controversial-truth - Tumblr blog

[controversial-truth]

How can you tell if a post of yours is just being liked by a bunch of bots? One of my posts on another blog is being liked by a bunch of “people” whose icons are face-shots of women who look like they are trying to be models. It doesn’t seem like its ever the same woman in the pic, but the pics are all the same quality and style. It makes it kind of obvious. Im not sure if I would be happy if one of my posts went viral because of bots.

[controversial-truth]

Love it when I’m at work and my smart watch notifies me I closed my exercise ring, despite barely stepping away from my computer.

Turns out anxiety now counts as exercise. 🙃

[controversial-truth]

Here’s a post for Easter!

There is this person I work with and they actually like peeps. Turns out they also like candy corn. Monster!

[controversial-truth]

Stores in the midwest be like, “A big snowstorm is coming! Let’s get out the swimsuits!”

[controversial-truth]

I don’t think I have hurt this much since her funeral. I bought a new planner today and was writing in birthdays only to realize I didn’t have to put her name in.

[controversial-truth]

I feel like hockey is just boxing with extra steps.

[controversial-truth]

I can guarantee the reason coffee works to wake you up isn’t because of the caffeine, it’s because it tastes so bad the flavor is a shock factor.

[controversial-truth]

In 2017 my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. After surgery to have the mass removed and 4 rounds of chemo she was declared to be in remission. In 2020 the cancer returned, but because of my grandmas fear of catching COVID while at the hospital she skipped appointments and was not able to get the spot biopsied. In early 2021 that was finally performed and it was officially noted the cancer had returned and metastasized. After a few months of immunotherapy, treatment was stopped because it had stopped working and grandma was put on hospice. I am now sitting at her bedside whenever I can and watching her slowly die. Sometimes my family and I wish she would just fall to sleep and that be the end of it but that is not what’s happening. Day by day, as her heart slows, she is becoming more confused. She keeps saying that something isn’t right. It’s difficult to watch someone you love slowly die. And do you want to know the worst part of it all?

She is a smoker.

She was still smoking up until just a couple days ago, when her mind decided she couldn’t be completely awake anymore. And even now, she is hallucinating that she is smoking. We see her fingers move to the position where she would be holding a cigarette and bring it to her mouth. The last cigarette she requested still stays, unlit, on the dinning room table next to her lighter.

This morning her pulse is in the 30’s. Last night it was in the 40’s. She doesn’t have long now and it feels like torture just sitting next to her, waiting for her to die.

And to think, it’s possible this could have been prevented. If only she hadn’t smoked. She is 77 years old, so it’s obviously not clear if she would have lived much longer, but her life was definitely shortened by tobacco use.

And I don’t know if I am simply in the anger stage of grief or if this is just something I have never thought about before, but how can tobacco companies get away with this? They are literally the only industry that has not been shut down for killing their customer base. They are literally murderers.

I started writing this post about 25 minutes ago and as of this moment I was told grandma passed.

How hard would it be to sue the tobacco industry on behalf of everyone who has ever died of lung cancer?

[controversial-truth]

Can people without internal monologues get songs stuck in their head?

[controversial-truth]

I feel like its a losing battle when I argue with my watch that anxiety does not count as exercise.

[controversial-truth]

Right now we are experiencing too many job openings and not enough workers to fill them.

I was having a conversation with the husband about how, as workers, we are not putting up with how employers are underpaying and mistreating their employees anymore and if they want to stay open they will need to treat their employees better if they want someone to work for them.

My husband looked at me and said, “They won’t close. They will just automate everything.”

I found that comment startling in its truthfulness. Companies would rather invest in automation than have to treat their employees humanely. That says a lot about the current state of the workforce in the U.S.

[controversial-truth]

I realized the Internet has lied to me today. We have two small dogs and leave our deck door open all the time so they can go outside when they want to. I just now realized we have never had a cat invite themselves in despite our door being open nearly constantly. And I know for a fact we have cats that roam the neighborhood because they have sat on the deck with the dogs before. I am extremely disappointed that the internet gave me the expectation that if I left a door open, they would come. I want a surprise kitty.

[controversial-truth]

[controversial-truth]

Now that it’s the coldest part of winter I keep seeing posts like, “See? Global warming isn’t real. If it was, why would we be breaking cold temperature records?”

The best response I have to a question like this is, “Because you are confusing Global Warming with Global Climate Change.”

But what is the difference? I am in no way, shape, and/or form an expert, but here is an easy way to understand without having to be.

Global Warming causes Global Climate Change which causes the record highs and lows.

Global Warming is what we see when we look at the planet’s average temperatures over the billions of years its been around. We can tell from evidence left on the planet what temperatures were like at different points in the past and how ling it should normally take for the planet to reach a certain temperature. We also know that ever since the industrial revolution the temperature the planet has reached is higher than it would normally have reached on its own at this time.

Global Climate Change is the result of the earth having reached its current temperature too early. It’s causing extreme weather in almost every aspect and it is what we are able to see for ourselves. This is what we experience every day.

So the difference between the two concepts is the scale. If you are talking about temperatures over billions of years, you are talking about Global Warming. If you are talking about how crazy the weather has been over the last few years, you are talking about Global Climate Change.

Hope this clears up some confusion.

[controversial-truth]

Humans are greedy fuckers

Now that I have your attention, I will explain why humans are greedy fuckers using one of the hot topics going around right now: a $15 minimum wage.

When we think about a $15 minimum wage, there are generally two schools of thought:

1. The minimum wage needs to stay where it is. These jobs are meant to be used by people who are in high school so they can get some work experience, learn work ethic, and earn some spending money so they don’t have to ask their parents. They are not meant to be careers. Because of this, there is no reason to raise the minimum wage. Kids don’t need to be making a lot of money and a higher minimum wage will only cause problems in the form of increased prices. If someone wants a higher pay, they need to acquire the skills to get it.

2. The minimum wage should be increased. Not only high schoolers work these jobs. Adults do too and need to be able to support their families. I don’t mind spending a little more to make sure someone can afford food to eat and a place to sleep.

Now here is where the greed comes in. The United States has a mixed economy (it is a mix of a capitalistic economy and a socialistic economy). The capitalistic part means the government cannot tell companies how much to charge for their goods and services (except for when it comes to price gouging but that’s a different conversation). Companies will, obviously, charge an amount that allows them to make a profit. Those companies who have stakeholders want to make those stakeholders happy. The stakeholders are happy when the company they invested in grows. Growth is most often measured in a larger profit from year to year. This is the reason prices have continued to rise despite the minimum wage staying the same. This is also the reason why prices will increase after a minimum wage increase. A higher minimum wage will create higher expenses, which will cause higher prices in order to cover those expenses. And no one is allowed to tell companies they can’t do this.

Rather than taking a smaller profit (because lets face it, even if the companies raise what they are paying their employees, the expenses will be no where near what their profit is. They will not be taking a loss, only a smaller profit) the companies will raise their prices in order to make up what they are losing. Because they want to make their stakeholders happy.

Even if the government could do something about it (it is more likely they wouldn’t do anything because they are probably the stakeholders in question and want to make their money), we can’t trust them to in the first place (even assuming they are not stakeholders). This is because the government has proven time and again that they can’t be trusted to pass legislation that will actually benefit the people. Whenever they try to pass legislation that actually sounds good, sounds like something that would actually help people, they have to add in some non-related crap in order to make their backers happy. Ever wonder why something that should be fairly simple (maybe even as simple as yes or no) has to have a document over 1000 pages long? It’s because they have the first page as what the legislation is supposed to be about, then the rest is a free for all for things everyone else wants that is completely unrelated to the first page.

And this is only taking about corporations. Small businesses are a different story because they could actually go out of business without raising their prices to match their expenses. They dont normally have people financially supporting them if they have a bad year or go through hardship. They would need their community to actually support them by buying from them rather than larger corporations. But with them having to raise their prices makes their products cost more, which many in the community can’t afford. It’s a catch 22.

So even though it would be amazing for a minimum wage job to be only for students, it can’t be disputed that there are issues because of people’s greed. Adults without marketable skills need the jobs to provide for their families (and all of their money is being used for that). So, they don’t have enough money left over to gain any new skills so they can get a better job that pays more. They are stuck in a rut. If the minimum wage was raised and they were able to save more, then they could gain the skills needed for a better paying job. But that would only work if corporations agreed not to raise their prices for a period of time that would allow the workers to do so.

Should the minimum wage be raised? If we raise it, the same people will be in poverty, but the poverty line will be raised. If we don’t raise the minimum wage, more people will eventually be in poverty at the current poverty line. There is no right answer. And that is because:

People are greedy fuckers.

[controversial-truth]

So let’s learn how insurance works (in a pharmacy at least). Then you will have a basic understanding as to why medications cost so much.

Lets say a manufacturer sells a medication to a wholesale distributor for $15

The distributor sells it to a pharmacy for $30

The doctor gives you a prescription and you take it to your pharmacy

The pharmacy charges $50 for the medication

But you have insurance, so the pharmacy submits the claim.

The insurance looks at the claim and says, “I know this says the bill is $50, but just for shits and giggles, let’s say it actually is $30. We will pay $20 and the patient will pay $10.”

The pharmacy can’t dispute this and they can’t charge the patient the extra $20.

Most people would use simple accounting and say, “Well, that’s not bad. They are breaking even.”

But the accounting isn’t so simple. You have to take into account paying for supplies, wages, insurance for the building and employees, morgage on the building, software payments, and many other expenses

In this example, lets say $50 is the true break-even point. In other words, the point at which the pharmacy has to sell the medication to pay for the other expenses

So, the pharmacy is actually losing money with this transaction, so they have to raise the price of the medication

So, knowing the insurance will only pay 60% of the bill, the pharmacy increases the price to $100

Now with the same expenses, the pharmacy is making a $10 profit off a $100 bill

This is why your medication costs so much

[controversial-truth]

Even though commercials say 99% of medicare plans will cover expensive anticoagulants (and other new medications that are only available as name brand), that doesn’t mean they will be affordable. Medicare patients can not afford to pay $300-$400 a month for a medication (and due to current medicare laws, they are not eligible to get additional assistance due to being are a medicare patient).