____

What Google password?

I don’t intend to browse RMS-style, but I have zero need of a Google account, nor of the major search engines directly.

I just add layers between myself and that particular company. I still can get their data, but without the creep factor.

Mostly.

It’s an imperfect solution, but I’m more comfortable with access by proxy than direct access.

Been looking for this sort of device for my Pantech laser.

The cartridge is good for 1,600 pages - no more, no less.

All well and good, they’re cheap, except.. the vast majority of my printing is in A5 size (roughly half-letter, or exactly half-A4).

Those half pages count just like any other page against the total, and I get shorted by the better part of 800 pages or so.

1. Suffer through working life
2. Retire, downsize, go see the world without having to convince a gf/partner

Nothing wrong with disliking dating, it’s a screwy social ritual intended to use a short series of interactions to determine if this is a person you could trust and genuinely like enough to share everything - including tough mornings - and compromise with for the next fifty years.

Works for some folks. Doesn’t work for others. I’m happily married, took a couple false starts and youthful indiscretions to get here - as well as the magic of the internet and some long discussions about relationships/commitment/poly/nonstandard stuff.

Works for us, maybe not for most.

Curious how common the truly bad ones are. I’d assume quite uncommon between licensing, hospital hiring, chart data analysis at scale, etc., but…

Counting down the days to a relatively minor surgery I need. No real concerns, I’ve met the lead surgeon a few times, but plenty of unknown humans are part of the process too.

Company has low-key software trainers - a ton of information to convey, but they mostly embrace and gently corral the inevitable side convos you get in a Teams room of thirty very confused people.

Some of us were more vocal than others and a handful were less pleasant. During a brief silence, as a woman is about to ask a valid question, we ALL hear,

“Oh, there’s Jennifer, running her fat fucking mouth again! (Pause) (gasp from speaker)”

Guy wasn’t getting it anyway, but he didn’t last the rest of the morning.

There were 29 of us in that room, two years ago. Now there are six of us remaining. Mouthy guy above is the only one I know left involuntarily.

I like your approach much better.

Content? Hardly.

Disinformation. Lies. Etc.

Wasn’t sure I’d agree when I started reading, but I like the way you think.

I benefit from an orphan drug, and the R&D was most definitely subsidised by the public purse.

My insurance pays a few grand a month for it.

The mfg coupon covers most of the rest, minus a copay.

This is the second iteration of the original drug. The first hasn’t meaningfully fallen in price and only the original company can manufacture and distribute the generic even under the name of competitors.

There was no breakthrough in the second iteration, and the logic to solve the “problem” they solved was straightforward. So now I pay more, for an anecdotally less effective version that addresses a risk irrelevant to me but present in the original.

There is yet a third iteration on the way.

Shock revelations:

• pharma companies are greedy and will double dip against both government subsidies and patients/insurance at every opportunity.
• XX Pharma didn’t pay for the original R&D, my gov did.
• if one replaces Na with a/several similar elements, one still ends up with a salt, often resulting in a drug variant that “doesn’t affect blood pressure” and offers no other real benefits, nor risks.
• Clinical trials for said alternative salt are broadly leas expensive than for the original. That does not result in lower prices.

Nationalise pharma research, if not the manufacturers.

Also, generics are often manufactured in countries with, shall we say, fewer controls and regulations. Know who makes those pills and where. If you can’t stomach the FDA reports on that manufacturer, find a pharmacy who will sell you something else…

Probably cheap at the price compared to burning Jet A by the tens or hundreds of gallons.

Not that I am unconcerned about the resource usage. Lesser of two evils.

That’s not per se inaccurate. There would have been relatively little cultural divergence at that point, so large scale “take what you like and leave the rest” would have been reasonable.

Wouldn’t want to copy and paste their laws now (see “Safety of Rwanda” bill under the prior PM), and we made the right decision from the start to dispose of honours with titles altogether.

Not, of course, that we’ve banished the aristocracy, or even the generally well-off, but can you imagine an effusive Sir ($FalconRocketGuy)?