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Welcome back to What Just Happened?!, a semi-comical digest of the most important news from the UK, US and the World. Look out for us every now and again, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The Internet
Floating in a Tin Can
The Astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) after an 8 day trip looks to have turned into an 8 month stay, are most of their way to being done with their ordeal having recently hit the 6 month mark. They’ve been up there since June and weren’t able to come back swiftly, as planned, because NASA determined the Boeing spacecraft that was used to get them there wasn’t actually safe enough to also bring them back. They’re scheduled to come home via a SpaceX vessel in February. While being in space probably isn’t boring, it’s nevertheless impressive and inspiring to hear the positive thinking of the adaptive and pragmatic astronauts:
“Mindset does go a long way,” Wilmore said in response to a question from Nashville first-graders in October. He’s from Mount Juliet, Tennessee. “I don’t look at these situations in life as being downers.” Source: AP
The US
Total Denial
The CEO of America’s largest health insurance company was assassinated in a targeted hit outside of a Hilton hotel in downtown Manhattan. The words Deny, Defend and Depose were written on the bullet shell casings used in the murder. The US Health Insurance market is so notoriously ineffective, cruel and profit motivated that there is common knowledge of the 3 D’s of the industry: Delay, Deny and Defend, also the title of a book by a well regarded lawyer (Jay Feinman) subtitled: “Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It”.
While the police might not have established a motive, formally, there is little mystery to the homicide. Some folks have taken to sharing statistics about claim denial rates, though the truth of the matter is that these are educated guesses (at best) due to a lack of both available information and meaningful accountability. The US healthcare system sees at least 100,000 preventable deaths annually; a great many people are bankrupt as a result of medical debt and despite being “insured” many Americans have significant medical debt. It’s an outrageously inefficient and cruel system whereby many layers of rent-seeking middle-men set up arbitrary barriers to accessing care and cost an incredible amount of money in the process. Combined with no sensible regulation on drug prices (allowing ludicrous, immoral, drug-price hikes and people like the deplorable Pharma Bro to exist) it’s not hard to build an intuition for how the US spends the most on healthcare and has the worst outcomes (among wealthy nations).
One of your authors is a British national living in the United States, who has frequently had various Health Insurance companies initially deny their requests for Hemophilia medicine. This medicine is generally recognized as the standard of care for this blood disorder. The relevant medical faculty even have a dedicated team of technocrats and advocates to deal with the insurance companies on behalf of the end “consumer” or “customer”, where most civilized countries see a “patient”. The point here is: someone who obviously needs a certain medicine, who has had the same needs their whole life, still has to fight with an insurance company in order to get their medicine, answering and humouring insanely stupid questions along the lines of “do you really need it tho?”, “would some other medicine work?”.
All that said, it comes as absolutely no surprise that attempts to automate these processes, with AI or otherwise, would not be in the patient’s best interests or those of humanity. Instead, they would be in the best interest of the profits of the health insurance company.
Make America (Economically) Depressed Again (MADA)
The inbound administration is already hard at work planning to make things even worse, by threatening various tariffs on their neighbours, “friends” and farther afield nations. To be clear, these tariffs will ultimately cost the US consumer, and the incoming leadership are lying about that fact. Trump & Vance have repeatedly claimed that China (for instance) will pay, whereas it’s actually US importers. If you’re keen for more information and detail, we’ll recommend this fantastic video explaining how tariffs work from LegalEagle.
“Before accounting for behavioral effects, the $79 billion in higher tariffs amounts to an average annual tax increase on US households of $625. Based on actual revenue collections data, trade war tariffs have directly increased tax collections by $200 to $300 annually per US household, on average. Both estimates understate the cost to US households because they do not factor in the lost output, lower incomes, and loss in consumer choice the tariffs have cause” Source: Tax Foundation
I beg your Pardon?
In a move that does absolutely nothing to increase public confidence in their government, Joe Biden has granted his (former?) degenerate son a full and unconditional pardon for, among other classes of offenses, “crimes against the US”.
Source: Pew Research
The UK
We’re all dying
… just some quicker than others. The UK has finally decided to join some more enlightened and modern countries in their mutual recognition of some of the unfortunate facts of the universe; specifically, the UK has passed an assisted dying bill through the House of Commons (to hopefully be signed into law by the House of Lords) that would allow terminally ill adults to request help in cutting their time even shorter still.
To the extent that laws tell us that something is never permissible, having laws against assisted dying imply that it’s never an acceptable option. This is a form of extremism and it’s still this publication’s point of view that extremism is, generally speaking, bad. Speaking of which, US republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson gave a great example of this by talking bollocks at a press conference on December 5th about how this bill presented a “sad and shameful” day for the English Speaking world.
“[Mike Johnson] makes claims about the constitution and Christianity, and his wish to impose his faith on others, that do not withstand serious scrutiny” Source: The Guardian
The World
Zealots Making Other People’s Lives Harder
Carrying on with the theme in the above story, Zealots really do make everyone’s lives harder. Take the stunning essay by Samer Sinijlawi in The Atlantic entitled “How to Build a Palestinian State” – the summarizing conclusion of this shadow leader’s perspective is that the current leadership of both the Israelis and Palestinians are the real enemies of both nations. Sinijlawi also reflects on how he’s forged a view throughout life that focusing on setting a good example is all he’s able to do. This is really a profound realization, because it’s true for all of us.
Catch them if you can
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, on the basis of their having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The French have already buckled at the opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership. As have various other European countries, however, some might actually grant the ICC legitimacy by arresting Netanyahu (and/or Gallant) if they end up on their country’s home turf.
“Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovenia and Spain have given the strongest indications they would enforce the arrest warrant” Source: Euronews
In not unrelated news, Amnesty International has determined that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. A wafer thin silver lining in this hellish affair might be the World Central Kitchen (WCK) swiftly returning to feeding hungry Gazans after yet another group of their staff were killed by the Israeli armed forces. This follows the 7 WCK staff killed in April (see: What Just Happened: Protecting Heroes).
We’re going to need a bigger fire extinguisher
South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol is being impeached after trying and failing to impose martial law. It took about 6 hours for parliament to unanimously vote on overturning the martial law declaration. Due to a combination of soldiers not carrying out the president’s demands and staunch public opposition, the president was unsuccessful in their bid to impose martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1980. As military forces tried to storm the parliament, aides sprayed them with fire extinguishers. The whole drama led to this amazing image of a woman defiantly grabbing a soldier’s gun.
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