villakram

8 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Oh dont worry we are heading that way 

They usually just want to stick you on meds. But before you do that try prevention.

How much would something like that cost you in the states?

You would need to be insured for sure. The pricing and treatment absolutely depends on that, e.g., I had a knee issue a few years ago, arrived in E.R. ~ 9pm and stayed until next morn where some senior types could get a look at an ultrasound. All good in the end after too much knee based needle porn.

Billed by insurance ~ $12k. This was for some tylenol, lidocaine when needle probing my knee and then a couple ultrasound go arounds. They did get someone from ortho with a big needle at one point, so I suppose he cost more?!? Even had a surgeon turn up after the morning shift change telling me to be nil by mouth as they'd be scoping my knee that afternoon... I may have let him know a thing or two, so that didn't happen. Who knows how much they would have billed for some actual surgery. Madness.

I have heard that were you being personally billed for these things, then there is always some room for negotiation, but I dunno about that. 

4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Well that’s it isn’t it, it’s the definition of backwater.

A kid living in The Falklands could potentially be making music in their bedroom that is influencing clubbers in New York. They could be debating trans rights on a messageboard. They could be brewing up the next thing in fruity alcohol fashions.

A backwater might not be geographically backwater anymore. Whereas a whole housing estate in Barrow in Furness or Abderystwyth might be an absolute dead zone for people motivated enough to realise its not for others to provide culture or entertainment.

It’s fuzzier than miles from London these days.

You have made Charlie unhappy.

4 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Yeah it was veey early prediabetic/normal so that was enough to scare me. I know there is various different tests to do to continue to monitor. I have fatty liver because i stupidly removed my gallbladder in my twenties (this was days before you could do your own resrarch online and you trusted the doctors who absolutely lied to me) so i have bile defiency affed onto when i was over weight.  Ive now gone from a large to a small for clothes so i think im heafing right direction fingers crossed

 

I can only imagine what they would have proposed were you over here,  $$$$ parasites.

Surely this should be somewhere in the Falklands or elsewhere in the beyond of his empire.

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

So got my A1c result back and delighted to report that ive gone from pre diabetic to completey normal. Thank god was terrified hence why i took action before it was too late. God bless keto!

Anyone who is pre diabetic i would highly recommend doing keto for 6 months odd as you can reverse it. Its only when your actually diabetic its difficult. If in doubt go to your GP and ask for a A1C blood test as it measures your blood sugars over the most recent 3 month period

 

The correct way to do this is with a proper blood glucose screening over a 4-6 hr period post ingestion of a glucose mixture.

A1C etc., are one secondary markers as to the state of your system. If they indicate a problem, it is likely worse than indicated.

Awesome stuff on getting yourself sorted out!

22 hours ago, mjmooney said:

That looks awfully facebooky...

Roster coming together nicely. 

50 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

I'm not a fan of this but how different is it from charging kids a fortune for a pack of stickers?

The question of our times.

What is real?

4 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

Digital sports cards? This is very much world's gone when it comes to NFTs, not just football

Swiping left to like and then let's see what the god of QR code will reveal. A different kind of magic for sure. I suppose it's not all that different to the various level of $ based loot boxing endemic to computer games now.

The only positive regarding the new brutality case, is the rapid nature in which the authorities have dismissed and charged the former officers. Even, if it's only out of an interest of preservation and avoiding further inspection, it is some progress.

The enhanced poisoning of the US policing identity by the 20+ years of war begun by the idiot Bush are going to hurt society for many more years to come unfortunately.

On 28/01/2023 at 08:33, StefanAVFC said:

Making the point that in the other recent case, a black man was beaten to death for nothing, whereas in this case, in a much more high profile case they allowed him to be hit in the head with a hammer before acting. 
 

Anyway I’m not sure there’s a rash in this situation. He has a weapon and he’s endangering another person, the police would have right to shoot to kill. 

In defence of the police here, they had no knowledge of what the issue was other than a somewhat confusing call in by an apparently under duress Mr. Pelosi... and everything appeared very calm until it wasn't. Not really clear what more could have been done.

Cancelo on the way out... pity as had been playing some great stuff.

Wonder how much that break in etc., last year has messed up his life.

FFS!

"The Premier League is partnering with French fantasy sports platform Sorare to sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a sign that the sporting world is continuing to embrace digital assets despite the rout in markets.

The deal gives Sorare a four-year license to sell digital sports cards of players from all 20 Premier League clubs, Sorare said in a statement on Monday.

Sky News reported in October that the deal could be worth 30 million pounds ($37.13 million) per year. Sorare declined to comment on whether the figure cited by Sky News was accurate."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/premier-league-signs-nft-deal-with-softbank-backed-sorare-2023-01-30/

Echo chamber much.

There were plenty of statements of a nationalistic tinge from the Ukrainian leadership over the past number of years and a move to disavow the Minsk II process. Not that any different should be really expected from the leaders of any country under threat (real or imagined, but that's a broader discussion). There was an ongoing slow burn conflict in the Donbass and many statements that they would take back the "rebel" areas.

There were also other interesting things occurring and/or planned, e.g., increasing large NATO exercises were planned to be hosted with the Ukrainian military. 

Now, if reading all of the above has triggered "Russia is justified in this war", which is not nor has been stated anywhere, you ought to question why that is so.

Why is it that this cannot be discussed and instead, Russia bad is the only thing worth saying.

9 minutes ago, Genie said:

By VPN you mean buying from Brazil, Turkey or India?

They can also be used to obfuscate your identity and hence the algo will not treat you in the personal way it has based on your online identity (for better or worse). Or you can poison their various profiling methods at a minimum.

This assumes you also have the appropriate cookie/script blockers enabled and that you empty the browser caches on shutdown and do so regularly. It's becoming increasingly hard to be truly anonymous and hide from the advertisers though.

One of the primary reasons for the Russian move was the ongoing arming of Ukraine and their calculation that in XX months time very little would be possible and their geo-strategic position would be significantly weakened given that Ukraine would not just sit and stare at it's shiny new toys. Somewhat of a chicken and egg situation for Ukraine of course, but one would suggest that earnest negotiations could have avoided all of this. Alas, the Minsk process was completely abandoned.

This US has no problem with this, as it's on someone else's doorstep, so away we went.

The absence of any desire for a negotiated settlement and all the associated zero-sum talk is a sad indictment of many.

On 12/01/2023 at 08:33, Genie said:

US inflation fell a bit to 6.5%, another positive sign.

Food still at over 10%.

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Which language was this written in? Can't seem to get google translate to work!

The war against AI is real.

On 15/01/2023 at 14:03, Brumstopdogs said:

 

Hmmm... Word was that Usman was really touch and go recovering from a recent injury. Should be really interesting to see how that bad KO effects him mentally (probably 5 rounds of wrestling) and physically (could become a bit chinny). Atmosphere will be amazing if Leon could pull it off again.

Hail Satan!

17 hours ago, magnkarl said:

I wouldn’t worry. The only stable currencies are ones from NATO countries and or our good allies. It’s not like the Saudis will take payment in rubles, yuan or rupees. They’re all extremely volatile.

Political turmoil (see authoritarianism) is not good for a currency, which is why this shouldn't be an issue.

There's an awful lot of full fate and credit in your statement that increasing agreements amongst non-NATO nations for trade in non-dollar currencies dis-agree with.

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

I was actually thinking that they will probably look at immigration but cant see many in europe wanting to go there so there may look at it regions closer to them

They may have a massive population but you gotta look at the percentage of how many of those millions are of the older generation in comparison to the young generations. Been trying to obtain the data for this but its hard to find. If i was a betting man i reckon they would have a very old population.

Apparently people in china as well are not having as many kids as they would have liked

They have the advantage of not really being wealthy as a nation for that long, so many of their current old population will be pretty hardened self-sufficient folk and I suspect less likely to be afflicted by the chronic consumption based medical conditions that plague the classical "western" economies.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, is open to discussing oil trade settlements in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, Saudi Minister of Finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, told Bloomberg TV in an interview in Davos on Tuesday.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Arabia-Is-Open-To-Discuss-Non-Dollar-Oil-Trade-Settlements.html

The world is a changing place. This should sharpen minds come debt ceiling time.

Could well be posted in the gun thread too... jeez!

"A failed Republican state legislative candidate, who authorities say was angry over losing an election last November and made baseless claims that the vote was “rigged”, has been arrested in connection with a series of drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico’s largest city."

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/17/former-republican-candidate-arrested-over-shootings-targeting-democrat-homes

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

This is more to do with China than the tension with taiwan so think needs to go here.

What does everyone make of the report today about the crisis China are having with their population? Since they adopted (and recently scrapped the one baby rule) since then 

China's population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low - 6.77 births per 1,000 people.

The population in 2022 - 1.4118 billion - fell by 850,000 from 2021.

This is going to be massive problem for china maintaining being a super power as they are becoming a gaing population. They are alreading having problems with their manufacturing because of the lack of people from where they once were.

They could do mass immigration like European nations and the US are doing.

Or we could realize that economic growth predicated on an endlessly growing population (workers/consumers) is a little silly as global population levels off over the next 50 years.

New systems/processes will be figured out, e.g., see Japan, which is doing pretty good with its old and declining population. Much of the scare stories around this are just that. Life if easier when population is growing, while stalling or declining is tricky. Large scale drops are where big problems emerge (e.g., US "rust belt", various post industrial parts of Europe). To be topical, Russia in the 90s, Ukraine now, Syria/Libya/Iraq more recently.

It's not going to be a massive problem for China being a "super-power", they are one by default. They have 2-3x the EU population and 3-4x the US population and all those people can buy/sell many many things. It's countries like Portugal/Netherlands/Spain/UK being super-powers that is the anomaly. Countries like Russia/Canada/Australia/Brazil are the weird ones to classify, being huge in size but with relatively small populations. It'll be interesting to see what happens in Africa as Nigeria's population peaks making it somewhere between #3-5 on global level as the century progresses.