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[Frumple]

That'd be far more equitable with toucan tesla if it had been the Black Llama, the llama anthro alternate reality gerald ford.

[nenjin]

On a business trip this week. The night I got to my hotel, 2 cars got broken into, in the parking lot right in front of the entrance to the hotel. Pretty sure there were break-ins before that too, because the first parking spot I found had shattered safety glass in the stall next to it.

The second night I stayed there, 5 cars got broken into.

I guess I sort of lucked out having a rental. All my stuff came inside with me so there was no point to breaking into it. Man that would have sucked doing the incident report with the rental company while I was trying to catch a plane.

The whole place was sketch. Near Chicago Heights, IL, some super massive mall-like complex that was clearly 20 years past its glory days. Pretty unnerving to pull up to a complex the size of three football fields and parking for several thousand people and have it be almost empty.

[Frumple]

I guess I sort of lucked out having a rental. All my stuff came inside with me so there was no point to breaking into it. Man that would have sucked doing the incident report with the rental company while I was trying to catch a plane.

Hey, if it'd happened, you could have just considered it doing your part to help the local economy

Be pretty surprised if it being an empty rental actually influenced much, though... even if there's nothing to yoink from the inside, there's usually parts that are pretty low effort to klep. Might have just been distracted by shinier opportunities, heh.

[MaxTheFox]

So, I had the weirdest string of events I have ever had. Some important context:
In the cellular automaton Conway's Game of Life, there are patterns (arrangements of cells) that change their shape but return to their original form some number of generations (ticks) later, called oscillators. This number is known as the oscillator's period. All periods except 19 and 41 were known until recently. In fact, it was suspected by some prominent members of the community (yes there's a vibrant community that pores over this stuff, I'm too dumb for this but I stay in touch with discoveries) that they simply don't exist. "Omniperiodicity", meaning that all oscillators in a cellular automaton are known, was a major problem in CGOL.

So, on July 13, I wrote in my sci-fi novel, set in a Space Age future in 2230, that a p19 oscillator has not been discovered by then, in a casual conversation, and the character saying it expresses his belief that it won't ever be discovered, considering 200 years of throwing computational power at it.

Literally the goddamn next day, a p19 was discovered.

Okay, fine, weird coincidence and I was shocked. But I changed it to p41, surely this was a fluke. p41 didn't have any real avenues for its discovery, as a partial result was shown to be difficult to impossible to stabilize.

All was well.

Literally a motherfucking week after, a p41 was discovered. What the actual fuck, was my reaction.

Everyone knows about sci-fi failing to predict the future, but the "future" that was less than a week after it was written?!?! TWICE?!?! I'm utterly flabbergasted by this. Like what?

(I changed it to "indestructible still-life". Feels like something that's nigh impossible to prove doesn't exist, but feels hard enough that people will still be trying to crack that nut 200 years in the future and, in my setting, with distributed computing all over the Terran Federation of ~120 colonized worlds.)

[Eric Blank]

Honestly it sounds like the universe doesnt like sci-fi authors making predictions that "will never happen"

You should claim gravity/space-time manipulation is impossible next.

[dragdeler]

It's a fun coincidence but what amuses me more still, is that you might not even be the sole member here who has vested interests into, let's call them scientific puzzles, beyond participating in solving them. Which sounds vague said like that... but hehe idk... like large money bets on prime numbers or stuff like that... lol, nerds  .


"It is possible we are going to sink into the quicksands of history with the answer clutched into our hand."

[EuchreJack]

Speaking of which, observe Scientists being tricked by scammers:
https://www.science.org/content/article/costly-invite-scientists-hit-with-massive-bills-after-speaking-at-covid-19-conferences

[Loud Whispers]

Speaking of which, observe Scientists being tricked by scammers:
https://www.science.org/content/article/costly-invite-scientists-hit-with-massive-bills-after-speaking-at-covid-19-conferences

For the researchers now under pressure from the courts, ignoring the demands is not an option.

It's so fucking dumb that foreign courts have to even seriously tolerate what is patently fraudulent at the cost of innocent scientists

[Akura]

Insurance. A prescription that was written weeks ago, but I couldn't actually get until a week ago was because an issue with insurance not covering it. Today I received a call from the pharmacy explaining that my insurance wouldn't cover the original dosage, which was twice a day for two weeks, but they did cover 1/day for 30 days. Note that, despite the change in amount, I'm following my doctor's original instructions(2/day for two weeks). Even then, the pharmacist thought I was going run out halfway even after I explained the math there.


At least this stuff is by and large working. After a week, one of the more... distressing symptoms

Spoiler: namely (click to show/hide)

the bleeding

has all but disappeared.

[hector13]

… they won’t pay for 28 medicines, but they will pay for 30 medicines?

Like… how does that even get to that point?

[Frumple]

Paperwork, if I had to guess. The actual cost of the medicine is almost certainly less than the time of whoever would have to deal with the non-standard/less used paperwork of a sub 30 day supply, so it ends up cheaper on the net (for the insurance company) to just give the standard 30 day supply.

It looks nonsensical when you're eyeballing whatever's being charged on your end, but the prescription costs paid by the insurance company probably boils down to effectively fuckall, less than however many minutes it'd take for the person or program that'd have to handle the less common prescription period to deal with it.

[lemon10]

Orrr they are intentionally malicious and know that the harder they make it for people to get money from them the more money they make.
Bonus points if the person dies since then they don't have to pay out anything at all.

[MrRoboto75]

It looks nonsensical when you're eyeballing whatever's being charged on your end,

If it really was some chatgdp derivative that just pulled random numbers out of its recycling bin, it would not surprise me.

[hector13]

It looks nonsensical when you're eyeballing whatever's being charged on your end,

If it really was some chatgdp derivative that just pulled random numbers out of its recycling bin, it would not surprise me.

See that’s the thing though; if it does have to go through software to come to a decision first, surely there are (at least!) a set of human eyes and brain that have to read the decision the computer made versus what it decided against, or just what the initial query was even, and that person (or persons) then have to communicate that further down the chain and then finally to the pharmacy?

I get they might be low on the totem, but that doesn’t mean they lack thinking capacity.

[EuchreJack]

It looks nonsensical when you're eyeballing whatever's being charged on your end,

If it really was some chatgdp derivative that just pulled random numbers out of its recycling bin, it would not surprise me.

See that’s the thing though; if it does have to go through software to come to a decision first, surely there are (at least!) a set of human eyes and brain that have to read the decision the computer made versus what it decided against, or just what the initial query was even, and that person (or persons) then have to communicate that further down the chain and then finally to the pharmacy?

I get they might be low on the totem, but that doesn’t mean they lack thinking capacity.

...that is not how computers work in organizations.

Instead, they work exactly how they did in this example.
The program determined that:
twice a day for two weeks = FALSE
The pharmacist imputed: once a day for 30 days
The program said: TRUE
...and then the humans tricked the computer into doing what they wanted.

The humans did in fact use their "critical thinking skills". It's why our friend was able to get their medication. 
Machines don't care: Their program was not violated.

If there were human eyes and brains involved higher up the chain, this either wouldn't happen, or the decision would be made that "it's fine".