Insurance is about compensation for loss, and that’s it.
That’s certainly not true of medical insurance. Preventative care is part of the whole package. In fact, certain preventative care is encouraged. Health insurance companies are more than happy to pay for UTIs, for instance, because they’re so much cheaper than pregnancies.
It really is the most selfish generation that exists.
It’s selection bias. Nothing about this generation is meaningfully more selfish than any other.
We just had an enormous population cull after decades of War on Crime/Drugs/Terrorism that chewed up the Evil Socialists and left us with Randroid Libertarians holding the lion’s share of wealth
People seem to totally forget how the old people of today were the young people of years passed.
And the environmental movement didn’t start yesterday
I don’t work at Amazon, but we have a similar system. I’ve gone all-in on a couple of subordinates saying they deserved a 4/5 for this or that work. And because they were new-hires, I eventually got the grades punched through after a bunch of hemming and hawing.
Also advocated for my own higher-than-average marks on a few occasions. And just arguing the case gave me the grade as often as not. If everyone in the department had been as stubborn and insistent, I don’t know that they’d have given the whole floor these grades. But the squeaky wheel…
I’ve got a few friends who work at Amazon, and while the story certainly sounds embellished and a bit too “just-so”, the corporate attitude of make-work to justify a promotion even when its a waste of time and resources rings true as a bell.
Did this guy actually oversee a fully transition to a new service and waste a bunch of internal time and money for a system that’s sub-optimal by any conceivable measure? Idk, maybe. If he’d just written “Twitter” instead of “Amazon”, I’d have taken it at face value no problem.
Did this guy author an overly-complex plan as part of his promotional material, get it vetted and reviewed and rubber stamped by a bunch of friendly higher-ups because they wanted to justify his promotion, and then stuck on a shelf marked “Maybe we’ll do this in 2029 if we’re not busy with something else”? Equally likely.
Does Amazon have a bunch of bread and butter break-fix work they could be dedicating staff to, rather than chasing the next digital White Whale so they can feel cutting edge? Yeah, no shit. Absolutely.
The bloc’s total defense spending in 2024 exceeds China’s by about one-and-a-half times, and is more than three times as high as Russia’s military budget. Only the United States has higher military expenditures. The figure represented 1.9% of the bloc’s GDP, and a 19% increase over the previous year.
Yehaw.
I mean, the first part seems to be the root of the problem. By the time you’re talking about booting this player, the game is already on life-support.
I’ve had games disintegrate because of out-of-game beef between players. But that signaled the collapse of the whole social group, not just the D&D table. So much of D&D is just an excuse to hang out with your friends. If your friends hate each other, there’s not a lot about hanging out that’s attractive.
I always see these “how do I ditch this annoying player I absolutely hate”.
I rarely see anyone consider why this person was in the group to begin with. Is this the younger sibling or always-around cousin of the DM / game host? The best friend of a person you don’t want to lose from the table? The next door neighbor you roped in specifically because you wanted more than two other people at the table? The kid at the comic book shop you invited in because they were giving you puppy-dog eyes for weeks prior? Someone you otherwise enjoy being friends with except when they’re playing this particular board game?
I mean, yeah. Its trivially easy to ostracize or freeze out a person from a social group. But there’s usually a reason this person was included. And friendly players / skilled DMs can often find a way to make the game fun for more people. Once your solution to a frustrating player is to invent an elaborate way to boot them (in my experience) the table doesn’t last very long afterwards.
Turns out AI was a lie and what you were really communicating with is tens of thousands of these guys
Maduro’s grip on power relies fundamentally on electoral manipulation.
All the “Maduro cheated to win the election” stuff comes from the same people insisting Biden cheated to win in 2020 and Obama cheated in 2008.
Following the contested 2024 election, Maduro launched “Operation Tun Tun” (Operación Tun Tun), a brutal crackdown described by experts as “state terrorism”.
Were these experts affiliated with Elliot Abrams?
Conservatives do love self-owning with the anti-Castro rhetoric
Listening to people describe him as an anti-war president is so fucking gross
War with Venezuela
Intervention in Nigeria
Bankrolling Gaza Genocide
ICE pogroms at home
Navy circling Taiwan like a school of sharks
Ongoing conflict with Iran and Yemen
How many wars can the US juggle at once?
Eh, if you run away from fascism instead of fighting against it, it will simply eventually find you as it spreads like a disease.
The goal of war is not to die for your country but to make the other fucker die for his.
The Ukrainian military has done a far better job getting it’s people killed than killing fascists. There’s no benefit to getting dragged into an army that won’t train you, arm you, or deploy you to maximum beneficial effect.
You can’t ask bullies politely to stop making you suffer, because they never respected you in the first place.
This isn’t a schoolyard brawl, it’s a high tech killing field. If a neighborhood bully fires a cruise missile at you, there’s no benefit to standing your ground.
People care. That’s the truly bizarre thing.
They’re deeply invested in Evil Foreign Brown Man as someone they can hate and Wise Righteous Western Liberal is someone they can cheer for.
… yes.