Friday morning links

New York City subway: $3.5 billion a MILE!!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

#2 bgarrett on 2017-12-29 08:44 (Reply)

I remember reading an Edward Glaeser paper that found, using the NYC subway as the only mature system in the US, that the installation of a subway station was directly responsible for the longterm decline in property values in the area.

#3 JK Brown on 2017-12-29 09:22 (Reply)

re Alzheimer's

Breakthrough: New Alzheimer’s Treatment May Fully Restore Memory Function

QUOTE:

Queensland Brain Institute believes they have a solution. According to one report, this team showed impressive results by utilizing a specific type of ultrasound to fix mice’s brain function.

With the help of this technique, they were able to break up the protein lesions by not causing any harm. As the outcome showed, the scientists successfully restored the memory function in about 75 percent of the mice that underwent tests.

http://www.positivityboard.com/new-alzheimers-treatment-restore-memory/

#4 feeblemind on 2017-12-29 09:23 (Reply)

I think it is incorrect and misleading to blame the opioid epidemic on drug companies. I also think it is a mistake to pressure doctors to not give pain relieving medication to patients out of fear that too much of these drugs are prescribed. In almost all of these cases of Opioid deaths and/or addiction the addict was already a drug user and was simply looking for a new or better high. Most hard drug users began as soft drug users and willingly and eagerly choose to graduate to more powerful drugs.

As for the increase in deaths and in particular deaths of white people this is the result of two different factors:
1. The general degradation in the family and moral values since the 60's which now translates into adult children of people who themselves thought drugs were not a problem. Most of these drug users began as young children of drug using parents and illegal drug use seems normal to them.
2. Many of the Opioid deaths are the result of cutting the Opioid of choice with fentanyl. Fentanyl is deadly in tiny amounts. It is so deadly that non-drug users have died from merely touching clothes or items that had fentanyl on them. In other words, most of these deaths are not from the illlegal use of oxycodone but are in fact the result of drug pushers combining fentanyl with more common drugs like oxycodone to increase the high.

#5 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-12-29 10:22 (Reply)

From my perspective there are a LOT of people very invested in the belief that the opioid crisis is caused by over-prescription of painkillers. It checks all the right boxes in certain people's narrative - evil capitalist exploitation of workers and patients, medical miracles could be performed but painkillers are cheaper, white hillbilly losers get payback for racism, and proof the criminal underclass is formed by society rather than individual choices.

#5.1 Christopher B on 2017-12-29 11:00 (Reply)

Also that insurance companies are "evil" and would rather not pay for other pain alternatives. Vicodin/hydrocodone is cheap. In all seriousness, it also gives the feds another excuse to legislate a solution and thereby make things harder for law-abiding citizens.

#5.1.1 dianainsa on 2017-12-29 11:56 (Reply)

A family friend is the lead clinician at a high volume in and outpatient rehab clinic in the Philly suburbs. When I asked what percentage of her patients could be attributed to the over prescribing by doctors we've been reading about her reply was "A few". Her answer to my obvious follow up question was "They're druggies".

#5.2 tljhound on 2017-12-29 11:05 (Reply)

Disagree based on own experience and experience of my then-14-year-old son. They hand out opioid pain meds like candy to unsuspecting people...who don't realize that YES you can have withdrawal symptoms after only a few days on these meds.

Both my son & I received a bottle full of oxycodone after minor surgery (me) and minor broken wrist (son). My son NEVER took his, never needed it. Now it sits on a shelf in my medicine cabinet. I don't know what to do with it...

I took half the prescribed dose for about 3 1/2 days. On the 4th day I took even less. On 5th day I stopped entirely, as I no longer had any pain worth caring about. I had a horrible headache, couldn't think straight, was in absolute misery.

When I called the pharmacist about it, was told that I was not going through withdrawal...that just couldn't be b/c I wasn't on it long enough. Called a 2nd pharmacist, and she told me she'd never had a complaint like this and it wasn't related to withdrawal.

Doctors SHOULD NOT be handing out huge quantities of these medications for minor things. You don't know who might become addicted based on their history or something else.

It was upsetting to be told by 'experts' that I didn't know what I was talking about.

#5.3 MissT on 2017-12-29 12:07 (Reply)

The local police usually have a few days each year when you can turn in all expired medicines. They say not to flush them if you are sending it to public waste treatment, because enough leaches out to affect fish populations. Or so I hear. If you have your own septic system, just flush 'em.

As for people becoming addicted this way, it does happen, but doesn't tend to. People have always become addicts, even when it was low-alcohol beer and wine thousands of years ago. The difference is that we are technologically more clever than our reward-systems can handle. Distilling is more dangerous; stronger marijuana is more dangerous; hallucinogens, stimulants, and yes, opioids are stronger. Each time we ratchet up the reward (speed, strength, or duration) a few more go under the waves. That is why it looks the same even as it gets gradually worse. They look like pretty much the same group and type of addicts we had ten yeas ago or twenty. Yet not quite. There are slight increases, and the really powerful drugs are usually taken by those who had the least chance of making changes anyway. So it is worse, just gradually.

#5.3.1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2017-12-29 13:37 (Reply)

Like I said, people are invested in the narrative that a complex problem has a simple solution.

#5.3.2 Christopher B on 2017-12-29 15:25 (Reply)

I got it IIRC 4 times daily for 5 days after surgery, and a bottle to go home with. No pain at home, so a month later took them to the local Police station recepticle.

#5.3.3 Sam L. on 2017-12-29 17:16 (Reply)

We will not curb this until we establish the death penalty for drug dealers and start executing them. Getting rid of drug dealers will also do wonders for the "homeless" population, although for the large number of drug users who now have PDB (permanent brain damage) it is too late for them to serve a useful function in society--those people need to be permanently institutionalized to protect the rest of society from harm.

Unfortunately, the last president put thousands of drug dealers back on the streets to again begin their trade.

#5.4 Jim on 2017-12-29 13:06 (Reply)

You go Jim.We probably ought to get rid of guns and alcohol also as all the death and problems they cause.Also cut off every mans penis so we can stop prostitution. Put them ol 'shag nasty's'' out of business!

#5.4.1 RL on 2017-12-29 14:37 (Reply)

re The End of “The End of Winter”

And it is so much worse in Canada:

QUOTE:

Mars and the North Pole are warmer than Winnipeg: A guide to how damned cold it is

Saskatoon is colder than both the north and south poles

Alberta’s warmest place was almost as cold as Mars

Toronto is colder than CFS Alert, the world’s northernmost permanently inhabited place

It’s colder in Winnipeg than it has ever been in Scotland (ever)

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/mars-and-the-north-pole-are-warmer-than-winnipeg-a-guide-to-how-damned-cold-it-is

#6 feeblemind on 2017-12-29 10:41 (Reply)

My wife's grandfather from Canada began spending his winters in Southern California in the 50's. Now my wife's aunts are retired and spend their winters in Phoenix. All of her cousins in Canada are too young to retire and are still tough enough to deal with the weather but their time is coming. I actually like the cold and the snow but it is hard to beat shirt sleeve weather and sunshine in December.

#6.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-12-29 11:48 (Reply)

Re: White Women voters

It's pretty simple why the Left does not understand women voters: it's because they do not understand the fundamentals of the Marxist theory they espouse. White, middle-class women (and working-class white men for that matter) continue to vote according to their bourgeois values instead of their legitimate class interest. This is clearly because the dominant patriarchal class has instilled in them a false political consciousness, which the party must overcome through propaganda using the organs of mass communications.

It's all there in the books they don't read about the theory they don't understand.

#7 another guy named Dan on 2017-12-29 11:01 (Reply)

Black woman not hit upon by Charlie Rose. She's lucky to be upset by that.

NYT must FIRE that person who dissed Regulations!!11!!

#8 Sam L. on 2017-12-29 11:23 (Reply)

Press a button. Eliminate opioids, heroin, cocaine, and every narcotic known to man, sooner or later someone would discover that melting down pre-war furniture glue, or smoking frozen carpet backings or drinking juice from boiled thumb tacks cut with milk of magnesia, could get them out of their own reality, that would be the next epidemic we'd need to hold marches and write editorials about.

#9 scullman on 2017-12-29 11:44 (Reply)

Same disease as Hate Nixon, Hate Reagan, Hate Bush

^ Same disease as Republicanist Rightism.

#10 Arf on 2017-12-29 15:34 (Reply)

“Pew: Trump media three times more negative than for Obama, just 5 percent positive”

And yet their approval numbers are identical. Either Trump is 3 times better, or the press is completely useless.

#11 db on 2017-12-29 16:57 (Reply)

Useless, except to progs.

#11.1 Sam L. on 2017-12-29 17:21 (Reply)

Or Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail drink when mixed with dextromethorphan (DXM) cough syrup. Sometimes you have to break into a home to get the cough syrup but be careful that a neighborhood watch person isn't suspicious of your actions.

#12 OneGuy on 2017-12-29 18:05 (Reply)

its so cold in new york that flashers are describing themselves. Actually new yorkers are unaware that other American cities dont have flashers

#13 bgarrett on 2018-01-01 17:14 (Reply)

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Friday, December 29. 2017

Friday morning links