Universal Chat Thread

[Maniakkid25]

*mad, hysterical laughter closing in on sobbing territory*

So, my medication has hit a few snags in the change of insurance providers, and my co-pay assistance is not going through. And because I'm an idiot, I waited until right on the cusp of my injection date (June 5th or something like that -- the Friday of that week), so now I'm currently in Limbo hell trying to get this resolved. I should have NEVER switched to my employer's insurance; this wouldn't be happening right now if I had just stuck with the one I was on through Healthcare.gov for the year!

[Moonface]

*mad, hysterical laughter closing in on sobbing territory*

So, my medication has hit a few snags in the change of insurance providers, and my co-pay assistance is not going through. And because I'm an idiot, I waited until right on the cusp of my injection date (June 5th or something like that -- the Friday of that week), so now I'm currently in Limbo hell trying to get this resolved. I should have NEVER switched to my employer's insurance; this wouldn't be happening right now if I had just stuck with the one I was on through Healthcare.gov for the year!

Based solely on my experience with the brief time I had that health insurance I wouldn't ever recommend it, only because when I lost it they didn't tell me as such for 2+ weeks and working enough hours for a whole year prior doesn't equate to a whole year of coverage. But I also have a burning disdain for any US healthcare insurance.

I feel like they should just give you the medication and resolve the co-pay thing afterwards but that's probably asking for way too much.


Also on the subject of awful Florida heat, our A/C is shitting the bed from a blockage yet again, yay! Fortunately it will run with a blockage but if we don't keep an eye on it it'll start pissing water all over the carpet.

[Maniakkid25]

OMG YES!

After years and years of trying and failing, I finally got access to my old fanfiction.net account! I couldn't do password recovery because the email I used was defunct in, like, 2008 (it was to Adelphia. Anybody remember Adelphia?!). And then I forgot which variant of password I used, so I couldn't get in. This morning, I just tried a random one, and it WORKED! NOW I CAN FINALLY BE FREE OF MY CRINGE!

[Moonface]

Dang I haven't visited FF in who knows how long. I never had an account on there I think but I would read fanfics and just bookmark them if I liked them or if they were ones that were in progress.
I think nowadays people took preference for some other site for fanfics that I can't remember the darn name of now that I need to actually recall it.

[Maniakkid25]

You're probably thinking of Archive of Our Own, or AO3. Yeah, AO3 is probably killing FF.net, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is obliterating my old cringe like I've wanted to do for over a decade, at this point.

[Moonface]

You're probably thinking of Archive of Our Own, or AO3. Yeah, AO3 is probably killing FF.net, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is obliterating my old cringe like I've wanted to do for over a decade, at this point.

Ah ha, that's the one! I've never visited it but I see it mentioned here and there whenever fanfic stuff is brought up in a tweet. I wonder what it did to draw traffic away from FF.net since I can't imagine there's much you can provide for fanfic writers beyond just give them something to easily write stuff on and I never got the impression FF.net was lacking in something.

Also it's gonna suck if somehow the stuff you're trying to obliterate was preserved on Internet Archive.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, considering it was on FF.net for nearly 20 years at this point, it almost certainly is in the Internet Archive. But that's not something I can do about, so I'm not gonna worry about it.

[Moonface]

Just got an email from Twitch that they're increasing the price of Tier 1 subscriptions to $6 starting July 11. The email also says streamers will continue to receive the same percentage share on subs and so this price increase will mean streamers receive more revenue, so at least the increase isn't just to all go to Amazon's pockets.

Tier 2 and 3 aren't changing but it says "at this time" so I won't be surprised to see it change in future. Not that I care much because I never subscribe above Tier 1.

Oh, and this price increase is only for desktop and mobile web. Prices in the app won't change for a few more months so I guess just keep buying subs via the app?

[Moonface]

Currently on my plane back home from Texas just waiting for it to finish boarding and take off. Wish me a safe flight and see you all on the other side folks!

[Dragon Lord]

Just got an email from Twitch that they're increasing the price of Tier 1 subscriptions to $6 starting July 11. The email also says streamers will continue to receive the same percentage share on subs and so this price increase will mean streamers receive more revenue, so at least the increase isn't just to all go to Amazon's pockets.

Tier 2 and 3 aren't changing but it says "at this time" so I won't be surprised to see it change in future. Not that I care much because I never subscribe above Tier 1.

Oh, and this price increase is only for desktop and mobile web. Prices in the app won't change for a few more months so I guess just keep buying subs via the app?

Yeah, I got that same email last week as well. Definitely not thrilled by it. Obviously in the short term, it's just $1 more a month, but the more people you want to be subbed to, the more it's going to add up to and that's going to cause some people to have to drop some subs.

It also doesn't help small streamers at all. 50 cents more per sub doesn't add up to much if you only have 100-200 subs and in the end will just cause people to drop those smaller streamers in favor of keeping their subs to larger streamers, who are the only ones that will benefit from the extra 50 cents (10,000+ subs).

I can't wait until Tier 3 subs become $49.99 a month. KEKW

[Moonface]

Fortunately I only sub to two people and it's highly unlikely that will ever change, so the price increase won't hit me too hard when calculated across all of my subs combined. One of the two streamers I'm subbed to has a very large community and even he isn't happy about the price changes because he knows that it's likely to become a negative to a lot of streamers regardless of size as people stop sub renewals when the price increase goes into effect which ends up negating the extra money remaining subs are contributing. One person stops subbing and five people paying $6 each ends up coming to $5 each when you take a dollar away to make up for the person who stopped subbing, so anyone who loses subs to this change is looking at a 1:5 ratio to maintain the income they already get, and only after that ratio has been equaled out on both sides will they then begin to actually see more income than before.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah this is one of those scenarios where sub prices has never changed since inception 10-ish years ago, so this just feels like a business decision to keep income coming to the streamers in addition to their losing support from their overlords (Amazon) and make up for lost revenue. This won't get people to stop supporting streamers all together, but be more picky about who they're subbing to, so some streamers may get the axe. There's already a ridiculous pressure on content creators to maintain audiences, and this just really puts it on harder.

Glad it's just Tier 1s for now, cuz good lord if they upped Tier 2s and 3s, I'd definitely downgrade. I've had to downgrade my Tier 3 to 2 once I quit my job cuz it just wasn't feasible (I also meant to cancel it ages ago; was meant for just Sub-tember cuz it was half price but I kept forgetting to downgrade). Now it's actually not that much of a difference between Tier 1 and 2 anymore, huh? $6 and $10, a $4 difference instead of $5.

They explained it a bit more in the Patch Notes videocast they did today: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2170404141?t=00h13m15s (timestamped for your interest)

[Moonface]

Bah, I caught COVID yet again because @ShiraNoMai contracted it from somewhere during our stay in Texas. Trouble for me is I have to work the next three days and can't afford to call out because my coworker is out of town the weekend, so if I don't do the work that needs doing I know it won't get done and just left for whichever one of us comes in first to deal with whatever got backed up.

[Moonface]

Bleh, my COVID got so bad I had to just spend the last few hours at an urgent care to get medical help. I also got written off work until next weekend so I'm sure my coworker will be thrilled about that.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeesh got COVID again, hope it doesn't take too long to get over it but the fact you had to go to urgent care doesn't sound good. Screw work though, the stupid Fs, apart from your coworker.

I had a cold recently, on the end of it now so I'm happy it wasn't worse. Work's been slightly weird though as we haven't had much stock but my goodness the counts were just so wrong, seemingly caused by delivery finalising being wrong in that it's thinking we have a ton of stock but we don't but the opposite has happened as well, a lot of certain items with the counts to low the other way. It's always wrong anyway but not this badly for the last couple weeks. Today was a really slow day though as nights overfilled and we didn't have much stock out the back, odd for a Sunday but there is the Euro tournament on and England are playing today.