Depends on language and culture and context. In the United States we use America to refer to the country and North America and South America to refer to the continents. Many Latin American countries use a six continent system though, where North America and South America are just one continent called America. This can lead to some tension and confusion when people from the United States call themselves American, since that would imply everyone in the western hemisphere to them basically. While sometimes “Americano” is used to refer to people from the United States, you’ll also you get descriptors like “estadounidense” in Spanish for this reason. Though this also has ambiguity, since technically Mexico is also a “united states.”

Anyways, point is, a seven continent system with the western hemisphere separated into north and south America isn’t used everywhere, for some people America is a continent. In some places Europe and Asia are combined, and there’s other variations too. None of them line up with plate tectonics or anything perfectly, so they’re all a little arbitrary in the end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent

And if it’s dragons dogma 2, for a few sweet sweet fps.

Prescriptivist jerks. Let’s all dress up in $50,000 robes, call ourselves immortals, and pretend that we can control language.

While opening a business is closer to the situation than personal debt the analogy still breaks down here. The state controls the size of the money supply itself as well. It creates money through issuance of debt/bonds, and can get rid of it it via taxes and interest payments on the debt. Through the federal reserve it controls that as well. And the job of government isn’t to generate a profit. There’s just no good perfect analogy. A country should be carrying a debt load to some degree, it’s the ratio of debt to the size of the economy that’s important and could indicate when it’s getting to an unhealthy level. The national debt will never be paid off, and you’d never want it to be. Andrew Jackson found this out the hard way, very ironic he got put on money eventually given his hatred of central banks.

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/03/1024401554/the-time-the-us-paid-off-all-its-debt

US debt to gdp ratio is likely starting to get too high though and probably needs to be reined back some. Not a problem unique to the US after a lot of spending to prop things up during the pandemic. Best way to bring it under control is unwinding the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and increasing taxes on corporations, capital gains, and billionaires.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/debt-to-gdp-ratio-by-country

Yes that’s all true, I agree with you. And I hate how big companies pass on the cost of their waste to the public in this and so many other instances.

The linking it to a supposed coronocupia logo was the clickbait nonsense to drum up views though.

One, fruit of the loom bought that company after this event happened (were not owners during the event), they became liable by buying them. Two, that has nothing to do with a coronocupia being in the logo, there is no good evidence of a cornucopia ever being in the logo, that was just a tik toker driving up views by trying to link it to the more popular mandela effect thing. Removing a small section of a logo to cover up a chemical spill? That makes absolutely zero sense (not to mention it’s not exactly covered up, it’s on the epa website). But good on them for spreading awareness of chemical contamination by companies. Bad on them for doing it by making up nonsense about the logo to drum up views.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fruit-of-the-loom-cornucopia/

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It’s never had the cornucopia in the logo.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fruit-of-the-loom-cornucopia/

It’s pretty common for people’s brains to want one to be there for some reason though. My guess is because we’ve seen so many similar pictures of fruit or vegetables spilling out of a cornucopia that we misremember and merge similar pictures.

Europe is doing their best to catch up on some fronts. Keep at it, you’ll get there. We’ll continue sending fast food chains your way to help.

Musolini’s grand daughter sends her regards:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/31/mussolini-supporters-march-in-italy-while-meloni-minister-shuts-down-rave

This is real. It’s also one reason why laws against gay sex were on the books in many states until finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. Sometimes police would use the laws directly, but more commonly since gay sex was considered a criminal activity, landlords would use it as an excuse to deny lgbt people housing or evict them.

People say the content of the meme in all seriousness all the time too is mainly why, thinking the doctor is responsible for that cost. I didn’t want it to become an attack on OP though, not my intent. And maybe my comments will encourage more wholesome memes about evil health care administrators and insurance company execs instead, the true enemy, haha.

That’s true! But the mri costs are billed by the facility and hospital and generally have nothing to do with the doctor. Doubly the insurance and hospitals play games with each other, so the billed amounts end up being way more if not paying with insurance. I get bugged by memes and statements suggesting that doctors are the driver of the cost when it’s actually insurance companies, health care facilities, hospitals, medical equipment companies, and pharmaceuticals that are primarily driving all of this. Your doctor probably wanted to be sure there was nothing dangerous or abnormal. If it only showed arthritis there’s usually not much more that can be done besides pt and nsaids. Even the radiologist fee is a small part of the actual mri charge. Doctors just want to get people the tests and treatments that are indicated, but are the person people actually interact with so tend to take all the blame. I agree with you our health system is a mess.

Unfortunately doctors have no magic fixes for back pain related to muscular strains or degenerative disease/arthritis, which is most back pain. Treatments are basically physical therapy and nsaid medications. Surgery for low back pain from degenerative disease/arthritis alone has poor evidence with most randomized trials suggesting no difference. Even opiates fail to show any superiority over nsaids (like ibuprofen or naproxen) for back pain. Not saying don’t see your doctor about bad persistent back pain, there’s always edge cases or bizarre causes that may need addressing. But unfortunately no magic bullet for the vast majority of typical low back pain.

Review on surgery indications in back pain https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10107811/#mja251788-fea-0002

Randomized trial of opioid and nsiads in back pain, hip pain, and knee pain from degenerative disease/arthritis https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29509867/

Also, I know it’s a meme, but the billing code doctors use for even the most complicated of visits going over an hour and involving multiple potentially life threatening conditions or treatments isn’t anywhere close to $3000. Let alone a visit for routine back pain which wouldn’t qualify for anything like the highest billing codes.

You’re right it wasn’t a very scholarly article, that article was just the first thing that pops up on a Google search meant for people who weren’t familiar with Olestra, was mostly intended as a joke.

To take it more seriously though, a lot of those studies took place after a formulation change, so the later incarnations may have been better. It’s also possible that some of the reports came from people consuming large amounts of it at once. The studies I saw that didn’t show much difference all had a relatively small amount of chips ingested (see studies cited by article here https://www.acsh.org/news/1996/12/01/whats-the-story-olestra#3), for instance one of these studies was a double blind crossover with only 2 Oz of chips. I’m not aware of studies that would simulate downing a whole can of Pringles with Olestra at once. It was often included in snack foods that people don’t always moderate themselves on. Many of these studies, like the one you cite, were run by the manufacturer so important to be skeptical of the methods. They apparently started to fortify it with fat soluble vitamins to address concerns it could exacerbate deficiencies of those vitamins (besides basic science which should logically suggest this would happen, there’s evidence to back that up as well https://jn.nutrition.org/article/S0022-3166(23)01561-4/fulltext). The principle of every stool softener on the market now is that it’s something your body cannot absorb that will remain in the gi tract, eat enough Olestra or anything like it and it’ll have an impact on your stool consistency, just a matter of dosing. Animal studies also suggested it doesn’t cause weight loss and may even lead to increased weight. In the end it stopped being sold in the US altogether, because why go to all that trouble for something that probably doesn’t have any benefit.

It’s tough though, common symptoms are common. Many side effects you see on medications or things like Olestra may not even have anything to do with the product and were just coincidence or nocebo effect.

Or never had a run in with Olestra

https://www.cookist.com/olestra-the-embarrassing-story-behind-the-once-famous-fat-substitute/

Damn you fat free Pringles!

You’re right, I was clarifying sometimes with the eye you might perceive black as opposed to the brain where you generally won’t, but it may not be universally true. Sorry that happened though, strokes suck.

Ah, if it was truly blind in one eye that would be a retinal artery occlusion which is a stroke equivalent, just affecting the retina itself instead of the brain. That one you can see black sometimes. If it’s the visual brain centers in the occipital lobe, it’ll be half the vision in each eye, and that’s the one where field of view is just narrower and you don’t really perceive any dark area.

But as you said, point is this stuff is confusing, if any doubt, go to the hospital. Doctors would much rather a false alarm than people showing up too late to do anything.

Have them smile is very key for the face one. Faces aren’t perfectly symmetric. People often use the phrase facial droop which is a somewhat misleading phrase. Older individuals with looser skin and wrinkles there may be a “droop” but not otherwise. It’s really the lack of activation of the lower facial muscles on one side that helps you tell. Facial muscles help move the side of your mouth both up and down, and they both get weak in a stroke affecting the face. So unless someone has a lot of loose skin it’ll probably just look kind of flat. So again, have them smile, the inability to elevate the corner of the mouth or decreased ability to do so is key.

There’s also a lot of misleading graphics out there with upper facial weakness too, like inability to close the eye. That can happen with certain strokes, but it’s much more common for only the lower face muscles to be weak, with the eye and forehead muscles being fine.

Here’s a good example of what it’ll usually look like irl:

This is someone trying to smile, the side affected by the stroke would be the person’s right side (left side of the picture), not the side that’s “drooping” that’s actually the normal side.

It’s not uncommon. Especially strokes affecting the non dominant side of the brain, people often don’t realize there’s anything wrong. Takes other people around you to tell to you that something is wrong.

You shouldn’t feel bad, it could happen to anyone. Just depends on where the stroke is in the brain if someone is capable of recognizing it themselves or not.

An especially difficult one for people to detect on their own is strokes that are affecting visual centers of the brain. People expect they’ll see black or something. But you don’t see anything at all, field of vision is just narrower. It’s like, you don’t see black out the back of your head normally right? Usually if people notice anything it’s that they’re bumping or tripping into stuff on one side, or like driving and get in a car accident because they’re not perceiving one half of what’s in front of them.