You joke, but Trevor Noah ate a whole bag of biltong (South African jerky) in front of customs because customs would not let him into the country with it.

I’ll be fine, I don’t lie about my beliefs, and it’s pretty 50 50 here. I’m pretty sure I have some family members that would be sweating about it though.

Thanks, I checked, they don’t carry the generic or name brand of that medication

I just double checked, currently the generic for my medication I used to take before UHC, can be gotten for just under $40 from CVS or Target, its $150 from walgreens for some reason (Either way, same copay to me regardless of whether its $40 or $150), while the name brand specific med shows $750 on their website, while goodRX shows I can get it from Walgreens or CVS for $650 for 30 day supply, but I have to take a double dose, so its yeah, between $1300 (GoodRX price) and $1500 (MSRP) per 30 day supply for me if I had to pay out of pocket for it.

I’m not surprised… my work has UHC, and every year they cancel our current plan and force work to get a new one. Then every year around april they deny me for my annual doctor’s visit because they have in their system that I have a different primary insurance. And every year I have to call them and be like “who do you show as my 2nd insurance?” and they are always like “uh… no one… but we have marked you have one.” and every year I have to tell them, no, we don’t have 2nd insurance, just you, and then call the doctor’s office back and let them know, then wait a month for the doctor’s office to confirm they received payment and I’m no longer on the hook for the bill. Last year I had to do it twice, once for my medical and once for my daughter’s dental plan. They also aren’t even economic… they denied one of my medications, because they only cover the name brand that has a higher co-pay for me instead of the generic. They aren’t even saving money on it unless they are getting a giant kickback from the manufacturer. The without insurance price of the generic to me would have been like $50, but the without insurance for the name brand they want me to take is over $1500. And instead of me paying the $20 copay for the T2 medication and them paying $30, I pay $30 for the T3 medication and they pay $1470. So if they aren’t getting some massive kickbacks from the name brand, they are way worse off in this arrangement and it took me several hours on the phone, and multiple escalations, just to get someone who could tell me why I was denied coverage for my prescribed medication in the first place… Then I had to play phone tag with my doctor’s office to explain to them the issue and get them to change the prescription since they used the word “generic” in the RX and the Walgreens couldn’t fulfill a non-generic with that RX… If I had a choice, work would switch to a different company the next time they cancel our plan on us, but I’m a mushroom at work. (Kept in the dark and fed bullshit).

It also forces Russia into a defensive war where they have already committed all their forces for an Offensive war. This will force Russia to either give up parts of Russia, or withdraw troops from Ukraine to retake parts of Russia. And also I’ve seen reports that Ukraine is having to slow progress because of processing surrendering Russian soldiers.

I figure once Russia withdraws troops from Ukraine to reinforce itself, Ukraine will likely pull back and swoop in and take their territory back.

Then we’ll see where this goes, either Putin will withdraw and try to get peace, or he’ll act like a cornered animal, and will get more unpredictable and erratic. There is always the chance that Ukraine will refuse peace talks and just keep marching on Moscow too. Either way, by pushing into Russia they are changing the dynamic of the war drastically and can finally put Russia on the defensive without worrying about losing support from NATO allies.

Its “Walz”, no t, and yeah, Daily Show already made that association yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1geBpDjYb7c within the first minute of the clip.

yeah, I had heard of that, I’m hoping that since it was a while ago and most of them were the ones done by automated systems and not going through it comment by comment editing them, but I’ll keep at it, if I have to sneak one edit through a day or something.

Pretty much, when they removed search engines who wouldn’t pay them was the final straw and I went back to reddit (after not being there since the API debacle) 1 last time and replaced all my 26,000 karma worth of comments with “Comment removed in protest of Reddit blocking search engines.” Took me a while, but meh, if they want to hasten its enshitification, I don’t mind doing my part.

Gmail wasn’t even the first, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, there were tons of free email offerings, even sites that would host your whole website for free like geocities. Gmail came into the market when 3rd party email being free was already well established. They just followed an Apple style of development, taking something that already exists and made a better version of it. Also back then their motto was still “Don’t Be Evil” and they mostly still kept to it, so they used that goodwill and the better user experience to grow it at a massive rate. And for the most part, its still the best experience for email for many cases.

IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt, but from my understanding, Its legal, though it may be unenforceable. If I want to sue them, they will say I agreed to arbitration in the contract, I will ignore that and continue to file. They will counter-file that I agreed to arbitration by accepting the EULA and that the case should be dropped, I will counter-file that I only agreed to it under duress because it was either agree or throw away my TV and that the arbitration clause is invalid because of X, Y or Z. At this point either the Judge will decide to listen to arguments from both sides then make a decision or will decide based on the undisputed facts presented by both sides and will either invalidate the EULA and allow the lawsuit to continue, or will uphold the EULA and drop the case with prejudice, or will allow me to make another argument and drop the case without prejudice allowing me to re-file with a better case.

The issue is, is it worth it to spend that kind of time and money for it in the first place? If you don’t have an open and shut case and can’t file in a state where you can make Roku pay the legal fees, in general whatever you’re trying to accomplish will cost you more than just getting off their ecosystem, which is what they are counting on. Since you would have to sue them just to see if you can sue them, it just adds extra time, money, and effort into suing them that it is more likely to deter people from actually suing and instead choosing to arbitrate under their terms which, depending on the ethical considerations of the company, could be fair or it could be heavily skewed in their favor. At which point you can decide at that point if you should sue and then will also have any evidence acquired about an unfair arbitration in the filings as well.

Either way, the legality is perfectly legal to be in an EULA, its enforceability though is mostly only backed by how much time, money, and effort it would take to bypass it. Like if there is an open door with a sign saying “Please use next door” and the next door leads to the same place as the open door. Most of us will just use the next door because its not worth the effort to deal with whatever issue might occur if we used the open door. But if the “next” door is locked, we’d just go in the open door because its no longer worth the effort to deal with procedures the company wants.

For one, the myth is that people swallow 8 spiders per year not per night.

Another, its a myth. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/

Earlier this year fiber became available to my house, switched providers in a heartbeat to ditch cable. Saved more than half my monthly bill and I get a consistent 945 every time I test it. Rubbing my nipples while telling Cox to go Cox themselves was a high I lived off of for a couple months.

Same, but before it was available in my area I was stuck with “1gig” cable that was really like .75gig because they only guarantee “up to 1gig” and 700mb is not over “1gig” therefor I’m getting what I paid for (Had this actual conversation with a customer service rep when I requested they send a tech to find out why I NEVER get the advertised speeds and my modem was reporting thousands of errors in the data between it and my provider)… and cost me $120/month with a 1TB data cap, or $170/month for unlimited. Now that the DSL provider in my area ran fiber to my neighborhood, I switched to the unlimited 1gig fiber for $70/month with no hidden fees, rate locked for life, and told my old cable provider to go pound sand while sipping wine and rubbing my nipples.