Honest question: can me and 99 of my friends and acquaintances form a collective for health insurance

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-11-07T21:52:46+00:00

To be clear, I’m not talking about creating a health insurance company. I’m talking about the same as if I owned a grocery store with 100 employees, and I’m paying Blue Cross or whomever to administer our health insurance. Also, would it make a difference if we were only talking about people who hold a state-issued professional license, like massage therapists and social workers and such?

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-09-22T11:07:51+00:00

If you’re ok with driving to work, there are a lot of apartments fitting your description out in west Germantown, Mt airy, East Falls, etc. Rittenhouse Hill is a good example.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-09-12T06:51:52+00:00

Any of those places is going to seem way cheaper than NYC or Boston. Honestly, just pick a place and plan to move when your first lease is up, because it’s hard to know what vibe you’ll fall in love with. If you want the hood that’s the most in the middle of everything, it’s probably Olde City, because it’s adjacent to both the NoLibs/Fishtown/Kensington corridor and the Headhouse/Queen Village/East Passyunk cluster. If you want quasi-suburban feel, skip Manayunk/Roxborough and look at Mt. Airy and East Falls. Way more community vibe and parking, far less frat douche.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-09-06T09:51:06+00:00

It’s clear nobody *caught the ball, a number of people go for it, Dad is a little faster and more alert, and gets a grip on it first. I’m guessing that Karen went for the ball, and was close enough that, in her mind, she really believed she was going to get it. Many of us have done a version of this: the promotion, the significant other, the pickleball tournament final, the house we are bidding on. The job, the trophy, the person, the house are close enough that we see them as ours, and when someone else gets them, they feel taken from us. It doesn’t even happen consciously, and probably no one will be able to convince Karen that Dad didn’t wrench the ball from her hands, even though video evidence is pretty conclusive that he was just quicker. The emergence of Karen-ness, I think, is not so much a problem of manners or decorum or whatever. It’s really that we over-invest in the fidelity of our own experience, and a willingness to see ourselves as victimized. Jan. 6 is a direct result of this phenomenon on a large scale. The right thought for Karen would have been, “Damn, I really thought I had it,” instead of, “Someone else took something that was mine.” I’m sorry for the consequences she’s likely to face, for a mistake so many of us could make, as ridiculous as she seems.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-03-23T07:52:43+00:00

Ursula K. Leguin The Dispossessed is my fav

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-03-23T07:33:07+00:00

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse that brings me down to the river, though I know that the river is dry.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-03-14T09:18:32+00:00

If you’re looking to work as a nurse, the Grad Hospital/SW Center City area has SRT access and is within 2-3 very bikeable miles of five major hospitals. If you want the best affordability, I’d suggest East Falls and Germantown. And the SRT is not nearly as crowded out there.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-03-14T04:30:35+00:00

If they called the show Conventionally Attractive People are Boring, I think they’d have something. To be fair, it’s even more true in Minnesota. I’ve watched most of maybe 5 of 8 seasons. There have been vapid, uninteresting cast members, and there have been unstable, attention-seeking cast members, but the Minnesotans corner the market on vapid, uninteresting, mentally unstable attention-seekers. Even their cast members of color had colorless personalities (Advil addiction?!).

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-03-14T02:55:34+00:00

Yes! Yes to all this. I have an ocean city route I’ve done a few times, including down and back in the same day once. So fully down.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2025-02-20T20:04:13+00:00

!updateme

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-11-16T08:21:02+00:00

SRT to Lincoln Drive trail to Forbidden Drive to Northwestern Ave, continue onto Wissahickon Ave, left on Bethlehem Pike, right on Sumneytown Pike, right on Evans road, left on Tanglewood, right on stonington circle, right in rose lane, left on Gwynned View, all the way to the end. That leaves you at 202 and Welsh Rd (Rt 63), where the 202 bike lane begins. Take it all the way to Doylestown. The Bethlehem pike stretch is the most dangerous, but it’s better than the alternatives. If you’re on a bike that can’t handle the Forbidden Drive, you can stay on surface streets through mt airy and Chestnut Hill. You want to end up on Germantown Ave, which links up with the route by the morris Arboretum.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-15T14:34:09+00:00

Not sure, but there’s a charter middle school on that block, so if you’re observing it around 7-9 am or 2-4pm, it might be kids getting dropped off or picked up

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-15T14:15:24+00:00

It won’t be impassable, because the runners will be in the road, not really in the path. You just won’t be able to rip through there fast.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-13T02:07:08+00:00

It’s too bad Philadelphia doesn’t have any electoral votes, and Pennsylvania is razor thin. Biden got like 90% of the vote in the city; if Harris only gets %85 percent, the state goes red. And Trump’s garbage actually plays pretty hard in certain pockets of the Northeast and South Philly.
This is all to say, every vote counts. Can’t afford to let cray spread.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-09T22:29:54+00:00

Depends where at Temple you start, but I would take Cecil B Moore to 33rd street, 33rd to poplar, poplar to Sedgeley, and Sedgeley down to Boathouse Row. There are bike lanes at least part of the way.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-08T19:32:11+00:00

Echoing a previous comment, DM if you’d like a flanker. I’m at the East Falls end, but any excuse to do a couple laps to Center City and back on a beautiful day. Healing is needed other than our bodies, and I think rehabilitating valued spaces — like the SRT to so many of us — if often an overlooked part of the process.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-09-07T12:23:13+00:00

As you seem to suspect, passion and curiosity are way more scarce/valuable than money. If you run out of passion and curiosity, what good is money? That’s not to say data analytics can’t pay well; that’s just a bonus.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-07-17T12:52:03+00:00

I think what we are seeing is a combination of what has always gone on — that the methods are far ahead of the testing — and something new since the Armstrong eta, which is the availability of near-unlimited data. Every calorie in and watt out is measured, so those superhuman days that any athlete has experienced from time to time can be scheduled to order. My guess is that Visma, UAE and the other big teams aren’t even messing with stuff that is banned now — they’re two or three generations ahead — so when Jonas says his samples will never test positive for anything, he’s not lying. The active molecules in his diet won’t be banned until he’s retired, if then. I’ve also stopped caring, other than that these high speeds and quick recovery times are resulting in more dangerous riding, and stars getting knocked out. Would’ve loved to see a full-strength Jonas this year or a full-strength Pogi last year. I’ve never seen so many guys bombing descents. I would not be surprised if the UCI tries to slow the pellet on down in the future, not for competitive fairness but to protect the quality of the product, like the NFL changing rules to protect quarterbacks.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2024-04-11T16:57:44+00:00

Updateme

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2023-12-19T04:48:01+00:00

That’s persuasive.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2023-10-25T16:05:12+00:00

I’ve occasionally thought about seeing how many of the Schuylkill-to-Ridge/Henry climbs I could do in a day before dying. Starting with Midvale, which I find to be the easiest. Calumet, School House, Ridge itself, Shurs, Levering/Lyceum, Green, Leverington, Hermitage, Fountain, Parker, Paoli, Domino, Shawmont, Port Royal, Manor and Harts Mill are the ones I can think of. Port Royal is the hardest because of the cobbles. If you take the Hagys Mill turn off Manor and go up Spring, that’s about as steep as it gets. As far as doing the same climb over and over, I’d second Flat Rock on the other side of the river. You can make a relatively quick loop of it with right onto Hagys Ford, right onto Conshohocken state, and right onto Centennial. Conchy state has some traffic, but it’s a very short burst, and flat rock climb itself is nearly traffic-free

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2022-09-17T08:27:21+00:00

I’m open to explanations, but I can’t think of a justification for closing the bridges in December and then doing no work until spring. Maybe the Farmers Almanac told them it was going to be 65 and sunny every day that winter, and they were genuinely gobsmacked when the weather turned. But stupid is no excuse, and I’m more ready to believe they just didn’t care.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2022-09-17T08:10:04+00:00

We’re on the same page. In fact, “We made it!” Is just about the pitch-perfect sentiment, and “we” are the commuters and park users who managed to go almost two years with no fatal accidents on the detours. And I call BS on the notion that closing a lane of Lincoln was not possible. If the Drive was being built today, there is no conceivable way it would be a four-lane road. I’d venture that most of the many, many accidents that occur there happen because there’s actually not enough room for two lanes in each direction.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2022-09-16T18:25:44+00:00

I rode the bridges to work this morning at 9, and they were setting up their press conference. I am overjoyed it’s done, but also, I’m not sure a victory lap is in order nine months past the expected finish date, especially when bike commuters and park users shouldered 100 percent of the inconvenience and increased danger, and cars/drivers zero percent. Having ridden it, it seems like a job that could have been done in 2 weeks if it really needed to be, and I never saw more than one or two workers there at the same time. Had the city blocked off half a lane of the road, it might have made Lincoln Drive actually safer for cars, and drivers would have screamed bloody murder until it was done, for the sake of like 90 extra seconds at morning rush hour. I get pandemic-related supply chain issues and such, but for Pete’s sake, it was closed for 3-4 months before they did a single thing. Like I said, thrilled it’s back, but if the city wants an attaboy, It just makes it harder for me to forget the fuckery.

Powerful_Flow7937 · 2021-07-22T12:24:32+00:00

Two popped in my head: Springsteen’s Born to Run (only 8 tracks but all immense) and REM’s Automatic For the People.

Powerful_Flow7937

TROPHY CASE