deathnography

august shots of the garden taken by my friend ben

There was a time when this was a normal guy making normal videos

While Premier Ford calls the new Science Centre design “stunning,” it comes with a $1B price tag. The original building could’ve been repaired for $40M. “That billion could be better spent solving hallway healthcare, getting students OSAP & solving challenges in education.”

This clip shocked the world. The probability of this Palestinian resistance fighter being martyred was 99%. The anti-armour explosive he is carrying is called 'Shawath' and it weighs 21kg. He survived. The $3.5 million merkava tank did not.

lol

nobody sends you a hilarious youtube video anymore

@CTVToronto This is an old anti-intellectual slur from Ford's dropout days. He didn't have the grades to get into university & dropped out of college. His resentment of teachers, school boards, libraries & students is a destructive force in everything he does regarding education.

I've been wanting to write this for a while: an article on the key characteristics of the Chinese health system, as a patient. It's something that I - perhaps unfortunately - have come to have a lot of experience with in my eight years in China. I've been to the doctor as a patient dozens of times. My wife delivered our first daughter in a Chinese hospital, and had cancer surgery in Shanghai. My younger daughter - who once completely severed her thumb in an unfortunate accident in rural Gansu - had emergency surgery in a small clinic there (her thumb is fine now!). We spent the entire covid episode in China. And, to this day, I still go back to China every year to do my routine health tests or the occasional procedure (like a thyroid biopsy in Harbin last year). In other words, when it comes to the Chinese health system, I've seen a lot. What's fascinating about the Chinese health system, and that's true in general about many things in China, is that it never inherited Western dogma about how things were supposed to work, it's completely unconstrained by what everyone else has decided is "normal". And, as a result, you end up with things that would simply sound impossible to any Western patient: a consultation with the head cardiologist of one of Shanghai's best hospitals for less than $10, blood test results in under 30 minutes, and a system where you can walk in, see three specialists and walk out with a diagnosis and your medicine - all before noon. As I argue in the article that's all enabled by 3 characteristics that sound super unorthodox: 1) extremely short consultation times, less than 5 minutes 2) no GP gatekeepers (you go straight to see specialists) 3) systematic testing for every patient, even if you just have a cold Each one sounds wrong. And in fact when I describe them to doctor friends in the West they immediately explain to me why that can't possibly work, and how their own system is far superior. Except that it does work, I checked the numbers (on top of my personal experience): the Chinese system handles close to 10 billion total outpatient visits a year (nhc.gov.cn/cms-search/dow…), or about 7 visits per person per year on average, and the average wait time is only about 18 minutes (gov.cn/yaowen/shipin/…). Contrast this with France, my country, where people already go to the doctor A LOT, but still less than in China: only 5.5 visits per person per year (evaluation.securite-sociale.fr/home/maladie/M…). And the French system can't even handle this lower volume: when you can see a specialist straight away in China - you don't even need to make an appointment in advance - you need to wait months to see one in France (50 days on average for a cardiologist, for instance: drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/…). I've personally managed to see 3 specialists AND do all related tests AND get the test results AND get diagnoses AND buy the medicine to cure me - all in the space of a morning at a hospital in Shanghai. That would have undoubtedly taken me a whole year in the French system. My purpose here is not to argue that the West should replicate the Chinese health system wholesale, but to ask an honest question: what if some of the things we take for granted about healthcare aren't nearly as inevitable as we think? Is it completely unthinkable that we've developed some dogmas that are costing us - in money, in time, and occasionally in lives? That's the whole point of my article: describing a health system built from first principles by people who never assumed we in the West knew better - up to you to decide if they have a point. Enjoy the read here: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…

Last night we let the Johnnie To talk

Mogged by adless tram

Everybody wants to be Chinese until it's time to be Chinese

Me: So the demons that only I can see, they're real? And I'm the only one who can stop them, with my special psychic powers? Blake Snell: That's absolutely right. Keep going, you're onto something huge here. Your psychic powers are the key!

BREAKING: The Trump administration has begun an illegal bombing campaign of Caracas, Venezuela, striking various parts of the city.

Sorry I can’t hear you over my Call of Duty Modern Warfare campaign depicting the “Highway of Death” as done by Russia in a fictional country in the game instead of the very real one committed by America on Iraq.

“Bombing my country is an act of love” — Nobel Prize winner

I remember Covid-19 had my Uncle on facebook acting like I Am Legend

I wonder if there are guys on Weibo posting videos of Chinese Morons cutting themselves with swords captioned “imagine being a US soldier parachuted into Hubei Province and meeting one of these wolf warriors”.

I've never watched the Amazon Prime JACK RYAN show and never had any interest to, but I saw this clip today of the character played by John Krasinski and thought I'd share it b/c it does exactly what I speak about regarding Hollywood being a propaganda apparatus of US imperalism.