sparklingmango

No, my parents and in-laws have routinely expressed how much they love to watch and spend time with my kid. But they're also retired and have lots of trips and hobbies going on. They're getting older and aren't as physically able as I am in regards to picking up and chasing after a highly mobile toddler. My husband and I aren't their only kids either. They also spend time helping out our siblings.

So it's really more of a me thing why I don't ask them to take care of him "full time". If I really needed them to, they would (and happily).

It's a lot to ask grandparents to take care of an infant full time during the work week. Here and there, on occasion, that is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. It helps strengthen family bonds. But I would never ask my parents or my in-laws to care for my toddler 8-5 M-F. They already raised kids.

Optimism. And unfortunately based on the doom and gloom that the news and social media constantly shoves in our faces, we have a short supply of that.

Wow. Thank you for sharing. May his memory be a blessing to you and yours.

Additionally, I recommend the book Empire of Pain for an excellent deep dive into the Sackler family and how they essentially created the opioid epidemic. You'll be infuriated as you read it.

I feel like this would be fun... if all of my friends used it too and it didn't feel like a "thing".

Like what?

Diagnosis is done via biopsy.

Additionally, DHH somewhat regularly blogs about political things. While I understand it's his "personal" blog, can you really have a personal blog separate from work when you're the CTO of the company and the creator of Rails?

Medical patients are not really "consumers" in the normal sense of the word. A patient may be unconscious when they arrive at a hospital and doctors will just start to treat them (as they should). A patient's doctor may refuse to change where they'll do the operation even if it'll save their patient a lot of money. A patient may decide they're going to have a procedure done at a surgery center, a facility that is typically much cheaper than a hospital, but they can't predict if they'll have a complication that will drastically change the cost of their procedure. Patients can't just walk up to a menu and decide that because they have chest tightness they want a stent put in. That's not how medicine works. The doctor typically sets the treatment plan and there's very little veering off that plan. The doctor really isn't even the one that sets the prices. Insurance companies are heavily involved in that and it varies by health insurance and plan.

The cheapest prices in US healthcare are the prices paid by Medicare. There are so many people on Medicare so this leads to a lot of bargaining power. Hospitals would never refuse to treat Medicare patients (because there are so many). So, Medicare decides "We're only going to pay $10,000 for a total knee replacement." And hospitals have to say "Okay, sounds good. Can't really say no to 60 million patients." Insurance companies do not have that type of bargaining power. They say "We only want to pay $20,000 for a total knee replacement." And the hospital goes "Nope, we're charging you $30,000." And the insurance company sheepishly goes, "Okay..." and then sets really high premiums, deductibles, and out of pocket maxes so they don't have to bear the weight of the cost.

Some standout stats for me:

- Hospitals recorded their most profitable year on record in 2019, notching an aggregate profit margin of 7.6%

- From 2012 to 2016, prices for medical care surged 16%, almost four times the rate of overall inflation

- Last year the average annual deductible for a single worker with job-based coverage topped $1,400, almost four times what it was in 2006... Family deductibles can top $10,000

Facilities charge exorbitant prices for procedures and insurance companies pass more and more of these costs on to patients via higher deductibles and premiums. It will continue to get worse unless there is colossal change.

For big tasks, I break them down into really small tasks. Crossing things off of a list really motivates me to continue.

I use the Pomodoro technique. I work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. My 25 minute stretch of work is actual work - no looking at my phone, the NY Times, or Twitter. Then my break is an actual break. I'll leave my office, sit on TikTok or walk around my yard.

I use noise canceling headphones and listen to electronic music or make a nice blend of white noise on Noisli.com

I block off my calendar for 4 hours at a time so I'm not disrupted by meetings. I close my Slack/Teams/Email apps. I put my phone in a different room.

These all work for me, but I found them through trial and error. Keep trying stuff until you find something that works for you. Good luck! And remember to not be so hard on yourself.

HN loves the DX7.

For address parsing, I've had good luck with this package: https://github.com/datamade/usaddress

When I was in undergrad, I declared a math minor quite late - just before my junior year. This led to me taking up to 9 hours of math credits in a semester. The reason I declared my math minor was because I was interested in going for a PhD in economics and my econ professors all recommended that I try to take as many math classes as possible to prepare. Reader, I was not a 'numbers person' at all.

However, in all of my math classes, I asked questions all. the. time. when I didn't understand. I would go to office hours and the teachers were seriously so helpful. This was the only way I survived. I learned that you don't have to be a 'numbers person' at all to be good at math. You just have to understand what's going on under the hood, and this may require lots of questions and outside help. But most importantly, you just have to practice. I ended up graduating with nearly a 4.0 for my math minor.

Because you typically play with one other person (unless you're doing doubles), it can be another way of casual networking.