Removed by mod

I’m mostly saying it because I don’t know the mods on this sub or if/when they’re gonna start nuking posts and comments like the News mods did. But also, I don’t want to be responsible (or at least feel responsible) in the unlikely event that an unhinged person sees this and does something stupid.

Like…look, am I weeping because a man who profited by denying people healthcare is dead? No. Am I happy to see billionaires suddenly afraid of the people they’re exploiting? Yes. But does that mean I want people who see this meme to start gunning people down in the street? In all seriousness, no, don’t take this as a call to violence.

I know there’s some hypocrisy in that statement, but that’s kinda the point I was getting at with the post: “I can’t condone this action, but damn, it appears to have been very effective at enacting change.”

Basically, BCBS was only going to reimburse the amount of anesthesia that government medical agencies estimate a procedure requires. So, an appendectomy is estimated to take an hour, but your surgery takes an hour and a half, then you’re on the hook for the anesthetic costs for the last 30 minutes. There was a lot of backlash to that decision, and I guess they’re taking backlash pretty seriously…for some reason.

I’m saying that framing a meme post as the fight against evil is a bit much.

One of the things I remember Snowden saying about the NSA’s data collection is, something to the effect of, “It doesn’t even make sense. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, the answer isn’t more hay.” I was still outraged by the government’s collection of my meta data, but it did make me feel a little better about their ability weaponize that data competently.

To me this is, “rock my edgy older sister listened to.” Gave me a nice nostalgia hit too.

Yeah, that’s about what I’m getting at.

I mean… I’m not willing to risk that for a meme post.

I don’t disagree, but I don’t want to get on the wrong side of any of the ToS. Or wind up on a government watch list.

Oh damn, I don’t think I’ve heard that one in since I was in middle school.

I certainly agree with that, but that agreement is not a call to violence, and definitely not an incitement of violence…from a legal perspective.

Well, I definitely can’t agree with that…in writing.

…well, again, I definitely think that would be a bad thing. Truly terrible. Definitely wouldn’t be happy to see the billionaire class living in fear of the people they’re exploiting. Oh no. Stop. Police. Murder.

Fair enough, but that’s a variation of a variation, and pretty obscure (I’d heard of the Fat Man variation, but not the Fat Villain).

But if CEO deaths started matching school shooting numbers things would likely change.

I mean, that’s basically what I’m saying, but that’s not really the Trolley Problem. That’s basically the French Revolution. (And, again, should any law enforcement agents happen to read this, I’m definitely not trying to incite violence against the billionaire class, no matter how badly they deserve it or how much better the world would be for it).

Well, at least he got to be played by Robert De Niro in a movie…sort of. That’s something.

I see what you’re getting at, but this isn’t the trolley problem. The trolley problem is predicated on the idea that killing one will save many, but it’s assumed that everyone involved is innocent. It’s a philosophical question about moral choice; is inaction that allows many to die more moral than an action that directly kills one? If the one person being killed is somehow culpable for the deaths of the other people, that changes the entire equation.

Also, that’s not even what happened here. One person was killed, but just as many people are going to die today because United Healthcare. No one was saved. Maybe if dozens of CEOs were gunned down in the streets, that would change something, but one dead CEO isn’t going to do anything.

(And, to any moderators or FBI agents reading this, I’m of course not advocating for that. Can you even imagine? The ruling class that has been crushing the American working class for decades suddenly getting put down like rabid dogs? With the very weapons that the gun manufacturers allowed to flood our streets in order to maximize their profits? Makes me sick just to fantasize think about it.)

It seems like there was a largely unspoken agreement among the wealthiest in the West throughout the middle of the 20th century, particularly in the aftermath of the Depression, World War II, and the rise of communism, that they wouldn’t try to extract the absolute maximum of wealth from the workers and try to keep a stable, happy middle class and even lower class that had a relatively comfortable existence without feeling too at risk of losing everything.

Actually, the richest people in America were terrified of FDR and the New Deal, and even attempted a fascist coup in order to overthrow him. Fun fact, George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was implicated in it!

True, although I met a girl with celiac early in the gluten-free fad who claimed that she couldn’t trust a lot of restaurants’ gluten-free options because a lot of them weren’t actually gluten-free. Restaurants were just chasing a trend that they didn’t fully understand. Things are much better now, but I think early on a lot of restaurants were treating gluten-free like the Atkins or Paleo diet, not an allergy.

Peter Gibson, the guy who discovered non-celiac gluten sensitivity, retracted his own study a few years later, but it had already become a fad diet, so it just stuck. That being said, there have been some studies that seem to confirm its existence, but the evidence is pretty thin. (To be clear, celiac disease and wheat allergies are 100% proven and can be reliably tested for).

• It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).

Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.

Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.