eochaid

I highly recommend Buck Meek.

He's the guitarist for Big Thief but his solo albums are some of the best country I've heard in a long time. And free from the toxicity of modern country (as far as I can tell)

Thank for your sympathy, friend.

What's hilarious is that the government recently passed legislation to cap the cost of most formularies of insulin to $35.....for medicare recipients. I've checked, the vast majority of formularies are participating now.

But if you are reliant on private insurance (because medicare is for seniors), you can fuck right the hell off. You pay what we tell you to. BCBS has not expanded their preferred formulary list beyond this one shitty formulary and I don't expect them to.

Oh and if you're like my wife and your insurance only covers a formulary that causes you problems and a demonstratively higher A1C as a result, well you can buy vials out of pocket for $600 - $1000 for a month's supply.

I'm glad that medicare is as great as it is and have no problem paying into it as a tax-paying citizen, but private insurance is the problem that most of us are dealing with and nobody is doing anything to address it.

My problems aren't anywhere near as bad as yours, but I'll add my own complaints to comiserate at least.

My wife is a type 1 diabetic. I have a pre-diabetic A1C (type 2) that i inherited from my mom. My insurance (Blue Cross Blue Shield) claims they cover preventative care. But they refuse to cover our regular A1C tests - it's not preventative because they already know what you have. As a BCBS support person told me, if they're throwing spaghetti at the wall, its preventative. If they're aiming for a spot - it's no longer considered "preventative". So thats like $600 - $1000 a year. Chump change compared to many in this thread, I know.

Also, for some reason, they only offer coverage for one type of insulin - novolog - which happens to be the one insulin that causes my wife issues. She's type-1, so her immune system killed her insulin production at around 5 years old. She's dependent on insulin to survive and uses an insulin pump. Novalog is less effective than literally every other insulin for her - which means she has to take more - which means more risk of long term problems. This insulin also requires a pre-bolus (basically taking insulin) of 1-2 hours before every meal. That means every meal has to be preplanned and prepared for or she starts a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Humalog, aphidra, fiasp? All work more efficiently and within like 15-30 minutes.

The local HMO my work used before offered tiered options. We could pay a bit more for a better option. I would have no problem paying double to get her Humalog. BCBS says no. Novalog or pay out of pocket.

I have occasional headaches that start in the back of my neck that turn into bouts of depression followed by mania a few days later. My neurologist wanted to do a full MRI panel to look for issues. Insurance denies it - medically unnecessary. The neurologist appeals and they're like "fine fine, but we'll only cover the head, not the neck" even though the pain started from my neck. They don't find anything in the head. So the neurologist says, "well unless you want to pay out of pocket, we can't check the source so.....assume it's just migranes?"

Oh and by "cover", I mean they paid a small part of it. It still cost me $1,500 to do the ones that were "covered".

That's a smattering of the interactions I've had with my insurance that I can remember right now.

My parents are retired and on medicare. They pay far less and get way better medical care than I do with one of the biggest private insurance chains in the country. Go figure.

Social media would be great if it weren't for all the damn people.

In my experience, the people who work retail and food service are more likely to favor socialism and collective action. But not all of them, of course.

The people who justify capitalism tend to work in higher paid office or managerial jobs. Not all of them, of course, as I am an example, and as are the ton of lower paid office workers that hate their jobs.

Turns out, the people for whom capitalism worked out, tend to like it. Those being crushed by the weight of unsustainable consumption tend to hate it. Go figure.

Serious.

If you are seriously annoyed by any of these things, then it should be a reminder of how unburdened and care free your life is that such a thing actually bugs you, and spark a sense of pride and contentment instead.

I did.

My wife dropped Reddit but never adopted Lemmy, despite my attempts lol.

What a wierd take, given that people STILL play Skyrim, Morrowind, and Fallout games in droves to this day. And that there are a ton of YouTubers that have made careers exclusively off of Beth lore and build videos and such.

Also given the post is about the game shifting to "mostly positive" on Steam. Which means the vast majority of reviews on steam are actually positive. And a lot of the negative reviews have to do with performance and technical issues, not the gameplay itself.

Also the fact that other "open world story-based shooters with rpg and crafting mechanics" are actually really popular - you know like Cyberpunk, or Mass Effect, or RDR2, or arguably, Jedi Survivor.

If you don't like Beth games, that's fine. They're not for everyone. But it doesn't mean your opinion is universal.

I totally agree. I'm having a blast with this game. Imo, the best thing Beth has ever made (yeah, suck it Morrowind stans)

I think the problem is that this game has a bit of a slow burn. It took a bit for it to open up and make sense for me, more than most Beth games. I think over time the hate cycle will die down and people will get it on a steam sale and finally sink their teeth into it and after a couple of years it's going to be as beloved as Skyrim is today.

Nope, not true in the slightest. There's actually a lot of variety in biomes, flora, fauna, characteristics - and a lot of them even have multiple biomes with different life per biome.

What i expect people are complaining about is one of two things:

1. Planet scanning is boring.
2. On noes generated dungeons

To the first point, I agree planet scanning gets pretty boring if that's all you do for 5 hours straight. But there's a TON of content in this game. Switch it up. Once you're done with a mission, go explore the planet you ended up on and scan the things. Or don't. Who cares. Planet scanning isn't necessary at all. I think a lot of people see that planet scanning gives you a ton of credits and xp, go grind that one thing, and then complain that it's boring.

On the second point, yes every planet will have a bunch of locations that are like "Cave" or "Covered Crater" or "Abandoned Facility" and such. A lot of them are small resource troves, but the facilities actually feel pretty handbuilt - if you check them out. But I think a lot of people see "Abandoned [whatever]" and think "oh autogenerated content, meh" without checking it out. I certainly have been guilty of that. But every time I actually decide to go in, I'm surprised at how much fun I actually have in those environments, how much environmental storytelling is actually there, and how well built the levels are. I feel like they hand built a bunch of these or components of them and an engine puts it all together.

The reality is that every Beth game ever has used procedural generation. And they've been getting better at it with each game. Skyrim felt less empty that Oblivion. Starfield feels less empty, overall anyway, than Skyrim. The handbuilt hub planets are way busier than any location in Skyrim. The procedural worlds feel more empty than skyrim for sure, but it makes plenty of sense, theres still plenty to do, and the amount of planets makes it feel less empty. And overall, there's a LOT more handbuilt and story content than skyrim - by several factors imo.

I'll also point out that the procedural content is just flavor. You don't need to engage in it but it's there if you want it. This game has a TON of handbuilt content - more than any other Beth game. The faction quests feel like a full game in their own right. The side quests are plentiful and quite deep. Complaining about procedural content in this game feels like complaining about the number of leaves on a tree.

I get you, but this is how people are today - and the internet feeds it. We get a lot more positive feedback from negativity these days and the internet brings more people together which means there's more chance for a spontaneous negativoty circlejerk. And honestly, it's harder to be positive against the grain in such a situation than it is to join the circlejerk.

This behavior has nothing to do with Lemmy or Reddit or Mastodon or Twitter or whatever platform. Yes, each has a "culture" but those cultures are easily changed as more people join. And that's the problem with Lemmy. What you remember is a smaller community with enthusiasm for a new platform. Over time, as Lemmy gets more people and the "newness" dies down, negativity will surface. The only difference between Lemmy and Reddit is the management and federation, the people are always going to be the same.

The only thing we can do is be the change we want. Create your own positive posts. Interject negative circlejerks with positivity. Run against the grain. What you'll find is that, whilr you'll get hate, people will come out of the wordwork to join in your positivity - but only once someone else does it first. Misery does love company, by positivity is infectious and sometimes needs a patient zero.

Think about your contributions to this goal. You saw a lack of positivity and your immediate response was to complain about it with this post. You're feeding the thing you hate with this very post. If, instead, you had posted something positive, then you'd be woking towards a more positive Lemmy. But instead, this post is pulling it down and forcing everyone to wallow in the very negativity you think is destroying Lemmy.

Now, of course you did it because it's a much easier way to force a conversation. You see a problem, you want to talk about the problem. But that's exactly why you see more negativity. It's way easier to see and react to the negative than to react with positivity. And that's why no matter what platform you're on, you're always going to have this issue.

The best anti-war stories are those that are set during peacetime, because they show the alternative, rather than glorifying the violence of war. At the same time, you cannot fight negativity with negativity.

If you want Lemmy to be a more positive environment, you'll need to add some positivity of your own. But I promise you, your investment will pay dividends. People will come out of the woodwork to join in whatever positive message you put out. Sure, you'll have haters, but others will defend you. You just have to start the ball running.

Plus, unless you go work out like crazy right after drinking it, that amount of carbs is going to cause your body to overproduce insulin and counteract any energy benefit you might have gotten from the sugar or coffee. Carb overload with low activity is the real reason people get sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner - not tryptophan.

The idea that people get these milkshakes to "wake up" is hilarious to me. The best it'll do is prevent a caffine headache but its not going to give you much of an energy benefit and you're going to crash like crazy.