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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • Yes, but to clarify: the time constraints are imposed by for-profit healthcare businesses trying to optimize billable time because insurance will only reimburse for so much time, rather than being imposed by the insurance companies directly. (It’s generally not quite as silly in the non-profit sector.) I work in healthcare in the US: we all hate how it works. The system sucks and it interferes with the quality of care that can be provided, leaving patients worse off just so that greedy can be fed. It’s just asinine that anyone who has no medical knowledge/training is making decisions about how patient care can be implemented, especially where there’s a profit motive involved. We really need to pivot to single-payer or national healthcare system, and abolish for-profit ownership of hospitals.




  • Except a 401k gets taxed on withdrawals, potentially at a higher tax rate than you were paying when you invested some or even most of it. Also, we can’t invest our whole salary into a 401k, as there’s a hard limit on contributions. Whereas a business never gets taxed on the assets they invested in to offset their profits (except maybe state/local property tax, but then they get to deduct that from federal tax…), plus they get to deduct the depreciation of said asset for years going forward.




  • In my hyper religious, Southern Baptist upbringing, I often heard Christians say that Christianity is not a religion. The mental gymnastics employed to explain this position were varied. Most often it was “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship [with God]”, or something along the lines of “Christianity isn’t a religion because it’s true”.

    “Religion” in general was thus deemed a bad thing, because it was a term used to encapsulate all the other (and thus false) faith-belief-philosophy systems that were used by Satan to lead the world away from God. It bears noting that Catholicism and other major denominations always all fell under that umbrella of “other”.




  • May or may not be relevant. Statistically, people with illnesses like schizophrenia are no more likely to commit violent crimes than the general population (but are more likely to be victims of violent crimes). There are documented cases of people with schizophrenia killing or commiting other violent acts in response to delusions, but it’s usually in an act that they perceive as self-defense rather than being driven by malice or desire to harm. I.e., it’s generally more like “I killed my dad because he was going to kill me” rather than “I went out and murdered some random women because no women like me.”



  • Last house I rented, when I moved in the dryer lint trap and its housing were so jammed full of lint I could have made a blanket from it. It was astonishing. I don’t think the prior tenants knew it needed to be cleaned ever. I honestly wonder how the dryer wasn’t broken and no fire had started.

    The HVAC filter had a solid inch thick cake of dust and dog fur.



  • Private browser mode in many browsers disables plugins by default, and also doesn’t do anything to stop trackers or data collection. All private mode does is keep your activity private from others who also have access to your device (e.g. family members, roommates), by not saving browser history/cookies/etc.

    Also, VPN’s can be helpful, but there are ways to “fingerprint” individual users behind VPN’s by how they move their mouse and click speed and what websites they visit etc… I imagine plugins like AdNauseum could help with that. It’s a clever idea, I’ll have to check it out - thanks!