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Cake day: September 24th, 2023

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  • Congenital? No. Acquired? Yes. The area of the brain that processes and interprets sound has to develop. Without sound input as a child, that won’t happen.

    Current leading theory of tinnitus is called the ‘central gain’ theory. This is where the brain becomes accustomed to seeing signals from the ear at a certain level, and when that neural level is no longer at that level it will add in its own noise to make up the difference. This noise is then perceived as a tone or sometimes a broadband sound, commonly described as either a ringing or a whooshing sound. Sometimes it can also be described as crickets. Depends on the person and cause. Not all hearing loss comes with tinnitus, but most tinnitus comes with hearing loss. In audiology school we had a whole class on tinnitus and covered many interesting aspects exactly like your shower thought here and went over papers on every angle you could think of. It was fun. But in the end, the brain has to at a minimum know what sound is to even perceive sound.


  • Seriously. We are talking about tire tread compared to weight. Both use multiple sizes of tire depending on the year/model. There are a few that overlap in diameter to get the closest to comparison but they still have a very different width. We are talking about a 235/35R18 vs a 235/75R18. That is a huge difference in wall height/aspect ratio and changes how the tire gives under power. Those numbers massively change depending on model as well. Something like an f150 raptor could have a 315/70R17, almost a foot wide. So comparing just the weight and saying they are close enough is far from a fair comparison.


  • While any aircraft sent to ukrane is nice, I sure hope they aren’t paying much for them. That airframe is about 60 years old with the last major design overhaul in 1990 and its last electronics upgrade in 2000. They would be better off buying F15e’s or even the new f15ex. He’ll, even getting some last Gen f16’s or f18’s over there would be as good or better, but cost probably more. The f15 though is probably the best multiroll jet for the cost.

    Now, if we are talking about sending some OG Mirage 2000 fighters over there, then that sounds like the ultimate white elephant gift France could give. The US could sent some F4 phantoms over while we are at it.

    The big news I the training of 4500 pilots. That is huge. If they could do that, then the mirage 2000 could basically turn into their base fighter trainer and use it as the training wheels to get the new pilots experience and into bigger and better things.


  • I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called “preexisting conditions” and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone’s premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.


  • That is at a ‘state’ level, there are still smaller level communist places to live. Like where the word ‘Commune’ comes from and what communism was derived from and attempted to expand into. There are communes all over the world. US included. There is a famous one in London, lots of large ones in Spain. They are communities that exist in their own bubble of micro economics within their larger communities of normal living. You should look it up. They are interesting and normally very appealing.




  • I know, right? Like, who the fuck needs democracy and sovereignty? If they didn’t want to be part of Russia, then they should have just said so. Has Velinsky tried talking to the justly elected Putin? This 100 billion could be spent on rebuilding all the housing in Ukrane that was blown up by Russia DEFENDING its self from the Ukrainian troops invading Ukraine. This could be 100 billion dollars in food aid spread around the world in the form of Ukrainian grain shipments that have been stalled or sunk, but Ukraine has CHOSEN to stop shipping their grain by blocking their own barges and trucks.this could have been 100 billion dollars in CLEAN oil that Russia could have been exporting to help the world with energy, but instead will have to rebuild because the plants keep blowing up. If only there was a solution that would let the world move on and spend their money on better things. If only we would just give in to Russia and let them take what they want at the expense of others- then the world would be a better place.






  • Unlike the othe comment, this DOES sound like it could be BPPV, where something like the epley maneuver would work. Typically we would use the Semont-plus maneuver (same idea, slightly different). Or there is a fun half somersault maneuver the person could try on their own.

    Bppv will be brief but intense episodes lasting seconds with lasting nausea for minutes and exasterbated by head movements. You will also see their eyes jumping or flicking (nystagmus).


  • The epley maneuver is to treat BPPV- where an otolith becomes dislodged and then finds its way into a semicircular canal (normally the latteral canal). If it was causing vertigo it would have to be the posterior canal. Not to say it isn’t possible, but it is the statistically least common canal to happen in. Not only that, but the epley wouldn’t treat it. Even then, this strongly doesn’t sound like BPPV, whose episodes would last seconds to minutes. If the episodes are lasting minutes to hours it is a short list of other possible things. best case this is vestibular migraine of it was vestibular related. More likely this is central involve ment and the person needs to see a neurologist. I have seen patients like this before for balance accessments. We will do the testing on them(VNG and caloric testing), but then have to tell them to go to a different department because it isn’t part of the vestibular system causing the problem. I would push to see an ENT/neuro/PCP sooner than later because worst case is it is a developing vestibular schwanoma (non cancerous tumor) and the sooner the better to take care of it or at least monitor it.