It was a legitimately nonprofit hospital and he probably was overpaid, but at least he was a practicing physician at one point and did seem to give a damn about his staff.

I once worked at a hospital in the ER where the department director was a union-busting bastard, but the CEO was pretty reasonable. After I left, one of the other ER techs went to the CEO about our pay being messed up and got everyone $5-6/hour raises to actual market rate. Also, there were a few weeks when we were really understaffed that the hospital encouraged admin folks to volunteer as “candystripers” in the ER to do stuff like help clean/turn over rooms, and answer patient call lights for water, blankets, etc. And the CEO was down in the ER for a couple hours every evening helping out most of that time period. It was encouraging to see the CEO of the hospital putting on some gloves and helping us with basic stuff like cleaning and stocking.

NPs working under a physician with actual oversight is fine. The ones I have problems with are the ones that have a physician sign the hundreds of notes a month while maybe reviewing a handful, and worse, the ones pushing for independent practice without even that sham of oversight involved.

For me, it just looks like he has a certain coldness in his eyes. It’s not a dead or vacant look, it’s just the way a smile, or any other facial expression for that matter, just doesn’t seem to make it to his eyes. There’s obviously life and intelligence there, but it’s not a friendly intelligence. I pulled up the most lizard-man pictures of Zuckerberg for comparison, and even at his most robotic, his eyes still look human. Like there’s some capacity for empathy in there somewhere. With Musk? His eyes just don’t quite read as human to me in an uncanny valley sort of way.

Makeship is having a sale on their new Glow in the Dark plushies. It’s not a huge discount, but the proceeds go towards supporting independent artists which is always a good thing.

https://www.makeship.com/shop/gitd-2023

What strikes me is the complete discordance of the realities of Israelis and Palestinians shown in the pictures attached to the article. There’s multiple pictures of a grand funeral with flags, pomp, and circumstance…and compare that to the white sheets and mass graves in Gaza. The Israeli soldier gets a military funeral with honors and fanfare while innumerable Palestinians are interred in barely marked mass graves with little to no ceremony because the number of dead simply does not allow for paying respects to each victim.

Let’s rewind to the part where you look at why they are mortal enemies, and realize that the same problem is still happening in the West Bank at the same time as the mass murder in Gaza.

Israel lost 0.014% of its population to the Hamas attack. Gaza has lost about 0.52% of its population to Israel’s rampage and that over 40% of those deaths are children. How is that comparable at all?

I’ve had it for years and one of the biggest features that I find worthwhile is being able to easily download videos to watch on the plane or play like podcasts when I’m driving. When I first got it, I had a really long commute, so being able to download stuff and play it with my phone screen off is helpful.

I’m asking about your opinion. If Hamas refuses to cooperate, how many Palestinians does the IDF have to kill for it to be too many in your mind? When does the mass murder of Palestinian civilians exceed a reasonable metric for “defense”?

Why does Hamas have insights into your personal opinions and beliefs?

That’s not answering my question. How many Palestinian lives is too many?

The fact that Netanyahu has supported Hamas in the past as a foil to the PA says otherwise to me. To a certain extent, Israel has made its own monster out of Hamas and Gaza through their policies and positions.

I think you are misunderstanding how the demographic shift in Gaza has happened. They didn’t have a baby boom, it’s just that many of them do not survive very far into adulthood because of violence, health and environmental problems, and, when they can manage it, emigration.

Secondarily, I’m interested to hear how you justify calling Hamas genocidal without making the same observation about the Likud and Netanyahu.

So how many is “too many” for Israel to have killed? Or do the citizens of Gaza not count the same way Israelis do?

If the citizens of Gaza aren’t offered anything better, why would they gamble what little they have on overthrowing the local oppressors? They don’t really have anything to gain by overthrowing Hamas and trying to do so would be putting their lives and their families at risk. If Israel and the wider international community can offer them something better than life under Hamas and the Likud, they’d be much more likely to eschew Hamas’ control.

You’re talking about a population with extremely limited resources that is literally 50% (or more) children that has been under two fascist boots for the last decade and a half. There does come a point where a level of desperation combined with a possibility of a better future will instigate a revolution, but right now? They don’t see a possibility of a better future. With Israel’s Likud on the other side of the wall and no resources to rebuild after a coup, what’s the point in gambling everything on maybe being able to overthrow the more local oppression?

Also, education in Gaza is very inconsistent and most political revolutions are started by people with education and nothing to lose.

They took power illegally years before the literal majority of Gaza citizens were even born.

Edit: My apologies, the ones that are almost legal adults would have been infants or toddlers at the time Hamas seized power. They really should have done something about that while they were learning how to walk and speak. /s

Why does “radical action” always mean “radical violence”?

“Radical action” can and should include radical kindness in which past wounds can be forgiven and a cooperative future can be built. Right now, all the violence is doing is ensuring that Hamas will be enumerated and maintained for generations by the people that Israel is considering to be sub-human and disposable. Radical violence creates radical ideologues and only ever begets further violence in the absence of total and absolute annihilation.

Would you get your kid out if you didn’t know whether or not they would be adequately cared for? Would you get them out if it meant that you will probably never see them again and that they will be taken to another country speaking another language with no one there to look after them and no plan for how to take care of them after the medical treatment is done?

This would most likely be a permanent separation and the child would effectively, or maybe even literally become an orphan in a foreign country with nothing. Not their vital documents, not their family, not anything that would give them any hope of ever getting home. Getting your kid out in this situation means gambling your child’s life on the good will of strangers and most likely losing them for good.

It is not unreasonable to demand to go with his child. Especially since he needs medical care as well.