Haven’t dug into the data but from reading this article it seems like having untreated diseases/poor health in general increases the risk of dementia rather than these classes of drugs directly reduce risk.

I’d also suggest that being vaccinated and being prescribed these medications is correlated with being in regular contact with the healthcare system which may be the more relevant factor.

My wife and I are moving from the Midwest to the Southwest in a couple of months and I wanted to get her a classy warm jacket as a Christmas present, must’ve visited 15 clothing stores in Perth and couldn’t find anything. I see why your silly fast fashion places don’t want to use the space but there is a market for winter clothes out of season.

I’m just about done with Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson, I’ve read most of his work and this might be his strongest work. It’s clear from the Mars and science in the capitol trilogies that the man is obsessed with stone age culture so it’s an obvious choice of setting for him and unlike much of the rest of his work it’s a simple and self contained story.

I’m also a few chapters into Julia by Sandra Newman, a retelling of 1984 from Julia’s pov. Very evocative and well written so far, looking forward to the rest of the book.

We need to start letting people and organisations know that this isn’t acceptable. I’ve been guilty of just using an anonymous account or letting it slide but having a mailing list is not much effort for example, honestly having a basic website is pretty cheap and easy.

What?!?

This isn’t a deviation from the mainstream critique, this is the mainstream critique.

I don’t think that this is a distraction, yes the policies and actions of these people need scrutiny more so than symbolic things like this.

But

This salute is associated with a historical movement that has been disavowed by all but the most extreme rightists throughout the 20th century, it is both shocking and revealing that mainstream political and business leaders now seem to be embracing it openly.

Looked this up as I optimistically thought it might be an unfortunate still that looked nothing like a nazi salute on video, but nope.

Elon’s Nazi salute

I’m about to move further from the equator partially for this reason.

If you can, swim 2-3 times per day, or at least a quick cold shower.

At night it is at least a little more pleasant to be outdoors due to the sun not beating down and you’ll feel better for getting out and doing something.

Also seek out indoor spaces with aircon or green spaces with shade that are much more pleasant, if you can.

If you have to do manual work outdoors then god help you.

But you do get a little more used to it over time, but very high temps are always unpleasant.

I’d take slight issue with this. Having untreated depression and working at heights are also dangerous but driving is by no means safe. As @brotundspiele pointed out driving is safer in most other developed countries than it is in the USA. Simple behaviour and policy changes can make it substantially safer and the fact that drivers don’t take the danger of driving seriously is a huge factor making it more dangerous.

“The ICC defines an illegal bowling action as when a player’s elbow extends more than 15 degrees between the point when their arm reaches horizontal and when the ball is released.”

Cricket Europe article

Couldn’t easily find out exactly but broadly speaking it means that there is suspicion that her bowling ‘action’ isn’t legal, probably that she isn’t fully extending her arm.

I want everyone to know this is how to live. I used to do exactly this frequently when I worked in retail and hospitality.

Boss - “I’ve put you on an extra shift next week”

Me - “You can put whatever you want on the roster but I won’t be here”

Boss - “😮”

I’ve also just straight up broken contracts, the boss would point out I’ve got a contract and I’d point out the contract doesn’t actually mean much to me and if they want to get a lawyer that’s on them.

I never faced any consequences, I was competent at my job but never worked hard especially. A lot of people would be nervous about this and it’s not worth losing a job to be smug but everyone needs to realise we’re not slaves, employment is a two way relationship.

The US has a weird political culture in a lot of ways. I know France and Germany have fixed term lengths and I certainly don’t get the impression that they have that problem.

As always I have serious reservations about calling representative government democracy at all, that being said I think that fixed term lengths is a greater step forward in democracy than a longer term length would be a step back. If that’s the compromise I think it’s worthwhile.

It is a supply chain issue not increased demand and it is not just Seroquel but a huge variety of medications as I said in another comment.

I don’t understand the issue in enough depth but I’ve had discussions with people who do and who think increased local manufacturing is the only way of addressing this. What’s more a government owned pharma corp mandated to ensure steady supply of off-patent essential meds could probably be run at a profit.

Labor haven’t been left wing for decades, but they are a vaguely competent liberal party as opposed to the vastly incompetent conservative coalition.

This is a genuinely difficult situation to deal with, nothing wrong with asking for advice.

It obviously depends a lot on your relationship with them but what people usually need at times like this is to know you care, that they aren’t alone, and that you are there to help if needed.

It’s also important to give them the option to opt out of anything you offer and allow them space.

Something like ‘I know this must be a really hard time for you, you’ve been in my thoughts. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you out or even just talk’ then leave it at that unless they want to talk or need help. It acknowledges their grief, offers help, but crucially doesn’t make an obligation for them.

First off, I’m a huge housing first advocate and it is completely uncontroversial that for a wide range of outcomes housing first policies are vastly superior not to mention just that it is morally correct.

Whether unsuitable housing/homelessness is directly implicated in suicidality is an interesting question so I did a little bit of digging.

One study from Taiwan showed a relationship between housing affordability and suicidality but the effect is only present when using one measure of affordability and disappears when measuring affordability in other ways suggesting it may not be a real effect.

Another, older, study from the EU found that lack of affordable housing had no impact on suicidality but the driving factor in the increase in suicide during the great recession was job loss.

You could interpret this evidence as mixed but IMO unless more convincing evidence comes out I would have to say that at a societal level it isn’t a big factor.

The impact of housing-price-related indices on suicide rates in Taiwan

The findings revealed that higher housing rental index values were associated with increased suicide rates in young and middle-aged adults compared to the elderly population, regardless of sex. However, this association was not observed with the other two housing-price-related indexes (i.e. housing price index and housing price to income ratio).

Economic shocks, resilience, and male suicides in the Great Recession: cross-national analysis of 20 EU countries

BACKGROUND During the 2007-11 recessions in Europe, suicide increases were concentrated in men. Substantial differences across countries and over time remain unexplained. We investigated whether increases in unaffordable housing, household indebtedness or job loss can account for these population differences, as well as potential mitigating effects of alternative forms of social protection.

And

RESULTS Changes in levels of unaffordable housing had no effect on suicide rates (P = 0.32); in contrast, male suicide increases were significantly associated with each percentage point rise in male unemployment, by 0.94% (95% CI: 0.51-1.36%), and indebtedness, by 0.54% (95% CI: 0.02-1.06%).

Effect of Housing First on Suicidal Behaviour: A Randomised Controlled Trial of Homeless Adults with Mental Disorders

Compared to baseline, there was an overall trend of decreased past-month suicidal ideation (estimate = –.57, SE = .05, P < 0.001), with no effect of treatment group (i.e., HF vs. TAU; estimate = –.04, SE = .06, P = 0.51). Furthermore, there was no effect of treatment status (estimate = –.10, SE = .16, P = 0.52) on prevalence of suicide attempts (HF = 11.9%, TAU = 10.5%) during the 2-year follow-up period.

Medication shortages are the biggest ongoing problem that no-one is talking about.

I’ve been a doc for 10 years and before COVID I can think of one medication shortage that impacted patient care, now it’s a constant issue. The TGA has 414 ongoing shortages that are listed including 41 that are critical (Medicine shortage reports database )

We’ve had to deal with shortages of everything from reflux medication to liquid morphine for palliative patients to a shortage last year of amoxy-fucking-cillin!

Many of these can be dealt with by substituting a similar medication but this has often lead to subsequent shortages of the alternatives. Needless to say it isn’t ideal to be chopping and changing antipsychotic medications.