My native language is Russian and I have met a black woman who speaks Russian better than I do. (I haven’t been there for over thirty years so maybe there are some black people living there now, but I never saw one before coming to the US.) Her parents are diplomats and she is fluent in a couple of other languages too because her family lived in several different countries when she was growing up.
I have been exposed to hospitals as a guy who worked on their software, as a friend to a doctor, and as the relative of a patient. What I have seen is that hospital staff are generally well intentioned but extremely overworked, to the point that they can overlook obvious signs of a life-threatening illness. You can’t just assume that if you’re in a hospital then you’ll be taken care of. The doctor can be too busy to pay attention to you or too tired to think clearly about your condition. The doctor might even just forget that you’re there. You have to make sure that you’re getting a doctor’s attention, even if that means acting in a way that makes you feel like an entitled jerk.
My grandmother went to the hospital a couple of years ago because every few hours her heart would stop for several seconds. After she was in the emergency room for a day without receiving any treatment, some hospital employee came and wanted to discharge her. She and I refused so she ended up in a hospital bed for a couple of days, still with no treatment. Finally my sister came from another state, and my sister is less shy than I am. She actually found the cardiologist and made sure he looked at my grandmother’s condition. Once he did, he immediately sent her to surgery. She had a pacemaker put in and recovered.
(In case anyone is curious, my grandma says that when her heart stopped for long enough that she lost consciousness, she felt a wave of heat go through her body, her vision faded to black, and then she passed out. It didn’t hurt. In her case, her heart started again on its own but I suppose that for someone less fortunate, that would have been what it felt like to die.)
Man, this hits close to home. Just yesterday I decided to get in touch with an old friend from college and I found out that she had died in a car accident years ago, not long after I lost touch with her. Don’t put things off, folks.
Why not both?
There are two components to this question. Did many in the working class feel that Democrats had abandoned them? And is Trump’s economic policy actually better for the working class than Harris’s? I think the answers are “yes” and “probably no”. However, voters don’t listen to economists. If they’re not happy with the status quo, they vote for disrupting the status quo even if experts tell them that that’s a bad idea.
I suppose Sanders thinks that the working class would have supported a Democratic candidate who proposed a leftward (as opposed to Trump’s rightward) disruption. My guess is that that isn’t true and socialism is still a dirty word in America, but who knows?
lemon and sugar
Ah, memories. I can’t drink that any more unless I don’t want to eat for several hours until my teeth stop being sensitive, but during my childhood it wasn’t just delicious, it was a way to bond with my older relatives.
Impra Gold orange peoke. Get the loose-leaf kind that comes in a metal container.
But one time, I was dragged into helping a guy I didn’t know move a couch up stairs. Afterwards his wife (they were an Indian couple) made me some chai tea that was the best thing I ever drank in my life. I would happily carry another couch for one more cup. I was a fool and didn’t ask what that tea was, and since then I have tried different chai teas (including when I went to India) and I never even found one I liked at all.
But… Do you want to? I don’t feel like this is a country I want to contribute to anymore. I’m not going to leave (because that’s very impractical) and I’ll still support myself, but the goodwill I had towards my fellow Americans is very much diminished.
It’s easy for me to say that because I could leave if I needed to. The situation is very different for the people who can’t. Maybe I should have more concern for them than I do right now, but instead I just keep thinking how one upside of Trump winning the popular vote is that whatever happens, most Americans will deserve it.
Do people want to play Warcraft 2? I have a lot of nostalgic memories of when I played it as a kid but unlike the other remastered old Blizzard games, it isn’t very good by 21st century standards.
Why would you pay to make your Rhino’s bulge smaller?
Also, how is Warframe now? I last played eight years ago and I’m a little surprised that it’s still going strong.
Always remember to wear a steel codpiece.
They better hope they’re not in New York state.
He’s not wrong about the squirrel…
Note that I’m the original commenter rather than the one you’re replying to. I don’t want to talk about fertility but I do have a few questions for you.
As an elder Millennial, I have zero interest in someone half my age. Or younger.
I think you and I are about the same age. What do you mean by “interest” here?
Emotional intelligence and availability, shared experiences, and common ground are also factors in potential mates. Add societal factors like education, financial stability…
Those sound like your criteria for long-term compatibility rather than your criteria for sexual attraction. I think they are different things. I have met people who would have been great long-term relationship partners if not for the fact that I was not attracted to them. I have also met people I was very attracted to who turned out to be terrible partners.
Some people (usually women) say that someone who wasn’t initially attractive to them became attractive once they learned what a good person he was. I was taught that judging people based on their appearance was shallow and wrong, so I tried very hard to make relationships with good people I wasn’t attracted to work. They never did. They were doomed from the start and there would have been less pain for everyone if I had been honest with myself immediately rather than pretending that my initial lack of attraction didn’t matter or that it could change with time.
The dip only lasted a few months. By August of 2020, VTI was back to where it had been before the dip in February.
Another thing to consider is that Melkor was never known to show understanding or mercy to his servants who failed him. I would have to think that any balrog who failed to come to his aid would have been killed (or worse as you postulate) as soon as Morgoth was freed.
Hah, now I’m imagining an alternate, sillier Arda where the balrogs had the same conversation as the villain’s abused lackeys did at the end of Disney’s Hercules. (A really underappreciated movie, IMO. Just don’t watch it expecting it to be about the Greek myth.)
He’s not going to be happy when he gets out of there.
You mean if he gets out of there!
If. If is good…
The actual transcript:
But [Dick Cheney’s] daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face, you know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee. Well, let’s send, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy, but she’s a stupid person. And I used to have, I have meetings with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people.
I’m no fan of Trump but this is unambiguously not a threat. The clear meaning is that she would would change her mind if she was one of the soldiers who would be fighting a war that she supports, not that Trump would threaten her with a gun until she changed her mind.
Not all older people are sexually attracted to other older people. A 70-year-old friend of mine confessed that he’s sad and frustrated because any woman he is attracted to is way too young for him. (He’s not a creep who would actually bother younger women.)
I worry about this myself. I’m still young enough that I think women my own age are attractive, but to be honest I can’t imagine being attracted to a retirement-aged woman unless she is one of those celebrities who have a hidden painting that ages instead of them.
I think “freedom” resonates emotionally in different ways for different people. If you try to pass a law making it illegal to drink bleach, I will oppose that law. I certainly don’t want to drink bleach, but right now I have the freedom to drink it and you would be trying to take away that freedom. It has value to me even though I intend never to exercise it.
Taxes, unlike drinking bleach, are a matter of trade-offs. I’m not categorically against them. However, I don’t buy into the argument that I shouldn’t oppose them as long as I will never have to pay them.
I think she learned it as a kid because it was the language of where she lived, but she didn’t use it much in the USA. The reason we met was actually because she wanted someone she could practice speaking it with.