Special Guest: Nenad Stojiljković.

Links:

• US still has the worst, most expensive health care of any high-income country | Ars Technica — Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn't know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system's failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
• U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022 | Commonwealth Fund — Health care spending, both per person and as a share of GDP, continues to be far higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. Yet the U.S. is the only country that doesn’t have universal health coverage.

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• 'Disturbing': Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws | AP News — Canada’s road to allowing euthanasia began in 2015, when its highest court declared that outlawing assisted suicide deprived people of their dignity and autonomy. It gave national leaders a year to draft legislation. The resulting 2016 law legalized both euthanasia and assisted suicide for people aged 18 and over provided they met certain conditions: They had to have a serious condition, disease or disability that was in an advanced, irreversible state of decline and enduring “unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be relieved under conditions that patients consider acceptable.” Their death also had to be “reasonably foreseeable,” and the request for euthanasia had to be approved by at least two physicians. The law was later amended to allow people who are not terminally ill to choose death, significantly broadening the number of eligible people. Critics say that change removed a key safeguard aimed at protecting people with potentially years or decades of life left.
• Alec MacGillis on Twitter — Have often wondered the same thing as Janan Ganesh
• The vibes theory of politics | Financial Times — For a sense of how little I believe in belief, here is an experiment that I have been running in my head for two years. Imagine, at the start of the pandemic, that Donald Trump had shut his country down and Angela Merkel had kept hers open. He justified his action as a protector of the homeland while she stressed liberal ideals. (“As a girl in East Germany, I saw the human cost of draconian . . . ”)

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• Real World Risk Institute — We are about risk taking (front office) not just something called "risk management" (back office), which should never be separated from decision-making. Some academo-bureaucrats with something to prove have an incentive to make things look complicated, while real world risk takers with skin in the game do not have such insecurity; they are not ashamed of making those things that are simple simple! The real world require vastly more rigor than textbooks and it is a different type of rigor. Most of all risk requires maximal clarity of mind.

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• My Bibliography - NCBI — Milos Miljkovic's Bibliography
• Texas sharpshooter fallacy - Wikipedia — The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.

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• Anas Younes, M.D. on Twitter — Thrilled to announce that Dr Nina Shah (@ninashah33) will be joining our hematology R&D team as the Global Head of Multiple Myeloma Clinical Development and Strategy.
• Physician-scientist - Wikipedia — A physician-scientist is traditionally a holder of a medical degree and a doctor of philosophy also known as an MD-PhD. Compared to other clinicians, physician-scientists invest significant time and professional effort in scientific research and spend correspondingly less time in direct clinical practice with ratios of research to clinical time ranging from 50/50 to 80/20.
• Clinical investigator - Wikipedia — A clinical investigator involved in a clinical trial is responsible for ensuring that an investigation is conducted according to the signed investigator statement, the investigational plan, and applicable regulations; for protecting the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under the investigator's care; and for the control of drugs under investigation.
• Academic ranks in the United States - Wikipedia — Academic ranks in the United States are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.

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• Stream 4.54 - Eric Collisson Professor, GI Oncologist, Physician Scientist by Plenary Session | Listen online for free on SoundCloud — I talk to UCSF Professor Eric Collison about his lab, grant writing, the physician scientist life, cancer, and a doctors duty.
• Is Science Stagnant? - The Atlantic — Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong?
• Priključenija 84: Kompleksnost — ✓ Šta je komplikovano, a šta kompleksno? ✓ Kako se ljudski um nosi sa kompleksnošću? ✓ Kakve to ima veze sa teorijama zavere?
• Bullshit Jobs - Wikipedia — Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth.
• Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » On blankfaces — What exactly is a blankface? He or she is often a mid-level bureaucrat, but not every bureaucrat is a blankface, and not every blankface is a bureaucrat. A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare—a blank stare that, more often than not, conceals a contemptuous smile.

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• Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy | Vanity Fair — Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
• VPZD Fact Checking Fallacies, Dumb COVID Policies & More (w/Drs. Marty Makary & Vinay Prasad) - YouTube — The boys are back in town 😂 and we talk COVID policy failures, fact-checking fallacies, criminalizing nurse Radonda Vaught's fatal med error, Twitter "experts," safetyism, fixing healthcare efficacy and costs, and MUCH more.

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• Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors - Alexey Guzey — Any book of Why We Sleep’s length is bound to contain some factual errors. Therefore, to avoid potential concerns about cherry-picking the few inaccuracies scattered throughout, in this essay, I’m going to highlight the five most egregious scientific and factual errors Walker makes in Chapter 1 of the book. This chapter contains 10 pages and constitutes less than 4% of the book by the total word count.
• Theses on Sleep - Alexey Guzey — In this essay, I question some of the consensus beliefs about sleep, such as the need for at least 7 hours of sleep for adults, harmfulness of acute sleep deprivation, and harmfulness of long-term sleep deprivation and our inability to adapt to it.
• New Science — New Science is a 501c3 research nonprofit with the mission to facilitate scientific breakthroughs by empowering the next generation of scientists and building the 21st century institutions of basic science.

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• Early consumption of peanuts in infancy is associated with a low prevalence of peanut allergy - Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology — We demonstrate that Jewish children in the UK have a prevalence of PA that is 10-fold higher than that of Jewish children in Israel. This difference is not accounted for by differences in atopy, social class, genetic background, or peanut allergenicity. Israeli infants consume peanut in high quantities in the first year of life, whereas UK infants avoid peanuts. These findings raise the question of whether early introduction of peanut during infancy, rather than avoidance, will prevent the development of PA.
• Effect of Avoidance on Peanut Allergy after Early Peanut Consumption | NEJM — In a randomized trial, the early introduction of peanuts in infants at high risk for allergy was shown to prevent peanut allergy. In this follow-up study, we investigated whether the rate of peanut allergy remained low after 12 months of peanut avoidance among participants who had consumed peanuts during the primary trial (peanut-consumption group), as compared with those who had avoided peanuts (peanut-avoidance group).
• Circumcision Policy Statement | Pediatrics | American Academy of Pediatrics — All policy statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics automatically expire 5 years after publication unless reaffirmed, revised, or retired at or before that time.
• Diagnosis and Treatment of Adults with Community-acquired Pneumonia. An Official Clinical Practice Guideline of the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America — This document provides evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on the management of adult patients with community-acquired pneumonia.
• About The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) is a not-for-profit alliance of 31 leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to improving and facilitating quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care so all patients can live better lives.
• Frequency and level of evidence used in recommendations by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines beyond approvals of the US Food and Drug Administration: retrospective observational study | The BMJ — The NCCN frequently recommends beyond the FDA approved indications even for newer, branded drugs. The strength of the evidence cited by the NCCN supporting such recommendations is weak. Our findings raise concern that the NCCN justifies the coverage of costly, toxic cancer drugs based on weak evidence.

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• Sigalert — Central LA Traffic Report
• Every Californians Ever (Part 1 of 2) - YouTube — Watch the drama and driving directions unfold in every Californians ever aired on Saturday Night Live.
• Irvine, California - Wikipedia — Irvine (/ˈɜːrvaɪn/) is a master-planned city in Orange County, California, United States in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
• GOLDEN ROAD BREWING — Yelp — Located next to the Golden Road brewery and the Barrel Room, the Golden Road Pub serves fresh, local food with many vegan and gluten free options. Our beer selection offers a wide selection of our beers which are brewed just 550 feet away from the pub, as well as guest beers, cider, wine and sangria.
• Tracking San Francisco’s drug overdose epidemic — San Francisco is grappling with an increasingly deadly drug overdose epidemic. In recent years, that epidemic has been driven largely by the proliferation of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The Chronicle is tracking accidental drug overdose deaths in the city and related trends to shed light on the crisis.
• Sam Quinones on Meth, Fentanyl, and the Least of Us - Econlib — Author and journalist Sam Quinones talks about his book, The Least of Us, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Quinones focuses on the devastation caused by methamphetamine and fentanyl, the latest evolution of innovation in the supply of mind-altering drugs in the United States.
• Magic Bullet (appliance) - Wikipedia — The Magic Bullet is a compact blender sold by Homeland Housewares, a division of the American company Alchemy Worldwide, and sold in over 50 countries.
• A New, Cheaper Form of Meth Is Wreaking Havoc on America - The Atlantic — Different chemically than it was a decade ago, the drug is creating a wave of severe mental illness and worsening America’s homelessness problem.

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• ‎Sleep++ on the App Store — Sleep++ takes advantage of the motion and health monitoring capabilities of your Apple Watch to measure both the duration and quality of your sleep.
• ‎AutoSleep Track Sleep on Watch on the App Store — Automatically track your sleep from your Apple Watch*. No buttons to press. Even the Watch app is optional! Just sleep!
• Heart rate variability - Wikipedia — Heart rate variability (HRV) is the physiological phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats. It is measured by the variation in the beat-to-beat interval.
• Quantified self - Wikipedia — The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers".
• Biohacker Regrets Injecting Himself With CRISPR on Live-Stream - The Atlantic — When Josiah Zayner watched a biotech CEO drop his pants at a biohacking conference and inject himself with an untested herpes treatment, he realized things had gone off the rails.
• Has Life Gotten Better? — You're probably feeling bored: you've heard the answer (Yes, life is getting better) a zillion times, supported with data from books like Enlightenment Now and websites like Our World in Data and articles like this one and this one. I'm unsatisfied with this answer, and the reason comes down to the x-axis. Look at any of those sources, and you'll see some charts starting in 1800, many in 1950, some in the 1990s ... and only very few before 1700.
• The history of OxyContin, told through Purdue Pharma documents - STAT — Starting in the early 1990s, the internal emails and other documents describe Purdue’s preparation for the opioid’s launch in 1996, its plans for targeting OxyContin to non-cancer patients with chronic pain, and how the company aggressively fought off threats to its blockbuster’s sales, even as the opioid epidemic took hold.
• IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | INCERTO | Medium — "IQ" is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds.
• With no USMLE Step 1 scores, challenges and opportunities arise | American Medical Association — With Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) going pass-fail, major changes could be afoot in medical education assessment. The Step 1 score was a stress and anxiety driver for students and has raised concerns about negative effects on diversity in medicine. Changing that exam to pass-fail was aimed at increasing well-being and encouraging a more holistic view of performance.
• trade off prevod | englesko-srpski rečnik | onlinerecnik.com — 1. kompromis

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• D.C. is worst place for doctors to practice: WalletHub - Washington Times — The nation’s capital is the worst place for doctors to practice, according to a survey released Tuesday that looked at wages, the cost of malpractice and other factors that face a set of professionals who are highly paid and respected, yet reeling from student debt and an ever-shifting landscape.
• 2860 Woodland Dr NW, Washington, DC 20008 | MLS #DCDC506380 | Zillow — 2860 Woodland Drive NW is a noble 1927 stone manor that has been expertly renovated and meticulously refined into an unforgettable residence that dovetails comforting charm and sharp sophistication. The caliber of this home is outstanding and each handpicked detail and finish is superbly appreciated.
• Why You Can't Afford To Buy a House in New Zealand - InsideHook — Increased demand, a housing shortage and an almost COVID-free year have fueled an overheated real estate market

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• Paul Graham on Twitter: "Americans have fewer friends than they used to. 15% of men and 10% of women have no close friends. https://t.co/Dl2lSknT18" / Twitter
• Harvard Health on Twitter: "Compared with people who didn't take a tub bath more than twice a week, people who took a daily warm or hot bath had a 28% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 26% lower risk of stroke: https://t.co/2fpXUOlB71 #HarvardHealth https://t.co/0Lcop1x6Bl" / Twitter
• Surfside condominium building collapse - Wikipedia — On June 24, 2021, at approximately 1:25 a.m. EDT, Champlain Towers South, a 12-story beachfront condominium with a penthouse and an underground garage in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, United States, experienced a sudden partial collapse.
• The problem with reinforced concrete — By itself, concrete is a very durable construction material. The magnificent Pantheon in Rome, the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, is in excellent condition after nearly 1,900 years. And yet many concrete structures from last century – bridges, highways and buildings – are crumbling. Many concrete structures built this century will be obsolete before its end.