In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.

Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.

Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…

It was too long and had too much content.

Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).

It’s not as if healthcare costs have some inherent reason to increase along with wealth.

Well, there are several big reasons. For example, doctors and nurses in the USA have much higher pay than those in Europe. Part of this is because of policy differences (e.g., the supply of US doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA). But part of it is simply that educated professionals are paid much more in the USA than in Europe, and it’s nothing specific to healthcare.

The point is that when making comparisons between US and other rich countries, the first thing you have to do is to account for the fact that Americans (i) have higher GDP per capita, and (ii) have higher levels of consumption even after compensating for GDP per capita. That should be the first-order effect, with stuff like the public-versus-private issue as second-order effects.

I do agree with the benefits to the US not being proportional to the cost, to a point. Lots of healthcare spending goes into things that don’t really benefit aggregate outcomes, like heroic interventions that end up extending end-of-life by a few months, or treatments that only benefit one-in-a-million conditions. But this is not just an issue for the US; for example, the UK spends 18x on healthcare per capita compared to Thailand, for 2 extra years of life expectancy. And those individuals who get their lives extended by a small amount, or get their rare condition treated, may have different views on the matter.

I disagree. That is precisely the thing that needs to be unpacked and rebutted, because it’s the actual thing these people are worried about. Not the financial sustainability of Social Security, or whatever.

Just look at the Wikipedia page on List of countries by household final consumption expenditure per capita. Americans consume much more than anyone else on the world, and it’s not even close. Americans even consume at a higher level than the “ultra-rich” countries that exceed it in GDP per capita, e.g. 30 percent more than Luxembourg (which is number 2 on the list)!

This covers all forms of consumption, in which healthcare is only a fraction. The discrepancy is so great that it can’t be explained by US healthcare being expensive. It’s the other way round, it’s healthcare consumption that is being pulled along by the rest of the consumption.

While I don’t disagree with the premise of this article, it does a piss poor job at rebuttal. It tries to explain that migrants and asylum seekers won’t get to vote in this next election, don’t draw SS/Medicare benefits today, and anyway the census is only every ten years, etc. But the “great replacement” stuff is about fears about changing the population over the long term, so this kind of counterargument either falls flat or will be interpreted as gaslighting.

The US spends more on healthcare because it spends more on everything. I don’t think people have a good sense of how much Americans consume even compared to their peers in other rich countries.

If you plot healthcare consumption per capita versus individual consumption per capita, you can see that the US is on the trend line. Americans are not spending inherently differently from Europeans, despite the differences in healthcare systems. They just have more of everything, including healthcare.

A new holodomor, this time abetted by the US. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling.

This is a composition effect. Democratic candidates who run for safer, more left-wing constituencies feel free to propose more radical left-wing policies, especially if their main threats are other democrats during primaries. They then go on to win because they’re not running in competitive elections. You can use the same reasoning to conclude that Republicans who attack abortion and socialism do better in elections.

foreign aid and health officials … have long supported breastfeeding across the globe. They call it “one of the highest returns on investment of any development activity” because of its well-documented benefits for babies’ health and cognitive growth.

Actually, the scientific evidence for the advantages of breastmilk versus formula is remarkably thin.

Sure, it’s eyebrow-raising for the US to meddle in other countries’ public health policy-making. I’d argue that the US meddles too much in other countries’ policy-making, period, not just in public health. But the unspoken implication behind this article is that allowing formula companies to market their products is causing some kind of public health catastrophe, and that claim is just not scientifically defensible.

Giving automakers an extra three years to keep building gasoline vehicles is not, last I checked, “accelerating the EV transition”…

Someone should make an RBG award for refusing to retire long after it’s obvious you should have. First posthumous award to Diane Feinstein.

Internationally, the US is the main party holding back improved taxation of corporations. In October 2021, the US struck an international deal to revamp global rules on corporate taxation, based on two pillars: getting corporations to pay tax in countries where they do business, and a global minimum corporate tax. Now the US looks set to renege, due to bipartisan opposition in Congress over US multinationals getting taxed overseas.

Even though the Biden administration spearheaded the original deal, they’ve been MIA getting it ratified. Understandably, other countries worry that the US intends to watch them raise taxes while doing nothing in return. To avoid getting backstabbed, some are looking to impose unilateral digital taxes. And the US has threatened these countries, calling the measures unfair discrimination against US companies.

White House is still pussyfooting around, though. From another article (FT):

John Kirby, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said Schumer had told the White House in advance what he was planning to say. But he sought to distance the White House from the Senate majority leader’s comments, saying that the Biden administration remained “focused on making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself, while doing everything that they can to avoid civilian casualties”.

This is the kiss of death. Putting Kamala Harris in charge of an issue means the administration doesn’t think there’s any solution (remember how she was supposed to fix the border?).

White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights…

Yeah, sounds about right.

The US is decoupling from the global trading system even under Biden. Biden maintained Trump’s block of the WTO appellate judge system (apparently because the WTO had the temerity to rule against the US in a couple of trade cases). He kept the Trump tariffs against China, and he’s had fairly tense trading relations with allies like Japan, South Korea, and Europe, in an effort to court union support. He has strongarmed/blackmailed Taiwan into helping setting up chip production in the US, a distinctly Trumpy move.

So while Trump might add a layer of unpredictability, the general direction of US trade policy is the same no matter who wins the election.

Salon complaining about the NYT having a right wing bias is the ultimate in ultra-liberal wankery. The Times isn’t perfect, far from it, but good grief, get a grip.

The Dems have a bench of pretty impressive governors, who could have risen to prominence by going through a primary campaign. It’s hard to think of Biden as the best possible hope against Trump, given that he has a 38 percent approval rating, a bit lower than Trump at this point and 10 points below Obama…

Right wing smearing is to be taken for granted. An open nomination process could have brought to the fore someone younger and with more energy to campaign. And Biden was never a terrific campaigner to begin with.

Basically, his ego got the better of him, exactly the same as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Even if Biden squeaks through a victory in November, him choosing to run again back in 2022/2023 was an act of incredible selfishness, and choosing personal ego over the good of the country.