Thomson hid behind company sponsored laws passed by bought politicians to legally kill tens of thousands of people despite valid insurance coverage. He is nothing more than a murderous villain, but it’s not the least bit surprising that the NYT thinks he’s a hero.

I don’t think us mere mortals can hope to understand the mysteries of Amazon marketing services.

Some problems with that:

1. Companies routinely use more than one source address meaning I’m required to play whack-a-mole to maintain my filters.
2. Setting up a content filter means wanted emails from other sources can be filtered out.
3. The majority of users have absolutely no idea what a filter is.

I had 2 of these just this week. Disney+ sent an ESPN ad with no way to unsubscribe, despite my having all marketing emails turned off. Their chat rep laughably insisted it was not a marketing email, just a way to “help” people use their services. It’s very kind of Disney to be looking out for me.

Best Buy sent me a marketing ad with a $5 coupon (lol) attached. All marketing emails were disabled with them too and again there was no way to unsubscribe.

Both problems were easily solved by deleting my accounts.

13K pesos, or about 650 dollars.

When I had United Healthcare my doctor would often perform multiple routine services when I saw him. UHC denied every single claim, saying services performed weren’t the purpose of the original appointment. They wouldn’t just deny the claim for those services, they denied the claim for the entire visit and it happened almost every time I saw my doctor.

United Healthcare obviously didn’t want me to make multiple visits for the same services because that would have cost much more. The crooks running the company were instead pocketing huge unearned profits because they knew few people would appeal their constant denials. Health Net served up other flavors of the same shit.

These companies need to be put out of business permanently.

I have two Zen 30 switches and since I wrote that comment a week ago both have died. Zooz is blaming the failures on an installation error after 18 months of use! Instead static discharge is the logical cause and since it’s a fact of life in my home, if Zooz won’t replace the Zen 30’s I’ll move away from their devices and will install Shelly wifi relays and Minoton wireless controllers instead.

The Zen 30 switches have mostly worked until now, but occasionally they haven’t responded to Home Assistant for a minute or two - really frustrating when standing in the dark waiting for the lights to come on. Leviton dimmer plugs and Minoton wireless controllers connected to the same Zooz Z-Wave stick have been flawless, as have all my Tasmota wifi and Zigbee devices.

To be clear, the right of free speech given in the first amendment is the right to express any opinion without fear of repercussions.

Not the case. The 1st Amendment provides freedom of speech without fear of repercussions by the U.S. government. We do not have the right to express any opinion without repercussions from literally any other source.

For Windows user who don’t want to bother learning a new OS? Mint, no question. The latest releases are easy to install and configure, Cinnamon will feel familiar, and it works flawlessly on most hardware.

Despite fairly congested 2.4ghz wifi in my area with 18 networks detected by my phone, all Zigbee and Tasmota wifi devices on my network are nearly 100% reliable. In my experience Zooz Z-wave devices have been less so and occasionally are unresponsive. Other Z-wave devices have been much better.

The Tasmota plugs and lights in my network generate very little network traffic. Power monitoring plugs will generate more, but with 1 second update intervals that traffic should still be minimal.