While cheap healthcare here is nice, without private insurance (pricey) it can be months to get an appointment with a primary care doctor. I had to fire one doctor who just refused to make progress on treating my conditions or help in the aid of persistent pain. Many doc offices operate as patient mills, where you can wait up to 90 minutes past your appointment time to be seen for 5 minutes. Office gets the pay from insurance, and you need to return 3 months later with the same ailments. I was stuck in that system for a year before I found a new doc that would listen to me and take me on as a patient.

So, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It is a better setup than in the US, where insurance has ruined the industry, but unless you’re diligent about getting a good doctor to take you on, or pay for private insurance, It’s just a grind. A lot of chopping, but no chips are flying.

The system here is better, but the treatment you get in the US is ultimately more beneficial.

This has been my experience and perhaps not representative of the system as a whole.

It’s crazy! The doctor said they weren’t allowed to use email because fax was more secure. I explained that using e-fax wasn’t any more secure. I also reached out to a guy I know who works IT for a small village and the way he laid it out is that Germany doesn’t want to have to upgrade and train everyone on email, buy all the computers, go through the growing pains of new tech.

This sums up Germany in general… if it’s not broken then shut up, there’s nothing to fix. You can’t even go grocery shopping or wash your car on Sundays. The rest of the EU runs laps around Germany on tech and progressive life.

(Transplant from USA, I should note. It’s been a journey.)

Are you in Germany? They’re still using fax, predominantly, here. My doctor wanted to fax my records, couldn’t email them to me. I said of course don’t have a fkn fax, it’s 2024. I asked if people still have pots lines for fax machines and she said they use e-fax. There’s your German efficiency!

Anyway, government passed some law saying they have to cease using them (for gov business) by end of 2024. In the meantime, don‘t throw that telegraph out just yet!

Combination of Sportsfire and Streamfire apps.

That’s great news. But they’ll eventually sneak it in when they’ve distracted us with something else astonishingly awful.

Question, mostly out of an inability to completely understand the tech side of this, but how would this be possible with Messenger services that have no central servers or direct point to implement something like this? Say, Session IM or SimpleX.

🤘🏼

That seems to be written by a child.

What is it? Not going to watch the video.

I’ve tried to give them my money. Max, Hulu, Netflix… and none of them want it unless they can get my telemetry. American in Europe, so I can’t use US services. Netflix and Prime will only show me the Euro selection. Don’t want that. Use a VPN, you say? All those services block IPVanish and Proton. They want my data not my money. It would be optimal if I paid them to give them my data, but if I can’t give them clean telemetry, they don’t want my money. This tells me they should be paying me for that info. And that’s not going to happen.

So, I tried. I honestly did.

Enter Stremio-Torrentio-Debrid and I can now watch every single thing I can think of. For the pittance I give Debrid, it’s been a game changer. I don’t expect it to last forever, but aligning with you fellow seafaring folks will keep me at the forefront of the game. 🤘🏼🏴‍☠️

Continued losses, in the billions, for ad-riddled streaming services is all I can ask for.

It’s not like cable was going to vanish and leave us with this wonderful ad-free Ala carte service we've always wanted. They dangled the bait and once everyone bit they set the hook and reeled in the suckers with an even worse, and costlier, scenario. In every avenue of entertainment, marketing is there to make sure it fucking sucks. Even some of the pirate apps have ads in them. Greed ruins everything and will be remembered as the true folly of man.

Set sail mofos! 🏴‍☠️

Soulseek for life! There should be a documentary about this because…. how? How has this been able to go this strong for so long? One of the first installs on any new OS I spin up. And when it comes to supporting the artists? Live shows and merch, when possible.

I block ads, so neener-neener. 🤡