So I took it for a little while for my blood sugar. (I’m a non-diabetic hypoglycemic, and it doesn’t just ‘smooth’ glucose for people with diabetes- it smooths it for anybody who could use it for that. I’m off of it now because it’s so goddamned expensive.)

Lemme say… It’s such a miracle drug, and improves so much stuff, that I’m seriously waiting to find out that it turns us all into spider mutants or something, because even if I found out I’ll turn into a spider when I’m 60, I’d still take it. It’s that fuckin’ amazing.

Absolutely batshit that they’ve invented a drug so good, almost everybody wants to be on it.

From Hark a Vagrant!

(Use your imagination)

Do I have to?

I have an answer for this that’s from my personal life if that’s helpful.

I’ve lived either in the great plains or in the rural south my entire life, and I only found out a year ago you can pay $20 to rent a pickup truck. So up until that point, I thought, every group (of friends or family) has to have a person with a truck in it, in case someone needs to move, or in case of an emergency (like a tornado effing up their house and now you have to clear the property).

When I found out that renting a truck is so cheap, I was so mad! All that time wasted paying extra for more car than I needed! I prefer something small and cheap and efficient, personally, but so does everyone else I know so I always wound up with the truck. (And I helped a LOT of people move over the years as a result.)

Obviously this is n=1 but at least it’s my story? And my answer is legit, “ignorance and being too poor to own my house, and landlords like to jack rent on someone staying in one place every year so you have to keep moving to avoid that needless creep of fees.”

That’s why I said it might have something to do with who you’re around.

This is so weird to me. Maybe it’s about who you are, or who you run with, but when I saw that Discord was about to go that way, I messaged my Pathfinder group and every single person there immediately hit me back with, “so where to next?”

On the plus side, if anybody reading this ever has reason to think that they might need to go into a police station and remove someone being held there, apparently if you and a friend or two look sufficiently the part, you can just walk in, in plainclothes, and claim to be Homeland Security, and just… take a dude and leave.

The stories I could tell you from my time as a caregiver for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities…

::: TW: neglect, abuse, SA

Here is a link to a lawsuit against Clover Bottom Mental Hospital, which was one of these institutions. The lawsuit happened in 1993. This was not that long ago.

“At the defendant state institutions, plaintiffs spend their days waiting out the hours. They sprawl in ill-fitting wheelchairs or carts. They are parked in dayrooms or hallways unattended, or are left alone in their rooms. Many plaintiffs languish in hospital beds or cribs, with no stimulation except when they are changed or fed. Others are left in wheelchairs, unattended for hours, with no stimulation or human contact available to them.”

“Plaintiffs’ basic care needs are ignored; they are left alone for hours. Clover Bottom residents in diapers are often wet, their clothes soaked through with urine.”

“Defendants have failed to protect residents of the institutions from physical abuse and neglect.”

“Verbal abuse is widespread. Staff at Clover Bottom use abrupt, verbal commands to communicate with residents; often, they scream at them.”

There is so much more, and so much worse. The thing is, some of these folks are still alive, and still members of our community, and they still have the evidence of this ongoing trauma writ large. The current system isn’t ideal. There’s never enough care, and the people who are providing care are often under-trained and under-paid and over-worked. But at least it’s better than this.

ETA: I had to come back and add: I left out all the sexual abuse. There was… a lot. There’s evidence. It’s mentioned in that lawsuit but there are stories I can’t bring myself to tell. :::

I agree that the Reformation was a mistake, but this is a little tasteless under an article talking about a drowned child.

Luckily the NWS offices in Paducah and Nashville have been crushing it because we’re in day 3 of severe weather.

Shout out to Paducah, who had to stop updating warnings and stuff on Thursday because they were in shelter while a tornado went over their office!

Like 6 good ones and a bunch of the same tired comments about poop knives, broken arms, same, this.

Here, at least most of the answers are real human beings trying to contribute to a conversation.

I didn’t really mean it to imply that you get respect, so much as it’s more obvious that you’re a real, authentic person. People will give more weight to someone they know is a real person, versus a bot. Or a shill.

I actually suspected that this was part of all this.

Real humans with lots of karma, some of it perhaps built up from before they started fucking with karma? Who might say something other than what the paid sponsors want?

I think this is an intentional move to try and get rid of anyone with any authenticity who isn’t a bot or a shill.

It’s just my little conspiracy. People with accounts like my old one would be very undesirable (lots of karma, ancient account age, not a capitalist stooge.)

That’s the problem with racist bullshit. They scrape the racism off and peddle it everywhere until it’s widely accepted and not tied to it’s roots anymore.

I’ll have to take your word for it. I struggle with podcasts.

That was 21 years ago! And where others might expect someone to slow down, I think Jon Stewart’s spending all the time since then writing, interviewing, producing content, and fighting in Congress will suit him well. I think we’ll see a meaner, hungrier Stewart.

I really hope we get a chance to see it.

I shared this upthread but I think that you might enjoy knowing it also. Jon Stewart went, himself, onto Crossfire, Tucker Carlson’s show in 2004. And he just… destroyed him. Here’s a link to the wikipedia article of the incident.

I am so excited to tell you this.

When Tucker Carlson (right-wing shithead) was hosting a show called ‘Crossfire,’ and still wearing a stupid bow tie, he made the mistake of agreeing to have Jon Stewart on his show. Here’s a link to the wikipedia page. There is a whole page for this one incident.

Here is a line that might appeal: “Three months after the appearance, Crossfire was cancelled and Carlson was fired; commentators differ as to how impactful it actually was, but generally agree that Stewart was at least part of the reason.”

And one thing is for sure, Tucker Carlson may have kept his incredibly stupid “man just asking questions” expression… but he stopped wearing that stupid bow tie.

If I ever embrace my fate as a lonely housewife book author, I’m going to have a rough time, because the kind of people who would forever love me for producing my books and sharing them as free (with the option to donate) and the kind of people who buy lonely housewife books are two completely different circles and I wouldn’t be able to spend all the time necessary to ‘market’ myself online to get the books in the hands of people who want them, if I’m trying to spend that time writing.

Maybe what we need is an apparatus. A website where authors can share full-size books, users can vote on them, and if you like them enough you can give money to those writers.

I just don’t know how we’d get that, be able to allow any author to share their book, and still have quality control.

I haven’t looked at or held or otherwise directly perceived a kindle in many years now, but when I did it was insanely easy to just pop any old file into a converter and slip that onto the kindle and pirate and read as you like. Did they put a stop to that with some proprietary nonsense?