Contriving

This means I'm privy to lots of people's financial information.

Do not let the vehicle people drive guide your thinking about their financial status or place in life! If I had to guess at a percentage I'd say 50% of people applying to rent an apartment or house are driving vehicles where their vehicle loan payment is over 50% of their take home income.

Insanity!

Not-CGI time lapse of tadpole cell division taken through a custom-designed microscope.

There are around 25 million tons of spiders on the earth and, annually, they consume animal prey amounting to the weight of all human beings now alive on the earth (400-800 million tons)

(explanation here: http://w4t.pw/27)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKXCBlUPJqM

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

I guess you shouldn't just accept your doctor's treatment at face value.

When you visit a doctor, you probably assume the treatment you receive is backed by evidence from medical research. Surely, the drug you’re prescribed or the surgery you’ll undergo wouldn’t be so common if it didn’t work, right?

it is distressingly ordinary for patients to get treatments that research has shown are ineffective or even dangerous. Sometimes doctors simply haven’t kept up with the science. Other times doctors know the state of play perfectly well but continue to deliver these treatments because it’s profitable — or even because they’re popular and patients demand them. Some procedures are implemented based on studies that did not prove whether they really worked in the first place. Others were initially supported by evidence but then were contradicted by better evidence, and yet these procedures have remained the standards of care for years, or decades.

It's weird how difficult it is to even question what your doctor tells you to do, but it is difficult.

The first person the article talks about googled some stuff about treatment of coronary artery disease while he was sitting in the ER. The article notes that the reason he questioned his doctors (wrongly) suggested treatment was that the man was "unusually self-possessed".