Hacker News: BobaFloutist

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Why your asthma inhaler is so expensive (in the US)"

BobaFloutist — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:24:47 +0000

I think the other issue is that generics have such bad margins that it's hard to convince anyone to manufacturer them in the best of cases, so if anything happens to make a generic too hard to sell they'll just give up.

Combining that with PBMs being allowed to choose a preferred manufacturer for a generic or even preferring the (more expensive for the patient) brand, and refusing to offer the same coverage for a generic and you get less access to generics than there should be.

Honestly, PBMs should have to contribute at least the same amount of money to any version of a drug. If it's genuinely more expensive for them, the patient would still have to pay more. If it's not, it's none of their business.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:04:54 +0000

Maybe a football game?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Basel_hooligan_incident

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:02:32 +0000

I disagree, but I would also have a similar reaction if it turned out that toilet-paper supply chain issues left over from the pandemic were going to affect our ability to manage screwworms, and that particular overreaction was non-partisan.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:57:38 +0000

Both! I think it would be unfortunate if a valuable deworming drug was difficult to access in an acute worm crisis because it had became unexpectedly politically salient from an crisis that did not involve worms.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:54:44 +0000

You know what, I will accept that there's some decent arguments for why hunters would want access to ARs.

Do you think it makes sense that people that don't hunt would prefer for widely, easily accessible weapons to be largely less efficient at killing human beings? It feels like many gun owners and gun enthusiasts struggle to accept any compromise. And I won't say this is particular to them, I think most people have some pet regulatory peeve, but it sure makes it difficult to have conversations about it!

New comment by BobaFloutist in "US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:10:05 +0000

How many deer are you trying to kill in one go??

New comment by BobaFloutist in "US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:08:43 +0000

I don't understand, why have some of the newcomers become builders and doctors?

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:54:55 +0000

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years.

Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 03:09:52 +0000

The wheel was independently invented in the Americas, it just seems to have been used exclusively for toys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#/media/File:Remojadas_Wh...

New comment by BobaFloutist in "A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:45:43 +0000

Do you think the selection of what body cam footage cops make available is without bias?

New comment by BobaFloutist in "The Abundance Illusion"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:41:48 +0000

If the FPR is very low, the FNR rate doesn't really matter if you get a positive result (unless the pre-test probability is very low, which is not the case here)

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

BobaFloutist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:39:07 +0000

I'm sure it wouldn't be worth it, because otherwise people would be doing it, it just seemed like a cool way to supplement solar or even to allow for indefinite underwater drones. Like, imagine a deep-sea research drone that could spit out an anchor and recharge whenever the battery got low. Almost certainly a case of "Cool, wouldn't really work well"

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

BobaFloutist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:46:57 +0000

This is silly, but I've also wondered if you could make a boat that can anchor and recharge batteries from ambient current, sort of like stationary regenerative braking. I'm sure it would take way too long to be worth it, but it was a fun idle thought.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%"

BobaFloutist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:42:14 +0000

I think a broad, contrarian dismissal of a broad, contrarian dismissal of a metric is, while unhelpful, not inappropriate.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'"

BobaFloutist — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:57:15 +0000

I don't know the details of the economics, but Costa Rica seems to be doing quite well with ecotourism, no?

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M"

BobaFloutist — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:46:48 +0000

Is it cliquishness, or is it genuine joy at an unexpected connection?

New comment by BobaFloutist in "Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee"

BobaFloutist — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:24:33 +0000

Same issue as rural doctors, to be honest. It's hard to pay an American with a medical degree enough to live and work in that environment, so if we want to keep rural hospitals (and independent practices) staffed, we need to allow immigrants to do the work.

The alternative isn't that rural communities get doctors born in the US, it's that they get no doctors.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

BobaFloutist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:31:28 +0000

> Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies.

In the United States it's pretty clearly the nativists destroying the society, the immigrants are largely baffled about what the hell we're doing to ourselves and why.

New comment by BobaFloutist in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

BobaFloutist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:30:14 +0000

> The question was do you believe that without ethnic Japanese people you can call it Japan?

Yes, of course, ethnicity is a collection of observed physical traits. What makes Japan Japan is the way people behave, not the way they look, and behavior is not an ethnic trait, it's a cultural trait.

What the fuck are you even talking about?

New comment by BobaFloutist in "India's surprise baby bust"

BobaFloutist — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:12:02 +0000

Insects I'll consider fair enough, but fish? Are you leaning on "fish isn't meat"? Otherwise, this isn't a colloquial use I'm familiar with.