As a staunch antitheist, I really can’t disagree. The unitarians are pretty great. I personally know a minister and he’s very big on community outreach, supporting other local support programs like our independent food rescue, and preaching a very positive and inclusive message with minimal woo. And he has never once asked me to attend church.

This whole thread needs to listen to Samaritans by Idles.

Ditto, this and Yakuake, which is great at keeping it out of the way until I need it.

This would fundamentally break the Unix/Posix functionality of layering file systems. All containerization would break. You would lose the ability to map in one filesystem’s content within another’s. I don’t think the right way to get people used to Linux is to fundamentally break it.

File managers - even the dogshit one you get with Gnome - already register external storage devices in a list that’s shown no matter where in the file system you are. Assigning a drive letter doesn’t clarify anything. What beginner/grandpa is even looking at the contents of the FS root?

You could try gconf

Next week for us.

It’s gonna be a hot fucking summer.

Yeah, I didn’t know people were just giving out basic necessities. I’ve been allowing people to exploit my labor for nothing this whole time?

And that being gay was bad. It was not conveyed well in our media, and our culture was full of negative connotations with non-heterosexuality. I feel you on this one. Bi people exist, and we’re everywhere!

You like em tongue-in-cheek? You might try Chopping Mall (1986). Shopping mall management invests in a killer robot security system. A group of horny teens decides to spend the night there, but a lightning storm takes out the main killer robot controller! It’s funny, a little gory, has topless men and women, and it’s hilarious. A spook night favorite of mine.

Throw the original King Kong in with that.

The largest I’ve passed was about 4mm. It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt, and it took weeks to work its way through, even with the Flomax. Crying, moaning, writhing on the bed in pain, pissing blood. Malicious looking little thing. Looked like the ball on the end of a morning star. I passed two of those at once one time.

It’s always a consideration, but the question is where would we move to (and how much am I willing to uproot my family)? Canada is a nice place with a better healthcare system, so maybe there? But that’s expensive all on its own, and I have to consider that I have two autistic kiddos who are currently receiving their education at the best school in the state for special ed kiddos. Is it worth it? Maybe not. For now, I think we should stay where we are. I love it here, except for the high cost of my own care. Think I’d rather stick it out and fight for a better system here. Maybe we can improve things for everyone instead of jumping ship.

Because insurance pays for a portion of your treatment, rarely 100% of it, and the moment you start racking up bigger bills, insurance starts looking for ways to not pay your claims. They’ll put a hold on payment until you call them and broker a deal or they go back and forth with your doctor demanding that you receive some treatment other than what that doctor recommends.

I have Crohn’s Disease, an autoimmune disorder that is often treated with immunosuppressants. First, they did not want to pay for my initial “loading dose” because it has to be done by infusion. That’s a ~$25,000 procedure (3-4 hours on an IV). I talked them into it by telling them that only the first dose would be by infusion and the rest by self injection.

But when my company decided to pay for a less expensive insurance plan that started at the beginning of the year, they suddenly didn’t want to pay for the injections either. Now I owe 30% of the cost of my injections. That’s almost $4,000 a dose that I take every 8 weeks, about $25,000/year.

So now I use a coupon program through a separate company, and they bill the remainder of the balance to the company who produces the medicine who give me a $21,000 annual credit toward paying the remainder. So now to get my medicine I must coordinate between my doctor, a specialty pharmacy, my insurance provider, a company that runs the coupon program, and the company that produces the medicine… Just to get a syringe delivered to me on a schedule. And the credit probably won’t last until the end of the year; I’ll probably end up shelling out a few thousand for my meds around Christmas time this year.

If any of the complicated web of companies that collectively get me these meds doesn’t have everything lined up in their system, I don’t get my meds. My last dose was almost three weeks late to me because of all the calling around I had to do. Because we don’t have a central health care authority, that means each company maintains their own system of record. Each phone call involves working through a phone tree to get to a human agent, working through the same set of identity verification steps with them, explaining the situation over again to a different person every time…

It’s a real pain in the ass, and they do it on purpose to get you to give up. Having insurance doesn’t mean your health care is paid for, and you pay a premium (hundreds of dollars) on every paycheck to keep the insurance that still doesn’t pay for your medical costs. Having health insurance does not mean you don’t still pay through the teeth for your health care. Having health insurance does not mean that health care is accessible to you. Having insurance that makes health care accessible today does not mean they won’t change the rules behind your back, and that you will still have access to health care tomorrow.

Yeah it’s alpha software. Even fully developed AAA titles ship with bugs. My point is they haven’t decreased my enjoyment of the game at all, and that’s a counterpoint to the meme.

Was just gonna say I’ve put an embarrassing amount of hours into Satisfactory, which is an “early access” game I paid like $20 for. Nothing wrong with it. It’s not an abandoned product, but even if it was I’d have a hard time complaining about it.

🫂

I think ethical nonmonogamy casts a wider net. I wouldn’t call myself a swinger. I don’t do parties or anything like that. But I’m still not monogamous and it’s still not cheating since my partner and I have an existing arrangement and regular check-ins.

Right. Some people handle this well, others are not open to it. Willingness to adhere to monogamy is a thing that varies from person to person and must be discussed in any relationship. Ethical nonmonogamy is a thing, but it’s not for everyone, and it is a lot of communication and intimate work.

I thought vinyl was the new vinyl.