KinglyWeevil

I'm one of the few who even have a primary care physician but I really only see them basically annually to get my blood pressure meds, or for general non-urgent health concerns like, "I'm tired all the time, is it that I'm in my mid thirties, or do I have low testosterone like my dad?" The wait time is usually like 4 months unless I think it's urgent, then they can usually squeeze me in in the next 3-4 weeks. I don't normally have to schedule the blood pressure visit but only because they'll schedule it a year out for me when I'm there.

Anything else, like respiratory infections, covid, flu, strep, etc... urgent care is my only option and unless I get there at 6am when they open it's usually a 4 hour ordeal.

I mean he definitely didn't make it better, but I tend to associate the "racists coming out of the woodwork" moment with Obama getting elected. Which also corresponded with the increase in Internet usage. The racists suddenly weren't confined to their small groups of like minded people wherever they lived, but connected to all the other dip shits who believe the same disgusting shit internationally.

I don't think that's what happened, with Twitter at least.

Elon pissed off the wrong people at the SEC and FTC playing stupid pump and dump games with stocks by using Twitter and his absurdly undeserved reputation as an unconventional super genius with his mega group of followers.

One of the biggest of these, was pumping and then dumping twitter stock by alleging that he'd buy the company. And the people he'd pissed off in government basically saw their opportunity to fuck him by literally forcing him to buy it at his stupidly overpriced valuation - that's why he played all sorts of dumb games dragging out the purchase and trying to get out of it.

And so now he's stuck with an unprofitable company he didn't want. I'm pretty sure he's running it into the ground on purpose so he'll be able to carry that loss balance forward eternally, using it to get out of paying taxes by writing off the loss.

Anything you can share?

I get why some limits are necessary, a company doesn't want a Microsoft Tae repeat...but after Chat GPT was made available to the public, the rapid addition of a whole range of guardrails made it nearly immediately unusable.

You ask it about anything which is controversial in the slightest regard and it shuts down, which for me at least, removes any interest in using it.

I suggest a magic 8 ball, and a person to shake and read it.

Ah that wasn't my interpretation, I was just sort of "yes, and-ing" your comment

An example of a thing which has been tried so many times, but which ultimately only increases complexity, expense, and rate of failure for very little gain.

"Ah yes, let us take one of the most finicky vehicular systems outside of the engine itself and make it literally twice as complex!"

And in return you get.... slightly reduced turning radius.

Sometimes the thought occurs to me that the only thing standing between me and being absurdly rich by way of saying reprehensible shit on a YouTube channel, is my inconvenient conscience

When there's no refunds in x period but no penalty to reschedule, so you reschedule and then cancel.

Right. Only squeaky wheels get greased. If you don't actively bitch and moan or threaten to leave, your company will never give you more because they assume you're happy.

Mine gave me what appeared to be a fairly sizeable performance bump, percentage-wise, at the beginning of the calendar year.

But when I calculated it out in comparison to all the other increases they'd given me, accounted for inflation as measured by CPI, and excluded the amounts given in "class-wide" salary adjustments, the dollar amount was really put into perspective.

Per their own HR policy, an individuals position within their defined salary band is determined by their skill/merit achievements relative to the job position. Because a class wide salary adjustment also redefines the salary band, and I have a habit of snapshotting the salary bands every few months, I was able to prove with numbers that A) they'd only ever actually given me one "merit increase" that matched the words they use in my review to an actual, measurable, "skill increase" as measured by an individual's position in the salary band.

And because the others had been so poor, using their own HR policy, they were effectively stating that I was only 2-3% better at my job than when they hired me 4+ years ago. Which was impossible, because if it were true, why would they have me actively mentoring individuals more highly paid but in the same band as myself?

It was compelling enough that they offered me an in-department "promotion" to the next grade and it came with one of two new roles, which I was allowed to trial and choose between. HR had previously squashed the grade increase two times over the previous two years, saying I didn't have enough experience, despite pushback from the three levels of management over me. (Our HR is like comic book villain levels of sanctimonious overpowered karens left to their own devices, and are actively holding the whole company back.)

Because I was able to use their own language to state, "either I'm good enough to do the X,Y,Z you currently have me doing and therefore deserve more; or I'm not and therefore should not be responsible for the things I do for the team and will essentially 'behave my class' and stop doing them," I forced their hand.

When you're too stupid to be a cop, despite the absurdly low bar: corrections officers.

It's like if the people who worked at the animal shelter got off on abusing the animals.