theneverfox
@theneverfox@pawb.social
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 2 days ago:
Sure, but the R&D is largely subsidized because it’s a common good. Pharmaceutical companies generally take over when it’s already a pretty safe bet… It could fall through during clinical trials, but they don’t pay for the massive R&D they did traditionally. Sometimes they even just buy the patent
There’s overhead, but the vast majority is just profiteering
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 3 days ago:
Ah. Laws vary by state, mixing and matching manufacturers is illegal in my state, the manufacturer must be on the bottle along with a description. I’m less certain about the expiration date thing, but I believe here they require them all to come back to the same batch in case there’s an issue (including improper storage of the bottle or something)
I’ve been told this is how it works by a pharmacist when they were having trouble filling my rx, and we were talking about controlled substances in particular
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 3 days ago:
What do you do with expired meds, does the pharmacy eat the loss?
Do you mix and match pills with different expiration dates to fill a prescription? From different manufacturers?
I’m genuinely asking. What I described is how things work here, and while our healthcare system is insane, this is one part that makes sense to me
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 3 days ago:
We wait it out. It’s a collapsing empire, a real war would prolong the collapse, they’res plenty of historical precedent
We’re doing our best to speed run it, guys. Maybe make fun of us for healthcare more, it’s a real sore spot
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 3 days ago:
I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying.
Yes, the companies need to sell the pills for a certain amount to make a profit, due to infrastructure and overhead. The R&D is a whole complicated thing, let’s just lump it in as overhead and put it aside
The pills themselves cost basically nothing to produce each, a batch will cost money but normally they’re consistently pumping out huge batches
So, most manufacturers have programs to retrieve pills. If you have 4 pills at the end of the roll, they can be reclaimed so patients can get a complete strip, because the pills themselves cost so little. They do the same if you end up with a small number of pills left in the big bottle, you can’t mix batches because of expiration dates and expiration. So you send them back, and they give the pharmacy a credit
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 3 days ago:
The r&d costs come from government grants these days
Yes, a sterile lab is expensive, but like normal business expensive. It’s very achievable to build, drug cartels manage it just fine. Universities and YouTubers have no problem doing it with pretty modest funding
Yes, there’s overhead. But the pills themselves? The materials and production cost is cents. They themselves cost basically nothing
That’s why other countries can afford to sell them for cents - they really are that cheap to make
- Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription 3 days ago:
Pills aren’t really precious resources… They cost like cents to make, aside from a few very expensive special ones
The expensive part is all markup
- Comment on Roach Motel 3 days ago:
Booo
- Comment on Is there a self-help way to deal with fear of germs/"contamination"? 5 days ago:
Force yourself to do things you think are gross. Touch the sink and eat a sandwich. Eat a cracker off the floor. Little, very low risk things like that
Practice being able to overcome it, it’s that simple
- Comment on People who have eaten since December 31st, 2025, why are you trying to start new shit? 5 days ago:
Trying to get out all the 2025 shit. 2026 may or may not be better, but I know I want to be done with 2025
- Comment on Do I have extreme anxiety? 6 days ago:
You think it hasn’t crossed their mind already? The urgency is the point. They need to tell others they are in distress
You can’t just be left in that state, it gets worse and worse. And if it’s a brain tumor, which could cause many of those symptoms, speed is survival.
I get what you’re saying, but sometimes “it could be a brain tumor” is the brain worm that makes you push through when your family initially dismisses your symptoms
- Comment on Do I have extreme anxiety? 1 week ago:
The headaches? No idea. Never had paranoia either.
But I just managed to get treatment for a crippling anxiety disorder, I spent 6 months pacing or crying into the corner
Your description sounds a lot like how I was before my family realized how bad on a way I was. It sounds like major anxiety disorder plus plus
It could also be a brain tumor or something else to. And it can’t wait too long
You need to get help, get your people, tell them you’re not ok, and let them help you. Call all of em. Scream it out that you ain’t ok
I am in distress. There’s nothing undignified about it. Let those who care about you pick up the call. Let strangers pick up the call
Keep screaming. I am not ok! I require assistance!
All else fails, go to the ER, they have to help you. But do the rest first, everyone has some kind of people. In a way I’m of your people, so I answered, best I can, how to call it out better
- Comment on What are therapists allow to share about their clients? 1 week ago:
They can share details, just not your details. And if the details they share reveal a connection to your identity, they fucked up
- Comment on I hacked mars! 1 week ago:
There actually might be enough water to help if we warm it up. And that would also release some hidden gasses too
It’ll still probably need more, and there’s sands that make it hard for plants to grow, but it seems like there’s feedback mechanisms that would help massively
- Comment on My life has been way better since I started keeping a cursory view of headlines once a day 1 week ago:
I like to watch a streamer and skip through the stream for anything that looks crazy
I’ve definitely been watching less and less because less is happening, but I’m enjoying the highlights
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
I believe that orcas are out there having philosophical debates and singing stories of their history and mythology that dates back even further than our own. I don’t think they’re doing math proofs, but if they are I’d be curious what base they use
All the cutting edge science suggests we’re not special. We are not different in kind from animals
Since science became a thing, we’ve been drawing lines between us and animals since we could no longer gesture to the soul. We’ve progressively disproven every single one. I’ve had this debate over various lines so many times
It’s human arrogance
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
But that’s exactly what I’m saying. There are elephants out there contemplating morality. Even dogs do it, even if it’s massively based on the rules we impose on them
Not math though. Math exists in the minds of humans, it doesn’t even exist in the universe. There is no two of anything, there’s one object and another similar object
What does exist are ratios and harmonics, and animals have no problem understanding them
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
Lol right? It’s crazy how far on a limb they go, despite interacting with dogs
How often do we talk about how dogs want this or that, how they’re thinking of doing something “bad”, how they look so guilty they tell on themselves
But yeah, nothing going on up there. It’s all projection, they’re just dumb animals and humans are super extra special
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
LMAO okay then. My comment will age like wine, you’re will age like milk
Meet back in 5 years?
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
What are you even saying? What evidence do you have?
That sounds like a bunch of unfounded nonsense to me.
Elephants seem to clearly understand life and death, cause and effect, who fucked them over and where they ran off to
I’d bet the average elephant has a better grasp on the meaning of life than the average human
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
Bullshit. You just don’t speak any animal language
I can tell you what a dog is thinking at any given moment. They’re so expressive I can dictate it in real time. They tell you where and how they want to be pet, they can understand time and remember names
Koko was barely special. She spoke a form of sign language, and she enjoyed interspecies communication enough to devote time towards it. That’s what is rare
Do you understand how much more they’ll have to say when we crack their language? Because it’s coming
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
I don’t think that’s different, I think that’s very related to the topic at hand
And yeah, that’s all true. All living things can suffer, down to single cells
The real question here is where is the line between us and other animals. And I think you’re almost there - you’re on the verge of recognizing there is none, or maybe of internalizing that realization
Most animals don’t often think about the meaning of life, just like most humans. They don’t think to ask us either, because we’re honestly a pretty foolish species. We’re powerful and intelligent, but not wise
An orca, elephant, or corvid is probably the wisest being on earth right now. Possibly even a whole forest
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals
The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak
The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.
Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply
You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”
I agree, but that is the kind of question they do think about. Koko was “a wonderful gorilla person” in her own words
There’s a dog that uses one of those word button mats that thinks small dogs are cats, dogs are dogs, and that she’s a human (or that her owner is also a dog, she’s convinced she’s the same as her owner and always gets confused when it’s explained otherwise)
They don’t ask, because they already know what they think. They aren’t confused about where they stand in the world, it’s learning human categorization that confuses them
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
They already understand the second order questions though. Why would they ask the humans?
They know what’s outside their enclosures, they know they’re there because the humans want them there, they know strange humans like to see and interact with them through the glass. They just don’t care, so long as they have their tribe around with things to do and they get tasty food
Animals understand existence better than humans do. They understand life and death better than we to. Our higher intelligence makes second order questions complicated because we put ourselves through mental gymnastics
We should be asking apes about the meaning of life, not the other way around
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
That’s crazy. You think monkeys aren’t curious about the world around them?
They just don’t look to humans for answers, they look to humans for treats
- Comment on We wouldn't listen, anyway. 1 week ago:
That’s just not true. Most of them simply aren’t interested in communicating with humans, they just care about the reward
That’s what made Koko special. She was interested in communicating with humans, and her conversations were wild. It got existential
- Comment on Anon buys a can of beans 1 week ago:
Don’t you see?? That’s greed. Why do you need their magic? Only to fight them and each other better!
There’s nothing to be gained by keeping them around, they are just predators of sapient people. Their magic is made to dominate and kill
Frieren has the raw strength to dominate and kill, but she doesn’t value that kind of magic despite her skill in it. She wants to create fields of flowers, she seeks beauty instead of violence. Her violence isn’t about genocide, it’s about protecting what she values
- Comment on Anon buys a can of beans 1 week ago:
Frieren actually is exploring something here. The demons actually aren’t human, and the show sets her up as appearing intolerant to show that no, these actually just aren’t people
The demons are just demons. They just want to eat people. They’re intelligent, but entirely alien
They’re the old school pure evil anime demons, but in a time where demons in anime have become relatable
- Comment on Hospital Bill 1961 1 week ago:
They actually turn around and will slash the cost for the uninsured the second you dispute it. They don’t actually expect people to pay that much
It’s a weird dance with insurance companies, they say it’s costs 20k and then insurance says “ok, I’ll pay 7k” and you pay 5k
An uninsured person might get away with paying even less than $5k when it’s all said and done. It’s not a real healthcare system