ConstableJelly

They’ve got a really talented bench of people, I’m surprised this has gone on so long (though I am far from a regular viewer). My vote would have gone to Jordan Klepper, who I think has both the intelligence and sincere anger that made Jon Stewart the cultural force he was on the show. My theory is that the execs saw him as too much of a risk after his previous (unfortunately) failed solo outings.

You too, thanks for the interesting conversation.

Based on this conversation, what you consider right has a lot more in common with pride and laziness than it does with moral integrity. You say a lot of revolutionary words about dismantling power structures before finally admitting you’re just shrugging your shoulders in your own little corner.

At some point, if the people don’t say enough, let it all come crashing down, and rebuild a more equitable system

Who’s organizing this? Your withdrawal isn’t part of some collective movement, it is solitary and impotent. It is harmful. There’s no board room hosting the league of evil medical barons, no agenda item about how Allonzee stopped donating blood so they’d better start taking things seriously. You’re not changing anything, and squeezing sick people isn’t a necessary step in effecting change anyway.

There’s no “we” and there’s no collapsing. These systems persist despite your personal rebellion, because they’re really good at persisting until faced with overwhelming collective action. Until then, fucking help people.

Sorry friend, it’s not really about you. But a lot of good people who care about inequity have let their pride convince them that systems will implode if they personally choose to stop participating in them. That’s not how it works. The only people feeling any hurt are the innocents in your own communities.

Seriously, I get it. It’s fucking infuriating, but again…what’s the alternative? Is there some way in which this moral rigidity is not holding patients hostage in an impotent effort to force change in a broader healthcare industry?

There are alternative and more effective methods of effecting change that don’t involve sacrificing life or well-being. I implore anyone who’s rightfully disgusted by this reality to grit your teeth and help people however you can, and direct your ire where it’s best deserved.

The next link in the donation delivery chain is unrelated? Agree to disagree.

Forgive me, but this is misguidedly reductive. No healthcare is provided in the US, by providers, without being subjected to capitalist exploitation. If I understand your thought process, a collective of the best pharmaceutical scientists in the world could create a completely non-profit pharmaceutical NGO, design and manufacture life-saving drugs, and give them away to hospitals (or sell them at-cost). But so long as hospitals then charge profit rates for those drugs, it would be ethically indefensible to financially support the NGO?

Is that not holding patients hostage in an impotent effort to force change in the broader healthcare industry? I donate to my local non-profit blood center, who (assuming they’re similar to ARC) sells my blood to local hospitals at-cost, and then my blood is used to save a patient in need. The patient will then be responsible for paying the hospital exorbitant sums for my blood (from which the blood center doesn’t benefit) and all the other services it provides, but what’s the alternative?

Edit: would it make a difference if the blood center didn’t charge hospitals for the blood, even though the hospital will still charge patients?

Ransomed? I hadn’t heard about this so I checked and found that places like Red Cross sell the blood for roughly $250 per unit to hospitals in the US, which seems…perfectly reasonable within the parameters of our healthcare system. There are operational costs to collecting blood that have to be funded somehow.

The cost to patients charged by healthcare providers is unrelated, and this does not apply to for-profit plasma centers, which…yeah, don’t do that.

I wish media would give credit to the organization leaders responsible for these types of moves rather than crediting a homogeneous “Biden administration.” The fact is that the administration does deserve credit for employing a number of “progressive” (read: competent) administrators, but those departments compose a progressive wing of the administration that is not on par with some of the overall administration’s more centrist leanings.

Personnel are policy, something that the Biden administration has proved again and again since the 2020 election. Biden himself is a kind of empty vessel into which different wings of the Democratic party pour their will, yielding a strange brew of appointments both great and terrible.

-- Cory Doctorow

We replaced our HP OfficeJet with a Brother this year. I don’t even know what we were thinking getting the HP 5 years ago or so, it was gross overkill for us. But of all the things it could do, it was most consistent with printing like shit and jamming paper. Part of the problem was that we just print too infrequently, but having to replace overpriced cartridges from HP didn’t help. You also have to install apps for wireless printing (or if there’s a workaround we didn’t bother with it).

The Brother is a color laser printer and it’s perfect for us. No apps needed, super quiet and hassle-free (there have been no paper jams or transmission errors), and the print quality is crisp as hell.

If you want to be friends then why aren’t you friendly?