• 2 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Here’s the problem. Let’s say you have a doctor club, where everyone pays the same amount regardless of how often they use the doctor. For people who need the doctor a lot, that’s great. They pay a lot less than they would if they had to pay per visit. For people who just need one checkup a year, they end up paying a lot more than if they just paid for their annual checkup. And they would quickly figure that out, and drop out of the program.

    So now the people who are all basically healthy aren’t in your pool anymore. They’re paying for their annual checkup at another doctor. So only the people who need the doctor a lot are paying in. So you have to hire more doctors and increase the cost of the program, because everyone who is in it needs a lot of doctor time.

    But then the same thing happens again. People who need more visits a year are getting more out of the program than they are paying in, and people who need fewer visits a year are getting less than they are paying. So the people who need the fewest doctor visits drop out. And so on as the cycle repeats.

    You get the idea. There’s a game theory term for this that I am forgetting, but the result is spiraling costs and more dropouts. This is why the ACA (for you non-Americans, that’s the Affordable Care Act, which was attempting to reduce US healthcare costs) had a health insurance mandate. Requiring everyone to be part of the program is the only way to make something like this work.




  • It stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, but you don’t need to know or care about that part.

    The part that matters is that you get news from places you trust without the algorithm BS. RSS lets you subscribe to any website you want, and you see all of their new posts, in reverse chronological order, no algorithm. You can (if you have a good reader) filter out subjects you’re not interested in, and just see the stuff you care about.

    I recommend trying out Feedly (feedly.com) with a few sites you already follow, and going from there.






  • I am loving this post and am bookmarking it for future games to play.

    The one I want to recommend is a little out of left field: “Photopia”, a text adventure that is more than 20 years old but that I just found out about. It’s a nonlinear narrative game with two distinct voices, where you gradually piece together the story of, well, go in unspoiled and you’ll be happier. It’s not a long game, and there aren’t much by way of puzzles, but the writing is wonderful and the story hits hard.

    You can play it for free online.


  • I use a system I read about ages ago. The idea is that you have a bunch of different reasons for keeping your mail in your inbox, and you should have separate boxes for each of those reasons rather than mixing them all together.

    So I have a box for “Quick Reply” (will need an answer today), “Slow Reply” (will need an answer, but it can wait) “To Read” (I need to read it or its attachments but don’t need to reply at all), “Reminders” (things like job numbers and due dates), and “Save” (any other reason it needs to be kept).

    Then I empty out my inbox whenever I have a chance (multiple times a day), and use those folders as I need them. Works pretty well.