Interesting Links for 08-05-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Mike Pence's takedown of Trump shows how lost traditional Republicans are

(tags:politics republicans doom usa )

2. 'I did stunts for my own pleasure': The terrifying feats of French film legend Jean-Paul Belmondo

(tags:history france stunts movies viaKenny )

3. Europeans Have Realized Their Error About Russia

(tags:russia europe war ukraine )

4. Trump blows a hole in Ed Miliband's wind farm plan

(tags:usa uk politics windpower OhForFucksSake )

5. Vagus Nerve Stimulation Erases PTSD

(tags:ptsd GoodNews )

6. Digitising NHS and adult social care 'will cost £21bn over the next five years'

(tags:computers nhs healthcare uk )

7. How do we deal with Reform?

(tags:politics uk )

8. A map of electromagnetic warfare happening in real time over Ukraine and parts of Russia

(tags:war electronics russia ukraine radio )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Very interesting stuff; thank you!

[andrewducker]

My pleasure!

[nancylebov]

5. I hope it's true. The video sounds so much like an ad, but maybe they have a real product.

At least there's a link to the whole scientific article. It's only nine people.

I wonder why they think it's necessary to start with therapy, and if the vagus nerve stimulation works, therapy might not be necessary, or might be useful for changes after not having PTSD.

[andrewducker]

I think we'll need a whole load more reearch before we know the answers. Starting with the therapy might be a good way to have something that works, and you can try it without later and see if that works too.

[andrewducker]

Worth noting that the people in these experiments had vagus nerve stimulators implanted. It looks like you can also get non-invasive ones, but I assume they aren't as good.

[threemeninaboat]

Ho Ho. My office is the largest provider of external vagus nerve simulators in the world, outside the US military. They have 9 people? We have hundreds. Our patients still have PTSD. The external simulator make them more comfortable and better, but not cured.

[nancylebov]

Thanks. Some help is definitely good, but so much for dramatic claims.

[bens_dad]

I guess these patients were already having therapy and getting *some* benefit from it.
If so, stopping it would not be good science or good patient care.
To be good science, the investigators need to be able to monitor all treatments the patient receives, otherwise the changes may be caused by things there weren't measuring.

[nancylebov]

It's an interesting question, but if they're getting therapy and possibly getting some good from it, starting a different therapy (at a minimum, a different therapist) isn't great either.

[simont]

Tangentially related to #7:

During the run-up to the elections I got a leaflet through my door saying "Reform is a racist party, don't vote for it".

Fair enough, I needed no convincing, and already wouldn't have touched Reform with the other end of two bargepoles tied together. But it struck me as odd that the leaflet didn't say who I should vote for instead! I don't think I can remember a single other instance of purely negative campaigning in my life. Plenty of "don't vote for them, vote for us instead", but just "anyone but them" is unique in my experience.

I don't know who produced that leaflet, or even whether it was a political party or some other group. I have to assume they were staying anonymous on purpose.

[andrewducker]

*Personally* I think I'd have gone more multi-pronged than that. But good for them!

I'm now curious if it's legal to campaign against a political group without being registered in some way.

[simont]

The leaflet had high production values – it definitely looked professionally printed, rather than run off someone's home laser printer or whatever. So if what they were doing is actually illegal then I'd guess they're in trouble, since it must surely be possible to track them down through the print run, given enough search warrants. It's bound to have left (sorry) a paper trail.

On the (unsafe) assumption that they weren't unwise enough to take that risk, I deduce that it probably isn't illegal, and that the anonymity was for some other reason, like maybe they feared the negativity would rebound on them and lose them votes if people knew who they were.

[andrewducker]

Here are the rules: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/political-registration-and-regulation/imprints/imprints-printed-election-material

It sounds like they'd at the least be on the edge of legality.

[chickenfeet]

STG 21B (USD 28B) for digitising the entire UK NHS sounds low to me. Kaiser Permanente, who have 12.5 million members spent over USD 7B fifteen or so years ago. I reckon KP is a much more disciplined organisation ( in the sense that it really can tell its clinicians how to operate) and letting people nit pick and customize is the easiest way to drive up the cost of an IT project. The track record suggests that the NHS is poor at imposing process discipline , especially on senior physicians, so I would expect cost per patient to be much higher than KP plus add 15 years plus of inflation...

[andrewducker]

I suspect it will end up costing more. These things always do. (Because nobody ever likes the real estimate, so they insist it be lowered, with no justification)

[calimac]

So now how should I go about getting non-subscriber access to #3? (Yeah, I could go for the free trial, but then what do I do next time?)

[andrewducker]

General workaround for paywalls is to go to https://archive.is/ and put the URL into the lower box.