LA Banker

Hi, I'm Felix. I'm an eng lead working on Claude. I love watching people take flight and do things they never thought possible. We often describe that as "being more ambitious" when using AI, which is tricky advice to follow. I wrote a tutorial: felixrieseberg.com/how-to-be…

I am shocked and horrified by what I witnessed at a New York City hospital yesterday. Suffering patients packed like sardines in the emergency room hallways. A severely exhausted woman vomiting violently, with other patients just inches away from her. She stayed there for hours, undergoing her full exams in front of everyone. A patient with blunt trauma to the face, swollen and in pain, lying in a gurney at the edge of the hallway as people rushed back and forth past them. An injured woman in her 90s, dazed, confused - being examined by doctors while surrounded on all sides by strangers and sick people. Nurses and doctors with no choice but to have people’s most private conversations right there in the open. We all learned about one man’s Crohn’s disease, and exactly where on his body he had rashes. We heard a woman’s entire history of neurological issues. A man discussed his STDs out loud. Patients were told they needed to be admitted, but there were no available rooms. Not today. Hopefully tomorrow. So they stayed in that overcrowded room, packed in as far as you could see, forced to suffer in that environment with no idea how many more hours they’d be there, many trying to sleep sitting upright in a chair, with no bed. Dignity? Nowhere to be found. And then something happened that I will never forget for the rest of my life. A doctor approached a woman who was having cognitive issues and told her that her imaging had revealed a tumor in her brain. “I believe in being very truthful, and to let the prayers and the planning with your doctors begin as soon as possible." I was standing three feet away, and turned away as I started to cry. That woman did not deserve to have a room full of strangers witness the worst moment of her life. Yet amid absolutely inhuman chaos, the shining light was the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. Overworked, exhausted, stretched past anything reasonable - yet still taking their time to make each patient feel as dignified and cared for as possible in an impossible scene. I know they themselves are shocked by the situation they’ve been forced into, but you’d never know it. The level of love they showed, the professionalism, the humanity in the middle of all that suffering… These men and women are the best of America - and we’ve put them in environments that are truly incomprehensible. I kept thinking about how we possibly got here. How has this become the norm in America? I kept thinking about how many freedoms we’re afforded in this country. How many luxuries we’ve built. How good life can be here. And yet when it comes to what matters most, our healthcare, the thing we absolutely need to be there for us at our most vulnerable, it feels broken beyond repair. I don’t know whose fault this is, and I don’t know what the solution might be, or if there is even one at this point. On this particular day, I was just accompanying someone, only five hours in that environment. But to the doctors, nurses, hospital workers, and the patients who have to live this reality, all I can say is: I’m sorry. You deserve better. We all deserve better.