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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • Yes, but to clarify: the time constraints are imposed by for-profit healthcare businesses trying to optimize billable time because insurance will only reimburse for so much time, rather than being imposed by the insurance companies directly. (It’s generally not quite as silly in the non-profit sector.) I work in healthcare in the US: we all hate how it works. The system sucks and it interferes with the quality of care that can be provided, leaving patients worse off just so that greedy can be fed. It’s just asinine that anyone who has no medical knowledge/training is making decisions about how patient care can be implemented, especially where there’s a profit motive involved. We really need to pivot to single-payer or national healthcare system, and abolish for-profit ownership of hospitals.




  • Except a 401k gets taxed on withdrawals, potentially at a higher tax rate than you were paying when you invested some or even most of it. Also, we can’t invest our whole salary into a 401k, as there’s a hard limit on contributions. Whereas a business never gets taxed on the assets they invested in to offset their profits (except maybe state/local property tax, but then they get to deduct that from federal tax…), plus they get to deduct the depreciation of said asset for years going forward.


  • If she says she’s on birth control but you haven’t seen it, dont believe her. If she pressures you not to use a condom, don’t consent.

    Don’t marry someone before you’ve known them well for a few years. Don’t ignore red flags, such as them telling you that they see other people as pawns or them pressuring you to empty your 401k to put it into their financial/realestate schemes.

    If your partner doesn’t treat you with kindness and respect right now, then they are never going to, no matter how many times they say they will if you would only just do this or be that - nothing will ever be good enough for that kind of person, period, full stop. And, no, they won’t change, no matter how much you do, and no matter how much you love them.

    Do learn what “love bombing” is. Then find out if someone is grossly irresponsible with money or hiding a severe alcohol problem before you move in with them.

    There are a lot of people in this world who will take advantage of your kindness and naivety, if you let them, so be mindful of how people treat you and those around them before you make commitments to them.

    Not everyone is awful.

    Edit to add: don’t ignore your friends or family telling you that they think your relationship is unhealthy, or that the person is mistreating you or others, or may be taking advantage of you. Even if you don’t have much respect for the person telling you this, stop and listen and reflect, because red flags don’t stand out to you when you’re wearing rosy tinted glasses.



  • In my hyper religious, Southern Baptist upbringing, I often heard Christians say that Christianity is not a religion. The mental gymnastics employed to explain this position were varied. Most often it was “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship [with God]”, or something along the lines of “Christianity isn’t a religion because it’s true”.

    “Religion” in general was thus deemed a bad thing, because it was a term used to encapsulate all the other (and thus false) faith-belief-philosophy systems that were used by Satan to lead the world away from God. It bears noting that Catholicism and other major denominations always all fell under that umbrella of “other”.





  • I’m not optimistic about her winning - this is Tennessee, after all. Outside of Nashville and Memphis, it’s a sea of painful ignorance and R voters. Even relatively purple places like Knoxville can’t seem to elect anyone other than R’s who are hellbent on destroying civil society for no particular reason - the pro-wrestler mayor dismantled the county health department in the middle of the pandemic, for crying out loud. And people applauded him for it!

    I’ll donate to her campaign and cross my fingers, but I’m not holding my breath.


  • Depends on district policy and state/local law. E.g., in my kid’s district a parent can request for their child to attend any school of the same grade within the district if space is available, but parents have to provide transportation if it’s not the zoned school. For the district where we lived previously, a family moving out of zone could request that students be allowed to keep attending their current school through the end of the year.

    Per the article, both state and federal law allows these kids to continue attending the same school in such situations. It’s the school’s fault because, even if their district has no such policies, the clear and obvious course would be to seek an exception until policy could be addressed to align with the law. Instead, they simply refused to meet with the mother.


  • Last house I rented, when I moved in the dryer lint trap and its housing were so jammed full of lint I could have made a blanket from it. It was astonishing. I don’t think the prior tenants knew it needed to be cleaned ever. I honestly wonder how the dryer wasn’t broken and no fire had started.

    The HVAC filter had a solid inch thick cake of dust and dog fur.



  • The people who are that severely damaged by drugs* are a small percentage. I’ve only seen a handful who got that bad because of drugs (I’m a professional in the field). Most addicts can benefit from appropriate care and could become functional members of society again if they had proper support - which our system grossly lacks.

    *Most cases of persistent psychosis aren’t drug-induced; most of those throwing feces have psychosis from some other cause, which can also be treated with varying levels of success. Drug-induced psychosis is most of the time transient, and subsides as the drug wears off.