But all of these are indeed historical. Y’all moderns have simply redefined the term to not include these types of history. That’s extremely problematic.
For a long time, but not anymore, Consumer Cellular had this fantastic “Lyft Concierge” service, where you could call a human who could 100% arrange a Lyft ride for you, even with a feature phone.
Of course it was designed for the elderly and disabled, but I loved it. There may still be third parties offering this type of service.
“Boko” is actually a loanword from “book” so it literally means they want to forbid “book-learning”.
It is also instructive to understand that the Quran calls Jews and Christians “People of the Book”, in other words, people who read and believe the Bible.
The Gaudí models themselves were actually destroyed during the Franco years, and so what we see today exists thanks to the successor architects doing reconstructive work on Gaudí’s lost mockups.
In an age where cabinet video games and arcades were passé and a dying breed, Terminator 2 introduced an absolutely epic pinball game that started a renaissance of these machines all over again.
Robert J. Sawyer wrote a series of sf books called The Neanderthal Parallax which proposes that human sentience (and Neanderthal sentience) originated, and ended, with changes in the Earth's magnetic field. It explored some very interesting social and anthropological ideas.
I personally think that the conquest of Jericho depicts, allegorically, a conquest of the Moon itself. That there is more than one OT story that describes journeys to outer space (the highest heavens, of course). That the Promised Land really was an unfathomable location in outer space that was only reached by the most faithful and holiest of warriors.
But I like to start with Jericho because there's a lot of evidence that the actual city-state of Jericho was dedicated to a Moon god, and the Moon god was worshipped there. But if you think about how Jericho and its conquest is described...
There is a gigantic business called "NEMT" "Non-Emergency Medical Transport" that has been filled by taxis and rideshares for decades. I first discovered this service when I broke my leg in 2006, and Medicaid was paying for taxi vouchers so that I could travel to far-flung orthopedic appointments over the span of 9 months. Otherwise I'd be on the bus, on crutches: ouch!
So NEMT can cover a lot of use cases where people are stable and just going to PCP or specialist visits. Or even behavioral health appointments. There are now dedicated NEMT providers, like Veyo out of San Diego.
In fact, when I broke my leg, there was talk of calling an ambulance. But I was only about 3 miles from the destination hospital, and there were many wise people nearby, so several of them suggested I just call a cab and take the cab to the E.D. instead, because that was far more efficient. So that's what we did, because really, I didn't need any life support, or blood transfusion, or rescuscitation on the way there.
Since the billing SNAFU last Thanksgiving I also learned about the difference between BLS and ALS. For some reason the ambulance provider billed for ALS even though none of that was necessary. Of course, ALS costs more and bills more and probably profits them more. I should have contested this stupid account trick, but whatever. They haven't even billed me for the "co-pay" yet, so we still need to wait and see how this shakes out.
I learned that in a business context, it was extremely important to adhere to one issue per email.
If I peppered someone with a series of questions or worse, bundled unrelated issues into one message, they would all probably be mishandled. I think it was a mismatch of expectations and/or how corporate workers use email apps.
So if I held every message to one topic, one question, things tended to work as expected.
I had an ambulance ride on Thanksgiving Day last year. And the punchline was that with my ACA insurance, the "ambulance run" co-pay was $1,200. (Of course my total ambulance bill was around $1,310.)
There was a long period of back-and-forth with calls and website visits, where they were insistently billing the wrong insurance, and so forth. But I'm grateful that I used the ambulance at that point in time.
The key advantage to an ambulance ride is bypassing the Triage Nurse. If you're going to an E.D. and you take a ride-share or a friend drives you, then you'll go to the registration desk and then meet the triage nurse. And the Triage window is pretty good at conserving hospital resources, and de-prioritizing you if your issue could be handled by Urgent Care or your PCP on a weekday.
But if the ambulance gets called to your home, it's a foregone conclusion that you really, really want to go to the E.D. and the ambulance crew will Keystone Kops their way to a successful hospital drop-off. They'll take some vitals and ensure that you're stable, because if you're not, they can save lives, and keep you alive during transport. But if you're conscious then they ask that $64,000 question: "do you want to go to the hospital?"
Once a few years ago, a nurse in a clinic had called 9-1-1 on my behalf and it was actually difficult to refuse a hospital transport. The EMS crew put me on the phone with a hospital attending physician and I had to emphatically refuse transport several times, after being advised of all the risks. (My only issue was elevated blood pressure. C'mon, guys.)
One of the troubles with ambulances is that they are really overkill for many calls. If some homeless dude goes unconscious on the curb, they get called. Some neighbor was going to call 9-1-1 because I laid down briefly near the pool. The ambulance and its crew is highly equipped to save lives and respond to the worst trauma cases: multi-GSW, car accidents at 70mph, etc. But I called them because I had a bad headache. And that's why they got to bill so much: they cost a lot! And I bet that a lot of uninsured deadbeats default on their ambulance bills, and the City gets to eat all those costs.
But the times I've transported myself to the hospital, I kinda got blocked by Triage, and it was for my own good. This last time over Thanksgiving, I had a lot of issues, and isn't it always the way that they hit at the beginning of a holiday weekend? So, it was good I went to the hospital.
But I was flabbergasted that my "co-pay" was 92% of the ambulance bill. I don't know why, but that plan has terminated anyway, so there's no arguing about it. At least, my actual hospital bills were well-covered by that plan.
I had an SDB for a couple of months and some of the related incidents were rather surreal. I was finally persuaded against it.
I had been stashing cash and coins in there, and some USB sticks and some ID, as a backup or hedge, if something catastrophic happened to my home, or there was an extended power outage, or comms lines were down for some reason: civil unrest, natural disaster.
But I queried one of the bank managers about their backup systems and power. And he said "oh, if the power went out or something, we would obviously close down." and nobody from the public would be getting into that branch, come hell or high water. It was perfectly logical to expect that, but I had somehow thought they would be a fortress of solitude that could withstand any tempest outside.
So that's why I closed out the box, and basically my best backup plan is readiness at-home, and knowing somewhere to flee to, and/or shelter in place, if something goes wrong here.
Really now? Have you not been paying attention to the many news stories about banks that are closing out and shutting down their SDB services?
SDB are a horrible burden for banks and especially because they have little use for actual secured vaults anymore.
If you’re simply using it to squirrel away paper documents for emergency access, I strongly suggest an electronic replacement solution.
If you’re using it to store physical valuables such as watches, jewels, or negotiable instruments, then I feel sorry for you, but consider a storage locker or simply a fireproof safe.
I'm not sure if "future" is a good word for the widespread civil unrest, nascent insurgencies, and very normal soft-target gun battles that happen weekly here, but our "US conflict" looks like street-to-street fighting, within our own borders, with people who are already here.
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." -- Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5