kernalphage

[kernalphage]

the tv show "the torment nexus game is bad" being a poignant critique of wage slavery and class disparity and capitalism that is popularized in the west by big tv corporation bc it makes them money, then being turned into "the torment nexus game is bad: the game show" by the most souless and therefore most popular youtuber because it makes him money, so then big tv corporation makes their OWN "the torment nexus game is bad: the OFFICIAL game show" to make even more money off the "the torment nexus game is bad" fictional critique of capitalism tv show, and then it turns out that many allegations of torment nexus-like conditions come out of both reality tv game shows but there aren't any consequences. and then Bigger Corporation goes to the soulless youtuber and is like. lets make another "the torment nexus game is bad" -esque game show to make us a lot of money because the people stuck in the torment nexus love that shit. it's called "the torment nexus game is fun :-)" and then the writer of the "the torment nexus game is bad" posts on twitter that he fucking hates his own story and what it has become. you would think this is a plot from a heavy-handed early black mirror episode but it is unfortunately a plot from real life

[kernalphage]

The California insurance thing is adding on to my established belief that insurance is inherently a bad mitigation for any risk that affects large swaths of the population who will very likely need it at some point.

The point of insurance is for the collective to pay an affordable regular fee, and the few who are affected by a given risk are compensated. Ideally, the EV of insurance would be 0, but in practice the EV is negative, but since we are broadly risk averse* we want it anyway.

But that only works if the fee is affordable and the risk is low. Fire insurance in California was a bad idea because everyone was at a major risk, the full cost of premiums would have been immense. California made it worse by making it illegal to charge for the real cost, but even if they hadn't, the premiums would have simply ballooned and many people would have been priced out of insuring their homes, and would still be in this situation.

Similar thing happens with healthcare. Everyone wants their insurance to cover everything, including very common, every day medications for long term medical problems. Needing my ADHD medication isn't a risk, it's not at the tail end of the probability distribution. My insurance shouldn't cover it, because covering it means that the company has to raise everyone's premiums, and raising the premiums prices people (myself included) out of being able to afford insurance for actual tail risks that could ruin their lives.

"But I need my ADHD medication to live a good life, it would ruin me to not get it" yeah, I hear you, same here, but insurance is just a bad system for dealing with that. It just isn't a risk, it doesn't fit well with the "small affordable fee to avoid unlikely disaster" model. If insurance pays for everyone's lifetime medications, then it has to raise premiums by the average of the cost of everyone's lifetime medications, and everyone breaks even, except now insurance is just more expensive and some people are priced out.

I think anytime insurance starts to sail out of the price range of the target demographic, it's a sign that something is deeply wrong and some intervention, likely government intervention, is needed. If people can't afford the fire insurance, it's because the fire risk is way too high and your forest management strategy should be overhauled. If people are struggling to pay their health care insurance, their insurance probably covers way too much because too much of every day health care is also out of reach of people.

Insurance companies aren't the good guys, you have an adversarial relationship with them. They will try to screw you over and lie to you and scam you and all the rest. But you can't get blood from stone, and you can't get a policy of "pay me money if my home built on top of kindling burns down" without paying for it somewhere, and instead of getting mad at the insurance company you should probably start asking why your home is built on kindling.

*Or, well, more complicatedly the full cost of some disasters is much worse than than strict accounting cost. Losing your home is far more destructive than losing the market price of the home's value, because it means spending weeks to months homeless and opening you up to other risks.

[kernalphage]

why is bottom surgery so hard and long and painful. like my. just like m. i dont even have the heart to say it

[kernalphage]

I went to the forest that makes you have multiple pronouns and accidentally touched some poison ivy there

[kernalphage]

Fine. I'll speedwatch bocchi the rock.

[kernalphage]

[kernalphage]

stop telling trans girls that "it's okay to be a feminine man" and start saying it to "cis" girls with a little bit of a fujoshi vibe instead. would have saved me years.

[kernalphage]

gonna be honest whenever i see "master" in like a horny context it never reads correctly, my first thought is always Jedi Dialogue

[kernalphage]

kind of obsessed with my dad's friend who apparently goes back to being a Buddhist whenever he gets a divorce

[kernalphage]

okay so i finished checking if we were friends in every universe and, uh, it turns out we're only friends in 6 of them. but look, i need you to understand these universes vary like crazy, okay? like 6 is actually insanely high, like way higher than most. and one of those is the universe where i accidentally killed the actor who played Dipsy from Teletubbies when i was 7 and my life went completely differently as a result. and we still ended up friends! also you were a girl in that universe for some reason. what? oh, uh, yeah, you were cute as hell. like really cute. did you just fucking giggle

[kernalphage]

Tbh I don't care about the Odyssey discourse but I saw one tweet where they're like "convenient that they would have a guy who goes on an Odyssey named Odysseus" it was my favorite tweet about the whole thing

[kernalphage]

hank green's 2025 bingo card is gonna make me pass out

[kernalphage]

pangolin at the pangolin deli: Can I get uhh some ants on that and uhhh some ants on the side

[kernalphage]

[kernalphage]

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READ AHEAD ON KOFI!

[kernalphage]

[kernalphage]