Clean hands, Cool head, Warm heart.

GP, Gardener, Radical progressive

  • 3 Posts
  • 74 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 7th, 2024

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  • Like every new technology that is hailed as changing everything it is settling into a small handful of niches.

    I use a service called Consensus which will unearth relevant academic papers to a specific clinical question, in the past this could be incredibly time consuming.

    I also sometimes use a service called Heidi that uses voice recognition to document patient encounters, its quite good for a specific type of visit that suits a rigid template but 90% of my consults i have no idea why they are coming in and for those i find it not much better than writing notes myself.

    Obviously for creative work it is near useless.


  • I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue, obviously with high quality and cheap generative AI essay writing is meaningless for assessment, which is a shame because crafting an essay is an excellent exercise for thinking through a concept.

    In my undergrad I wrote a lot of essays but also had a lot of small group tutorials where our contribution contributed to our grade. In medical school assessment outside of examination was almost entirely based on interaction with professors and supervisors. I’m also aware of verbal examination where a professor effectively interrogates a student to assess their knowledge which I think in undergrad settings is mostly historical but could make a comeback, oral examination is used extensively in postgraduate medical training.

    For a degree to mean anything assessment needs to be not easily cheated. There are assessment methods that are available although they are less efficient.

    If I were running an undergrad humanities degree I’d have essays be 10-20% of the total grade, have a brief 15-20min oral examination and tutorial participation make up the bulk of the grade. I don’t know how else a degree can mean anything.



  • I’m a GP, here’s my opinion

    Can’t have eaten/drank anything for the last half hour

    • in principle could alter your BP but I wouldn’t worry too much unless it’s quite a large meal

    Feet flat on the floor

    • yes, this is important

    Lying down but sitting up

    • for some purposes docs want lying/sitting/standing but for home measurements do them sitting

    Back against the chair

    • yes

    Don’t cross your legs/ankles

    • yes, feet flat on the floor

    Only use your left arm

    • myth, if there is a significant difference between your left and right arms there is something funky going on with your subclavian arteries

    Hand facing upward/downward

    • not super important

    Keep your arm down/raised

    • keep your arm relaxed, ideally resting on a table or desk at close to 90deg or hanging straight down

    Most important is be relaxed, sit still, don’t move your arm, if you get a high reading calm yourself and take it once more then leave it.

    When I’m taking a BP in clinic the most important thing I do most of the time is distract the patient from the machine with some patter as for most people the biggest confounding factor is stressing about what the reading will be, I don’t correct posture etc unless they are substantially moving their arm around.






  • The budget deficit has been reducing over time under the current government, the man promoting nuclear is Dutton the opposition leader, his plans for nuclear power are being criticized as expensive, he is being portrayed as stupid in promoting nuclear which would reverse the trend of reducing deficits.

    It’s a bit convoluted and not particularly funny but it does make sense.



  • Modern guns a extremely precisely engineered devices that are incredibly easy to use, for better or worse. I know modern sporting bows are also but it’s no contest in my opinion.

    I’ve shot both, bows as a complete amateur and relatively competent with a rifle. There is no question that a modern gun is way easier to pick up as an amateur and hit what you want to hit and I cannot possibly believe there are anything other than extremely niche uses where a bow is superior.


  • I’m very much a privacy amateur but am interested in comments on my set up, I’m sure it’s not ideal.

    I use firstname@lastname.tld for personal email. Anything @lastname.tld forwards to my main email so for the rare occasion I need to access Facebook my account is facebook@lastname.tld and so on for any other untrustworthy sites.

    I can easily block emails from a leak or just if unsubscribing is made difficult.




  • I understand why you are putting them together but I think only the CPI measures inflation, there are other indexes also but inflation has to do with the value of money decreasing over time.

    The supply of money is inextricably linked to inflation but an increasing money supply is not inflation, under certain circumstances you could have no, or negative inflation, with increasing money supply. If you had high demand for currency due to large volumes of exports for example.

    In short the terms you want are inflation and money supply.

    Disclaimer: I dropped out of an undergraduate economics degree about 2/3 through around 15 years ago. I believe this is correct but please anyone correct me if not.