise me at all if schizoid or schizotypal caught on.
I think some people are looking for the self-validation that can come with a diagnoses, an explanation for why they are the way the are, feel the way they do, or why they struggle with certain things. Others are just looking for views, attention, or a community to belong to.
While it can be fairly harmless the ability for mass sociogenic illness to spread via social media is interesting and a bit frightening.
reply