Washington’s law about 3d printing guns. I wonder if they have considered 3d printed missiles?
Keep an eye on this technology. Imagine a future CW2 where people 3d print $100 TV guided missiles.
Uncategorized
Tired
Talking to people on the Internet, especially on social media, wears you down. Sometimes you get to the point, where you just tire of talking to the morons on there, all of whom are experts on things like military tactics and strategy, finance, police tactics, the law, the Constitution, and medicine. A couple of cases from my recent experience:
Finance
In a discussion of my recent post on the couple with the 538 FICO being charged 20% interest on a car, there was the guy who told me the law should cap interest rates at 6%. When I pointed out to him that this would force banks to stop loaning money to anyone with a FICO of less than 650, and would likely force them to require 50% down for those from 650 to 700. After all, with a 28% chance of default within a 12 month period and a cumulative 41% chance of default over 36 months, people with low FICO scores are poor risks for credit.
He told me I was wrong, then claimed to have received a Nobel prize for his work with Grameen Bank, when that bank saw an increase in repayment rates of 1000%. I pointed out to him that mathematically, it would be impossible for any bank to have such an increase unless their repayment rate was 10% or less before the change. He told me I need to educate myself. Then pointed out that a bank who has a repayment rate of 1 in 11, then sees the other 11 people begin to repay just had a 1000% increase in repayment. Never mind that this would mean 12 of the 11 customers are now paying, thus making it mathematically impossible. Not only that, but the Grameen bank is making loans of an average of $100, and is charging 20% interest on those micro loans. The bank does have a repayment rate of 95%, but it does this through local peer pressure.
This is how the bank works: A peer group consists of 5 people who live in the same village. Each of them individually receives a loan, but if any one of the five defaults, the others in the peer group are no longer eligible to receive any loans in the future until the delinquent account is brought current.
Borrowers must contribute to group savings accounts, and the savings accounts take the place of collateral. Rather like a secured credit card, the borrowers are essentially borrowing their own money at 20% interest. I don’t understand how that is worthy of a Nobel prize.
That’s the system he wants to emulate? Not to mention the fact that he clearly can’t do simple arithmetic. At the end, he accused me of being stupid in supporting billionaires who are earning profits through usury, and said I probably had a 450 credit score. Whatever.
Medicine
Then there was a story about a woman who was traveling at a high rate of speed and running red lights, and was spotted by police. The police tried to pull her over, but she refused to stop, instead turning on her flashers and waved out the window at them. After giving her several warnings on the PA, they performed a PIT maneuver. The woman stated she was driving like that because her mother was having stroke symptoms and she was taking her to the hospital.
I pointed out in comments that the cops don’t know that, and failing to pull over for the cops was a bad idea. After all, there is a non-zero chance of them hitting someone, they may not even be heading to a stroke center, and this would actually delay the mother’s care.
This mental midget came on and tried to explain to me that they weren’t headed to a stroke center, but to a hospital, or even an emergency room. I pointed out that I am a board certified ED nurse, paramedic, and certified stroke nurse. She said “So of course you will support calling an ambulance, so you can make an extra $2000 for an ambulance ride, and that’s the problem with US healthcare. They don’t need a stroke center, an emergency room will do just fine.”
I then pointed out that not every ED is equipped and staffed as a Comprehensive Stroke Center, so depending on the type of stroke the mother was having, they may not be able to deal with it, which would require that the ED call an ambulance to transfer her to the proper facility, thus delaying care (perhaps even past the window), whereas calling an ambulance to start with would have seen the mother taken to the proper place to begin with.
She then told me that I was wrong, and don’t know what I am talking about. She said “No emergency room will turn you away.”
A great example- my previous ED was a primary stroke center. The nearest comprehensive stroke center was an hour away. We had a Labor and Delivery department, but two nearby hospitals didn’t. We had a Level II cardiac cath lab, the next three closest hospitals didn’t. Every hospital and ED has different levels of what they can provide. The local ambulances know who can provide what services, and they take patients to each facility accordingly.
When you drive a person to the hospital, you likely don’t know that. If the person needing care has a problem that is beyond the capabilities of that hospital, care will happen, but not the best care. The best care for that person will happen after the person is transferred to a higher level of care. Few and far between are hospitals that are the best at everything. It’s expensive and difficult to staff every specialty doctor and the equipment they need, and many hospitals don’t have the patient volume to be able to do so.
In Person
Even in person, it’s no better. I was recently at a pineapple farm, and some idiot next to me actually told the friends he was with “I don’t understand why the put in all of this effort when they can just buy pineapples in the store for five bucks.”
Sigh. Some days, talking to the idiots just makes me weary. Talking to people is generally useless, and I just get tired of doing it sometimes. They don’t know what they don’t know, but are happy to beat you over the head with their ignorance. The older I get, the less I like people
Lawfare
Litigation Tourist
A German tourist came to the US and filed lawsuits against US businesses.
- A $100,000 suit against a Mexican restaurant because the salsa was too spicy
- A $10 million lawsuit against Walmart because it required a US phone number for its WiFi service
- A $10 million lawsuit against NYPD because the officers couldn’t call him on his European cell phone
Ridiculous. A judge dismissed the taco lawsuit. The others are still pending.
economics
Maryland and Tips
Maryland is probably going to raise minimum wage to $25 per hour, and at the same time will eliminate the provision allowing employers to lower their rates for tipped employees.
Tipped employees are opposed, because they make far more than $25 per hour in tips. This will kill many jobs and cause prices to skyrocket, which will force places to close. Want to know why a hamburger at McDonald’s costs $12? This is why.
Expect that price to rise.
economics
Tax Season
It’s tax season. That means car dealers are about to sell some cars to morons getting huge IRS payments.
A 538 FICO score, trying to get himself a Mercedes with what I presume is his IRS check. The finance guy says $8k down is the minimum to get approved for 19.99% interest and $700 payment for 4 years.
Thing is, there is a roughly 40% chance of a default within the next 3 years with that FICO score. The interest rate has to reflect that.
Antigun
Washington
The Washington state legislature just passed a law making it a felony to possess digital files that can be used to make any part on a CNC or a 3d machine that could potentially be used as a part of a firearm.
Not only impossible to make work in any practical or Constitutional sense, it opens a huge can of worms.
Illegals
Imports
Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world. Commit an obviouly preplanned ambush and murder, then claim you thought he was molesting a child.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The US isn’t built on magic dirt. Third world savages don’t become part of US culture merely because they touch our soil. Immigrants CAN be great Americans, but you have to be selective in who you allow in, or this is what you get.
Fake News
That’s Some Soviet Shit
Remember when the left got their panties in a bunch when Florida prohibited teaching about gay sex? Papers were written, and the left’s chorus were all claiming it was a First Amendment violation. (pdf warning- not hosted here)
Proving once again that, if it weren’t for double standards, the left would have no standards at all, Virginia has passed a law that defies belief. It is now a crime in Virginia for a school to “state, suggest, or present as credible a statement or suggestion that there was extensive election fraud that could have changed or actually changed the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
Not only that, but the same law says that school instruction must “Describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
Not only is this law egregious, but CBS’ reporting of it is as bad. The reporting here would have made Goebbels or Zhdanov proud. First lie is in the headline:
Virginia passes legislation prohibiting schools from teaching falsehoods about Jan. 6 riot
Read the money quote:
The White House posted a series of lies about Jan. 6 on an official federal government web page on Jan. 6, 2026, including a bogus claim that police bore responsibility for the attack.
So is telling teachers to teach only one side of a story propaganda, or not? A First Amendment issue, or not? Wouldn’t it be better in a politically charged case like this one, to present both sides and let students decide for themselves? Are we teaching students how to think, or what to think?
- “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
- “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
- “All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don’t think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.”
Anti American left
Who Said That?
“The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest.”
The next liberal who complains about the Iran conflict, ask them if the above quote is an accurate description of Presidential powers. If it isn’t, what should happen to the President making this claim?
Medical News
Nursing
Nursing is a great job because it’s a large tent. There are jobs for nurses both in and out of hospitals. I can’t speak for out of hospital nursing because I don’t have any experience whatsoever, but in hospital there is a hierarchy, and it’s the same in nearly every hospital, to the point that memes are made about this.
Nursing has a definite pecking order. Let me say that each nursing specialty is needed, but some nurses do have a more strenuous pathway than others. Remember that nursing is filled with mostly women (about 65% female) and women are some catty, backstabbing bitches. It makes for some very cat-like behavior, and not in a good way. No, in a “mean girls” way. The bullying and competition is pretty fierce. Women are simply vindictive, conniving bitches.
You have your inpatient nursing- medical/surgical (called med-surge), and these nurses staff the oberservation and general patient floors. Generally, med-surge nurses care for the least complicated patients, and they tend to be the least skilled nurses in the hospital. I’m sure that will piss some people off, but that’s just how it is. Because the patients are low acuity, nurse/patient ratios are 1:6 or sometimes as high as 1:8.
A step up from that is cardiology, oncology, wound care, those sorts of specialties. Nurses in these areas are very good within their specialty, but don’t generally know a whole lot outside of it. Again, they are needed, and a great example is that I suck at wound care, so not slamming anyone. The nurses in this area are usually ratioed at 1:4 or 1:5.
Above the general floor nurses are your step down units- PCU, CVPCU, those kinds of units. These nurses handle patients that are more complicated and require more care. For that reason, ratios are usually 1:3 or 1:4.
The next level up in the inpatient nurses packing order is the ICU. The nurses in this unit generally consider themselves to be the cream of the crop. There is a bit of a superiority complex here, and a good bit of it is well deserved. ICU nurses are well known for being very detail oriented and for having OCD. Every IV line is carefully labeled with color coded stickers. The ICU nurse knows everything there is to know about the patient: the name of his kids, his dog, his favorite color. They have time for that, because the nurse patient ratios are frequently 1:1 or 1:2, so they spend the entire 36 hour workweek with 1 or 2 patients.
Then there are outpatient nurses. PACU (post anesthesia care unit) nurses take care of patients who have just come out of surgery. After that the patient either gets admitted to an inpatient unit, or goes home. Also surgical nurses, endoscopy nurses, and the like. The nurses here are fairly specialized, and most of them work M-F 9-5 jobs. Other nurses refer to these types as “princess” and the shifts they work are called “princess shifts.”
The emergency department. The nurses here are known as being “cowboys” who don’t follow the rigid rules the rest of the hospital’s nurses have to follow. They have one overriding goal- stabilize a patient, then send them to an inpatient unit. Everything else- bathing the patient, changing their clothes, and other nursing tasks just don’t get done. ED nurses also tend to think of themselves as being the best of the best, and act like those routine tasks are beneath them. For this reason, inpatient nurses generally don’t like ED nurses.
If anything goes wrong in an inpatient nurse’s area, the nurse will initiate a “rapid response” or “CAT” call, and the response team will come to help them out. Some hospitals use ICU nurses as the response team, other hospitals use ED nurses.
As you can imagine, the rivalry between ICU and ED nurses can be rather intense, med-surge nurses feel (or are looked down upon) as being inferior, and the entire hospital feels like it is at war with one unit, shift, or zone being at war with all of the others. Some temporary alliances are formed, mostly when one unit teams up with another to take a third unit down a peg or two.
Yes, nursing is filled with a bunch of infighting that is mostly caused by having several hundred women in the same building, all wearing the same outfit, and about 1 in 5 of them is menstruating at any given time. It’s like being in a building full of rabid honey badgers.
All shift long, it’s “day shift is lazy,” or “Night shift didn’t do anything last night,” then you hear “Med-surge nurses are idiots,” or “Those ICU nurses are stuck up bitches,” and the old reliable “The ED nurses didn’t even bathe this patient and put him in a gown before they sent him up.”
Older nurses take great pleasure in screwing with younger ones, for no other reason than flexing their pecking order muscles. It’s so bad that every nurse hears an old adage while they are in school: “Nurses eat their young,” meaning that the level of bullying of new nurses by old ones sends many a young nurse off to cry in the bathroom.
It’s especially difficult when you are a man that just doesn’t like playing those kinds of bullshit power struggle games, and also has the nasty habit of calling things like you see them. It’s been a difficult skill to learn, biting my tongue. I still struggle with it frequently. I’m old enough that I don’t play those games, and I tell people to fuck off. That’s when your attacker then plays the victim card and uses their victim status as a weapon.
My first experience with this was in nursing school, when a fellow student began bitching at me and calling me stupid, and I told her to shut the fuck up. I almost got kicked out of school after she went to the instructors and told them I was racist and sexist. For the rest of school, that woman (who also happened to be black) organized a “Hate on Divemedic” club amongst the other students and staff members of her own demographic.
If you get the feeling that I don’t like most women in the workplace, you would be correct. They spend more time setting up tribes, posturing, backstabbing, and putting on makeup than they do actually caring for patients. There is a lot less of that kind of bullshit in the ED, simply because we are too busy to have time for that shit. Let there be some down time, and the ED starts with it too.
It’s exhausting.
I got a message from a reader who is a nurse, talking about my last work post. The gist of it was “be careful making enemies of HR and training folks, they will screw you over.” You know what, that is 100% correct, nurses like that will find a way to get back at you. The difference now is that I am close enough to retirement that I just don’t care.