Nah, they’ll just keep them open for the deportee labor camps …

I’m pretty sure that’s why that one doctor would only go over one issue per visit.

Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

I have never had worse “insurance” than when I had United “Healthcare”. They have you a big book full of all their “providers”, but when you called to make an appointment, you were told they’d left United quite a while back and shouldn’t be in the book. A few providers were still in network, but they weren’t accepting new patients. Their “provider support” line was completely useless, because they would only read you out the “options” available in the book, the one with all the ghost providers.

My SIL in southern New Jersey ended up with them for some reason. She needed to see an OB/Gyn due to some abnormal bleeding that had been going on for too long. She went through their provider carousel and finally found one provider who was still in network and also still accepting new patients. That provider was 2.5 hours away from her, in the very other end of New Jersey.

I eventually did find one local provider who was in network, except they never did any comprehensive medical visits; you had to visit them for one issue at a time, at least a week apart. They’d give you a prescription or a referral but (once again) you were entirely on your own finding someone to accept the referral. Like there were times I’d make a dozen phone calls a day for weeks, trying to find someone who could see me - it was very much an entire part-time job trying to see someone!

I ended up switching insurance and have ended up ‘captured’ within a regional hospital’s provider network. The hospital bought up a bunch of local independent providers in all the different specialities. I’m really unhappy with the continued corporatization of healthcare and the conglomeration of hospital networks - but the ability to call one number, be given a specialist within reasonable driving distance and (in that same phone call) be given an appointment within a reasonable timeframe is just so refreshing!

It has correctly identified both a Stargate and a moai made of snow.

I gave it two pictures of my cat and it said that she looked annoyed in one picture and contemplative in the other, both of which were true.

Yeah, that’s gay as fuck, especially for the late 70’s / early 80’s.

The thing is, you’re looking at it from 2024 eyes. 46 years ago, it was very definitely a gay video, especially when you throw in things that have been forgotten like the 1970’s gay mustache. It wasn’t really until Magnum PI that straight men reclaimed the mustache.

You can save your magic dollars and become a magic millionaire/billionaire etc.

One dollar a day is $365 per year. If I lived a hundred years and didn’t spend anything, I’d have $36,500 (not counting leap years). I’d have to live 2,739 years to become a millionaire - I don’t think I’m going to make it!

That’s how I was using it, like an iterative search engine.

Email/PM everyone I’m in contact with online and ask them for their current phone numbers and addresses, and send them mine. Subscribe to 2-3 local and regional newspapers, and one good national or international one.

Offline contact info for every place I do business with online, and scrape a list of all businesses within 20 miles of home or work. Offline contact info for all the government agencies I or family or friends may need to contact for the next five years. Offline contact info for every local, state, or federal official who supposedly represents me, my family or friends.

A full listing of all my online accounts, with full transaction histories. Copies of all Terms of Service and privacy policies, copies of all warranty, repair and refund policies.

Phone numbers of my favorite restaurants and copies of their current menus. Phone numbers, addresses, visitor information, prices and (where applicable) attraction information for all museums, parks and other attractions in my area.

All my archived email or stored files that’s still on a server somewhere. Copies of every single bookmark on every device I have. And copies of every story on AO3.

Someone suggested using it to identify things you only remember bits of or certain scenes from. I tried using it to find this YA book I read as a kid; it was not at all helpful, but did eventually lead me to do researching and finding the book elsewhere. (And it turns out the scene I was describing was exactly what happened, and the characters were named exactly what I thought they were, so that was born annoying at the time and frustrating later.)

I also tried using it to find this really obscure, incredibly bad 1970s tv movie that I had vague recollections of. Again, the scene was pretty much what I remembered, it couldn’t identify it, but I eventually found a site that lists the plots of old tv movies and I read through like 30 pages of movie synopses until I found the one I was looking for.

I’ve also tried using it to find this 1980’s interactive fiction game, but it’s proved useless once again - and once again further research has identified a couple possibilities except I haven’t had time to try to find the game and set up the right environment for it.

So my experience has been that it’s useless in finding the things I want it to find, but that in trying to persist against it may lead me to find what I’m looking for elsewhere.

I’d check to see if there’s a tool library near you. After doing some work, you’ll get a feel for what tools you’re using most often, or that are frequently checked out of the library.

Fortunately, my family all died off in the pandemic. We were all liberal, and they’d be horrified by the state of things. I’m grateful they don’t have to experience any of this.

I should go dig up some of those “Overly Honest Methods” memes …

Yeah, but then I’d have to read the Daily Mail …

When you say “the Dual-eligibles are likely the first on the chopping block”, do you keep people with dual nationalities, or people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid?

Isn’t Cyprus still caught between Greece and Turkey?

OP, make sure to get your thyroid levels checked, that can also lead to lethargy and depression.