Digital Exhaust #179
Resident unions and voodoo wearables
Here are a few interesting things I found this week.
Organized residents
Resident unions are growing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Loved this quote: “When there’s extra work, the burden falls on us.”
I’ll support them on burdensome paperwork and some of the garden variety BS. But that’s about it. Call me a crusty scab, but medicine is hard work. To be any good you have to put in a lot of hours. And it doesn’t end with residency.
Voodoo wearables
Watch what happens when you take apart a wearable advertised to promote lymph drainage, improve blood circulation, and liquify fat cells.
Maybe I don’t have my eyes open, but this is the first voodoo wearable that I’ve seen. Apparently, nothing is beyond the reach of those looking to exploit the desperate.
How to list an AI as author
As papers are being submitted with ChatGPT as co-authors, journals are scrambling to figure out what to do. This ‘what do we do?’ question is playing itself out in all layers of society.
The Uterine Monologs
The latest entry into the medical humanities: gynecology poetry.
MD means machine doctor
Via Eric Topol in
, this may be the best long-form piece on the current state of AI in medicine.
7 Points from the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference
Over 150 professors from universities gathered at Stanford recently to discuss the academia’s trend to suppress free speech and free inquiry. Points summarized by
Twitter’s Sad People
Loved this about all the tortured souls torturing us with their threats to leave Twitter: THERE ARE ONLY two kinds of tweeters: winners and losers. The winners are still on the platform, winning. The losers … well, they've lost. They are the Sad People for whom Twitter was a second home. They found influence there, and validation. Now they must, per their tribal allegiances, go.
What ever happened to Mastadon?
2022 Physician Specialty Data Report from the AAMC
New data on the state of the medical workforce from the AAMC. Lots of good nuggets here. More women are entering the profession. Some 37% of active physicians in the U.S. were women in 2021, up from about 36% in 2019, and about 47% of residents and fellows were women.
Don’t fear the handshake
Via the Atlantic, and interesting read on the changing nature of the handshake. Post-COVID.
How often to clean your towels.
Every three days, apparently, according to Wirecutter.
Hemingway on listening
“When people talk, listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out, know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice.” — Ernest Hemingway