The issue is that they are run as for-profit businesses but the product that they provide is a public good. They make money by providing as little product as possible. This type of structure is fine if your company makes luxury goods, but in the case of health insurance it results in unnecessary pain and death.

Think of the system like a force field (the physics kind, not the scifi kind). It pulls bastards into it. If you're not, you're in its presence, and you're susceptible to its effects. It's more like "No Humans Are Immune To The Corrupting Influence Of Militarized Institutions" but ACAB is a lot easier to say.

You sound like an AI. These mindless bots seem to be the only "magical" new technology that has come about in the past 7 years, and they are accelerating the climate catastrophe with the amount of power they draw.

Scientist here. I encourage everyone to use a shadow library like Scihub to break the stranglehold that Elsevier and Wiley have on the free availability of knowledge. These are financialized corporations that add nothing to society and leach off of scientists' hard work.

A schwarschild radius of 0.5 meters corresponds to about 56 Earth masses. So Richard must have accreted a bunch of mass before he collapsed.

Saturn is a mixture of gases. It has a solid rocky/hydrogen core surrounded by a layer of liquid hydrogen/helium. You could argue that this intermediate liquid layer might have solid particulates, and this would agree with the definition, but overall Saturn is too complicated to be classified this way. A better extreme example would be something like Earth's oceans.

How about you only have to work 28.8 hours a week?

Intra-uterine devices?

I think it's the degree of bullshit that increases gradually. To speak from experience, when you are a grad student you get a feeling like there's corruption but overall your project seems like it's important and making a real contribution (hopefully). You also don't have to worry about where the money is coming from. Sometimes the grant as a whole is total bullshit but there is enough discretionary spending included that great science comes out of it. But you don't realize this until you're writing grants, and by then you're maybe too deep in the game to pull out. Essentially, you end up becoming a manager once you get tenure. There is no epiphany; it's more like a slow creep.

There is no alternative if you actually want to do science and don't have millions of dollars to buy labs and materials and instruments. Science gets done in spite of everything she is describing.

I love this. "Israel invades Norway" would be such a great news story to follow.

This is literally what happens when a volcano erupts. Magma solidifes at the top and creates a plug, which builds pressure until it explodes.