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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: March 13th, 2023

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  • FirstCircle@lemmy.mltoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldMildly McInfuriating
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    2 months ago

    I haven’t eaten “fast” “food” in basically forever. It’s been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day’s eats that I could stash as-needed.

    These prices blow my mind. I can’t believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these “burgers” (or “meals” - just because there’s more than one item in the bag doesn’t make it a “meal” no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a “quarter pounder” here, I can get at least three big cans of “chunky”-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week’s-worth of breakfasts.

    Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you’re careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you’re already homeless of course, that’s gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

    I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity (“too busy shop and cook!”) are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand “treats” of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that’s what they “deserve”. I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you’re never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn’t seem to me like it’s going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn’t have to wait in line.



  • I use the one that’s built in to the Fastmail service. I have a custom domain just for aliases. The Fastmail alias-creation API is integrated with the Bitwarden app (which I use) so that makes creating new accounts (that use email addresses as usernames) on websites really easy. I also use Spamgourmet which is free, convenient, and has been around a very long time. No custom domains there, but they let you use a variety of their domains and they have some short ones which is nice, but I do find that they’re blocked pretty often, mostly by major mailing list services.















  • The AG’s press release is an infuriating read.

    [WA attorney general]Ferguson filed a lawsuit in February 2022, accusing Providence of billing and aggressively collecting money from low-income Washingtonians without determining if they qualified for financial assistance.

    Ferguson’s Consumer Protection investigation started in 2020, following complaints about collection practices at Swedish. It revealed Providence engaged in numerous practices between 2018 and 2022 that prevented patients from accessing financial assistance. Providence trained employees on aggressive and deceptive collection tactics. Their script included:

    • “Ask every patient every time” to pay outstanding medical costs;
    • “Don’t accept the first no;”
    • “If a patient declines the first request, ask for partial payment;”
    • "Use phrasing that signals to patients “payment is expected.”

    The lawsuit asserted that Providence knew many of its patients were likely eligible for financial assistance and not only failed to inform them, but also kept collecting payments from them. In fact, Providence sent thousands of patients it identified as “presumptively” qualified for financial assistance to debt collectors. Internal emails revealed Providence did this because it knew those patients were more likely to pay their bills if collection attempts continued.

    Moreover, starting in 2019, Providence sent thousands of Medicaid patients to debt collectors. Medicaid enrollees are among the lowest income Washingtonians, and are deemed eligible for financial assistance under Providence’s own policies. Providence staff caught the issue early and raised concerns to leadership. In fact, according to internal records, one employee warned: “We are sending the poor to bad debt and not treating them the same as other patients.” Providence did not correct the problem for more than two years.





  • selection bias

    He’s not doing a formal study that requires random sampling. This is his blog - opinions & thoughts.

    He makes the claim that nothing is done about right-wing protesters

    I’ve read the article and I don’t see him making this claim anywhere. The closest I can see to it is one of his opening sentences where he writes “actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law”.

    One of his topics here is the disproportionate punishments handed out to left-wing protesters (esp. peaceful ones). He talks about what he calls “extrajudicial punishments” that don’t even require convictions to cause massive harm to the protester. The UK gov’t seems to be pioneering these techniques to dissuade and crush public left-wing protest, but if the techniques are successful it’s just a matter of time before they’re employed here in the US too.

    Ragebait? I guess, but given that the topics are legitimately rage-inducing, that’s to be expected. While right-wing domestic terrorists in the US continue to ramp-up their threats, and acts, of violence against those they dislike (including insufficiently MAGA-loving elected officials and judges ), with very few of them being caught and punished (never mind having their terrorist networks broken-up), following the UK recipe, we have (source):

    Protests against the proposed training center — dubbed “Cop City” by opponents — have been going on for more than two years. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr obtained a sweeping indictment in August, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to target the protesters and characterizing them as ”militant anarchists.”

    Demonstrators and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have condemned the indictment and accused Carr, a Republican, of levying heavy-handed charges to try to silence a movement that has galvanized environmentalists and anti-police protesters across the country.