It's an online discussion. I'm not going to go price shopping for average circumcision costs by state broken down by insurance coverage.
Random urologist lists cash and insurance prices for infant circumcision? Done, that's the range I'm using.

It's a delightful PR gimmick by a most definitely not a tech company, since there's not much cutting edge technology going on in the world of "flamethrowers are perfectly legal in America and that's our business model".

In addition to strapping a flamethrower to a generic quadruped robot, they also strapped one to a drone.

I can honestly tell you I did not search very hard. First results for how much it cost said $500 cash price, and up to $4000 as billed to insurance. I picked a number in the middle.

Honestly it didn't seem that weird to me that removing skin from the genitals of a newborn would be along the same price as non-invasive outpatient surgery.

Or your joke was just so unfunny that it wasn't recognizable as a joke and was mistaken for your honest opinion.

If no one laughed at your joke, maybe it's because it wasn't funny.

Like how we don't say that blue glass is blue because it's really just the light that's blue?

Appearing blue when looked at is what it means for something to be blue.

If you're gonna be that type of pedantic, just jump straight to "nothing has color but light".

That's what they're saying. The typical cost is $20k-$50k, with all but ~$3k covered by insurance.

If insurance doesn't cover it it's now $1200 out of pocket.

Making it illegal would be better, but that requires convincing people. Even if you approve of circumcision, you're still not going to be surprised when your insurance company drops what you consider to be something important.

Robots.txt isn't even a rule, it's a request.

"Please do not ask for the following content if you are a robot".

If you don't want someone to look at your content, you ultimately have to not give it to them, not just ask them to not ask.

CEOs of companies that are adjacent to technology desperately want to ensure that their company isn't seen as "outdated", almost more than they want to actually not be outdated.

So when a technology comes that everyone in tech leadership is saying is the bestest, they want to make sure everyone knows they're totally with it, whatever the cool kids are talking about.

Hype train goes chugga chugga.

As the hype train slows, they still need to be onboard, but they set expectations based on what their people are actually telling them.

So this is the CEO yelling to do something, and then the news slowly percolating back from the tech people that they can, but only a handful of projects can do so in a way that makes sense, has impact, and doesn't disrupt a timeline or budget in a way that requires shareholder disclosure.

Everyone ate it too. The mockery was because

• they were messy to eat
• they were staples commonly eaten
• they were made and sold by black people early in their steps of economic independence following slavery.
• racism doesn't have to make sense.

If you hate someone, anything they do can be something you use to express your hate, even if you do it to.

So, I definitely think that society has a tendency to want to "fix" behavior traits that are difficult or annoying, but I think there are also a lot that are actually problematic.
For example, with my ADHD, I get stuck doing stuff I don't like doing at the expense of stuff I do enjoy. Just last night after my meds wore off, I got stuck watching YouTube videos of mediocre standup comedy instead of leaning over a bit and grabbing my book that I'm extremely into and very much want to find out what happens.

The definition I like most, which isn't out of whack with what the standards tend towards, is something that's:

• a measurable or observable set of behaviors
• causing distress to the individual
• or causing development difficulties in children
• or causing objective material harm to the individual or others

If it's causing the individual stress, or it's clearly causing problems in their life, it's something that should be addressed. Sometimes the easiest way to address it is just an environmental accomodation, like self directed learning, a pair of headphones, or permission to excuse yourself for a moment. I had a workplace unknowingly (to me and to them) accommodate me by putting down some anti fatigue mats where I would pace to a comical degree every day.

A big issue in my book is that disorder is an overloaded term. Colloquially disorder means "broken", and it doesn't mean that clinically.
A person with a learning disorder who can be helped by putting them in a more self directed learning environment still has a disorder that needs accomodation because they're not performing to the standards of their peers.
There's also a distinction between "mental disorder" and "neurodevelopmental disorder", with the disorder of mental disorders being the biggest one associated with the word "disorder".

I think it's good that people like you ask these questions, because that's part of what helps push society towards an understanding that many of these disorders are really just a very wide spectrum of differences from a rough average, and that our world needs to just be a little more flexible for people who do it a little different. It's caused a lot of more modern primary education systems to be more flexible and trained in the benign accomodations that some kids need, for example. (My nephew also has ADHD and he's having a much better experience in school than I did, of only because they were like "some kids with ADHD just have terrible handwriting, instead of endless drills, here's your Chromebook you do all your work on now")

In the end, I think we need to be able to categorize things in order to be able to know how to fix up people's environments when that's the right answer. We also need to be aware that sometimes the environment isn't the best fix, and that a medication can be the best way to help a person.
For your example, I would say the individual has "crazy tall disorder" which has some easy environmental accomodations (Padded corners on cabinets), individual accomodations (teaching them proper lifting techniques and posture early since height and bad backs go hand in hand), and occasionally medical intervention (gentle back strength exercises, back and knee braces, closer monitoring of cardiac function for the truly extremely tall).

Categorization helps us better understand how things are related, what the bounds on the spectrum are, and what accomodations can be made that help the most people, and when it's something that needs more focused attention.
It's not the categorization that's the problem, it's the stigmatization or inflexibility that causes issues.

Sure! Unfortunately, it was purely a joke and has no helpful qualities that I can think of.

Your prefrontal cortex is the very front edge of your brain, and it's (very generally because brains are complicated) responsible for problem solving, decision making and stuff like that.
It's the part of your brain that makes the call to actually remove the blanket.
These are called "executive functions".

It's also very associated with a lot of parts of personality expression, so while it's not where "you" are, damage to it has a more pronounced impact than other parts of your brain, so sometimes people treat it like it's "you".

It picks which tasks to do based on that reward system I mentioned in my original comment. It doesn't directly control which task it's pointed at trying to solve, so it can come up with a plan to do what's needed, and then discover that the first step is "bad" and it should keep doing what it's doing.

That's the little man sitting at a desk who knows it's all fucked. Did all the work and then was directed to ignore it, knowing that was the wrong call. Something else is in charge of that reward process (kinda), and you can't "reason" with that process.

No. There are tests for the types of functional behavior differences that comprise ADHD, but they can't really be administered outside of a moderately controlled setting.

Stuff like saying a list of words and seeing how many you can recall in a fixed time can't really be done reliably in a quiz.

There are tools that can say "based on what you answered, there's a high/low probability you'd benefit from further consultation". They're basically "how often do you interrupt?", "how often do you zone out?".
Basically a structured way of "what I'm hearing you say is ...". "Based on how you describe yourself as ADHD as hell, you might benefit from asking someone about that".

Self assessments can be wrong about what they suggest you ask about. If you have a concern or behaviors that you do that upset you or cause problems, then that's worth addressing and following until you get help, but it might not be what you thought. Or the doctor might have been mistaken, since they're also fallible, but hopefully the more objective tests can lend objectively to their conclusions.

Yeah, a lot of brain things are like that. The way I look at it is, everyone sees a little of it, but some people see a lot of it. If you see a lot, it's not self diagnosis to say "I have a lot of symptoms in common with people who have this, so I asked a professional".

You also don't need a diagnosis to practice some of the coping strategies that people have that are non-medication. If they turn out to be helpful, that's maybe a another reason to ask a professional.

Self diagnosis is a bad idea, but it's also a bad idea to ignore marked similarities you see between yourself and others. And stuff like "always put your keys and wallet in a specific basket" is only the cost of the basket.

Sometimes I picture my prefrontal cortex as a well meaning bureaucrat who's just like "oh, trust me, I know the rules are terrible and there's an active problem. Nothing I can do about it though, I just work here. Second that order comes in though, I'm on it boss, you better believe. You're gonna want to talk to my manager. Yeah, he doesn't take calls. It sucks, could maybe get something fixed around here. "

That's fair, situations can also cause serotonin to get suppressed without it being an inate production issue.

This is why they recommended talk therapy in conjunction with any medication, in part so that they can reevaluate if the medication is still needed. :)

Depends on the thing.
Super high level, ADHD is an issue with the reward system of the brain failing to deliver reward when it's supposed to. Your brain is supposed to try to find a new task when it's not getting it's reward anymore; it's how that frontal cortex problem solving engine gets driven around by all the parts that handle motivation, wants and desires.
Sometimes no reward is being given, so you keep slipping off to a different task, and sometimes too much reward is being given and so you stay on a task way too long.
And, to be clear: these are not huge rewards we're talking about like a wave of pleasure or noticable feeling, just the baseline steering signals.

Sometimes the task you need to do provides no "normal" reward but neither does what you're doing right now, so your problem solver sees no reason to switch. Sometimes a nudge can help because fulfilling a request or suggestion can come with some reward, or at least you're just swapping out neutral tasks with some minor effort.

Sometimes the task is unpleasant to some minor degree, so not only is the reward not there, it's also a punishment. Or the thing you're currently doing is providing some degree of reward.
In either case, switching means actively going against everything your problem solver uses to decide what to do. Needless to say, that's really hard, and being nudged often feels more like being nagged, or like they're upset with you, because your problem solver (also known as your conscious self) knows this is all going on, but knowing how the engine is working doesn't make it work differently.
So you've been sitting there trying to push a granite block up a hill for an hour, and then someone comes up and starts pushing on your back. They haven't removed the part that made it hard, but they added something uncomfortable to your current situation.

Before I got on medication following my diagnosis, me and my partner handled it by just being really cognizant of what our mental states are, and communicating clearly. "You asked me to remind you", "I need to do it, but I'm stuck", and effectively asking for permission before annoying someone to the point where the current blocker is less desirable than doing the thing. Requires a lot of trust and good communication though.

It's difficult to describe subjective feelings, but what can sometimes look like "sitting on the couch watching short YouTube videos about sheep dogs instead of brushing your teeth and going to bed" is actually: sitting on the couch bored out of your mind and desperately wanting to go to bed, but the sheepdogs are providing short bursts of novelty and cute. Removing your lap blanket provides no joy and makes you cold. Standing up provides no joy and makes you less comfortable. Walking to the bathroom provides no joy and now you're in the dark bathroom. Brushing your teeth provides no joy, tastes bad, and is intensely boring. Walking to the bedroom provides no joy. Getting into bed and snuggling up provides joy.
Summed up: sheep dogs provide continuous minor joy, and only costs the physical misery of staying awake, the confused guilt of paralysis, and the promise of future misery. Going to bed is a promise of some joy, but it comes with a bunch of steps that are at best neutral and often entail anti-joy. It just doesn't add up. Other people get a tiny hit of joy from each substep, which is why they can say "I'm done looking at sheepdogs, I'm going to bed" and then just magically do it.

"Before you go to bed, you need to slowly press your bare foot into this fresh dog poop, toes spread of course" isn't often made better by someone saying "it's not that bad, come on, you can do it, I believe in you, then you can get some rest for once".

It's a matter of scale, not a binary.

Having a thing that you need to do but just "don't" is perfectly common.
Having it happen so regularly that you reliably spend a measurable part of your day wondering why you can't just "do the thing", or it starts to have measurable negative impacts on your job, life and relationships isn't normal.

Everyone feels down sometimes, but not everyone has a serotonin balance problem.
Everyone feels difficulty focusing sometimes, but not everyone has a dopamine balance problem.

I mean, if you don't how will you end up with your body feeling tired tomorrow? It'd ruin the whole routine!

I believe that's why people are pushing for a week of early voting, and the ability to vote by mail with postage paid.
Also, if you increase the number of polling stations and keep them available longer, the wait goes down.
We can also pass laws to make it so employers must give workers time to vote at the workers discretion.

Most of what you describe is the result of an effort to make voting harder to keep turnout low. The way to fix it is to make it easier, not to make it less secure.

In a smaller local election a few cycles back, I got to trial a paper backed electronic voting machine they were testing out for people who have dexterity or vision problems.

You basically got the same paper ballot as everyone else, but then you slipped it into the machine and it colored the bubbles for you after you selected the option on the screen.
Then you took your piece of paper out and handled it like a ballot filled in by hand.

Wasn't networked and didn't see anything that could tie you to a vote.
I got to share my appreciation for the concept, but concern about difficulty verifying it filled things out correctly, and the potential for touch screens to be difficult to use or act funny, all the difficulties of ux work to handle fixing an error, and the need for the UI to be exceptionally clear, which was difficult on the smaller screen with the larger font.
I think it also has screen reader support, but I didn't use it, so I'm not sure.