I think nitpicking the inconsistencies in a work of fiction is like going to a magic show and pointing out that it’s not real. No one cares that the balrog had wings, or was divine or whatever contrivance people need to chew on until the story is tasteless. Suspend some disbelief, and just let the thing fall.

Apparently it’s real for a lot of people judging by the number of down votes I got. They’re upvoting this though, which I don’t get. Perhaps they don’t know that this meme is making fun of nerds who treat fiction like it’s reality.

I think you mean fictitious beings.

All insurance is paying to reduce risk, which is why I said it would be borderline crazy to not have general health coverege - that’s a lot of risk. Dental insurance for the most part covers routine costs, not high risk scenarios. Things like oral cancer are covered by more general plans. So I think largely I agree that dental insurance is a racket. However, I’m sure it makes sense for at least some people so it’s hard to make a blanket statement that no one shoud have it.

The fact that insurance is provided through employers in the US is strange. Other products are purchased directly. Presumably there’s some advantage a sort of collective bargaining, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way for this, in part because the employees aren’t really part of the bargaining and in many places employees needs are too diverse to reach am agreement that works well for everyone.

Better solutions aren’t coming any time soon. You can possibly make some better choices though. Although, not participating in the health insurance is borderline line crazy, dental and vision plans don’t make sense for a lot of people. I would pay more for my dental plan than I pay to visit a dentist, including two annual cleanings, periodic x-rays, and infrequent work like cavities - basically the care you need to maintain tooth health. I don’t get the dental plan. You can figure out your own out of pocket costs and see if a dental plan works for you. Going to a dentist that is not in an insurance network is the way to go when doing this. Offices in network are required by the insurance company to charge exorbitant fees to out-of-network customers (the dentists don’t get the same pay from the insurance company though). So say a normal dentist charges $200 for a cleaning. A dentist in a network would be required to charge $400 or something nuts. If a patient is in network, it will say $400 on the EOB, and that the customer is responsible for $50, making it look like the customer saved $350. The insurance company only gives the dentist $150 though, so the dentist gets $200 anyway, the customer really only saved $150. The insurance company gets a bunch of money in annual fees from the employer.

You can see if it makes sense for you. Not everyone will be in the same situation, and maybe it doesn’t eork out. If you have an option for an FSA or something similar, this option is even more attractive, since all those expenses can be paid from untaxed income, whereas the money taken out of your paycheck to cover insurance is after tax I believe.

Also people who touch monitors.

And people who push the glass part of a door.

By the reasoning given for why Mercury is the closest for each planet, the Sun is the closest object for each planet, on average, excluding satellites of the planets.

I don’t think it’s a snide joke about what people call it. I think OP has no idea that it’s called Neapolitan ice cream, not Napoleon ice cream, so there’s no joke at all. If it were called Napoleon ice cream, I suppose it’s a joke of sorts, but not one I consider very good.

Is the cluelessness the joke or is it genuine ignorance?

No, that assumes that prices are based on cost, which is not true. Ads are a way to make money on top of what people will pay.

“Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.”

That’s not at all how it works. How is it that adults think prices are based on costs? They teach supply and demand in high school.

I’m perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.

Thanks. Didn’t know that.

Ah, that’s explains it.

Im not familiar with Medium, but I don’t recall the other things I’ve read there being vapid crap.

Yeah, I use that all the time. I think I use it in a different way though. I have projects with C, C++ and other languages. The C and C++ get compiled and linked together, and so there are some considerations for those files that don’t apply to anything else. So I mean C files and C++ files, but not as if they were the same language.

I guess that’s the joke, and I think we’re all confused because it’s wrong.

I did this in a project and someone later came and changed them all to .h, because that was “the convention” and because “any C is valid C++”. Obviously neither of those things is true and I am constantly befuddled by people’s use of the word convention to mean “something some people do”. It didn’t seem worth the argument though.

Generations were a fad in the 90s where you’d hear something about some such generation every day. Then for the most part, people stopped talking about this pseudoscience nonsense. Although, like horoscopes, they never really went away. But I don’t get how we’re back a nearly useless model of behavior being a daily part of conversations.

So what, when you turn on your computer it goes straight to the BIOS menu?