I’m with you.

Never have I needed to work so hard to advocate for myself to get the care I needed as when I was with UHC.

By comparison, this year has held two major surgeries for me, neither expected, and my current insurer just shrugged, asked ONCE for proof of medical necessity, and paid the bill.

Also, let’s not forget the breach at a UHC subsidiary in recent months that brought down pharma payment systems for weeks…

And here I thought orange just pulled this out of his ass to malign immigrants.

This is a damned shame to say the least but I’m as guilty as anyone.

My own ostrich coping mechanism has been long term personal goals and wondering what I’ll do when I can no longer work and SS is gone.

It’s put me in a shitty state of mind lll admit, and I have no excuses. Overwhelmed is a statement of fact, not an excuse.

Particularly because citizens will not take those jobs.

At 20, a job was a job.

Me at 40+, physically incapable of doing that work - much less at the requisite speed.

Dammit, the one positive of suffering through summer temps is fresh produce.

While we can’t say for sure, I’d certainly be wargaming some possible outcomes and how to respond to them.

Wouldn’t surprise me if disability for mental health reasons was high on the list of things to cut. It’s effectively an “invisible” disability, which makes it somewhat easier to cut while limiting loss of political capital.

I wish you all the best getting through the upcoming difficult years. You’re a genuinely good person for caring and thinking far enough ahead to realize the question needs to be asked.

For other folks reading this, now is an excellent time to review your payroll deductions and ensure you’re paying for private disability coverage - both short and long term. It’s one of the least expensive ways to hedge against the crazy of the next four years.

TBH, I’m mildly surprised that this is a recent change. Signed binaries are neither new technology nor all that difficult.

Compared to all of the other crazy things that government does, this seems like relatively low hanging fruit.

PS don’t give our orange leader to be (or congress) any ideas…

• this is terrifying.
• This does not sound legally permissible, see posse comitatus.
• Members of the military have an obligation to refuse illegal orders. I am neither in the military nor a lawyer, so I can’t go too deep on that.

Even if we see (likely) “act first, let it wind through the courts later,” I’d expect there to be a substantial number of refusals.

If memory serves, the first version of the administration used “acting” department heads with some regularity.

If they are “acting,” there isn’t a confirmation hearing because no one has yet been nominated to fill the role.

I’ve worked side by side with RU devs who were both personable and damned competent. Never were their tech skills in doubt, and I retain quite a bit of respect for those individuals.

I’d not do the same today explicitly because of the political and compliance implications. It’s unfortunate, but necessary.

IOS presently, partially to simplify de googling.

Configurable, though, to use many other engines and results.

Lots of overlap, but there are a couple other indexes out there.

What Google password?

I don’t intend to browse RMS-style, but I have zero need of a Google account, nor of the major search engines directly.

I just add layers between myself and that particular company. I still can get their data, but without the creep factor.

Mostly.

It’s an imperfect solution, but I’m more comfortable with access by proxy than direct access.

Been looking for this sort of device for my Pantech laser.

The cartridge is good for 1,600 pages - no more, no less.

All well and good, they’re cheap, except… the vast majority of my printing is in A5 size (roughly half-letter, or exactly half-A4).

Those half pages count just like any other page against the total, and I get shorted by the better part of 800 pages or so.

Company has low-key software trainers - a ton of information to convey, but they mostly embrace and gently corral the inevitable side convos you get in a Teams room of thirty very confused people.

Some of us were more vocal than others and a handful were less pleasant. During a brief silence, as a woman is about to ask a valid question, we ALL hear,

“Oh, there’s Jennifer, running her fat fucking mouth again! (Pause) (gasp from speaker)”

Guy wasn’t getting it anyway, but he didn’t last the rest of the morning.

There were 29 of us in that room, two years ago. Now there are six of us remaining. Mouthy guy above is the only one I know left involuntarily.

18, sex in the stock room, didn’t get caught.

Even had a handful of more standard dates afterwards, always with sex.

No negative outcome, fortunately. Except for the really damn cold stockroom floor, but that was her problem not mine…

Think we just lost interest, I moved onto another job, that was that.

Content? Hardly.

Disinformation. Lies. Etc.

I benefit from an orphan drug, and the R&D was most definitely subsidised by the public purse.

My insurance pays a few grand a month for it.

The mfg coupon covers most of the rest, minus a copay.

This is the second iteration of the original drug. The first hasn’t meaningfully fallen in price and only the original company can manufacture and distribute the generic even under the name of competitors.

There was no breakthrough in the second iteration, and the logic to solve the “problem” they solved was straightforward. So now I pay more, for an anecdotally less effective version that addresses a risk irrelevant to me but present in the original.

There is yet a third iteration on the way.

Shock revelations:

• pharma companies are greedy and will double dip against both government subsidies and patients/insurance at every opportunity.
• XX Pharma didn’t pay for the original R&D, my gov did.
• if one replaces Na with a/several similar elements, one still ends up with a salt, often resulting in a drug variant that “doesn’t affect blood pressure” and offers no other real benefits, nor risks.
• Clinical trials for said alternative salt are broadly leas expensive than for the original. That does not result in lower prices.

Nationalise pharma research, if not the manufacturers.

Also, generics are often manufactured in countries with, shall we say, fewer controls and regulations. Know who makes those pills and where. If you can’t stomach the FDA reports on that manufacturer, find a pharmacy who will sell you something else…

Probably cheap at the price compared to burning Jet A by the tens or hundreds of gallons.

Not that I am unconcerned about the resource usage. Lesser of two evils.

At one time, Reddit (or at least the core server) was open source. Statistically, it’s relatively likely that someone, somewhere forked and is maintaining that code for their own purposes to this day, but I’m not actively aware of any examples.

If someone has been maintaining a fork, I’d love to see the old comment database imported into it and made available, though I don’t know offhand what license either the code or the comments were released under.

A FOSS Reddit, without the chaos that took over America during the presidential administration installed in 2016, and branching from there, would be an interesting point of diversion to say the least.

Edit: quickie DDG search found me one fork archived in 2023 and a further form updated a year or so ago. That’s recent enough the damn thing just might build with a little work.

2023 fork of open source reddit

~2024 fork

I’m sure there are others…

Generally? Well within the executive power / administrative law of any given state as noted by BlueFalcon below.

Practically? I’d expect it to be quite a struggle. For licensed professions in general (doctors, real estate, insurance, hairdressers, etc.) most or all states ask a question to the effect of “Has your license for profession ever been suspended or revoked in any other state?”. It may or may not be an automatic disqualifier, but even if not it’s an uphill battle.

It prevents the real estate agent who stole someone’s earnest money from upping stakes to the next state and getting licensed, but since the standards for suspending/revoking licenses vary widely by state I lean towards believing that perhaps it should be a factor, and perhaps the state board of profession should meet to review the application, but previous disciplinary action in some other state is in no way an absolute statement about someone’s fitness to practice in their chosen field.