Richard Nanian

“Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. . . . That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” — Viktor Frankl

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 @grok I can’t imagine being so intellectually bankrupt that I’d turn my thinking over to an A.I. controlled by a ketamine-addicted fascist billionaire. You’re spouting libertarian, anarcho-capitalist nonsense. We’re done here.

@litprof2 @JamesTate121 @grok @grok - will you verify or counter my claims in the previous tweet, please?

When the price gap is this wide, people start asking why healthcare costs so much more in the U.S.

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 @grok Comparing a hair salon to medical care is moronic. You have a sick kid. Your family doctor has privileges at a certain hospital. Negotiating after a procedure is entirely at the provider’s discretion because they can turn the bill over to collections & drive you into bankruptcy.

Of what game do you speak? If asking questions and probing for what is real, true & good is a game what is it's name? Do hair salons have different prices? If so, are they exploitative? It seems to me that the tool most often used to exploit other humans is government power. I believe it was Fredric Badtiat that said, 'government is that great fiction where everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else.' @grok - am I correct on that?

@Johnnypapa64 But why is the ball large again at the end?

Good morning, happy April Fools Day, this is the great Marty Feldman with A Long Run Up from Marty Amok (1970)

@williacd55 @grablekelly05 @JamesTate121 Your wife subscribing to journals doesn’t make you an expert, & data is useless if you don’t know how to interpret it. Obesity among the affluent is 1 factor but doesn’t explain why US child mortality is worse than Albania. Also, saying “People are lazy & fat” isn’t a solution.

@litprof2 @grablekelly05 @JamesTate121 Nonsense, but I do realize you don’t have access to the data I have. My wife is a physician which just means she gets lots of medical journals in the mail. Two main things destroying our system…obesity and type 2 diabetes. Highest rates come from above average earners.

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 @grok I’m not playing your game. Any number you put in that blank would be either anecdotal or an average. Both are irrelevant because 1) even a discounted price can be financially ruinous, & 2) a system in which prices for the same procedure vary widely is inherently exploitative.

@litprof2 @JamesTate121 @grok Fill in the blank for me: 'Uninsured patients negotiate post-service too, securing _____% discounts.

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 @grok I said it was delusional to think a patient could negotiate with a hospital. I’m not talking about insurance companies.

@litprof2 @JamesTate121 @grok is the prospect of a medical bill being a bargaining position delusional? Do insurance companies & individuals not negotiate price post hoc?

@1sounddept @sommyhillz1592 @factpostnews The account is based in Nigeria. As much as I loathe Newsmaxx, I don’t think it’s to blame in this case. Always remember a huge percentage of X accounts are sock-puppets.

@sommyhillz1592 @factpostnews You clearly watch way way too much Fox News channel and Newsmax.

Republican House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington says Congress can pay for Trump's Iran war by making further cuts to key programs like Medicaid and SNAP

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 Bargaining position? Delusional. Bargaining doesn’t exist when 1 side has all the leverage, which is the case when a patient’s health or even life is at stake. “Can I pay 64% of this?” “No. Pay it or die.” Negotiation over. Thus, medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcy.

@litprof2 @JamesTate121 The hospital sends the bill for (x) - from their perspective, (x) is the opening bargain position. I wouldn't mind a transparency requirement for any entity that receives government money.

@TheStingisBack And just to be fair, they follow it up with a drive-by on the Protestants immediately afterwards. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt53af…

“Every Sperm Is Sacred” is savage satire, staged like an MGM musical. It absolutely roasts Catholic teachings on contraception. A family selling their children for scientific experiments because they can’t use birth control is hilariously uncomfortable.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life turns 43 today, and it contains two of their absolute best songs. ‘The Galaxy Song’ is existentially hilarious, upbeat, jaunty, and scientifically spot-on, all while quietly reminding you how ridiculously tiny and insignificant you are in the universe.

@BlarnyMalarky @TheStingisBack Kevin Pollak. All his impressions — Nicholson, Shatner, Walken, Christopher Lloyd, and more — are top-tier. He’s also one of the best raconteurs alive. His stories about Nicholson on the set of “A Few Good Men” are hilarious. Here’s one. m.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnp9W…

@TheStingisBack STRANGE dude. Amazing tallent. Best Christopher Walkin is Kevin Pollick (spelling) impressions of him.

Two Christopher Walkens have a birthday today, and both are legends: the hilarious shuffle-king who somehow sneaks a dance into almost every movie, and the ice-cold intensity machine who hasn’t killed a man since 1984. Let’s start with the dancing one... 1/2

@LynnDempsey16 @kneerecon Clueless? They’re nearly powerless. The Democrats are in the minority in both houses. They’re legislators, not the fucking Avengers. But if it weren’t for them, the SAVE Act would have passed & elections would be a fiction. I hated Joe Manchin, but Jim Justice is far worse.

@kneerecon Congress is to blame because they have the power to stop him and they don’t. Half of Congress is his cult and is afraid of him. The other half - the Dems - are clueless.

1 Let’s stop bulls**ting each other when we offer different theories how we got here. Why are we in the mess we find ourselves in? It’s Garland’s fault. No, it’s Mueller’s fault. How about Mitch? SCOTUS is responsible. And Cannon, if she hadn’t … Oh, let’s not forget Russia.

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 Also, hospitals as a rule don’t give complete estimates. They’ll tell you the cost of the procedure, maybe the anesthesia, but incidentals can vary & add 100s or even 1000s to the bill. That is, unless you’re advocating for some new regulations that require transparent pricing.

People in private business are just as trustworthy or untrustworthy as any human tied to government (they are the same brand of homosapian, after all). The difference is that the business guy has to sell you and the government operates bia extortion & bribery. That's why companies lobby, so they can use regulatory capture angle to be awarded monopoly privelages. I guess we agree on hospital pricing. The fact that two hotdog venders are close, even across the street, is only one element of the pricing for certain services on a certain day. Still, prices are indeed set by supply amd demand, but opening bargaining positions (such as hospital bills) vary drastically.

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 Bargaining position? You can’t bargain with a hospital. Your doctor has surgical privileges at maybe 2 or 3 hospitals. If you want to shop around, you’ll need to find a new doctor, which involves weeks or months of delay. “I have melanoma, but I think I’ll shop around.” Really?

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 Regulations & credentials are both best handled by government. No industry or profession can be trusted to police itself. Obviously, if 2 equally good hospitals a mile apart charge significantly different prices for the same procedure, geography is irrelevant.

@litprof2 @JamesTate121 Credentials have an argument, just don't use government to do it. The monopolistic privelage provided by state restriction of supply should not exist. Is it your position that geography is the only variable to supply, demand & the opening bargaining price?

@brettblackham @JamesTate121 Licenses? Regulations? So you think people delivering medical care should be unlicensed & unregulated? And no, prices are not set by supply & demand. Adam Smith has dead a long time. The cost of the same procedure at 2 hospitals a mile apart can differ by thousands.

@JamesTate121 Prices are set by supply & demand. Licenses, regulations & subsidies play the largest role in torturing the supply & demand curve.

@williacd55 @grablekelly05 @JamesTate121 By choice? Europe doesn’t fund schools with local property taxes, a system that guarantees poor kids go to worse schools. Europe doesn’t have food deserts, where little fresh produce is available & what exists is expensive. Boxed mac & cheese means kids don’t go to bed hungry,

@grablekelly05 @JamesTate121 That’s not the system’s fault. We have such a huge segment of our population that is unhealthy by choice…primarily diet and lack of education. I lived many years in Europe and the populations there are so much better than the US when it comes to diet.

@tommyneumann @dieworkwear Dean famously said that he had Monty Clift saying “Love me” in one hand and Marlon Brando saying “Fuck you” in the other. I think that’s remarkably astute.

@dieworkwear James Dean was much more young at heart than Marlon Brando. Childlike. Lived on the edge. Brando 7 years older too. I couldn’t see him playing Jim Stark. Dean had the effortlessly cool style that made him eternal. The red jacket. Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse!

It's interesting to see this 1947 test screen with Marlon Brando for the film "Rebel Without a Cause" (a film in which would later star James Dean). Brando, of course, would later epitomize mid-century American masculinity. Brando was 23 years old here.

@cabsav456 @11Spooner11 Oh, I promise that none of us can see it all. Fifty years from now, historians (if there are any) will still be finding evidence of crimes the public doesn’t know about yet. These people’s avarice is infinite.

@11Spooner11 I see it all.

Trump is unilaterally redirecting $1.25 billion in taxpayer money for foreign aid to his personally controlled "Board of Peace." This isn't even a normal U.S. government entity. It's a "public international organization" he created by executive order, naming himself as chairman for life. He gets veto power, picks the members, sets the agenda, & controls how the money flows, with no real oversight or auditing built in. Congress is supposed to control spending & appropriations. They're the ones who can (and should) stop this. If Republicans won't even ask questions about funneling billions of taxpayer dollars into a "board" Trump himself owns for life, I'm seriously done voting for them for a while. It's beyond ridiculous at this point.

@Mark49438347 @dieworkwear Different script. The idea of doing a book based on a psychologist named Robert Lindner’s book “Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath” was bouncing around Hollywood for years. Ultimately, the movie’s only connection to the book was the title.

@dieworkwear 1947? The film was released in 1955. They did 8 years of casting?

@roland_______ @dieworkwear Yes. I don’t buy them, but Costco has kept the price of a hot dog (in a bun, with condiments, relish, and onions if you want) at $1.50 for ages. Like rotisserie chickens, it’s a product they’re willing to lose a little money on because it brings people in the door.

During the recent kerfuffle over whether people should be socially shamed for wearing pajamas at Costco, someone on here suggested that I was supporting the decline of social standards because I think it's perfectly fine to wear whatever you want to a giant warehouse that sells $1.50 hot dogs. The idea that dress was better in the past is treated as such an obvious truth that few people question it, even those who share my preference for contemporary life. But I would pose another view: although the emergence of fast fashion is certainly bad, and there's a terrible environmental cost from the waste now caused by the fashion industry, dress is better today than in the past. Just look at these photos recently posted by Scott Schuman, the photographer behind the famous fashion site The Sartorialist. These images are from his recent trip to Paris. Scott often posts themed sets like this — images of stylish people in Milan, Hong Kong, New York City, and so forth. I disagree with the idea of dress respectability on moral grounds. You should treat everyone with respect, regardless of what they're wearing. But as a matter of aesthetics, it's good that society has eased some of the Victorian handwringing around what people wear in public. Look at the diversity of aesthetics showcased here, from just one recent trip to Paris (and notably, only focused on menswear, not even getting into womenswear). On first glance, there are some themes here that could describe the fashion Robert Frank captured in his book The Americans, shot just after the Second World War. Here we see men wearing military-inspired clothing (e.g., bombers and trenches) and tailoring (e.g., houndstooth tweed and a boldly checked raglan overcoat). But we also see fashions that prob wouldn't have made it onto the streets in 1950, such as the patchwork boro jacket or the double-breasted with unusual pattern and button placement (look at that button-and-cloth corsage!). It's unimaginable today, but in the first half of the 20th century, a man could be sent home from work for wearing the wrong color shirt. For white-collar professionals, even in cosmopolitan cities, the standard office uniform consisted of a dark worsted suit worn with a white-collared shirt, a dark silk tie, and a pair of dark leather shoes. The phrase "no brown in town" refers to the British cultural practice of only wearing black leather shoes in certain professions when doing business in London. Brown was the countryside. If you flouted these rules, people would whisper behind your back about how you're a bad person (e.g., dumb, uncultured, rude, etc). That social system seems terribly toxic to me. But even as a matter of aesthetics, how great is it that the second man in the second slide can show up at many offices today wearing a brown houndstooth tweed jacket with a jaunty little neckerchief? The world is aesthetically better today than it was 100 years ago. Yes, there are lots of people who are badly dressed. This is fine, as not everyone cares about aesthetics. But if you do care about aesthetics, you enjoy greater freedom today and thus can express yourself through a wider range of aesthetics. If you let people wear pajamas to Costco, you can wear any of the outfits below and more. And if you open your mind to other aesthetics, I think you will find that many people on the street today are stylish, even if they're wearing something that you would not personally wear yourself. IG thesartorialist