Nah.

Iâ(TM)m 51. Iâ(TM)ve had health insurance continuously for 35 years and have used it exactly ZERO TIMES.

I am self pay. For everything but true life threatening emergencies, which Iâ(TM)ve had zero.

Even the ER is cheaper when negotiated self pay.

My urologist is stunned that I pay $85 for his visits. Self pay. Including labs. My colleague goes to the same urologist and his insurance pays $550 for the same visit and naturally it comes out of his deductible lol.

Insurance is a scam. All insurance is legal gambling and gamblers never win.

I hope the airlines lose and have to spend billions of dollars.
The customers would only get a small amount and the lawyers for the plaintiffs get the other billions but at least the airlines would be out an amount that makes them think next time.

The gap between "home" and "pro" users is the reason. "Home" must - by definition - include the lowest of the "low information users", and - man, do they get low these days. I'm serious. IT is now at a point, where it's everywhere and for everyone, and the level of competency between people varies WILDLY. Orders of magnitude between people. People that are centuries and milennia apart in self-domestication, IQ, cultural norms and cognitive development are now living together on the same block. And all of them have to use IT, which of course cannot be the same IT for all of them.

That said, you MUST have seen the reboot and restart notifications of Windows, Teams, Edge etc. in a business environment on screens of other people. High-information IT users, even. They just don't restart their program for the security update - ever. Literally all of them will tell you they've "got this big project due tomorrow for Mr. Kawasaki" and they're afraid of their Japanese management techniques and so they can't update "right now" and "right now" means "forever" and "I will update later" means "I will update never before the sun burns out".

So yeah, you HAVE to force updates on the average person. Unless the new update gives them a few new emojis for their favorite rainbow religion or other treats drip fed to them, they're not going to install them.

If you never encountered users that are this resistant to upgrades, good for you and say hello to the guys at the lab. But everyone not a guy AND in a lab will not update their stuff and they get the forced update. Sorry. It's how it is.

... now they are ultra-expensive pets. This is the prime driver behind birthrate decline. On top of that comes hormonal birth control that _significantly_ alters women's perception of men. Add to that social media that amps said perception of options, self-worth and alternate reality 10x and you've got the perfect storm of an aloof late-stage decadent society on the brink of dying out.

Curiously enough there are historic records of exactly this happening throughout human history, with astonishingly similar effects in society, like rising property prices, disenfranchising of mid and low-status mem, whore becoming a desired choice career for women and dissolution of sex/gender definitions. Rome, Maya culture, Weimar Republic and some vanished societies in far east Asia are examples from recorded history that show similar trajectories.

The "West" will collapse and some other society will take its place. If we don't all die out completely from some global Ecological Tilt brought about by climate change and pollution that is.

Supply and demand dictate this is exactly the case.

If something is valuable to everyone, it should only be accessible to those who have enough saved value to acquire it.

The poor fucked themselves. My parents are poor but worked hard so I wouldn't be.

Being compensated for it means it wonâ(TM)t get wasted and will always have a fair valuation.

Compensation is as cooperative as it comes because nobody can hoard it.

Now. You know. Where. James Tiberius Kirk. Developed his. Speech defect.

Americans don't WALK across their cities because

You know why.

You know exactly why.

The entire urban landscape of the USA can be explained by a very very very simple thing. It started on Dec. 18th, 1865 or much earlier, when they all were brought to the US in the first place.

Everything and everyone wants to get away from them, paying any price they can or driving as far as they need to.

So the big news here is that all the cool media players spy on their users.

But does mpv? Users are obviously demanding this feature, or else these stats wouldn't be available. How hard is it, to add code to betray the user and tell someone else how fast they watch videos? Free Software just doesn't keep up. All it does it work perfectly, time after time, until the user dies of boredom from the lack of drama.

I know some on the right decided to make up some ludicrous definition at one point that right vs left was "freedom vs tyranny" and it looks like you've bought into that

Uhr? No, to me, the essence is slow, careful changes vs fast, possibly-not-thought-out, experimental changes. If I had to do it in 4 words, they would be "degree of risk aversion."

That is how Trump appears to be the furthest-left president in US history, and how even FDR (and LBJ, etc) look relatively right-wing compared to him. Comrade Trump is breaking things which had good, proven track records. No conservative (or even centrist or lightly-left) person would do that.

Well, if your government is a shitshow, it just means your people need to vo--

Sigh. Why, yes, I am an American. Why do you a--

[hangs head in shame] Ok, fair enough. I'll shut the fuck up now.

When I hired people (as developers), the last question of the interview was "How many gas stations are there in the United States?"

The answer I wanted to hear was a quick, succinct, "I don't know".

IMHO "Hmm.. let me think about how to estimate that" would also be a great [start to] an answer. (Though now that I think of, we have The Internet now, so "lemme google that" might also be a pretty good answer.)

First time?

It's fascinating that there are so many people acting like this is their first taste of Maintenance Hell.

Learn from it. After some poor choices and orphanage heartbreak, I eventually had a last time, swore NEVER AGAIN, and I haven't looked back. I'm sure there are legit gripes about Linux but the one gripe I know nobody will ever have, is "they fucked me." It's never hostile, at all. It never tries to not work. The code isn't making any decisions, ever, which would translate into English as "fuck what the owner of this computer wants." Never. It's always on your side. Always. And to me, that's what I consider to be "normal" now.

The absurdity of recent versions of MS Windows requiring TPM is right there in your face. That's a deliberate defect, making it hostile for no fucking reason that any customer ever asked for.

They hate you. And you want more from those people? Really? You must hate you too.

If you ever change your mind, there's a way out.

Always a safe bet, even when bought refurbished. I rely on ThinkPads to this very day.

Every day, some "immediate family member" sexually abuses their children. So that point is quite moot.

Children are not the property of their parents and the parents shall not be allowed to reanimate the dead, either.

Would you be ok with the parents reanimating their dead adult children, nudify them and earn money via OnlyFans? No? WHY THE HELL NOT?

Same thing.

Our society is predicated upon the notion that we honor and respect the dead. No one has the right to change that.