#for human services?

[russellsblvd]

okay alright punks

whos gonna be an absolute doll and drop the brocedes interaction video where they're in the bg of sky germany

[localrobosexual]

literally fuck companies that don't want their employees to act "unprofessional" in front of customers. I'm at a five guys rn and the employees here are joking around calling orders back and forth to each other and saying things in weird voices and laughing with each other while they work. Someone just came in for their shift while I was waiting for my food and was greeted by the whole kitchen with a secret handshake lookin thing. It was so silly and cute I love seeing ppl have fun at work and I know my food's gonna be bomb bc the ppl there are having fun with each other. Let employees be people and friends and have fun what is the issue!!!!

[pjharvey-moved]

i think having worked a retail or food service job actually is more important to not being a loser than doing drugs or having sex. the poll that showed so much of this site has never worked one of those jobs was actually way more concerning to me than any of the celibacy sweep polls

[sunlit-mess]

[ Previous | Main comic | Tag guide ] A little warmer... Maybe, maybe not.

[raileurta]

Emotional support humans

In this au the war ended before humanity got involved in it but for one reason or another we still find out about the bots. Standard fist contact stuff happens you know but the bots eventually realize how much calmer they are around humans.

Bots find it hard to go into statis when there's a high likelihood of being attacked in your sleep, but with humans those worries seem to just melt away. It's kinda weird to them to feel protected by a very small organic creature. Regardless stuff like this keeps happening so seeing an economic opportunity humans created "Flesh therapy." (Everyone thinks it's a terrible name but it was the one that stuck)

Flesh therapy could be but not limited to: cable straightening, therapy sessions, human cuddling, car washes, becoming living fidget toys or the main thing live in human therapy dogs.

It will vary but usually a human will live most of the time with a bot (the company will provide basic necessities) and help them through daily life. They have their own vest with cybertronian writing and a government issued work id.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

"When you're famous, they let you do it": eight words that encapsulate the terrifying rot at the heart of our lived experience, a world where impunity for the powerful trumps the pain of their victims.

"Populism," is shorthand for many things: rage, despair, distrust of institutions and a desire to destroy them. True populism seeks to channel those totally legitimate feelings into transformative change for a caring and fair society for all. So-called "right populism" exploits those feelings, using them to drive a wedge between different groups of victims, turning them against each other, so that elites can go on screwing the squabbling factions.

The far-right parties that are marching to victory through a series global elections are different in many ways, but they all share one trait: they appeal to mistrust of institutions, claiming that the government has been captured by elites who serve them at the expense of the governed. This has the benefit of being actually true, and while the fact that far-right parties are owned by these government-capturing elites might erode their credibility, the fact that so many "progressive" parties have stepped in to defend the institutional status quo leaves an open field for reactionary wreckers:

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-slogan-219908

Why would voters turn out to support a "Department of Government Efficiency," run by a bully whose career has been defined by abusing the people he is in charge of? Maybe they're turkeys voting for Christmas, but they also have personal, traumatic experience with government departments that protected the abusive corporations that preyed on them.

Today on Propublica, Peter Elkind tells the incredible story of Lincare, the nation's leading supplier of home oxygen, a repeat-offender fraudster and predator that has made billions in public money without any real consequences:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lincare-medicare-lawsuit-settlements-oxygen-equipment

Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

Why not? Lincare is far too big to fail. In America's bizarre, worst-in-class, world-beatingly expensive privatized health care system, even public health provision (like Medicare) is outsourced to the private sector. Lincare has monopolized oxygen, a famously very important molecule for human survival, and if it were disqualified from serving Medicare, large numbers of Americans would literally asphyxiate.

Lincare clearly knows this. Too big to fail is too big to jail, and too big to jail is too big to care. They are the poster children for impunity, repeat offenders, multiply convicted, and still offending, even today. Lincare has been convicted of fraud under the administrations of GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and they're still in business.

What a business it is! Elkind takes us to the asbestos-poisoned town of Libby, Montana, where more than 2,000 of the 2.857 population suffer from respiratory diseases from the open-pit mine that operated there from 1963-1990. The elderly, dying population of this town rely on Medicare and Medicare Advantage oxygen concentrators to draw breath, and that means they rely on Lincare.

That means they are prey to Lincare's signature scam: charging Medicare (and 20% co-paying patients) to rent an oxygen concentrator every month, until they have paid for it several times over. This is illegal: under federal rules, patients are deemed to have bought their oxygen concentrators after 36 months and contractors are no longer allowed to charge them. Lincare doesn't give a fuck: the bills keep coming, and Lincare patients who survive long enough have paid the company $16,000 for a $799 gadget.

When Brandon Haugen, a local Lincare customer service rep, noticed this and queried the company's home office in Clearwater, Florida (home to Scientology and the Flexidisc), he was given the brushoff. After multiple attempts to get company leadership to acknowledge that this was illegal, he quit his job, along with his colleague and childhood friend Ben Montgomery. Between them, Haugen and Montgomery had 14 children who depended on their Lincare paychecks. Despite this, they both quit and turned whistleblower, with no job lined up. Eventually, Lincare paid $29m to settle the claim, with $5.7m to the whistleblowers and their lawyers. For Lincare, this was part of the cost of doing business and the fraud rolls on.

Lincare doesn't just defraud Medicare, they also have a high-pressure commissioned sales force that has repeatedly been caught defrauding Lincare customers – overwhelming sick, poor, elderly people. Patients are pressured to accept auto-billing, then Lincare piles medically dubious gadgets onto their monthly bills, as well as useless, overpriced "patient monitoring" services. Customers with apnea machines are mis-sold ventilators by salesmen who falsely claim these are medically necessary.

Salespeople illegally auto-shipped parts and consumables for Lincare machines to patients, then billed them for it. To satisfy the legal requirement that they telephone patients before placing these orders, sales agents would call patients, put them on hold, then part the call until the patient hung up.

Salespeople are motivated by equal parts greed and terror. Make quota and you can get up to $8,000 per month in bonuses. Miss that punishing quota and you're out on your ass (which is why one salesperson ordered a medically unnecessary ventilator).

Lincare also habitually ignores requests to pick up medically unnecessary equipment, because so long as the equipment is on the patient's premises, they can continue to bill for it. As one Ohio manager wrote to their staff: "As we have already discussed, absolutely no pick-ups/inactivation’s are to be do[ne] until I give you the green light. Even if they are deceased." Execs send out company-wide emails celebrating regional managers who have abandoned pick-ups, like a Feb 2022 "Achievement Rankings" email that touted the fact that most regional centers had at least 150 overdue pickups.

Lincare represents a deep, structural rot in American society. They are too big to punish, and too powerful to regulate. A 2006 law meant to curb oxygen payments was gutted by industry lobbyists. Today, Congress is weighing legislation, the SOAR (Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform) Act, which will allow Lincare to bill the public for hundreds of millions more every year, raising rates and eliminating competitive billing. The bill is supported by patient advocates who are rightly interested in getting oxygen to patients who have been locked out of the system, but the cost of that inclusion is that Lincare will be even more firmly insulated from its corruption.

The Trump Administration will doubtless crack down on some of America's worst companies, and the furious voters who elected the only candidate who campaigned on the idea that America was rotten will cheer him on. But Trump has made it clear that he will select the targets of his administration based on whether they are loyal to him or stand in his way, without regard to whether they harm his supporters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Companies like Lincare, repeatedly caught paying illegal kickbacks, know how to play this game.

Image: p.Gordon (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_bomb_with_burning_fuse.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[tsuutarr]

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[charlesoberonn]

With every cabinet pick Trump makes the more I am convinced he should not be allowed to return to power, will of the voters be damned.

[jelliedink]

Ancient Vampire Partner as a Service Top Headcanons

Warnings: Pure smut. Mentions of death, blood, violence. No gender specified, but reader do get periods. Implication of abusive relationship. Author's note: I wrote an extensive introduction to this post, but then I realised that was mostly me rambling. So I decided to get straight (and kinda gay) to the point. Shall we? Divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

Here's my take on how I think the sexual dynamic between a human and their ancient vampire lover would go:

Your ancient vampire partner knew they had to be gentle and careful with you. Much like us when carrying a newborn puppy, they were aware of how easily your bones could break if they got too excited. Since sex for them was now more of an echo from their human days and not a survival need, they were ok with going without sex for long periods of time, perhaps waiting until you were ready to be turned. For now, they thought it was safer to wait.

You, on the other hand, were very much not ok with this. You were human, your body evolved to make happy chemicals from sex. As if that wasn't enough, the main survival strategy of your partner's species was looking hot as fuck to lure humans, getting their thoughts so clouded by lust that they'd ignore the stone cold touch, the sharp fingernails, the bluish hue of their skin and the sharpness of their teeth. Your whole body went crazy just by looking at them.

They knew you couldn't help it. So, whenever you were needy and in the mood, they didn't mind putting you on their lap, back against their chest, and touch you until you've had enough. They loved being able to make you feel good, whispering on your ear while playing with your body: "What do you want to try today?" "Do you want me to get one of our toys?" "Does it feel good like this?" "Is this intensity enough?"

In the days you desperately needed to feel them inside of you, they ignored their own desire while watching you ride them mesmerised, gently guiding your hips up and down while kissing and caressing whatever part of your beautiful, soft and warm body they could reach. God, how pretty you looked with your eyes out of focus, using their body to get off and scratch that itch.

And when you were too tired they gladly took the lead, paying attention to your every reaction, focusing on how to serve you better: "Hold my shoulders tight so I can reach deeper without hurting you, ok?" "Slow and steady, precious, or you'll be tired before we can have the amount of fun you deserve." "Here, it will feel even better if you touch yourself too."

But they were far from being selfless. The moment you got your period they morphed into a feral and self-serving beast, unable to control themselves any more than a hungry lion would if near a trapped deer. This was one of the very few times they could feed off of you and they were not letting all this food go to waste.

You'd get properly cushioned in a comfortable position, a heating pad on your lower belly, your legs on their shoulders and they would lick you clean. Prepare to be there for a while, no amount of begging would make them let you get up until they're finished. Of course you always tried to. Every time this happened, they'd first try to convince you with love and praises, but their tone got increasingly more authoritative and mean until you couldn't recognise your lover anymore. "My baby, you taste so good." "How can you be so good to me, my little angel?" "Can't you hold on just a bit more? Please? For me?" "Oh, you're being tortured with too many orgasms? You poor thing, that sounds so terrible." "Pretty, you're not getting up. Don't think that you have a choice just because I'm trying to be nice." "Maybe if I show you how painful I can make it you'll realise how good you're having it stop being such a whiny ungrateful brat. You want this, my baby? You want me to hurt you? So don't make me hurt you."

In the end they'd kiss your whole weak body and your puffed teary face while begging for your forgiveness. They'd say they don't deserve you, they are a monster, they just don't know how to control themselves when you smell like this and they were so hungry. You'd be pampered: a hot bath, body massage, your favourite food, that thing you've been eyeing for so long but was way too out of your budget.

They'd do just about anything you ask for. Anything but promise not to do it again.

[nelkcats]

Surprise check

When Deadman panicked and rushed to call him during an important meeting, Constantine thought it was a ghost thing, he doubted it was anything really important so he ignored it for a few minutes.

What he didn't expect was for Deadman to inform him that his boss was coming to visit in a few hours (because apparently ghosts had bosses). The poor guy was in a panic, apparently it was the first King in charge in centuries that cared and he was coming to "make sure everything was in order".

Constantine didn't know what to expect; a King who demanded that humanity bow at his feet and the ghosts rule? One who hated it when Deadman got involved with humans and sent him away? A tyrant? It was clear that no ruler had ever been good, according to his ghost friend, so he had low expectations.

He reported this to the League, who took a high alert posture. An hour later, Wonder Woman was reviewing with everyone how foreign royalty should be treated when they heard Captain Marvel laughing with someone in the break room. Deadman was also mysteriously missing.

Constantine peeked in but all he could see was a teenager conversing with the Captain and strangely, the ghost. He was about to tell the boy that he needed a permit to enter the Watchtower when Deadman spoke up.

"I didn't know you were so interested in games, King Phantom, or that you were so good on them"

Then, John noticed the ice crown on the boy's head and his strangely sharp teeth, along with his toxic green eyes.

"Flattering me won't help you in the review" the teenager quipped "remember we're still waiting for Dan to find out if everything here is...balanced."

Constantine realized: The King was a bloody teenager.

[ozzgin]

Ozzy, your recent sketch of the human trussed up is both amusing and a little horrifying (the faux human dinner [vore isn't a thing I'm a huge fan of]).

But the breeding and the bathing! The human is going to have so many requests and you know I think the hotel employees should get a test run first. Quality assurance you know? Maybe the human should ask for hazard pay on top of the normal fee, maybe some of the monster cum is like an aphrodisiac...you never know.

It never crossed my mind that it could be interpreted as vore 😭 The faux dinner is literally just Reader brought on a silver tray, all prepped up for the stuffing. Kind of like an upgrade to the regular coitus.

Actually, you know what? I might just make an actual, official menu. This may or may not be the most downright shameless thing I've created. A literal fuck menu.

[Monster Hotel Origins]

[halorvic]

The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.

[...]

LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.

[...]

LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.

[...]

LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.

[...]

LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.

[...]

PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.

[poligraf]

« The Good Samaritan » by Vincent van Gogh

[doveboycreature]

I want to be like somewhere between an abused boyfriend, a creature you took in off the street, and a servant

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[rottengurlz]

try to be gentle when you are ripping me apart 🔪

w/ @kashisun