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Cake day: April 29th, 2024

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  • At this point i’m convinced the USPS has been sabotaged to disrupt mail in voting.

    I’ve had a piece of registered mail go missing just one month ago despite the tracking… I had a small package shipped from NJ end up in Iowa for some reason just yesterday, despite the destination being Boston.

    The USPS is in a really poor place with all the private competition taking the lucrative package shipments. It’s a shame we basically let them out to dry and accept service level decreases year after year so that we don’t have to fund it at all with taxes. IMO there should be a fee levied for every package shipped by third party delivery services that benefits the USPS because mail is simply too important to all aspects of a country to forsake.



  • I took a few courses about public policy at my university and met with the groups trying to create change. Did a research paper on this topic even.

    The ones in the industry know the secrets and the ones in the government turn a blind eye because lipservice and inspections on paper sound great when you’re trying to get votes from older people. They want to believe that when they need care that the providers will be doing the right thing. Sadly, they are not doing the right thing. There’s so much money in it when you’re charging over $400 per day per patient.

    Here’s an article that talks about it.

    They use nicer words to make it sound less predatory:

    Providers have wide latitude in how they utilize MassHealth and other funds, since there are no limits on self-dealing transactions/contracts and no ceiling on administrative costs.

    The growth of for-profit ownership in nursing homes, including significant investment by private equity firms and real estate investment trusts, makes it clear that nursing homes are profitable businesses.

    A Boston Globe 2014 study of Massachusetts nursing home finances found that many nursing homes directed cash to subsidiaries “…paying million-dollar rental fees and helping to pay executives’ six-figure salaries…”

    If you reach out to the authors of that article, including a former state senator, they’d be glad to talk to you about it. They won’t remember me though, it’s been a while. The things that can be said aloud go way beyond what is written down. No one wants to air their dirty laundry but trust me, the nursing homes are generally given a heads up before inspections take place so nobody gets fined and there are no problems. Unless something changed very, very recently.


  • Elder care wealth is extracted using service companies as services. E.g. they hire their for-profit cleaning service for astronomical money while their non-profit elderly care facility claims to make no profits. Since the service takes the money and the elder care facility is paying for a known cost (cleaning, supplies, whatever) then they can still claim to be non-profit. The non-profit pays no taxes so they aren’t doubly taxed either.

    This is a widely known scheme in the north east, combined with the fact that when it’s inspection time to see staff levels the business owners mysteriously are given a heads up before they show up so they can make sure just enough staff is there. They routinely understaff these facilities because each person there is just another wage to pay.

    Bottom line, for profit healthcare is appalling and corruption is everywhere.


  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlFree Thinker
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    3 months ago

    We’ve never had real communism.

    I don’t think human nature will allow for true communism at scale. Like all political organizations beyond a handful of people, corruption is de facto present and completely at odds with the theory.

    People can swear up and down that it’s doable but I truly don’t think it could ever be by humans. We are too selfish.


  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlFree Thinker
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    3 months ago

    I mean, the argument that communism is slavery to the state is a real and valid argument as of 2024.

    It’s not like capitalism is any less a form of slavery, except instead of stealing from everybody to give to everybody it steals from everybody and gives it all to insurance companies and other businesses benefiting oligarchs. The whole system is slavery under another name, work for the luxury of having a place to sleep at night so that your owner can live a comfortable life. Slavery to many masters who use your body for their gains.

    There’s not going to be a system that you’re not a slave to though, unless we somehow find a way to trivially convert matter to energy and vice versa and build a utopia where machines do everything for us… and we all share the rewards. All hail science fiction communism? (and keep in mind science fiction keeps becoming reality! Just don’t hold your breath for this in our lifetimes.)


  • it’s factored into your total compensation so you’re still the one paying.

    I never understand why so many people assume insurance is “free” from the employer or that they pay 0-1000 per week/month. What we see is the tip of the iceberg. Insurance companies are perfectly lucrative and they pay tons and TONS of money to workers that make sure they make as much as possible.

    80% of premium revenues must be spent on treatment, the other 20% is what they have to profit off of. If they don’t spend 80% of the premiums on treatment they MUST refund excess earnings. See: https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-review/

    This means if they took in 100 billion in premiums in a year, they MUST spend 80 billion dollars on treatments. The 20 billion left over is where they can make money. So they will make sure 4/5ths of everything they make goes into treatment so they never give refunds and they maximize potential profits. If they can convince companies to raise premiums 10% next year, costs will rise 10%, profits will rise 10%. It’s so obviously designed to raise the cost of premiums and treatments at the expense of all else it’s insane.

    They also don’t spend a dime over 80% of what they make if they can help it. There’s where claim rejections come in. They have mathematicians figuring out the ideal numbers and those guys make stupid amounts of money.




  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eetoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldMicrosoft will never change.
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    4 months ago

    anything else provided by Microsoft has a better 3rd party alternative if the user wants it at all.

    Imo this is what has held microsoft back. They never really focused on the user market. All their software is pay-for-me bullshit offering promo prices for user tier education subscriptions that never retain users. Once you’re out of school you’re gonna cancel office sub, pirate it, or simply use google docs because everyone can use it without paying. Office is for businesses only.

    Google lets you use their version of office without asking for any money. They give you storage that integrates with it and doesn’t nag you to subscribe or purchase a license to do things and they don’t nag you to use it. Their email is actually good, has good spam protection. You can use google mail for small businesses without issue too whereas hotmail or outlook.com look sketchy by comparison.

    Microsoft has had so many missteps in their headlong charge believing they are the only game in town. Android has a bigger market share and a lot of people just use their phone as a computer today on a global scale.

    In the US, Apple keeps gaining market share. iOS is the #1 operating system here but fairly neck and neck with windows. MacOS is a little under half of Windows too, so combined Apple is a big majority OS wise. Apple isn’t charging for updates on any of it’s OSes, unlike all of microsoft’s. The mobile hardware division makes way more money than laptops and desktops.

    On a long enough of a timeline it seems inevitable that microsoft’s OS marketshare dominance will evaporate. It looks like only MacOS is here today as a realistic alternative since Linux is a steaming hot mess for end user computing.



  • So it sounds like nobody in this thread looked at the actual article.

    This isn’t chic-fil-a. It’s the homophobic bigoted billionaire asshole who has turned a town south of atlanta georgia to a 2.7 billion dollar movie making industry by building a movie making compound. He’s trying to usurp hollywood. His studios have been the filming location for many major blockbuster movies in the past several years.

    The article even mentions that the guy has sold 200 homes to the tune of 110 million dollars right by the studios so obviously he’s diversifying beyond chicken.

    If there’s a market for christian shit i’m sure he’ll capture it, but i’m sure they will focus on what sells. Maybe they will try to be the epic games of streaming services where they undercut the competition by hiring cheaper labor and taking a smaller cut from the people who pay to use the studios the guy owns.

    Unlike steam, nobody loves netflix, disney, hbo or any of the awful streaming services there are now. Even crunchyroll which is a bargain has a fucking awful app and streaming quality issues. Since you don’t “own” the movies on the platform you rent access to there’s no lock-in or cult following like there is with steam. Because of all this… people will go to whoever provides the best service.