ragebutt

To be fair it’s not actually a subscription but a “strongly suggested donation”. Just one with financial penalties if you don’t pay it and ever get an ambulance ride.

What makes it extra fucked up is the housing system in the USA (and many places) means that most people don’t own their homes and a large amount of people move frequently.

As a result they are completely unaware of this because often the notice that it even exists is mailed out either to property owners based on tax records (meaning renters don’t get notified), at least where I live now. People I know here who live in apartment buildings or even my next door neighbor who rents his house had no idea because they don’t get the begging letter every year

Depends on locale though, where I used to live (which was far more urban and densely populated) they just mailed it to everyone but then it just came randomly addressed to “resident” and looked like junk mail. But then they got apartment complexes and stuff. That’s how I first found out, I got it at my old apartment (funny enough a few weeks after I used an ambulance for the first time in my life and had gotten a bill for like $1700 for a 7 minute ride with some medical care but that was over a decade ago. I did have decent insurance at the time too)

It also helps that like 80+% of the time the guy is the one otaku who is relatively physically fit, reasonably grooms himself, and has at least a modicum of social skills (even though they temporarily have no friends before making 3 dozen)

Every once in a while though you get something like the first few volumes of watamote where the main character is genuinely a fairly reprehensible person who constantly makes things worse every time they try. Though to be fair even that ended up with tomoko somehow gaining a pseudo harem

So I can still hit up track day and ruin it for everyone? Nice

I actually still own my car. I’ll soapbox for a minute here. I live in a less urban area. The closest grocery store isn’t far, about a mile, but the path to get there is completely unnavigable. It’s eastern PA and the roads are antiquated, old carriage roads that have a shoulder of about 6” on either side and no sidewalks whatsoever. The closest bus stop is, you guessed it, at the small town center with the grocery store, gas station, and a few other shops. It’s not exactly rural but it’s not that far from it

Anyway! They take your license and thankfully there are some supports and they are pretty great. The division of the blind will hook you up with all kinds of shit to help you and train you to use it. I’m fairly tech oriented so I can set up screen readers and such but they have all these neat things like bumps on my stove knobs and all sorts of tactile things.

But the nightmare situation is transportation. Thankfully I’m in a privileged position where I work from home in a position that pays me a solid wage. But if I didn’t or if I ever changed jobs I would be fucked. As mentioned I have no bus stop I can safely get to and there’s no rail service for miles here. So the solution is that I schedule rides.

This is a terrrrible solution. It means that I have to contact the dot in advance, schedule a ride, hope they show up (they have flaked before) and then they come all the way out here to pick me up for a doctors appointment or whatever. It’s super wasteful and it’s basically making the state my uber (with none of the benefits, I still end up waiting around for ages often). It also means if there is a last minute need for transportation I am fucked. In an emergency I am reliant on services like ambulances, which is obscenely expensive. (Pro tip: your local ambulance company will often have a subscription fee, if you pay it they will waive a lot of billing fees. This is a bullshit system that should be illegal. I am a medical provider. If I bill your insurance $500 and they pay me $100 I write off the $400 because that’s the contracted rate. But ambulance companies will often charge thousands over what your insurance pays intentionally and will bill you this amount if you don’t pay their subscription bullshit. It’s literally extortion of people experiencing the worst moment of their lives)

wonderful infrastructure, america #1

This isn’t wrong, per say, but it’s an oversimplification of a complicated relationship

Cortisol can influence how sensitive the body is to oxytocin, for one. Similarly chronic stress can inhibit oxytocin release. Most people can recognize this effect: high stress scenarios lower the effect of all the stress remedies you’ve suggested. Doesn’t mean to not try them of course

The timing and context of cortisol release play an important role in whether it supports or hinders oxytocin's effects. Short-term stress responses might be adaptive, while long-term chronic stress can be harmful to the body's oxytocin system. As a result cortisol isn’t inherently “bad”. (This is aside from its role in metabolism, insulin response, circadian rhythms, etc)

Funny enough OxyContin actually causes a temporary increase in cortisol. Opioids cause a stress response, body reacts by stimulating the HPA axis, and cortisol is released. Though long term use lead to dysregulation in cortisol levels and eventually blunted or irregular cortisol levels. withdrawal leads to spikes, and both withdrawal and chronic use lead to difficulty managing stress as a result

The more you know

Well for one it’s a bit of hyperbole, to a degree.

I’m legally blind and back I became legally blind the state pulled my drivers license. This is something that can happen in 13 states

However, I can still purchase a gun. Granted, legally blind doesn’t mean “without vision”. I can actually still see quite a bit. I still play videogames, read books, work, etc. However, I could be completely darkness blind, like no vision whatsoever, and I am still legally allowed to buy a gun.

Back when I had a reddit account I posted this anecdote as a joke and got dozens of replies about how “of course I should be able to buy a gun” despite not having the fucking prerequisite of fucking VISION. Several of them pointed me to some blind YouTuber who had a channel about being blind and shooting guns and owning guns

Like I am technically disabled. I work with the disabled, I work for the disabled. But the huge number of people who immediately jump on me to immediately reject the idea of any kind of regulation that would suggest someone who literally cannot see the world they are aiming a lethal weapon at shouldn’t have access to it make me think that the hyperbole isn’t that far off

And for the record I actually do own a gun. Well my household does, technically. I don’t use it, obviously, but my partner is trained to do so. We both abhor guns but are of the opinion that “pandoras box has been opened” so to speak. If shit hits the fan we need to be able to defend ourselves and guns beat pretty much everything else we could possibly do. If real legislation, reform,and regulation came through I would be extremely happy to be rid of it. It is a cancer on our home.

I’ve posted it before but the way to get “media attention” is to be controversial and a bit shameless

Republicans are great at this. “Ban immigrants”, “all weapons should be permanently legal for everyone”, “ban abortion in all cases”, “ban gays”, these extreme messages are embraced by the party. Algorithms pick up on content that is engaged upon. People engage on this content regardless of their viewpoint. Even if you hate these views you are more likely to click and view out of rage, to comment your disbelief and to say “fuck this stupid bullshit”

Democrats are terrible at this. They abhor the controversial messaging from the left. They embrace weak messaging that sinks like “maybe some mild economic reform”. They embrace weak counter messaging like “gay people are actually valid”, “abortion should be left alone”, “maybe regulate guns a little” and then it gets trampled by right wing commenters and voices.

They need to embrace the right wing formula, frankly. “90% tax bracket for income over 10 million dollars”, “state funded abortion mills”, “ban all guns”, “mandatory lgbt education in public schools”, “death penalty for oligarchs”, etc. stop softening the message because you’re worried about alienating 4% of old white voters. It’s clearly not working

I’m not sure about fluid filled but I have some that filled with other stuff like glow sand and pixy stix and it’s mostly stationary during play. I would imagine liquid is more mobile to be fair. I always wanted a liquid one but they’re always one of the toughest to get

Looks cool though

I had an sd card with a horribly compressed version of the first season of aqua teen hunger force on mine. People were so jealous, probably (they weren’t)

The headphone cable is excellent for sure and I will never ever buy another set of wireless headphones again.

I have one set of wireless earbuds (Sony XM3) for when bigger headphones are impractical and for the price the battery life is shit. After roughly 2ish years of moderate use the battery life is cut noticeably and after 3 they barely last 30 minutes. Thankfully changing the battery is fairly simple (go sony!) although the battery used is a weird proprietary cell that cannot be purchased through legitimate channels and is fairly expensive (boo sony). But whatever, $30 on batteries is better than tossing earbuds that cost $250-300 a few years ago.

That said I have moved on from phones with headphone jacks. I still have a few sets of proper ass headphones that are pretty nice. If I want to use them with my phone I don’t fuck with dongles, I have a Qudelix 5K DAC/AMP. This allows me to use my wired headphones with any Bluetooth thing really. The only thing that could improve it is a user replaceable battery, and they made that: the Qudelix T71 although I haven’t tried that. And frankly I’m pretty sure I can figure out swapping the battery on this whenever it croaks. I’ve sourced and changed a lot of batteries in my time.

It’s not as nice as my proper setup for listening to flac or vinyl but it’s pretty indistinguishable aurally for the most part when listening to flac on my phone (vs flac on my home server via my better dac/amp which again is pretty aurally indistinguishable unless you’re a buttsniffing audiophile type. And if you are I dare you to double blind test it)

My father in law, who is otherwise a very nice person, overuses ellipses in his informal written communication and it bothers the hell out of me

The crazy thing is he is extremely well educated. He was a professor at a super classy university, had a very distinguished career, etc. dude can write. But hand him an iphone and all of a sudden he can’t end a sentence definitively…

to be fair to this person finding out someone you love paid for 4chan pass would be absolutely devastating