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contubernio

369 karmajoined 6 mesi fa

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contubernio
·21 ore fa·discuss
Sharing costs generates institutional incentives to keep costs down. Individualizing costs generates institutional incentives to charge more.

Perverse incentives are the essence of what is wrong with US medical systems.
contubernio
·21 ore fa·discuss
It could be attacked easily via an alliance with Mexico or Canada. The premise that such a thing could never happen is not a good one for military planning.
contubernio
·4 giorni fa·discuss
Does this not violate European privacy laws?
contubernio
·22 giorni fa·discuss
The anecdote is meant to illustrate not to substitute a full data set.

Universities and other similar large institutions usually err systematically in one direction - that which protects the institution.
contubernio
·22 giorni fa·discuss
No one lives in rooms. Everyone in Madrid lives in apartment.

The average salary refers to those who have a job. Most family units have some that don't.
contubernio
·22 giorni fa·discuss
Alternative approximate translation: while I urinate on you tell me it's raining.
contubernio
·23 giorni fa·discuss
In Madrid where the average monthly pretax salary is below 1500 a shared room with four strangers costs 400-709 a month and small aprtments in bad neighborhoods cost 3000-4000 a square meter to buy.
contubernio
·23 giorni fa·discuss
False. I live in Madrid and being near a metro station a. Has no issues (for almost all stations) and b. is considered highly desirable. 10 minute walk is considered a lot (mine is 5, to either of the two nearby stations - at 10-12 minutes I can walk to four stations). These are genuine underground metro. They're deep and vibrations are mostly not an issue.

The article paints a somewhat biased view of the construction process. It gives too much credit to Gallardo and the pp and conveniently ignored the serious issues in the sam Fernando de Henares área created by too rapid construction that ignored environmental and design issues in the Sandy soil near the Jarama river. Several hundred apartments have been condemned because of it and a whole neighborhood affected ...

But it is the best metro I've seen in Europe or north america. Most usable and cheapest to use.
contubernio
·23 giorni fa·discuss
The very few cases that result in sanctions are generally horrendously flagrant.

With another professor I caught a flagrant case in a student thesis and we faced attacks from the university administration because the student had a stellar transcript (also not the positive signal some might think). Punishment was almost inexistent.

It's difficult for me to imagine what it would take to get a doctoral thesis revoked.
contubernio
·23 giorni fa·discuss
Rephrasing is worse than literal copying from a procedural point of view because it demonstrates intent and obviates a defense of mere incompetence.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
A time honored practice of dysfunctional institutions when confronted with a problem is to stop paying any attention to it. Problem gone. It's one of the derivatives of quality control.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
Professors suddenly realized everyone was cheating and started paying attention, but the cheating isn't new ... A lot of faculty are happy when their students get good grades because they interpret it as I'm such a good teacher instead of I should pay more attention to how they cheat. AI woke some of them up to reality.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
Absolutely inaccurate. I am nationalized Spaniard living here 2+ decades. Almost no one over 50 calls on the phone and when they do they almost always send a message first. The large public institution I work in is removing landlines completely because they get too little use to justify the cost.

I am (mostly against my will) in multiple professional and personal Whatsapp groups. Use is constant and daily and unavoidable. It is the principal means of communication in both work and personal settings. Calls are always a second option.

I suspect your experience reflects only partial integration in local culture.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
In Spain whatsapp is universal and necessary for everything personal and professional.

Some hard core committed communists prefer telegram, but even they usually have to have whatsapp too. No one uses signal or even knows what it is.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
Most comments are just older commenters confirming what everyone over 50 knows, which is that young people are slow and stupid and not as competent as we were back then nor as competent as we are now.

Every generation ever has known this once it got old enough ...
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
It's as recent as WWII was when Nixon got elected.
contubernio
·mese scorso·discuss
Irrelevant objection.

Currently signalling support for Palestine is common online. In videogames in my country (Spain) every third player has some such signal (flag or phrase). It's not a serious protest, it's a sign of belonging to group x (whatever group x is), something teens in particular are big in signalling. It's not a big deal and reacting operationally as if it were is a huge security error.
contubernio
·2 mesi fa·discuss
A casino is by definition a house that takes rake and is not the government or one of its subsidiaries ...
contubernio
·2 mesi fa·discuss
It's certainly true in Atlanta. That "cluster of shops" can be a long way walking (10-15 minutes) from where one resides. It's small, incomplete, inadequate, etc.

I grew up in Atlanta proper, so know the city well, and later, by choice, lived there for a few years as an adult without a car and it was genuinely complicated. I chose a place to live near my place of work (near = it was 30 minutes solid walking). I had access to a supermarket (15 minutes walking), two (!) transit (MARTA) stations each at 15-20 minutes walking, and several bus lines (none with frequency greater than 30 minutes nor standard deviation less than 20), as well as the "cluster of shops" to which you refer. It had a bar, a few restaurants, a laundromat, and a drugstore. For real shopping other than food I took MARTA to a mall. My morning walk to work around 6 o 7 am required crossing a street used by prostitutes and drug dealers. They didn't bother me but the cops were suspicious of me for being there on foot and more than oncee I had to avoid cops with guns out chasing someone down.

People there generally considered me nuts for choosing to live this way.

I remember fondly that on my way to work there was a street full of pecan trees and at the right time of year I could get a handful from the sidewalk (there were sidewalks!).

When I was growing up (true, this was a while ago), again in the city proper, the nearest park was 3-4 km away. I went there by bike and played pickup basketball or went to the public pool, but it wasn't exactly nearby, and it wasn't walkable. Ice cream bars could be bought at a convenience store several km in a different direction. The bus stop was near the park and the bus came every 50 minutes, with considerable variance. On it it took something like 40 minutes to get to a MARTA station. A single to and back trip on public transport could easily take 3-4 hours in total so I didn't do this often. My school was around 12 hilly kilometeres away, a bit longer if one avoided the interstate. Biking there required riding on heavily congested roads with no shoulder and dealing with drivers completely incomprehending of cyclists and later crossing 8 lane roads and facing considerable danger the whole way. It could be done and I did it, but it was not particularly safe as there was no way to get there without dealing with rush hour traffic accessing the interstate.

I vaguely remember that there was a store within walking distance that sold automobile tires ...
contubernio
·2 mesi fa·discuss
There are major US cities where this is not the cae. Atlanta is an example. I've lived there without a car, but as a single man in my early 30s. It was not easy even for someone committed to the task. Even in the most "urban" parts of the city there are very few stores within walking distance, very few people on the street, and the distances are huge. Public transport (how kids in cities get around) is terrible. A kid might be able to walk to a park were he/she to live near one bit almost no one does.