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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • I’m not sure if it’s still the largest in the state, but Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is a non-profit, but they don’t seem to run in a very not-for-profit way. A long time ago, maybe 20 years ago, the board tried to switch it to a for-profit organization with the stated goal of going public and issuing stock options. The state didn’t allow them to do that, so the board started giving themselves lavish pay raises and arranging executive “retreats” in prime vacation destinations like Hawaii.

    I don’t know how their denial rate compares to for-profit insurers, but they are a giant pain to deal with, and we have no other real options for the doctors we see and medications we take.






  • Once a long time ago I had some problems after upgrading a computer from Windows 7 to Windows 8. I got on a chat with someone from Microsoft support and eventually started a remote session with them. The first thing he did was go into the chat app from my side and give himself 5-star ratings across the board and pasted in some feedback about being diligent and responsive. That whole part took less than 30 seconds.

    At the end of the day he couldn’t resolve the issues and we ultimately downgraded back to Windows 7.



  • There’s a highway that formed a loop around the city where I grew up and we used it pretty regularly, but mostly only the western half (since we lived on the west side of town). My parents explained the concept to me that it had “belt” in its name because it circled around the city like a belt goes around a person. This idea intrigued me and I eventually asked my parents if someday we could drive all the way around it. My dad seemed kind of surprised but said we could sometime. I got excited and started planning for things we would need, like a tent and food, since it would obviously take a long time.

    The highway’s only about 25 miles/40 kilometers long.




  • I started working in local TV news 17 years ago. I figured out pretty quickly there’s enough actual news happening to fill the 24-hour cable channels, but sending out reporters and photographers (maybe even producers) is expensive. It’s much cheaper to just have somebody in the studio blabbering on about a few things and trying to stoke reactions from the audience. It can even build a bigger audience than actual news.

    Sports radio and TV is an even bigger (though less damaging) example of this. They have a lot of time to fill when games aren’t on, and a lot of times they just put someone on who will give the dumbest take possible just to get the audience mad and have an argument with someone else in the studio or even let the audience call in to argue.