levbo

[levbo @levbo]

@WhiteHouse @POTUS Best country in the world

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

The world finally gets it.

GOD BLESS AMERICA. 🇺🇸🦅

[Forest Park Pharmacy @ForestParkPharm]

My wife and I own Forest Park Pharmacy, and we don't accept insurance. None of it. That decision is exactly why we could fix what happened to a patient today.

A family came in wanting to transfer their kid's antibiotic to us. The child had already STARTED the course. Then, mid-treatment, the insurance company decided the last 14 tablets suddenly needed a "prior authorization" before the other pharmacy could hand them over. A sick kid, halfway through an antibiotic, and the answer was "please hold."

The drug is linezolid. It's a generic. It's been generic for over a decade. It treats serious gram-positive infections — the kind you do NOT want to stop antibiotics in the middle of, because an interrupted course is how you breed resistant bugs and end up right back where you started.

So why the hold-up on a cheap, common generic? Follow the fake math.

Insurance and the PBMs behind them price drugs off a number called AWP — "Average Wholesale Price." People in my industry have another name for it: "Ain't What's Paid." It's a benchmark number, not a real-world cost. On paper, the AWP for just those last 14 tablets is about $2,500.

My cash price for the same 14 tablets? $18.

Read that again. The system that's supposedly "protecting" this family from cost is the same system that inflated an $18 medication into a $2,500 line item, then slapped a prior auth on it to "review the expense" THEY invented. They manufactured the problem, then billed everyone for the privilege of solving it — and made a sick kid wait while they did it.

This is the whole game. When a drug is priced honestly, there's nothing to "manage." When it's priced off a fantasy benchmark, you get spread pricing, PA paperwork, pharmacy phone trees, and delayed treatment — all dressed up as cost control.

Here's the part nobody tells you: roughly 90% of prescriptions are low-cost generics. For the vast majority of what people pick up every day, running it through insurance does two things — raises the real cost and risks delaying your care. That's it. That's the value-add.

That's why we fired the insurance companies. No middleman deciding your kid can't finish their antibiotics on schedule. No fake prices. Just the real number, on the shelf, today.

The medication was always cheap. The insurance was the expensive part.

[🕊️ @lichthauch]

Fatherhood is the end of philosophy. you can read every book ever written about meaning and purpose and discipline, but the moment a small human looks at you and believes you, everything you thought you knew burns down. because now you have to do it, not think it, not debate it, not post about it. the child watches your hands, what you do when you are tired, what you do when you are mad, what you do when nobody else is looking. that is your only sermon and you cannot fake it for one day because children are bullshit detectors made of flesh. if you are a weak man your son will know it before he can spell the word weak, and he either becomes you or becomes the opposite of you, both out of desperation.

[Séb Krier @sebkrier]

This is wild. https://t.co/fA4oTX8fB9

[levbo @levbo]

@vlucasrocha You have never been more wrong.

[Brett Winton @wintonARK]

This NYS bill will literally kill

Same patient a few months earlier.

Chemo was interfering with warfarin which his cardio doc had inexplicably kept him on for years despite the rise of DOACs

Patient assumes that his INR reader is broken because it’s reading max high.

He’s trying to return it to the manufacturer (the reader). Cardio doc is on vacation. He asks me to help switch out the battery.

Same read. Still thinks machine is broken. AI highlights the interaction risk with chemo. We go in to get INR tested. Off the charts. Dangerously thin.

He’s running a 1 in 10 annualized risk of a brain bleed stroke. Odds of his dying are increased by 60% for every day he’s at that level.

Doc on vacation. Physicians assistant advises him to get over the counter vitamin K which is basically no better than placebo and perhaps worse (not least because he buys vitamin K2 which won’t do a thing.)

Due to AI I know that this is instead possible hospitalization terrain and also know that we need to find another doc to get a vitamin K Rx.

In a perfect world we would all have access to trained experts at the moment that we need them. In the real world we are all underserved. We are all mostly amateurs in most realms.

Denying people in need access to expertise when that expertise can literally save a life is no different than murder by neglect.

And for what?

To win some political plaudits and garner some campaign donations?

You, yes you: You deserve to die because this particular politician wants to raise their profile and this protected class wants to preserve their franchise.

That is the implicit message of the New York State AI bill.

That I - just a regular schmoe who happens to use technology - can honestly relay these anecdotes from just the past few months suggests that they are not that uncommon.

This bill will kill unless we kill this bill

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Sentiments of Venezuelans

I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.

If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothing

Then shut the fuck up.

You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.

I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.

This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.

Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.

My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.

Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.

And everything died.

Not slowly.
Violently.

People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.

They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.

People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.

They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.

So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”

No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.

China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.

They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.

If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignity

Then yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.

Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.

This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.

Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.

If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvation

Then again
Shut the fuck up.

This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.

By Stephen Subero

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

"My name's Raymond. I'm 73. I work the parking lot at St. Joseph's Hospital. Minimum wage, orange vest, a whistle I barely use. Most people don't even look at me. I'm just the old man waving cars into spaces.
But I see everything.

Like the black sedan that circled the lot every morning at 6 a.m. for three weeks. Young man driving, grandmother in the passenger seat. Chemotherapy, I figured. He'd drop her at the entrance, then spend 20 minutes hunting for parking, missing her appointments.

One morning, I stopped him. "What time tomorrow?"
"6:15," he said, confused.
"Space A-7 will be empty. I'll save it."
He blinked. "You... you can do that?"
"I can now," I said.

Next morning, I stood in A-7, holding my ground as cars circled angrily. When his sedan pulled up, I moved. He rolled down his window, speechless. "Why?"
"Because she needs you in there with her," I said. "Not out here stressing."
He cried. Right there in the parking lot.

Word spread quietly. A father with a sick baby asked if I could help. A woman visiting her dying husband. I started arriving at 5 a.m., notebook in hand, tracking who needed what. Saved spots became sacred. People stopped honking. They waited. Because they knew someone else was fighting something bigger than traffic.
But here's what changed everything, A businessman in a Mercedes screamed at me one morning. "I'm not sick! I need that spot for a meeting!"

"Then walk," I said calmly. "That space is for someone whose hands are shaking too hard to grip a steering wheel."

He sped off, furious. But a woman behind him got out of her car and hugged me. "My son has leukemia," she sobbed. "Thank you for seeing us."

The hospital tried to stop me. "Liability issues," they said. But then families started writing letters. Dozens. "Raymond made the worst days bearable." "He gave us one less thing to break over."

Last month, they made it official. "Reserved Parking for Families in Crisis." Ten spots, marked with blue signs. And they asked me to manage it.

But the best part? A man I'd helped two years ago, his mother survived, came back. He's a carpenter. Built a small wooden box, mounted it by the reserved spaces. Inside? Prayer cards, tissues, breath mints, and a note,

"Take what you need. You're not alone. -Raymond & Friends"
People leave things now. Granola bars. Phone chargers. Yesterday, someone left a hand-knitted blanket.
I'm 73. I direct traffic in a hospital parking lot. But I've learned this: Healing doesn't just happen in operating rooms. Sometimes it starts in a parking space. When someone says, "I see your crisis. Let me carry this one small piece."

So pay attention. At the grocery checkout, the coffee line, wherever you are. Someone's drowning in the little things while fighting the big ones.

Hold a door. Save a spot. Carry the weight no one else sees.
It's not glamorous. But it's everything."

Let this story reach more hearts....

Credit: Mary Nelson

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

An exciting milestone for AI in science: Our C2S-Scale 27B foundation model, built with @Yale and based on Gemma, generated a novel hypothesis about cancer cellular behavior, which scientists experimentally validated in living cells. 

With more preclinical and clinical tests, this discovery may reveal a promising new pathway for developing therapies to fight cancer.

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

there are essays, and then there are "violently shift your entire perception of reality" essays

[levbo @levbo]

I hope they make a big off switch, or we're cooked.

[The Humanoid Hub @TheHumanoidHub]

UFC chief Dana White checked out Unitree’s humanoid robots during his recent trip to Shanghai, where one robot threw a round kick at him.

[tyler hogge @thogge]

Sharing because it’s the best clip I’ve seen in a few weeks.

“Who are you jealous of?”
“Anybody who’s still got little kids at home.”

The purpose of life is to be a parent. To create an unbreakable family unit with a true partner.

Everything else secondary.

[All day Astronomy @forallcurious]

Mind=BLOWN🚨: Scientists have now found all of the DNA and RNA bases in meteorites ....... This means there's a possibility that life on Earth came from space!

[Yun-Ta Tsai @yunta_tsai]

When I was at Nokia, we had a big debate to remove the physical keyboards and go all-in to the touch screen.

The engineers at US tried to convince the engineers in Finland that it was a better design with a slimmer profile and touch screen only.

We even demonstrated some apps on iPod Touch with some concept experiences.

“What if touch screen stopped working?”

“It does not work with big thumbs”

“Customers would feel insecure without physical buttons.”

In the end, the Finnish engineers gave us thousands of reasons why touch screen only was bad.

The US engineers were frustrated because they could see the writing on the wall.

Then we realized it was very difficult to for a company to give up its legacy crutches. Almost never.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Neuralink today unveiled its next-generation surgical robot. It's able to insert threads into the brain in 1.5 seconds vs 17 seconds in their previous gen surgical robot.

This new surgical robot is also now compatible with 99% of the global human population. They've also increased the depth the needle can insert threads and can reach more than 50mm from the surface of the brain. The needle cartridge is now 95% less expensive to make vs previous version.

[Tesla @Tesla]

You don’t plan your day around charging your phone – you just plug it in when you get home, are at work, or visit other places you normally go to

Teslas are the same

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

🕺

[Bradford G Smith (Brad) @ALScyborg]

I am the 3rd person in the world to receive the @Neuralink brain implant.

1st with ALS. 1st Nonverbal.

I am typing this with my brain. It is my primary communication.

Ask me anything! I will answer at least all verified users!

Thank you @elonmusk!

[Tesla Optimus @Tesla_Optimus]

Domo Arigato

Mr. Roboto