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Amanda Kat
@AKatDevQa
.NET QA Automation Engineer. Self-taught. Passionate about QA, learning, development, music, travel, war strategy games, and my pets!
Georgia, USA
Joined January 2012
1.6K Following
121 Followers
358 Posts
Bleeding question for the American healthcare system 🏥
Imagine you walk into a restaurant.
You ask for a menu.
The waiter smiles: "There are no prices. Eat first."
You finish eating. You ask for the bill.
The waiter says: "We cannot tell you. Go home."
Three months later, an envelope arrives in your mailbox:
- Bread basket: $480.00
- Water glass rental fee: $210.00
- Out-of-network chef who walked past your table for four seconds: $1,650.00
TOTAL DUE: $2,340.00.
This sounds like a dystopian comedy sketch.
Except it is literally how going to the hospital works in the United States.
You can ask five different doctors, "How much will this cost?", and all five will look at you with genuine mystery, like you just asked them the location of Atlantis.
Nobody knows! The hospital does not know! The insurance company does not know!
The price is decided by a magical dice roll three months after you leave.
Why is healthcare the only industry in the free world where you buy a product with zero idea of the price tag? 🎲💸
WHAT THE HECK? A mom posted her kid singing in the car. Meta AI asked under the reel who the child was and started assembling the family.
Kalie Robins says it pulled names, old photos, a newborn shot, and even a deleted picture.
Then it suggested asking where she lives.
She says it stitched posts into a map of the house.
Meta hasn’t answered, but has a lot to say on this.
Writer: Lucas
Regarding recent press coverage
GOV: We have a housing crisis. Prices are too high.
ME: I agree. Supply is too low.
GOV: So we have a plan. We’re going to subsidize demand.
ME: …What does that mean?
GOV: We’re going to give people money to buy houses.
ME: But there aren't enough houses.
GOV: Right. So we’ll help them bid harder.
ME: If you have 10 people fighting for 1 house, and you give them all cash... the price just goes up.
GOV: Then we’ll give them more cash.
ME: That’s not a solution. That’s inflation.
GOV: It’s "First Time Homebuyer Assistance."
ME: Okay, let’s back up. Why are houses so expensive in the first place?
GOV: Because we made them the perfect investment vehicle.
ME: How?
GOV: First, the 30-year fixed mortgage.
ME: That’s standard, right?
GOV: Only in America. In other countries, rates float. Here, you can lock in a low rate for three decades.
ME: Why would a bank take that risk? If inflation goes up, they lose money.
GOV: Banks don’t take the risk. They sell the loan to us.
ME: To the government?
GOV: To Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We guarantee the liquidity.
ME: So the taxpayer subsidizes the risk so I can have cheap leverage?
GOV: Correct.
ME: And then I get to deduct the interest?
GOV: Only on the first $750,000 of debt.
ME: That seems... high.
GOV: It used to be a million. We trimmed it.
ME: But wait. If I rent, can I deduct my rent?
GOV: No.
ME: If I buy a small business, can I deduct the interest on the loan?
GOV: It’s complicated.
ME: But if I buy a giant house, I definitely can?
GOV: Absolutely. We wrote it into the tax code.
ME: So you’re paying me to borrow money to buy a bigger house than I need.
GOV: We’re "incentivizing ownership."
ME: What happens when I sell?
GOV: The Capital Gains Exclusion!
ME: How does that work?
GOV: If you sell a stock for a $500,000 profit, you pay taxes.
ME: Roughly 20%.
GOV: If you sell your house for a $500,000 profit?
ME: What do I pay?
GOV: Zero.
ME: Zero tax?
GOV: As long as you lived there for two years.
ME: So housing is the only asset class where I get subsidized 30-year leverage and tax-free profits?
GOV: Pretty sweet deal, right?
ME: So you turned shelter into a speculative financial asset.
GOV: We call it "Generational Wealth."
ME: Okay, so demand is juiced to the moon. Can we at least build more supply to bring prices down?
GOV: Oh, absolutely not.
ME: Why?
GOV: Zoning.
ME: I own land. Can I build a duplex?
GOV: Illegal. Single-family only.
ME: Can I build a granny flat?
GOV: Only if you provide two parking spots and pass a shadow study.
ME: So you made it illegal to build cheaper housing?
GOV: We protect "Neighborhood Character."
ME: But you spend billions on roads and utilities for the suburbs.
GOV: Infrastructure investment.
ME: So you subsidize the expensive sprawl, but ban the cheap density?
GOV: Now you’re getting it.
ME: This system seems designed to keep prices high.
GOV: It is.
ME: But you started this conversation by saying we have an "Affordability Crisis."
GOV: We do. Prices are too high!
ME: So we should lower them?
GOV: No! We can’t lower prices.
ME: Why not?
GOV: Because then the voters lose their "Generational Wealth."
ME: So we need high prices for the voters... and low prices for the buyers?
GOV: Exactly.
ME: That’s a paradox.
GOV: It’s politics.
ME: So what is your actual plan?
GOV: We’re going to give first-time buyers $25,000.
ME: Okay. I’m a seller. I list my house for $400,000.
GOV: Uh huh.
ME: I know every buyer just got a free $25,000 from the government.
GOV: Right.
ME: What do I do?
GOV: You... keep the price the same?
ME: I raise the price to $425,000.
GOV: You wouldn't.
ME: I absolutely would. The buyer can afford it now.
GOV: But that just transfers the subsidy from the poor buyer to the rich seller!
ME: Econ 101.
GOV: We don’t think that will happen.
ME: Just like you didn’t think $7,500 EV credits would make Ford raise the price of the F-150 Lightning by exactly $7,500?
GOV: That was a coincidence.
ME: You are trapping us in a box.
GOV: It’s not a box.
ME: What is it?
GOV: It’s a Single Family Home with a 2.5% mortgage rate that you can never afford to sell.
ME: ...
GOV: Welcome to the American Dream.
If you or anyone you know is wondering what is REALLY going on with the shutdown…
Watch every second of this. I Promise it’s worth your time.
#TrumpsGovernmentShutdown
I can't stop thinking about this poem...
The final two lines bear repeating:
And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
How often have you been convinced that your joy, contentment, and fulfillment were on the other side of some extraordinary achievement?
• I'll be content when I get that promotion.
• I'll be fulfilled when I make director.
• I'll be joyful when I find a partner.
This "when, then" psychology traps our happiness in a conditional statement:
You get to be happy when you achieve that thing.
In a culture that obsesses over the extraordinary, there's much to be gained through simply shifting your focus to celebrate the ordinary.
How can you make the ordinary come alive today?
Every single thing you do today is something your 90-year-old self will wish they could go back and do.
That simple walk. That feeling of satisfaction when you figure out a tricky problem. That smile from a friend. That laugh from your child. That workout you wanted to skip. That conversation with your parents.
That ordinary moment you're tempted to ignore.
All of it.
So, the next time you find yourself wanting to skip through to the other side—to the end, the goal, the finish line:
Stop. Pause. And breathe it in.
This is it. This is real. This is life.
Make the ordinary come alive and the extraordinary will take care of itself.
It-
A few years back, there was a guy named Brandon Mayfield, an ordinary attorney living in Oregon. He had a wife, kids, a law practice, and lived a pretty normal life. Then, out of nowhere, the FBI showed up at his door, arrested him, and accused him of being involved in the Madrid train bombings in Spain. Why? Because a fingerprint database flagged him as a “match.”
Turns out, the database was wrong. He’d never even been to Spain. But because all his personal data was in government systems, and because the authorities trusted their “master file” more than common sense, his life was turned upside down. He was detained for weeks, his house was searched, his family was terrified, and his reputation was trashed, all because a computer said so.
Now, imagine that, but on steroids.
With Palantir building a master database, it’s not just your fingerprints. It’s your texts, your emails, your medical records, your purchases, your movements, your friends, your opinions—everything— all in one place, all cross-referenced, all searchable by people you’ll never meet.
If the system makes a mistake, or if someone in power decides you’re a “problem,” you could be flagged, investigated, or even punished, without ever knowing why, and with no way to defend yourself.
And it’s not just about mistakes.
Think about how this kind of power could be abused. Maybe you go to a protest, or you post something critical of the government online. Suddenly, you’re on a list. Maybe you lose your job, or you can’t get a loan, or you’re denied entry to an event.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s already happened in places like China, where the government uses massive databases to control who can travel, who can work, and who can speak out.
The bottom line:
A master database isn’t about keeping you safe. It’s about making sure you can be watched, tracked, and controlled.
If you think “I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear,” remember: Brandon Mayfield had nothing to hide, either.
But when the system gets it wrong—or when the people in charge decide you’re inconvenient, your life can be ruined in an instant.
That’s what this means. And that’s why it matters.
1) This executive order creates the actual fascist police state. Here you see it creates militarized police departments by funneling military weapons and equipment to them. See that underlined part? The US military themselves can be used in a police role. Let’s continue⬇️
1) A salvo of executive orders from Trump just dropped. And this one? This one ends some civil rights laws. Not only on a federal level, but the order gives the Attorney General the authority to end state civil rights laws. Let’s begin⬇️
You hear Costco is great. One friend describes it as a 'shopping Disney World'. You start thinking about it. You have some extra cash. You decide to try it out, you'll save that much money in gas anyway! What's the worst that can happen?--
🐈⬛🤍
Economist Katheryn Anne Edward, I'll tag her in the comments below if you want to follow her.
OK, let me solve American "economic anxiety" very quickly. I'm gonna sort it out for you in less than ten tweets and then you won't have that excuse anymore. You ready? Here goes.
The cause is capitalism and greed. That's it. Nothing else. Just that.
The thing about leopards is eventually they will eat you too.
Your favorite local restaurant closing because the nice family who owns it getting deported. You thought they were some of the “good ones.” The price of produce skyrocketing even before the camps are built as immigrants flee. Your daughter dying of sepsis because the lawyers feel it’s too risky to perform that D&C.
No more FAFSA for your kids college because you didn’t know that was part of the Department of Education. Veterans having their benefits cut because they rolled back the PACT Act as too expensive. That factory in town that was going to build chips and employ your kids never breaking ground because of the repeal of the CHIPs act. The bridge that was going to cut your commute in half being canceled because of the repeal of the Infrastructure Act.
That sweet government job that you’ve loved because you can work 8 hours a day and fish on the weekends has been slated for a MAGA Schedule F slot because it controls funding for contracts that will go to Republican donors, so you’re fired without cause or any union protections.
You’ll blame Biden or the local Democrats probably. But it will be fine because Elon promised it would be uncomfortable at first but it will get better. You were just so sure it would be uncomfortable for…you know…”those people.” Not you.
But that’s leopards for you. They eat whatever is available.
I would love to see a debate for EACH key issue. And then another debate for another important issue and so on.
We could then watch and listen to each candidate’s grasp of the facts and the evidence, and also get to truly know what their policies and platforms are for that specific issue.
Trump is rarely, if ever, challenged on the actual substance of his understanding of the issues and his nonexistent policies. He just spews inflammatory nonsense and then gets to move on.
This represents the first time in the 25 seasons dating back to the BCS Era that an unbeaten P5 team was not given an opportunity to play for a national championship
Games don't matter.
It's not a playoff, it's an invitational.
And ESPN protected its brand.
https://t.co/pyEroWu7Bw
People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.
I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.
Let me start with this: It could have been me.
That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.
I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.
It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.
In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.
That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.
The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.
Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.
You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.
American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."
And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.
Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.
I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:
You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.
You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.
And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:
1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.
Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.
2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.
There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.
So, why did this happen now?
I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.
Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).
Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.
Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.
Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.
I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.
I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.
I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.
I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.
I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.
I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.
I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.
Whatever this is, I want none of it.
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