ricecake

Particularly since summarizing text is something that llms are actually decent at, it makes sense to use them for that. They're unreliable at generating new content, but asking for a description of text that's just below it is reasonable.

They're goal is to sell to each person for exactly the most that they can get the person to pay.
A lot of people get the medication through insurance, meaning they're just gouging another leach.
The insurance will pay because the medicine is just cheaper than what it would cost them if you didn't get it.

If you don't have insurance, they have programs to try to gouge you at more plausible rates that they refer to in compassionate language.

If you're a third world, they try to price gouge in terms affordable for the market.

About the only place they charge a fair price is in places they think the government might just set price ceilings.

Soap does destroy some bacteria, and a not insignificant portion. By destroying those fatty bonds the cellular membranes of many bacteria are destroyed, and many viruses denatured and rendered inert.

The removal is the primary action though, you are correct. Not all bacteria are destroyed by soap, which is why the leather, scrub, and scrub while rinsing steps are important to hand washing, since that mechanical action is what removes everything.

https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/why-soap-works/

Certainly. I'm not saying soap is bad by any means. It's a tool for bathing just like any other. Not using soap to wash your body doesn't imply unhygienic anymore than not using a scrub brush makes you unhygienic.

What matters is that you wash regularly, get rid of grime, dirt, excess oils and dead skin buildup.
There's many paths to hygiene. For most people, the one with soap is the easiest and the only downside is "now moisturize".

Persistent advertising from cleaning product companies since the 50s have heavily pushed a level of cleaning and perfuming well beyond what's actually necessary for hygiene.
My body wash company would like me to use a silver dollar sized portion. I get better results from a dime sized portion and a moderate firmness silicone brush.

You're taking "it's possible to be clean after bathing without soap" as a way stronger statement than it is.
Do you think I'm saying soap is bad?
No one is talking about hygienic hand washing practices for medicine, food prep, after defecation, or after being coated in tough substances.
We're in a giant pile of people talking about routing bathing to prevent body odor and the skin issues caused by poor bodily hygiene.
Washing with running water and a scrubbing action is sufficient for that purpose for many people. Bathing without soap is not a guarantee that you will have BO, a rash, skin lesions, or acne.

The Africa point isn't really the gotcha you think it is. Soap working better faster doesn't mean that a lack of soap doesn't work. As you said, when they didn't have soap they still washed. People are generally interested in being clean, and pragmatic. They'll clean themselves, and if something helps them get cleaner faster, they'll use it.

And yup, that passage does document that the Roman empire eschewed soap for personal hygiene until roughly year zero.

The primary action that soap has for fighting bacteria is breaking down oils and making it easier for debris and bacteria to be removed. Less food for the bacteria, and faster removal.
Bacteria will be destroyed by this process, but that's coincidental to why soap works and provides benefit.
It's why we don't tell people to wash their hands by squirting soap on them, spreading it around and then rinsing it off. The critical step is the mechanical action that facilitates removal of debris with running water.

Yes, soap is necessary for hand washing because we need to maximize bacteria removal after defecation or before preparing foods or medical activities.

In the context of bathing however, you don't need to sterilize your torso. You will also be rinsing your body far longer than you're typically going to be washing your hands, which when combined with scrubbing results in a clean torso.

I'm not one of those people who's opposed to using soap or anything, but that's not the same as recognizing that it's possible to wash and be clean without it.

Did I say pure luxury, or did I say it makes it easier?

I did forget that something is obviously 100% vital and indispensable or entirely worthless and void of functionality.

Early soaps were used for the preparation of textiles rather than personal hygiene.
As early as we invented soap, we actually had the notion that festering in your own rancid body oils is bad far, far earlier. As such, we had ways of dealing with that well before we had soap and people didn't just immediately switch.

So go ahead and use soap. I certainly do. But if you're looking to have your mind blown, take a shower and just scrub your skin with a brush, loofah or the palm of your hand and be amazed when you still get clean. If you're really grimey, you can do what the Romans did and rub yourself with olive oil and scrape it off with a scraper before doing that.

Phrasing it like that is weird, but you don't actually need soap. It just makes the oils and grime come off easier, so without it you just need to scrub more diligently.

If you're cleaning yourself properly your skin is gonna be the same cleanliness afterwards either way. Cheap soap will dry your skin though, so use decent soap.

Cleaning regularly and effectively is the key, not the specifics. Soap just lowers the bar for effectiveness, and maybe adds "and also moisturize".

Most voters don't have a business and never will.

The value of a net new business is that it creates more jobs and economic activity.
Most people benefit from more jobs to either work at or drive up labor demand.
Per that school of economic thought, incentivizing a new business adds more activity to the market and more opportunity for people to find ways to innovate, provide value and become profitable.
Giving money to an existing struggling business is subsidizing a businesses that's already demonstrated that it's not working.

However, we're both putting too much into it. The goal is to say $50k for small business, because people like a business friendly atmosphere.
Trump gets credit for giving tax cuts to businesses for stock buyback, which only helps investors. The goal is to court people who want pro business policies without literal handouts to corporations.

If you watch the video, he wasn't using it for anything political. He's doing low stakes crowd work. He's chatting with people, gives a guy in a trump hat a signed hat while making some self deprecating jokes and good natured insults to the guy in the trump hat. Definitely makes like he's going to steal the guys hat, and puts it on for a second for a bigger laugh.

Optics good, bad, or neutral, it wasn't a planned "solidarity" thing like the headline makes it sound.

A better headline would have been "Biden borrows trump hat for laugh at lunch following 9/11 memorial event"

How do you mean? Like number of votes, or who's on the ballot?

It's complicated, since the Harris campaign wanted him to have more opportunities to ramble, interrupt and get mad. They were very much counting on him being himself and comparing that to someone who can speak in coherent sentences without getting mad.