thebartermyth

They were hemming and hawing over the morality of it to me and I was like "I feel like the psychic effects of working there would destroy you, no?" They have actually read some theory and I think consider themselves a leftist. Very funny stuff. Anyway, they didn't get the job for non-political reasons (insufficient microsoft outlook experience presumably). Sorry to use hexbear for gossip, my 'apolitical' friends wouldn't understand why this is funny and my leftist friends would think less of me.

I know this post is like a decade late and very boring, but I gotta post it anyway

Basically, with employer-sponsored health insurance the employer pays half and the employee (you) pays half. The cost of your insurance goes way down if you have a high deductible, and a deductible is basically what you'd have to pay before the insurance actually pays anything. So 'high-deductible' means you have to pay a lot before insurance pays anything, and it's a lot cheaper to buy that insurance cause the insurers often just don't pay anything ever. If it's $5,000 before insurance pays a dime, often times you have to just pay as though you had no insurance. This is obviously bad, but it's also cheap so like maybe you just luck out an never get sick or injured, right...?

Anyway, HSAs. Yeah, it's called "Health Savings Account". It's marketed as a tax-advantaged, investor-y, bougie-"we're comfortable" lifestyle way to really feel like a keen insider. Picture this: what if health insurance was individualized in the same way 401k and retirement stuff was, and you could "call your broker" at your "health savings account" to tell them to invest your tax-free "medical dollars" in the latest gizmo or whatever. Just deeply bad for solidarity and also very weird. And this is how basically everyone thinks about HSAs. A "tax-loophole" for the rich that I can also use because "I'm actually very financially savvy, just like the rich, who got where they are because of a weird hyper-individualized investment thing rather than any underlying systemic basis of societal organization".

And you're probably thinking: "But I already hate the suburban petite-bourgeois and their annoying mannerisms for reasons that are way less boring and meaningless." Well you're right, but also: high deductible plans are a requirement of HSAs so the employer's half decreases significantly. Your employer doesn't contribute to the HSA (they technically could, but if you're reading this post they don't [incredibly silly losing battle available there for libs]), so hopefully you do at least up to your deductible, but it's pretty likely that's not possible even if you had the money (no one does) because you literally aren't allowed to due to contribution limits. (if people did have the money it would probably be better to get different / better / additional health insurance anyway.) But importantly and I guess obviously: nobody contributes to their HSA. It's basically the chance for each person to individually manage an insurance fund for only themselves, which is almost exactly the same as paying out of pocket, the main difference being the additional bank account and a make-work program for MBAs. I've talked to almost a dozen office workers about this and they mostly have no idea what I am saying at all or say "yeah, I added money in onboarding, but I canceled it once I realized it came out of my pay."

There's no non-scam option btw if that wasn't clear. And, yeah, obviously all health insurance is a scam, but this is a different scam run by a slightly different set of people (there's def overlap though don't get me wrong). The office job benefits world is basically a choice between varying levels of high-deductible plans + HSA (ie. $1.5k, $3k, $5k...) with maybe one ridiculously expensive low-deductible plan.

Anyway, thoughts? I needed to get this rant out, I guess. Maybe I just missed the discourse on this because I was a child at the time lol.

We've had threads on how D&D itself has a colonial mindset, but I think that undersells how fucked up and racist players can be. I want this thread to be about players who go out of their way to make characters that break the fourth wall and ruin friendships outside of the game.

I'll start: I had a player come to me with their character: "Gucci, the rapping goblin bard". The details were what you would expect. Like he literally put a picture of Gucci Mane in the chat. I told him that this was blackface and I wouldn't allow it. He had a tantrum about being called racist, and now we no longer speak (lol).

Show them this gif when they ask what you mean.

Gotta be one of the most cynical and villainous recent euphemisms. At least top 5. I haven't seen it recently though which is good.

Never meet your heroes that you learned about from a couple of quotes online and never think about until you're watching the Vietnam-Obama episode with your family and getting increasingly skeptical and nervous.