Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing
The fatal shooting on Wednesday of a top UnitedHealthcare executive, Brian Thompson, on a Manhattan sidewalk has unleashed a torrent of morbid glee from patients and others who say they have had negative experiences with health insurance companies at some of the hardest times of their lives.
”Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”
On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”
🍿🍿
Citi Bikes leave ‘digital exhaust’ that could help track a killer
An electric Citi Bike like the one reportedly used as a getaway vehicle after the murder of United HealthCare C.E.O. Brian Thompson creates “digital exhaust,” streams of data that can be used to track the rider, said David Shmoys, a computer scientist at Cornell University who helped design the system.
Between the creation of a Citi Bike account, connecting it to a credit card, undocking it, riding it around the city and docking it at a new location, every user creates many “streams of digital breadcrumbs” that can help Lyft, the company that operates Citi Bike, track the user’s location, and possibly their identity, Mr. Shmoys said.
Combined with the user’s phone data and location shared with cell towers, “It is amazing how much information is conveyed,” Mr. Shmoys said.
Never ride one of these.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Is Fatally Shot in New York City
We know it’s not antifa because they’ve never been this effective.
When our cities are no longer safe for extraordinarily wealthy insurance CEOs, what’s our country coming to?
Health care industry executives, like those in the insurance and defense industries, face increased risks “because of the services that are being provided and the emotion that comes along with some of those services,” Mr. Komendat said.
That’s an actual quote in the New York Times.
“Because of the services that are being provided and the emotion that comes along with those services.”
Wow.
What an obtuse way to say “these industries kill a lot of people.”
Trump Leads Biden in Nearly Every Battleground State, New Poll Finds
The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.
Being a citizen of this country feels like standing on the rails, watching a train barrel down the track right at you. You want to move, but none of your limbs seem to agree on what to do.
And I’m becoming angry.
It’s hard not to be angriest at the people most like you, which is why the Left seems to be eating itself alive. It hurts to watch people you know to be kind, caring, and compassionate succumb to the hate, the vitriol, the judgment, the division that’s long polluted the Right.
And it’s hard not to take their succumbing as a betrayal. They so easily gave up on all the shit they claimed to believe in, which only fuels my rage. I’ve known for a long time that the Right was only about power, never about morality or religion or “family values.” But the Left, too?
But watching the hatred consume Liberals has been agonizing, though not unrelatable. I get it — I really do. It’s so delicious, so righteous to hate the people that hate you. I’m guilty of this very thing.
But it’s easy. And unoriginal. And only makes a bigger mess of things.
Cory Doctorow: The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point
You might have some swivel-eyed loons in your life. I certainly have my share. Remember that we have common ground.
When they say they don’t trust vaccines because the pharma compa nies are corrupt and their regulators are toothless, that’s not your signal to defend the manifestly corrupt pharma companies who murdered 800,000 Americans with opioids, nor to cape for the regulators who let them get away with it.
Likewise, we all want to “save the children.” It’s just that some of us want to save the children from real threats who never seem to face justice – youth pastors, Catholic priests, rich people with private islands, border agencies practicing “family separation” – while swivel-eyed loons want to save kids from imaginary threats (adrenochrome-guzzling Satanists).
Remember all the things they’re right about. Lean into the common ground. Help them understand that corporate power, and its capture of government, is our true shared enemy.