213374U

Relatively cheap. Rates vary obviously but you can find it from ~13€/mo for someone under 30 with basic coverage, up to ~70-80€/mo for anyone, with all-encompassing coverage (stuff like acupuncture, assisted reproduction, hospitalization compensation). Mine is middle of the road, for a(n increasingly less) healthy single 30-something, including dental coverage at some 35 merkels per month. Evidently family packages are cheaper per member, the more members there are. Insurance doesn't cover meds, but generally you can take a diagnosis and prescription from an insurance doctor to your public health service GP and have them prescribe the same thing so it doesn't come out of your pocket, unless it's something frivolous like weight loss pills. Completely separate systems as far as the end user is concerned, except for the meds thing (which I don't think is official policy anyway) and what I mentioned in the other thread about a fraction of public healthcare patients being redirected to private hospitals for diagnostic tests and such, but you get some tax deductions if you are privately insured. Treatment quality is really top notch. And our low income per capita relative to other western countries results in generally low prices across the board, which makes this country an attractive destination for medical tourism. Only real downside is the locals...

So there's a new Trek show, and everyone and their dog is hating it? slowpoke.jpeg Seems like as good an excuse to try Netflix as any. First month is free anyway.

Post-truth era lingo for "someone aware of current social justice issues". Yeah, it's a thing.

Well, it's not a bad deal. However, Origin's selection of games isn't all that great and at the end of the day, you're still limited by the amount of free time you have, which is what the deluge of games being published these days really compete for, rather than your money. I wouldn't be surprised if, taking into consideration the mean amount of hours of gaming per day of the average Origin user, they make more money per hour played with most titles (those which aren't AAA released in the last 3-6 months, and therefore aren't available by subscription) than they would offering them at an aggressive discount.

You know it's a ****ty state of affairs when the Chinese have you beat on consumer protections. According to his Twitter profile, he is. A pity he quit posting here, but I can understand his reasons.

Not Rex Tillerson.

That idea is plain dangerous, and I'm only half-joking. Contemplating that fact it's easy to slowly slide into a sense of powerlessness -- which may or may not be the lesson of the vid. It's also important to remember that:

A metal thread separate from the general music one? Sure why not.

Sure there is. We do it every two years here in the US. However people keep checking Democrat or Republican and nothing ever changes. If you really want to change, then change your vote. There are other options. I'm fairly certain HD was quoting The Donald.

As of today, government's already taking the constitutionally prescribed steps to suspend Catalan autonomy. Considering that the Catalan police are expected to do nothing, their chief has been charged with sedition and Spanish law enforcement officers deployed there are under literal siege, I'm now seeing the military being called upon to "restore order". A cherished national tradition that has never caused trouble in the past. And ultimately this escalation of tensions is nothing more than a convenient smokescreen to deviate attention away from the myriad corruption cases both ruling parties are involved in. It's not by coincidence that waving a painted piece of cloth in front of a beast's eyes to draw its attention is another cherished national tradition. ****ing hell people are stupid.

I wouldn't throw her in jail for that either, I guess. Throw in contempt of court however and it's a different matter altogether. And you're not telling consumers what they can and can't buy -- you're telling services and goods providers what they can and can't offer and how. Much like how the food industry is subject to a more or less close scrutiny by specialists on the government's payroll. Unless you are a specialist yourself, you are simply not qualified to make an informed decision on whether additive X is bad for you. The disagreement is on where the line where you consider the government is treating you as "too stupid to make informed decisions" lies. I'm sure a PhD. in biochemistry may feel babied by the government when the FDA makes decisions for him -- but you should be grateful (most of the time).

The way the narrative goes in the ME3MP community is that the microtransactions bs was offset by the fact that they put out a rather decent amount of quality DLC for free. Many people bought biower moniez as a means to show their support. Largely, it worked, even though some parts of the RNG based system were infuriating (no streak breakers). Then... Andromeda came. They cranked the greed up to 11, and additional content delivery was reduced to a token effort. It was inevitable, in retrospect. I used to think this way, too. Then I saw this (it's even possible someone posted it here). I'm fully inclined to refrain from buying in those cases where, beyond ethical concerns, the scheme is actually detrimental to the game as a whole because it's a central design element, without which the core experience suffers: 2K18 comes to mind. In that case it's not really a boycott -- you're simply not buying a **** product.

Inspiring to know that people equate dietetics (which is a science-based discipline) with the likes of scatomancy. Good show folks. And btw, there are also actual doctors who support homeopathy. So by the same logic I expect peeps to go forth and rise in defense of the sacred right of wholly unsanctioned "health experts" to perform surgery and prescribe meds... provided that "the consumer" agrees. In the end it comes down to prejudice, sadly. GD and others just don't think the subject in question is serious enough to be a matter of government regulation, unlike aircraft operation or surgical procedures. If CDC statistics don't convince you otherwise, it's pointless for me to try. Ta-ta! edited because i cant into english

I'm not sure what's wrong about shutting down someone who isn't qualified to hand out dietary advice from doing so for-profit. Would you feel similarly outraged if she was offering tips on prescription drug usage? I didn't know, but looks to me like the requirements for obtaining a dietitian's license in Florida are quite stringent. That's a good thing. She doesn't get to do the same thing without undergoing proper training. What happens if someone's health is damaged from following her advice? As long as she is not presenting herself as something she's not what is the problem? Suppose you need new brakes on your car. The repair shop quotes you one price and I offer to do it in my backyard for half. Should the government be harassing me? The choice is always with the consumer. The problem is twofold, the way I see it. First: she's engaged in unfair competition v. actual dietitians. She's not presenting herself as a dietitian, but she's billed as a "health coach", whatever the **** that means. If her videos bore a "not an actual dietitian" watermark and she wasn't making money off of it, it wouldn't be a problem. If such an activity is allowed, it disincentivizes getting an actual education and offering quality advice. It's just much more insidious because the consequences of a bad diet are harder to connect to the root cause, unlike say, a botched surgery. Second: as there is no official licensing involved, there can be no official liabilities derived from her malpractice either, which leaves potential victims defenseless. If someone with kidney damage is given improper diet advice and their health suffers as a consequence, they are unprotected as she could never offer dietary advice in a professional capacity to begin with. It's all well and good to say it's a consumer's choice, but not everyone is aware of the severity of the consequences of a bad diet and the rigorous requirements to obtain a license. There's also a degree of expectations regarding professional competence: do you personally ask to see the pilots' licenses every time you board a flight?

I'm not sure what's wrong about shutting down someone who isn't qualified to hand out dietary advice from doing so for-profit. Would you feel similarly outraged if she was offering tips on prescription drug usage? I didn't know, but looks to me like the requirements for obtaining a dietitian's license in Florida are quite stringent. That's a good thing. She doesn't get to do the same thing without undergoing proper training. What happens if someone's health is damaged from following her advice?

Finally got around to playing Satellite Reign, the laptop I had before I bought a proper desktop gaming PC couldn't run it. Not very far in yet, but it's fun so far -- I'm pretty sure we (I'm playing with a friend) are supposed to be able to stealth through some sections but either we suck or stealth mechanics are gimmicky and unpredictable, so most situations tend to end up the same way: with a heap of dead guards. Either way, it's refreshing how easy it was to set up a game after giving up on Splinter Cell Blacklist which requires ****ing Uplay on top of Steam. GDIAF, Ubisoft.

No doubt ditching the salary cap would make it a more popular sport... in the same measure that it would damage the league's competitiveness. Team budget and ref/league corruption really have ruined any appeal the sport can have for anyone who isn't brain dead or a Real fan (cue equivalence jokes). I guess that must be the "invisible hand" I've heard so much about...

Most of the great LucasArts point-and-click adventure games are a bit on the wacky side, so maybe something along the lines of Syberia? Broken Sword? A personal favorite of mine is KGB, which is abandonware by now, I think. No idea about Mac games with a high skill ceiling that a kid would like, unfortunately. (people game on their Macs?)

Great piece. Doesn't hold up to facts, though.

More like your right to bear arms doesn't actually do much to prevent the government from abrogating your other rights. Last time I checked, it wasn't France that passed the Patriot and Protect America acts, it wasn't Sweden that established the Gitmo prison and CIA black site network, it wasn't Japan that ran a campaign of extrajudicial drone killings extended to their own citizens, and I'm pretty sure that, despite the poor quality of our democracy, you can't have your stuff (guns included) stolen by the police without a conviction here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against gun ownership rights. However I think your vision of said rights as a safeguard against government excesses is just not terribly realistic.

Interesting read. Makes the alt-right look much less unified and homogeneous a movement than it's usually portrayed as, with mostly Breitbart working as the glue that keeps it -somewhat- together and gives it focus. Not really surprised at Milo outed as a complete diva and 88 edgelord ("kristallnacht" as your password? Really?), but the careful calculations by his handlers that led to him being shot down when going too far for even BB sensibilities are pretty revealing. Still, the fact that he managed to attract ostensibly reasonable, literate and otherwise well-adjusted people (even though they may later disavow him) who resent the current climate of PC is deeply troubling.

I just noticed we're on page 46 already. How is it that this monster of a thread has not crashed the forum yet? What sorcery is this?!

I'm in one such country, and I'm kind of a bum, so I'll bite. One does not simply walk into a hospital unless in need need of emergency medical care. For everything else, you call up your assigned GP to get an appointment, generally in 1-2 days. The GP decides if the case warrants a specialist's opinion and if so, you're given a referral note which authorizes you to get an appointment with a specialist (which you don't get to choose either). This is where the waiting times get pretty crazy as the appointment can be anything from weeks to months unless it's something potentially life-threatening such as cancer signs. If you have, say, just a bad knee which requires a specialist, a specific diagnostic test and maybe finally surgery, you can be looking at the better part of a year. Recently they've been cutting down on wait times by redirecting patients to private hospitals -with the public health system footing the bill- but some people just refuse and would rather just wait. UHC has been hit fairly hard by the recession with Brussels-mandated "austerity" policies causing problems with understaffing, underfunding, the works. Quality varies quite a bit between regions too because we're so progressive that public healthcare administration is not the jurisdiction of the central government beyond ensuring that such a thing exists in every region. The Catalan health service for instance is basically bankrupt. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford private insurance because even though the quality is the same (medical professionals often work in both systems in a morning/afternoon split), I don't need to go through the GP and can get a specialist appointment of my choosing directly, and wait lists for tests and surgery are much shorter.

"There were 55% more casualties per capita from mass public shootings in EU than US from 2009-15" EU. Not Europe. Yeah, the chart itself is labeled "Public Mass Shootings in Europe and the EU" (and then goes on to include Norway in the EU... Russia is also bolded because why the **** not), but then it's at best a case of data not supporting the original assertion. But even the website shows that it's casualties per million that are "higher" in the EU than the US, whereas fatalities are still higher in the US. You seem to be talking about one when referring to the other. So, back of the envelope calculations still puts the US per capita deaths in mass shootings at 75% more than in the EU. "Europe" in general? Who knows. Perhaps if we consider only countries where mass shootings happened and exclude the rest, and maybe if we count deaths in Russia but not her ~140 million inhabitants, etc. It's also worth noting that mass public shootings are defined (per the website) "as as four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty", which is useful because it excludes other incidents that may further tip the scales such as gang-related violence, "private" shootings etc. Not sure where you're getting the 49 additional deaths 2013-2015, but consider that the criterion was lowered to 3 from 4 in a single event to qualify, in 2013. I think it's actually close to double that number. Not that it was a very useful comparison to begin with, with arbitrary cutoff points and distinctions between Europe, the EU, and casualty/fatality, but yeah, there's just no salvaging that hodgepodge of "statistics".

Well, I guess it comes down to expectations. I keep expecting them to surprise me with a return to form. In that light, the kind of content releases that add a flashpoint, a WZ and one raid boss is always going to fall short. Nothing wrong with enjoying it for what it is of course, but to me it's just... meh. Then again I'm nowhere near as prolific a gamer as you so I always have a metric ****ton of stuff lined up. @majestic: ah, yes. I forgot that after 1871, the French and Germans just can't be in the same server together. Anyway, better queue times are a good thing, but pugging EC is always going to be a veritable nightmare no matter how good waiting times are. Incredible that after all this time they haven't been able to come up with a system to encourage vets to teach pugs the ropes -- and the "proving grounds" aspect of the Eternal Championship seems to have been abandoned.