Hacker News: lisper

New comment by lisper in "Intelligent people are better judges of the intelligence of others"

lisper — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:11:40 +0000

It worked for me. ;-)

New comment by lisper in "Intelligent people are better judges of the intelligence of others"

lisper — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:00:18 +0000

> it's impossible for a dumb person to pretend they're smart.

Unfortunately, that's not true. It's actually pretty easy to convince dumb people that you're smart, and so even dumb people can learn that skill. Myriad successful careers and even entire industries have been built on that foundation.

New comment by lisper in "Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?"

lisper — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:41:25 +0000

Nope. Came close, though Apollo 10 came closer. But there's a reason that Apollo 11 is the one everyone remembers.

New comment by lisper in "Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?"

lisper — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 23:29:33 +0000

Because we are not going back to the moon. A flyby is going to the moon in the same way that driving by the Anaheim exit on I-5 is going to Disneyland.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 02:10:51 +0000

> I didn't read that as saying anything about your character

I didn't take it that way, I just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. This is an emotionally charged topic.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:30:34 +0000

Thank you. But he was two months shy of his 90th birthday and, except for struggles with osteoarthritis and Parkinson's, he had a good run. I'm sad that he's gone, but it's not like it took anyone by surprise. And I'm glad that his suffering, which towards the end was not insignificant (though he was very stoic about it), is over.

The last week has actually been pretty (ahem) interesting in a lot of ways. I should probably write a blog post about it.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:18:36 +0000

> There is, however, ALWAYS money for the colorful glossy brochures

OMG, so much this! One of the things that happened after the acquisition is that they changed the phones to play a marketing pitch whenever you were on hold. (They even did this on the resident's phones!) One of the things the pitch said was that the place featured "chef-inspired meals" which was about as disconnected as you could possibly get from what I knew first-hand to be reality. It was one of the most bald-faced lies I have ever heard in my life, and it really steamed my clams because I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:07:57 +0000

> There’s lots of markets that are okay-ish notwithstanding scummy people.

It is not at all clear to me that there are "lots" of such markets, but that is neither here nor there. A prerequisite for an okay-ish market is that buyers need to be able to choose not to buy, and when you have literal limited mobility it becomes very difficult to walk away from your housing and care provider, either literally or figuratively.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:04:46 +0000

To be fair, my mother had cancer and my father had Parkinson's, and that was a much bigger factor in their ultimate quality of life than any deficiencies in the retirement home they found themselves in. So I don't mean "thankfully" in the sense that "thankfully they died prematurely so they didn't have to suffer under their home's new management", I mean it, "Thankfully the natural course of their lives timed their deaths so that they were minimally affected by the new management."

But yeah, it kinda sucks, and not just for the residents who are still there. It sucks for the rank-and-file staff as well, most of whom still really care about their clients, but who now have to answer to people who absolutely do not care about anything other than money.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:57:39 +0000

That was my parents' original plan. But they were in denial about how much preparation would be needed to make that happen. They lived in a split-level house and my father had severe osteoarthritis in his knees. It's actually a miracle that he didn't fall and break his neck going up and down the stairs. But one day he fell in the shower and could not get back up, and that was the beginning of the end.

New comment by lisper in "Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs"

lisper — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:29:46 +0000

My parents ended up being forced by circumstances to move into a retirement home about five years ago. Fortunately, the place turned out to be run by people who mostly cared about their clients and so my parents' lives were basically OK, except that the food sucked (which AFAICT is par for the course at retirement homes). But a few months ago the place was acquired by a different company, which is trying to squeeze out higher profits. Staffing and services are being cut, and prices are going up. Even the food got worse, which I didn't think was even possible. The response when someone complains is, "If you don't like it you are free to leave."

Yeah, right. My barely mobile 90-year-old parents, one of whom has Parkinson's, are just going to pack up and go. They know perfectly well that they have a captive audience.

Thankfully, my mother died before the acquisition, and my father died last week, only a few months after the acquisition, so I don't have to deal with this any more. But caveat emptor: if you ever go into a retirement home, think about what will happen if they change ownership. Even if it looks great, or even acceptable, now, there is no guarantee that it will still be great, or even acceptable, tomorrow, unless you somehow manage to negotiate such a guarantee. I have no idea what a contract provision like that would even look like. But I am going to be facing this problem myself some day, so I'd love to hear ideas.