It’s largely because the “tens of thousands” is usually a result of being uninsured. And if you’re uninsured, it’s usually because you’re unemployed. And lenders tend to get squirmy at the idea of giving a loan to anyone who hasn’t been fully employed since the day they were born.

There was actually a rule implemented by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shortly after the pandemic, to prevent medical debt from impacting your credit history. Because lots of Americans were suddenly finding themselves in an awful job market with tons of medical debt from being sick. But last year, the fifth circuit court of appeals (the one that presides over Texas and Louisiana, and which is stacked with conservative judges as part of the Southern Strategy) voided the rule and allowed medical debt to appear on credit reports again. The ruling from the conservative court also prohibited the CFPB from implementing similar rules in the future.

It depends on the situation. Emergency rooms are required by law to stabilize emergency medical issues, regardless of the patient’s potential ability to pay. This is because there used to be a big issue with ERs dumping non-paying patients. If the hospital didn’t think a patient could pay, security would literally wheel them across the street, then just leave them there to figure their own shit out.

ERs run on triage, (and lots of people go to the ER for things which could be handled by an urgent care or family doctor instead), which means wait times entirely depend on your specific situation. Mildly upset stomach? You’ll probably be waiting at least a few hours, especially if it’s a busy night with lots of more urgent patients. Chest pains with a history of heart disease? You’ll have EKG leads stuck to you before you’re even finished telling the intake nurse what your issue is.

And the big key thing is that ERs are required to stabilize an emergency medical issue. They aren’t required to provide follow-up care, long-term support, etc… If you show up with a cut that needs stitches, they’ll stitch you up. But they’ll tell you to follow up with your regular doctor to make sure it’s healing properly, and to remove the stitches in a few weeks. Don’t have a regular doctor because you’re uninsured? Good luck, hope it doesn’t get infected, then maybe chew some Tylenol and remove the stitches in your bathroom.

The thing that really got her attention was me pointing out I can’t make a gallon of gas by myself, buy I can make a kilowatt of electricity with stuff I have lying around my house/yard.

Yeah, the Technology Connections video on solar panels vs ethanol production (growing corn to turn into ethanol to add to gasoline) was honestly a great tool for convincing people who simply never bothered to think critically about it. I don’t even need to get them to watch the video, I simply paraphrase some of the arguments he makes.

Kind of a “I’m going to shoot you in the head but I feel bad about it” sort of thing.

Not sure if you were making a reference, but one of Israel’s most distinctive propaganda tactics is literally called Shooting And Crying. Basically, get your former IDF soldiers to act all sad about the atrocities they had to commit, so the public focus stays on sympathy instead of the war crimes and genocides they committed. Nobody feels good about kicking a crying person while they’re down, so it’s a way to shunt blame and avoid being held accountable for your own actions.

Basically, divert the blame onto the shadowy and faceless “they”. They ordered me to do bad things. They put me in situations where I was forced to make impossible choices. They forced me to struggle to survive. They are the reason I had to do all of those awful things. Because “they” is a faceless amorphous entity that can’t be held accountable and can’t defend itself against allegations. Meaning “they” is easy to shift blame onto as long as I remain a sympathetic victim in the public’s mind. If I keep crying, I never actually have to apologize for my war crimes, because they should be the ones apologizing instead.

All Trudeau needs to do is implement a reciprocal tariff that also increases by like amount. Boom, now you have an infinite tariff loop and a single transaction in either direction is enough to create infinite GDP.

Checkmate, economists.

Yeah, they even employed weavers to make the memory units, because it was easier than training factory workers to deal with such thin wire.

Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.

Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.

Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).

So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.

And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.

Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?

The “AR” in “AR-15” doesn’t stand for “Assault Rifle” though. It stands for “Armalite-15”. Armalite being the company that originally developed the modular firing mechanism that we all know today. Technically speaking, the only part that is legally classified as a gun is the actual firing mechanism that Armalite developed; Everything else (like the barrel, stock, and handle) is just add-ons and accessories.

So yeah, calling it an AR-15 assault rifle would be correct. Though there’s also the debate on what actually constitutes an “assault rifle”, as people seem to just use a “you’ll know it when you see it” rule for identifying assault rifles.

“Small government” has been redefined by conservatives. When a democrat says small government, they mean they don’t want regulation in every part of their personal life.

When a conservative says they want small government, they mean they want a government big enough to oppress minorities, but too small to ensure those minorities have their rights respected.

That mentality is also largely why conservatives get so up in arms about the norm being shifted, and new things getting normalized. Because the conservative mindset is entirely focused on conforming to the norm, and excluding those outside of the norm. So if the norm changes, they believe they need to change to fit the new norm or they’ll suddenly find themselves excluded.

It’s why they get so upset about minor shit like blue hair or piercings; As they begin to see it normalized, they begin to think “will I be forced to get piercings or dye my hair just to conform?” They explicitly support changes to the norm that already confirm their worldview and habits, because that further entrenches them as the protected norm. But they rabidly oppose the normalization of anything that doesn’t fit.

So if you’re a white married hetero couple with two kids, that’s what you’ll support. No divorces allowed, because we’re married and can’t normalize divorce. No blue hair allowed, because we’re Wonder Bread white and have never dyed our hair, and therefore can’t allow anything but natural hair colors. No abortions allowed, because childfree couples are a threat to our norm. No gay marriage, because we’re hetero and can’t shift the norm away from that. No drug decriminalizing, because the occasional bottle of wine has always been enough for us and we can’t normalize anything else. Et cetera, et cetera…

Came to the comments specifically to see if anyone else noticed it. Glad to see it wasn’t just me.

I’d even be okay with platforms like Youtube receiving a portion of that fine for having to be in the middle of the bullshit copyright claims that were overturned because

YouTube is legally obligated to take the content down as soon as they receive the DMCA notice or else YouTube will become liable for potential damages. YouTube’s automated copyright claim system is inherently broken, but that’s a symptom of DMCA, not the cause.

It’s because it breaks all the nice extra functionality of iMessage. iMessage is closer to Discord chats; You can do things like react to messages, send live emojis, spoiler/emphasize text, edit/delete sent messages, see when someone is typing, see read receipts, automatically send check-ins when you arrive at a destination, draw doodles, send full quality media, share galleries natively, etc… But as soon as someone with an android joins the group chat, all of that goes out the window and you’re stuck with boring old SMS.

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified, because they’re left with a noticeably reduced feature set as soon as someone forces them to use green bubbles.

I mean, that’s what lots of users do. My state requires that all state employees change their password every 90 days. This just means everyone has an incrementing number at the end of their password. Because the idiot users just write it on a fucking sticky note, which totally negates the idea of password changes.