I had an out of network emergency room visit with a kidney stone once while covered by a $1,000/month UHC platinum plan. When the bills arrived I stupidly paid them thinking it’d be easier to just file the claim for reimbursement from UHC on my own. After two years of
submitting forms, exchanging letters, and hours of phone calls, I just gave up. It’s hard for me to consider their business as anything but an outright scam.
I get mild carpal tunnel symptoms when working straight on my Macbook, so I bought a Kinesis Freestyle Pro. The split and tenting are great and do the trick for my wrists but it's got a different layout than the MacBook. And a lot more keys than I need. It's large and a hassle to pack up and take with me.
Why does no one build a split keyboard that has the exact same layout as a MacBook? I feel like that would be my holy grail. I don't even care about mechanical switches (I know, blasphemy!)
I have a good friend who is a hygienist for two dentists. One is completely inept and the other an outright scammer.
The inept guy generates business by doing such a poor job with fillings that crowns and root canals are always eventually needed. And he does such a poor job with those that bridges and implants are then needed. He's a master bullshitter and most patients trust him (a few catch on, and a few have sued). My friend keeps records for the lawsuits, covers her own butt, and discreetly encourages some patients to go elsewhere.
The fraudster puts everyone on "perio" schedules (cleanings every 3 months instead of 6) whether they need it or not. And also bills insurance for treatment he didn't do. His actual dental skills are decent, however.
We laypeople assume we can trust these "experts" with degrees and white coats when we really have no clue if what they're doing is legit.
Next time you get your teeth cleaned, ask the hygienist if they themselves (or their family -- kids, parents) use the dentist you're about to see. My friends says that this is the question with the most valuable answer. She wouldn't let either guy within 100 miles of her teeth or her kids' and will happily tell people where she goes if they ask.
This is assuming the hygienist isn't crooked too. In the US, hygienists are typically paid hourly but with "production" bonuses, meaning they get a cut of the dentists fees for treatment beyond cleaning. So beware that they're incentivized to do more treatment than necessary too. In my friend's case, the bonuses are a small %, so it's not a huge incentive.
She stays because they pay well, give her the hours she needs as a single mom, and likes her co-workers. But the patient care and outcomes do take moral toll on her.
Damn. I haven’t read much of The Athletic (don’t have that subscription level) but I’ve enjoyed NYT sports coverage for forever.
They always seemed to have interesting, subtle, and original takes on whatever they were covering. More “literary” than your typical ESPN or other major network coverage.
Love the service and it's been rock solid for over a decade for me.
I do understand the concern with the lack communication with this outage, however. It's a bit of an organizational/leadership red flag when a crucial service business like this doesn't communicate with its customers when things go south.
Yes. While it’s less common, I’ve seen orgs struggle because they didn’t have enough imagination.
Every feature is done quick’n’dirty and eventually you have people whose full time job is to respond to customer complaints and fix data straight in the production database.
Never worked with them but I have with a contractor who had good things to say:
https://www.a.team/
Another route is to apply for full time jobs and ask early in the process if they’ll consider hiring you as a contractor. Give your honest reasons why you want to go this route. If they continue with the interview process, knock their socks off so they can’t afford not to use you at whatever terms you want.
I understood "infant amnesia" but wondered how far back my kids could remember when they were little. As soon as they could start to communicate with words (around 12 months?) I asked both kids about being born, and being in mommy's belly. They both gave descriptions I'd call accurate! "Wimming" my son said, meaning swimming inside of mommy's belly. And my daughter said "coooold!" when I ask if she remembered coming out of mommy's belly.
I remember thinking "Holy shit, they remember it all."
I downloaded and installed the first “browser” (what a weird name) to see what the hype about “hypertext” (sounds sci-fi!) was all about.
It was a page of text where some words were underlined and blue. And if you clicked on a blue word, it would jump you to a new page before you were even finished reading the first page!
I remember thinking how dumb that was and must be for people with short attention spans. Uninstall and move on. This WWW thing is going nowhere…
Yeah, I hear ya... of course there are degrees of in-between. In the article and the comments here, however, the tone of the criticisms of this guy and his ideas (e.g. "managed a few good years of self-promotion") seem weirdly personal and harsh.
That may be my bias as a very casual reader who isn't particularly invested in linguistic theories. (I certainly like Chomsky's social/political criticisms.)
A young missionary spends several decades living among and learning the language of a remote Amazon tribe.
He finds that his interest in languages and linguistics exceeds that of spreading Christianity and makes a career change.
Then, either
A) He realizes that he’s the only one who speaks this language and concocts a scheme to seek fame and fortune by falsely claiming it contradicts the leading theory of linguistics because no one can prove him wrong. Mwahaha!
Or
B) As he learns about linguistic theories, he realizes that the language he learned as a missionary contradicts the leading theory of linguistics. This is academically interesting, so he writes a paper and gives talks describing what he found.
While A is certainly possible, it seems B is more likely.
Darn, I use YouTube as a quick communication channel to users of an app I maintain. I’ll throw up a video to show a new feature or that something has changed. Sometimes I answer single tech support questions with a short video. That’ll be lame if ads start showing up.
But pretty creative game. Thanks for sharing!