Can you dance (at least shake your hips) and play a violin at same time? Lindsey Stirling can. Stopped watching Political NFL a long time ago, but noticed in the news that was was in the half-time show Packers game (?).
First, the stupid science projects cost a lot, but no one mentions what percentage of the grant is for admin overhead? I suspect it is a lot more than what the researcher gets paid or what the project actually costs. So, admin costs are being covered by these grants, tuition, donations, etc. And the schools still increase the tuition to the students, which are then covered by student loans which they try to get paid off by the taxpayers.
Second, the Biden Admin is proposing to let Medicare and Medicaid pay for the weight reduction drugs. The current retail price is expensive. The new 2025 Medicare part D rules cap out of pocket costs to $2,000, but who knows what the Medicare negotiated price will be. Other insurance programs will follow to negotiate their discount. And, the suggested retail price will increase to cover these discounts and we will hear about the high cost of health care. And, my understanding of these drugs is that you take them forever in order to maintain the weight loss. But, have these drugs been researched to test the impact of long term use? Probably not, so there are unknown future health impacts and costs. A vicious cycle …
And they cry that MC/MA programs are running out of money while they add on new expenses.
Some dolts can be math savants but are otherwise dolts. Curious but true.
Unit costs of the weight reduction drugs should decline with volume. I don’t know how much of the present unit cost reflects the recapture of development and testing costs and how much of it is actual manufacturing and distribution costs, but drugs are usually weighted pretty heavily toward the former, and the unit cost of those factors clearly declines linearly depending on how many you are going to sell over the life of the drug.
So maybe cover it with an agreed-upon declining payment over the next N years.
I do share the concern about side effects; no matter how good the testing, there are always possibilities of bad things showing up down the road.
Interesting video and it raises the question, would every human see the universe as Jason does if their brain could just be rewired in proper way.
I imagine each brain would have to be rewired differently.
And could different wiring circuits produce different abilities? Maybe that’s the future of AI– figuring out how to modify each human brain to benefit mankind.
YouTube then gave me a choice of a video about Marilyn von Savant who is claimed to have an IQ of 228. She suggests we abandon compulsory education since it doesn’t teach children how to think critically. Is she suggesting that a person’s IQ could be improved? Maximized possibly.
She writes an advice column and while her advice is no doubt very reasoned, is her advice better than someone with an IQ of only 150?
I’ve always thought of higher IQ’s being able to process more data at the same time. This goes against the theory that women can think independently of two things at once, and men can only think of one thing.
Roundup of links and commentary: AI, education and indoctrination….the ‘precariat’ class and their political leanings…the prospects for manufacturing in America…and a curious mountain lion.
David Foster, you need to add profit into the equation. Scarcity drives profit. But so does desirability. As long as it’s highly desired, the price will remain high.
As that market becomes saturated, the price will decline to meet the next level of affordability.
@Liz:what percentage of the grant is for admin overhead?
About 50% to the institution.
Brian E….”David Foster, you need to add profit into the equation. Scarcity drives profit. But so does desirability. As long as it’s highly desired, the price will remain high. As that market becomes saturated, the price will decline to meet the next level of affordability.”
As an investor in early-stage companies, including some in the drug development world, I’m all for profit! But large buyers can have a big influence on price behavior of suppliers. If I’m Medicare and you’re the drug company: Maybe you can sell to 1 million customers at $2000/year each. If I now offer you a deal that will let you get 10 million customers…but will only pay $1000/year each for them…should you take the offer, economically speaking? The answer will depend on the volume sensitivity of your cost model.
“I do share the concern about side effects; no matter how good the testing, there are always possibilities of bad things showing up down the road.” – David Foster
My neighbor, a type 2 diabetic, was put on Ozempic. The side effects were quite debilitating. Bloating, diarrhea, excessive burping, and poor sleep. He had to go off it. His doctor suggested exercise. He was loathe to do it, but he did. Six months later his A1C is under control, he’s lost a bit of weight, and he’s now wondering why he resisted exercise so long. 🙂
So, I predict that some fairly large percentage of people will not be able to use the drug continuously because of side effects.
I’ve seen comments about Ozempic and similar drugs that people lose both fat and muscle, which isn’t good. With exercise and a simple diet with adequate protein, you don’t lose muscle.
J.J.:
A lot of people stop taking the drugs for a number of reasons, including side effects. Most of them gain the weight back.
I read somewhere that they are now developing drugs that spare muscle.
I’m having good results from exercise and introducing some resistant starches into my diet (and thanks for posting about them, Neo). My opinion, and my doctor’s, is that the shots are appropriate for people who are morbidly obese or have type 2 diabetes resistant to change from diet and exercise.
Re: Side-effects
Ah me.
I knew my mother was in trouble when I discovered that she was taking drugs to counteract the side-effects of the drugs that she was taking to counteract the side-effects of the drugs that she was taking to counteract the side-effects of the drugs she had started taking to make her less crazy in the first place.
She still ended up slitting her wrists.
Goddamn doctors and psychiatrists.
Later on they admitted, “Woops!”
In the 90s my more or less constant depression escalated to suicidal ideation — I was imagining the act — so I saw a therapist and her strategy was to get me to a psychiatrist and on antidepressants.
But I just wouldn’t do it.
I kept thinking of my mother and my friends on antidepressants who were constantly tweaking their meds to fix depression and never getting better. One of them ended up in a parked car on the beach at dawn slitting his throat with a samurai sword.
Sorry to be so graphic.
I found my way out with a combination of physical exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, Tony Robbins, Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ.
I don’t claim my solution would work for everyone. Later on I found my way out of obesity with Tim Ferriss’s “Slow Carb Diet.”
Western medicine is great when it’s great, but I’m less sure when it comes to chronic or mental conditions. It’s worth looking for alternatives. If one can avoid the drug carousel, it’s better.
_________________________________
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
–Matthew 7:7-8
Thanks for sharing your story, huxley. Solving one’s problems is difficult. Medicine and therapy can provide help, but the patient often has to want to do the work. Glad you persisted.
Medicine and therapy can provide help, but the patient often has to want to do the work.
J.J.:
This is what makes me so crazy about all the Victim Mentality going around. Whatever one’s circumstances, one must persevere, not seek excuses.
I’m so grateful for all my teachers, direct and indirect, who taught me thus.
Hello.
Poking around on ZeroHedge, which is admittedly not a routine thing for me to be doing, I landed on an article about the UK government’s climate-change remediation goals. This in turn pointed me to a report produced by some British public-sector research organisation (UK FIRES) back in 2021 that outlined what it would take for Britain to meet its announced goals at that time, along the lines of committing to a 45% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and absolute zero carbon emissions by 2050. (There are really two separate documents Minus 45 and Absolute Zero from 2021 and 2023-4, respectively.)
It would mean an absolute revolution across all sectors, but I found some of the conclusions rather jolting. Such things as these to be implemented by 2050, for example (only one generation away):
2030-2049:
* All remaining airports close
* All shipping declines to zero
* Beef and lamb phased out, along with all imports not transported by train; fertiliser use greatly reduced
There are many others, not necessarily as shocking as these – the description of the proposed role of scrap metal recycling, for example, is relatively reasonable.
But it sounds to me like a recipe to essentially take Britain back to the eighteenth century, maybe with somewhat better health care and faster trains (I know they didn’t have trains back then, but you get the point); but Britain really would be writing itself out of the game if all of this were in fact to happen, it seems to me.
(One amusing detail under the report’s post-2050 vision for the shipping sector: “Some naval ships operate with onboard nuclear power and new storage options may allow electric power”. So if there is still such a thing as the Royal Navy by then, I guess it’ll be running under canvas once more? Good luck with that when the Chinese come to take your little island away from you.)
Philip Sells, if this insane program is fully implemented Britain will be populated by a declining number of cold undernourished people. Conquering it would be easy.
Phillip Sells ( et al.), it turns out today I finally caught up on some older emails, reading the monthly summary from “Wryheat” aka:
SCIENCE, CLIMATE, ENERGY AND POLITICAL NEWS ROUNDUP 2024 NOVEMBER
A monthly review of climate, energy, environmental, and political policy issues
Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel jedtaz@gmail.com
At: https://wryheat.wordpress.com
One item he mentions discusses a study where a 31% greater absortion of CO2 by the biosphere was found compared to prior understanding. This means most of the modeling and projections of climate doom and over heating, etc., are now flawed/ suspect, further reducing the level of climate catastrophe and need for urgent “corrective actions” or Zero Day targets, etc. I did not know about this before today, but it looks like the report has been out for at least a few months now: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/29/oops-science-was-settled-until-it-wasnt-plants-absorb-31-more-co?-than-we-thought/
Thus Britain and the rest of us should take a welcome step back in terms of bad policies and worse investments. I think the consensus was already turning away from catestrophic views before I saw this [with many vested interests still pushing falsehoods], but it certainly compounds the evidence in favor of a more scientific and responsible look at the real degree and causes of “global warming”, if any. And that voiding our technological civilization by reducing use of fossil fuels is no longer urgent. Good thing that Trump seems to also already have some alignment towards this viewpoint.
The climate crisis is OVER, but it will take a while for all the Zombies to finally fall apart.
From the “But the science was settled!” department.
You may remember just four days ago, WUWT ran this story: Oops, Science Was “Settled”—Until It Wasn’t: Plants Absorb 31% More CO? Than We Thought
Now, hot on the heels of that one, another underestimated CO? absorption has been found: New Study Reveals Oceans Absorb More CO2 Than Previously Thought.
…
Now, cumulatively, within a week, we now have a 38% difference in CO? absorption not previously known to climate science. That’s big.
The two recent studies on oceanic and terrestrial CO? absorption reveal significant, previously underestimated roles of natural carbon sinks, which have strong implications for climate models and predictions. Here’s an quick analysis of these findings and their combined impact on climate sensitivity and modeling.
…
We’ve known for some time that climate models have been running “hot” due to some of the emission scenarios like RCP 8.5 being unrealistic in CO? growth rates in the future. See: New Confirmation that Climate Models Overstate Atmospheric Warming. Perhaps these new findings will cool some of those models (assuming climate science has any integrity left) and we’ll hear less about a projected climate doomsday being just around the corner.
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Can you dance (at least shake your hips) and play a violin at same time? Lindsey Stirling can. Stopped watching Political NFL a long time ago, but noticed in the news that was was in the half-time show Packers game (?).
How dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling went from America’s Got Talent reject to YouTube’s highest earning woman raking in an incredible $6MILLION per year – she’s gotta enough talent to make $6MILLION per year now.
Researching her yesterday I like this about the best:
Crystallize
Two DOGE points –
First, the stupid science projects cost a lot, but no one mentions what percentage of the grant is for admin overhead? I suspect it is a lot more than what the researcher gets paid or what the project actually costs. So, admin costs are being covered by these grants, tuition, donations, etc. And the schools still increase the tuition to the students, which are then covered by student loans which they try to get paid off by the taxpayers.
Second, the Biden Admin is proposing to let Medicare and Medicaid pay for the weight reduction drugs. The current retail price is expensive. The new 2025 Medicare part D rules cap out of pocket costs to $2,000, but who knows what the Medicare negotiated price will be. Other insurance programs will follow to negotiate their discount. And, the suggested retail price will increase to cover these discounts and we will hear about the high cost of health care. And, my understanding of these drugs is that you take them forever in order to maintain the weight loss. But, have these drugs been researched to test the impact of long term use? Probably not, so there are unknown future health impacts and costs. A vicious cycle …
And they cry that MC/MA programs are running out of money while they add on new expenses.
Some dolts can be math savants but are otherwise dolts. Curious but true.
Unit costs of the weight reduction drugs should decline with volume. I don’t know how much of the present unit cost reflects the recapture of development and testing costs and how much of it is actual manufacturing and distribution costs, but drugs are usually weighted pretty heavily toward the former, and the unit cost of those factors clearly declines linearly depending on how many you are going to sell over the life of the drug.
So maybe cover it with an agreed-upon declining payment over the next N years.
I do share the concern about side effects; no matter how good the testing, there are always possibilities of bad things showing up down the road.
Interesting video and it raises the question, would every human see the universe as Jason does if their brain could just be rewired in proper way.
I imagine each brain would have to be rewired differently.
And could different wiring circuits produce different abilities? Maybe that’s the future of AI– figuring out how to modify each human brain to benefit mankind.
YouTube then gave me a choice of a video about Marilyn von Savant who is claimed to have an IQ of 228. She suggests we abandon compulsory education since it doesn’t teach children how to think critically. Is she suggesting that a person’s IQ could be improved? Maximized possibly.
She writes an advice column and while her advice is no doubt very reasoned, is her advice better than someone with an IQ of only 150?
I’ve always thought of higher IQ’s being able to process more data at the same time. This goes against the theory that women can think independently of two things at once, and men can only think of one thing.
The Woman with an IQ of 228
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rDygbx5Kk
Roundup of links and commentary: AI, education and indoctrination….the ‘precariat’ class and their political leanings…the prospects for manufacturing in America…and a curious mountain lion.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/72470.html
David Foster, you need to add profit into the equation. Scarcity drives profit. But so does desirability. As long as it’s highly desired, the price will remain high.
As that market becomes saturated, the price will decline to meet the next level of affordability.
@Liz:what percentage of the grant is for admin overhead?
About 50% to the institution.
Brian E….”David Foster, you need to add profit into the equation. Scarcity drives profit. But so does desirability. As long as it’s highly desired, the price will remain high. As that market becomes saturated, the price will decline to meet the next level of affordability.”
As an investor in early-stage companies, including some in the drug development world, I’m all for profit! But large buyers can have a big influence on price behavior of suppliers. If I’m Medicare and you’re the drug company: Maybe you can sell to 1 million customers at $2000/year each. If I now offer you a deal that will let you get 10 million customers…but will only pay $1000/year each for them…should you take the offer, economically speaking? The answer will depend on the volume sensitivity of your cost model.
“I do share the concern about side effects; no matter how good the testing, there are always possibilities of bad things showing up down the road.” – David Foster
My neighbor, a type 2 diabetic, was put on Ozempic. The side effects were quite debilitating. Bloating, diarrhea, excessive burping, and poor sleep. He had to go off it. His doctor suggested exercise. He was loathe to do it, but he did. Six months later his A1C is under control, he’s lost a bit of weight, and he’s now wondering why he resisted exercise so long. 🙂
So, I predict that some fairly large percentage of people will not be able to use the drug continuously because of side effects.
I’ve seen comments about Ozempic and similar drugs that people lose both fat and muscle, which isn’t good. With exercise and a simple diet with adequate protein, you don’t lose muscle.
J.J.:
A lot of people stop taking the drugs for a number of reasons, including side effects. Most of them gain the weight back.
I read somewhere that they are now developing drugs that spare muscle.
I’m having good results from exercise and introducing some resistant starches into my diet (and thanks for posting about them, Neo). My opinion, and my doctor’s, is that the shots are appropriate for people who are morbidly obese or have type 2 diabetes resistant to change from diet and exercise.
Re: Side-effects
Ah me.
I knew my mother was in trouble when I discovered that she was taking drugs to counteract the side-effects of the drugs that she was taking to counteract the side-effects of the drugs that she was taking to counteract the side-effects of the drugs she had started taking to make her less crazy in the first place.
She still ended up slitting her wrists.
Goddamn doctors and psychiatrists.
Later on they admitted, “Woops!”
In the 90s my more or less constant depression escalated to suicidal ideation — I was imagining the act — so I saw a therapist and her strategy was to get me to a psychiatrist and on antidepressants.
But I just wouldn’t do it.
I kept thinking of my mother and my friends on antidepressants who were constantly tweaking their meds to fix depression and never getting better. One of them ended up in a parked car on the beach at dawn slitting his throat with a samurai sword.
Sorry to be so graphic.
I found my way out with a combination of physical exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, Tony Robbins, Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ.
I don’t claim my solution would work for everyone. Later on I found my way out of obesity with Tim Ferriss’s “Slow Carb Diet.”
Western medicine is great when it’s great, but I’m less sure when it comes to chronic or mental conditions. It’s worth looking for alternatives. If one can avoid the drug carousel, it’s better.
_________________________________
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
–Matthew 7:7-8
Thanks for sharing your story, huxley. Solving one’s problems is difficult. Medicine and therapy can provide help, but the patient often has to want to do the work. Glad you persisted.
Medicine and therapy can provide help, but the patient often has to want to do the work.
J.J.:
This is what makes me so crazy about all the Victim Mentality going around. Whatever one’s circumstances, one must persevere, not seek excuses.
I’m so grateful for all my teachers, direct and indirect, who taught me thus.
Hello.
Poking around on ZeroHedge, which is admittedly not a routine thing for me to be doing, I landed on an article about the UK government’s climate-change remediation goals. This in turn pointed me to a report produced by some British public-sector research organisation (UK FIRES) back in 2021 that outlined what it would take for Britain to meet its announced goals at that time, along the lines of committing to a 45% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and absolute zero carbon emissions by 2050. (There are really two separate documents Minus 45 and Absolute Zero from 2021 and 2023-4, respectively.)
It would mean an absolute revolution across all sectors, but I found some of the conclusions rather jolting. Such things as these to be implemented by 2050, for example (only one generation away):
2030-2049:
* All remaining airports close
* All shipping declines to zero
* Beef and lamb phased out, along with all imports not transported by train; fertiliser use greatly reduced
There are many others, not necessarily as shocking as these – the description of the proposed role of scrap metal recycling, for example, is relatively reasonable.
But it sounds to me like a recipe to essentially take Britain back to the eighteenth century, maybe with somewhat better health care and faster trains (I know they didn’t have trains back then, but you get the point); but Britain really would be writing itself out of the game if all of this were in fact to happen, it seems to me.
(One amusing detail under the report’s post-2050 vision for the shipping sector: “Some naval ships operate with onboard nuclear power and new storage options may allow electric power”. So if there is still such a thing as the Royal Navy by then, I guess it’ll be running under canvas once more? Good luck with that when the Chinese come to take your little island away from you.)
Philip Sells, if this insane program is fully implemented Britain will be populated by a declining number of cold undernourished people. Conquering it would be easy.
Phillip Sells ( et al.), it turns out today I finally caught up on some older emails, reading the monthly summary from “Wryheat” aka:
SCIENCE, CLIMATE, ENERGY AND POLITICAL NEWS ROUNDUP 2024 NOVEMBER
A monthly review of climate, energy, environmental, and political policy issues
Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel jedtaz@gmail.com
At: https://wryheat.wordpress.com
One item he mentions discusses a study where a 31% greater absortion of CO2 by the biosphere was found compared to prior understanding. This means most of the modeling and projections of climate doom and over heating, etc., are now flawed/ suspect, further reducing the level of climate catastrophe and need for urgent “corrective actions” or Zero Day targets, etc. I did not know about this before today, but it looks like the report has been out for at least a few months now:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/29/oops-science-was-settled-until-it-wasnt-plants-absorb-31-more-co?-than-we-thought/
Thus Britain and the rest of us should take a welcome step back in terms of bad policies and worse investments. I think the consensus was already turning away from catestrophic views before I saw this [with many vested interests still pushing falsehoods], but it certainly compounds the evidence in favor of a more scientific and responsible look at the real degree and causes of “global warming”, if any. And that voiding our technological civilization by reducing use of fossil fuels is no longer urgent. Good thing that Trump seems to also already have some alignment towards this viewpoint.
The climate crisis is OVER, but it will take a while for all the Zombies to finally fall apart.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/02/for-the-second-time-in-a-week-climate-scientists-surprised-with-an-increased-co2-absorption-mechanism/