You ever see how many pairs of safety scissors are in a kindergarten classroom? What did you think all those were for?

Transition lenses, baybeeee

The fucking magnet in the junkyard scared me so much

I wonder if that’s even true. Sure, corporations aren’t black-bagging people in the night (yet), and the VOC genociding entire islands was many many years ago, but who put lead in gasoline and lied about its safety? Who covered up decades of climate change research? Why are we inhaling a credit card of microplastics every week? How are property management companies colluding on rents to create price floors and evict families?

Or here’s something forward-looking:

If Albertsons and Kroger are allowed to merge, do you think that’d be a good thing for American food security? If the government was not powerful enough to stop the merger, what should the citizenry do?

limiting the scope of the government, which is one of my biggest political values

Why?

Smaller government = bigger corporations. And corporate control = everything goes to shit. We’ve reached maximum shareholder primacy.

And it’s not like we can “vote with our dollar” anymore, with how consolidated everything is. For example, consider the attempts at boycotting Nestle…

Because they already raised hundreds of millions from investors

Shit maybe I will watch the rebuilds.

Alfred Sloan, GM https://moneymorning.com/2015/11/24/the-evil-genius-behind-the-general-motors-streetcar-conspiracy/

When I needed a new washer, I did a lot of research and strongly considered Speed Queen. But then I read they enshittified in 2018

Didn’t Asus start enshittifying recently? Thought I saw some chatter about that on here 😢

Did they actually go to space? I haven’t watched a Fast and Furious since, like, 5

MBA requirement for graduation

I called the insurance company about the bullshit “out of network ambulance” and they said they would “negotiate on our behalf”, apparently. In the end we paid about $2200 for the ambulance if I remember right.

Everything else we paid sticker price. Fortunately I had some money in an HSA from a previous job so that helped.

(For people reading this who live in more civilized countries: an HSA is a special type of account where you can put money and not pay taxes on it, with the caveat that it can only be used for health expenses. It’s similar to the much more common FSA, but with an FSA the account balance is reset to zero at the end of the year (not sure if the money goes to the government or the brokerage or what). This has led to a new absurd “FSA store” industry, where places sell only FSA-eligible items at a very high markup, with the idea being come December you’d rather buy their overpriced shit than just lose all the money outright. An HSA does not suffer from this nonsense (you keep the money indefinitely, because it’s your money), but it seems like it’s becoming more rare for an HSA to be offered on employer plans.)

I have (what I believe) is considered “very good” insurance. I pay $100 a month for premiums.

When my child was born, there were some complications and we needed to move to another hospital for emergency surgery.

The birth: ~$2500 deductible/copay/whatever you want to call it. I think this is all I would’ve had to pay if there weren’t more complications.

Surgery and aftercare for baby: ~$5600

Care for momma: ~$2000

But here’s a crazy twist. When moving hospitals, we rode in an ambulance. But this was an “out of network ambulance”. What the hell is even that? Under what circumstances do you have a say in which ambulance you ride?

Out of network ambulance ride: $4500

Basically it’s all just bullshit.

The insurance companies having more say than doctors about what procedures you can and can’t get is peak insanity, and yet here we are.

Yeah the pledge is definitely weird.

Eh I don’t buy that, at least not as the primary goal. It’s more a side effect of the structure and resources of a class. When the classrooms were built to support 18 students per class, and the teacher’s union contract says they’ll have a max of 25 students per class, but in actuality they have 31 students per class, kids sharing desks and bumping elbows, yeah we kinda need all 31 of those kids to sit down and buckle up, or no one at all is going to get any learning done.

Is it the ideal learning environment for every student? Nope. Is it the ideal learning environment for any student? Probably not. But unless we’re willing to invest more in education, it’s what we’re working with.

I think they want kids to pay attention in class

I haven’t watched the Olympics in a long time but I thought the experience was kinda shit, especially compared to ye olden days of it being on every channel. My experience was basically:

My wife: What’s the difference between “Women’s all around final” and “women’s all around final (TV)”?

Me: googling I think we want the “TV” one?

30 second ad

20 seconds of a commentator talking over a view of Paris

2 minutes of ads

15 minutes of the camera just looking at an empty apparatus while there’s clearly other stuff going on in the background

2 minutes ads

30 seconds commentators discussing the event

2 minutes ads

Ok they actually fucking start, finally

Someone does something, 2 second MICRO AD??? This is a thing now apparently? Randomly throughout there’s these insanely short ads that are super jarring

Zoom in on Simone Biles face

Watch someone do a warmup on vault

Simone itches her nose

We can clearly hear other competitors doing things in the background, but Simone is looking to the right, so let’s focus on that

2 minutes ads

Watch a competitor do uneven bars, neat

Back to Simone, she’s talking to Suni now, we can’t hear it, but it must be important

Literally can see people doing flips and shit in the background, but let’s watch Simone as she sits in this chair

2 minutes ads

BREAKING NEWS: Simone blinks

“What did that other girl get for a score? Did they show it?”

Attempt to rewind 30 seconds. Big mistake, 2 minutes ads

Simone does a vault

2 minutes ads

…

Like I love Simone Biles, I do. Obviously I want to see all of her events. But holy shit, I’m here to watch the Olympics, not the “Simone is waiting for her turn” show. Also it was like 90% ads, they didn’t even show some of the highest scoring performances (since they only showed like 3 other people besides Simone), and half the time didn’t even show the scores they received. It was just…pretty bleh.

Anecdotal, but when I visited Madrid I saw more cats on the street than any other city I’ve visited. So maybe they get by with neighborhood cats?