There is a subscription service, but it’s not required. I don’t have it, but my pet got fed during the outage so maybe there’s a different line of devices that don’t work without the subscription…

Salt Lake County’s voting process is straight up fire, Sherrie Swensen was amazing. One of the only things I miss about Utah.

In my personal experience, it’s not junior devs becoming senior with time. It’s much cheaper business analysts who are being expected to do our own coding now because AI makes it “so easy”. Thanks, I hate it. I’m a pretty great analyst but a pretty mediocre developer…and my salary continues to reflect that truth (which is exactly why companies are doing it). Someday I’ll probably be an ok developer if the trend continues, all for a BA salary.

Not as beautiful anymore, the inversion/air pollution is so bad in SLC you can’t see the mountains clearly most of the time.

Anecdotal, but I think this tracks with what you’re asking. I have never been obese, but due to family history of both connective tissue disorders and diabetes it has always been extremely important to me that I keep my weight in a normal range. It took an intense amount of mental effort on my part, religious food tracking and extensive exercise for decades.

When I started on a GLP-1 (due to a weird health situation that’s not really relevant), the amount of mental energy I needed to expend to maintain my weight was suddenly gone. I don’t feel sugar cravings like I used to, so I don’t need to stay so vigilant about my diet. I don’t spend my days monitoring my intake, planning out a rigorous fasting schedule, working out more than I’m naturally inclined to just to counteract that brownie I couldn’t stop myself from eating. It’s both a literal and emotional weight off. I am taking a very low dose but even so I honestly can’t believe the difference. I am one of the ones who was will-powering through calories in/calories out and it was miserable. Now it’s just…not.

Same. I also expected to like all children more after having mine, but I don’t. Even though I adore my kid, I still dislike children.

I’ve worked for the non-profit insurance subsidiary of a charity hospital system, and part of the problem is that ANY of the competition is for profit. What that means is that the for-profit companies are effectively setting the baseline of coverage. Healthy people (or the HR department at the company) aren’t as concerned with richness of benefit as they are with the lowest premium. Sick people, though? They’ve got a list of doctors and drugs they want to make sure are covered. So if the non-profit benefit is too rich it attracts all the sick people and suddenly the operating costs of the non-profit skyrocket and they go out of business. It’s a weird model that can’t be AS good as the mission wants to be.

In my case the hospital system actually created a generic drug manufacturer themselves to undercut for-profit drug manufacturers. THAT was less daunting than trying to impact the insurance side any more than they already do.

Yep, my dad and I are currently working with a lawyer to get our documents in order for dual citizenship. Once one of us qualifies my son becomes eligible and we can more easily emigrate to an EU country.

I got on-the-job training to be a pharmacy tech at a Walgreens while I was in college. My state required that you be licensed at the national and state level, but it was just a test and some continuing education credits.

My current state doesn’t require either, so the techs are definitely skewed younger. Thankfully I finished college and work elsewhere now so I can only guess at their ages but teenagers seems accurate.