Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.
Civ IV? Wouldn't he have been like 8 when it came out?
It was Civ 6, he was a UI Programming intern on it from 2016 to 2017 while in college according to his LinkedIn.
Yeah VI - a typo in my roman numeral.
A thing I have noticed in the response to Mangione's arrest is that Alex Jones brain has emphatically taken over everywhere, regardless of politics. It's always a false flag, it's always a patsy, there's always some nefarious conspiracy afoot by "them." Your politics defines who "them" is, but it's always "them."
Occam's razor is for fools and rubes, there's something they're not telling us.
Jason Pargin had a good video about that I linked in another thread, about how people are so acculturated by crime being complex and dramatic in pop culture that they get confused when real life crime turns out to be stupid and random.
Seriously. I work in news, I hear about people getting caught every day.
It's generally very, very, very stupid. A lot less Agent 47, a lot more "he livestreamed himself committing the crime on Facebook."
Huh.
Pretty sure The Onion's not on the path forward.
Didn't he work in QA at Firaxis for Civ IV?
A game that encourages revolutions.
And global thermonuclear war. That Gandhi fella just will. not. stop.
Edit. Just to say that as a non-American the discourse on all of this has been absolutely fascinating.
Jon Lovett, Pod Save America transcript
So when I saw that the shooting had happened, I was like, okay, so here's what's gonna happen next. I just was waiting for it. There's gonna be a round of people celebrating it. There's gonna be a round of people criticizing the people for celebrating it. Then a round of people criticizing those people for not understanding the pain that people are experiencing in their lives. [...] The way you demonstrate you really understand what's broken in our healthcare system is by performing this lack of empathy. That's how you demonstrate you really get it. And if you don't have that lack of empathy, that means you don't really get it. All of that. I was just waiting for it, and of course it unfolded actually worse than I expected. It was all pretty ugly. There was a lot of earned vitriol... insurance companies, while some are better than others, plenty play games, even break the law to try to avoid paying. We have a cruel and broken system. That's what we have. [...]This insurance company exists and benefits from a broken system. I want to have a debate about the broken healthcare system and why we have this ridiculous system where half the people get insurance through work, which creates these incredibly convoluted and broken incentives where we have publicly traded companies that exist to create a difference between how much they pay out in health benefits versus how much they recoup in premiums. Their job is to maximize that differential. We built a whole system around it. That's f*cking stupid. That is terrible. That causes all kinds of harms. [...]
We're not gonna shoot our way to universal healthcare. And it ends up becoming a kind of vicious and negative and divisive debate. A debate we can win without needing to resort to this ridiculous, performative,... I don't know what you'd call it. Theatrics. Heroics. I don't know.
Seriously. I work in news, I hear about people getting caught every day.
It's generally very, very, very stupid. A lot less Agent 47, a lot more "he livestreamed himself committing the crime on Facebook."
I’m going to be really annoyed if the correct guy actually got caught in a McDonald’s a couple states away, still carrying the murder weapon. I would rather it be a conspiracy to show The Futility Of Fighting The System than a moron.
We're not gonna shoot our way to universal healthcare.
What's the alternative?
Piano wire?
Ultraprocessed Foods Account for More than Half of Calories Consumed at Home
More than half of calories consumed at home by US adults come from ultraprocessed foods. Ultraprocessed foods contain substances with little or no nutritional value, such as colorings, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and sweeteners. They are linked to heart disease, obesity and colorectal cancer.
We're not gonna shoot our way to universal healthcare.
We'd need to collect more data points before anyone would be able to make such a declarative statement.
I'm seeing many people falling back on "Don't hate the player, hate the game" as if the players are completely divorced from how the rules of the game came about. The system is bad, ignore the millions of dollars of lobbying to bend the system to our will.
Well that, and most multiplayer games ban blatant abusers of exploits to boot.
So can we permaban the healthcare industry leadership?
Ah, to repeat my favorite Douglas Adams quote: "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." Hopefully followed up by the obligatory "A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
It certainly was a lot of words to use to say "I want to be next."
Meanwhile the president of the casualty department of my auto insurance provider (USAA) sent an email around saying that loyal customers were getting a $125 credit on their account "for the holidays." Don't seem to recall getting that last holiday season. Can't imagine what might be different this year.
Probably was radicalized by playing Theme Hospital.
(Sir) Andrew Witty is British, I suspect that right now a lot of security minded people are telling him to head back home and stay here for the foreseeable future. It's OK though, I'm sure that he'll get permission to work from home.
He was, at least twice during my career, my ultimate boss. I'm kinda surprised at the lack of empathy to be honest, he was a key component in our Covid-19 vaccination program, was noted for lowering the price of the drugs his company made for third world countries and was a big driver in making anti-HIV meds both effective and affordable. I've had worse CEOs, but then again he mostly got ousted because that company wasn't making enough profit.
I guess even multi-millionaire CEOs have their price.
I was just talking with a former coworker whose wife died of an aneurism next to him in a hotel bed while he was at a conference. Upon discovering her state, he called 911 and the paramedics pronounced her dead.
United Healthcare refused to cover the paramedics.
$2000.
Honestly, the entire concept of for profit healthcare is an historical absurdity. The fact that we don't haven't abolished the entire practice is mindboggling.
Congressman Claims Drones Over New Jersey Were Launched by Iranian ‘Mothership’
“I’ve gotten to know people and from very high sources, very qualified sources, very responsible sources, I’m going to tell you the real deal,” Van Drew said, prefacing his remarks on Fox News while talking with Harris Faulkner.
“Iran launched a mothership, probably about a month ago, that contains these drones. That mothership is off the east coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones—this is everything that we can see and hear. Again these are from high sources, I don’t say this lightly.”
Rep. Van Drew then goes on to admit there was a “probability” whatever these flying objects are could’ve been American, either as hobbyists or U.S.-government run, but he insisted, “we know it’s not our own government.”
They're going to go with Trump. The Dear leader must be appeased.
Give that man a dollar!
I was just talking with a former coworker whose wife died of an aneurism next to him in a hotel bed while he was at a conference. Upon discovering her state, he called 911 and the paramedics pronounced her dead.
United Healthcare refused to cover the paramedics.
$2000.
Honestly, the entire concept of for profit healthcare is an historical absurdity. The fact that we don't haven't abolished the entire practice is mindboggling.
We don't have enough adjustors. Give it time.
I was just talking with a former coworker whose wife died of an aneurism next to him in a hotel bed while he was at a conference. Upon discovering her state, he called 911 and the paramedics pronounced her dead.
United Healthcare refused to cover the paramedics.
$2000.
Honestly, the entire concept of for profit healthcare is an historical absurdity. The fact that we don't haven't abolished the entire practice is mindboggling.
Sadly that is SOP across insurers to not cover ambulance rides because ambulance services can't afford the "in-network" rates (which is just further evidence of how messed up our system is).
What's even more f*cked up? The insurer (Aetna, in my case. Not sure about UHC) would actually cover the cost! All you have to do is call their patient advocacy department to let them know you were balance billed and then they covered the difference. It wasn't a difficult process, but it's not exactly advertised. Completely ridiculous.
Trump Backtracks On Campaign Pledge To Bring Down Grocery Prices
“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” Trump told Time in an hourlong interview for its “Person of the Year” feature. “You know, it’s very hard.”Trump is right that it’s very hard to achieve across-the-board price reductions. Curbing inflation is only a matter of slowing the rate of price increases — actual economy-wide price drops typically don’t happen outside of a massive economic downturn.
Nevertheless, Trump repeatedly told voters during the campaign that electing him president would cause prices to tumble.
He lied, he lied through his teeth and every person who voted for him knew better but decided they didn't care.
He lied, he lied through his teeth and every person who voted for him knew better but decided they didn't care.
As incomprehensible as it seems, I think most of these people don't know better. They're absolute dumbasses who truly believe Trump will fix everything.
What I find infuriating is that they will completely buy into the upcoming gaslighting that things are actually going well now, excuses for why Trump can't improve the things he promised, and of course somehow blaming the Democrats for anything wrong despite them having no power now. None of these people ever display the ability to grasp that they were wrong about something, that they've been repeatedly misled, and maybe need to reevaluate their information sources.
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