i think a big reason that I get frustrated with the "liberals have never made anybody's lives better" is that in the US it used to be legal for insurance companies to charge you more if you were sick or even just straight up deny you the ability to sign up for them if you already had a "pre-existing condition", and this was only stopped by the passage of the ACA during Obama's term. but a lot of people who talk about politics on here are too young to really be affected by that since they would have been on their parents insurance (which the ACA required insurers extend until you're 26). and this was all done via politicking and not blowing up insurance CEOs mansions or whatever.

I'm not saying that the ACA fixed insurance forever, god no. but "you can't deny someone insurance for being sick" is a massive change and people don't realize it!

You are underselling the change. Let us recall "rescission," where as soon as it turned out that someone had an expensive medical condition, the insurance company would start coming through their medical history looking for ways to invent a preexisting condition and revoke their coverage.

It really frightens me if kids don't know about how bad the US insurance system used to be.

My dad didn't have any health insurance in his 40s, because he was a freelancer and his (Frankly not bad at all) existing health issues allowed insurunace to fully deny him.

When his girlfriend was dying of cancer they had to have a long discussion about what they'd do when she hit her insurance's lifetime coverage limit and they would no longer cover her cancer care.

People should understand that it was Obama and the Democrats who stopped that kind of thing.

Yeah the way to avoid that shit was to get a group plan through your employer, without that insurance was unaffordable/worthless

And even those group plans were not reliable unless they were huge. I know someone who worked for a smallish company. About 100 people. One of their workers had a child with hemophilia. Required VERY expensive regular infusions to treat. When renewal time came around, the insurance company gave the company management a choice: They could either exclude hemophilia from the plan or double their premium. They got the (Democratic) state insurance commissioner and their (Democratic) state legislator involved and the insurers eventually backed down. But it could have gone the other way. The real solution is a single insurance pool that includes everyone.

Also: medical transition or a gender dysphoria diagnosis could be a preexisting condition.

I was denied insurance outright for having a high BMI and a thyroid condition, despite being in excellent health at the time. Them not being able to do this anymore is huge, actually.

ive told a lot of sneering conservative coworkers to their faces that obamacare saved my life and i could very easily have died in my early twenties if he hadn't been president. it's always been interesting to see what someone does next in a conversation after that.

I accidentally follow people so much on this site that i dont know who half the people on my dash are

Art by Not A Starchild

HỒ XUÂN HƯƠNG WAS A BISEXUAL?

(Tiếng Việt ở dưới)

all of your feelings are valid as in “worth acknowledgment and internal consideration” but some of your feelings are also stupid and mean, and you need to deal with that shit without making it anyone else’s problem

like we are all beings of light, namaste, but also every single one of us has an ugly, dumb, selfish, lazy goblin living inside of us which can never be silenced or destroyed. and being a decent person means keeping that little fuck in his special little playpen hidden away in your heart, with his colorful enrichment rattles and his favorite pieces of raw meat, where he can pipe up with his wretched little opinions and you can nod sagaciously at him and pat him on the head and tell him you understand why he feels that way and never, ever let anybody else get their feelings hurt by him, because he sucks shit and nothing he has to say is worthy of notice by anyone but you. you should pay attention to him, but only because it’s important to understand your own worst impulses, and because trying to ignore him will make him break down a wall and run out into the street where he can show passerbys his privates and eat cigarette butts right off the ground. your goblin is valid: that doesn’t mean he’s fit for company.

Tag @dandelightin

More importantly, the goblin is a wretched asshole but he has a point. What your friend just said was kinda dickish, it’s understandable to feel snappish when you’re tired, and so on. The goblin has a lot of important things to tell you about your circumstances, mostly when they’re bullshit, and if you ignore him then you’ll get more and more internally battered until you accidentally let him out - although by that point the goblin getting out is the least of your worries.

It’s just that, while the goblin is really good at pointing out problems, his solutions to those problems are all terrible. Don’t listen to that part.

Astrology's weird bc if you've only ever had fun with it and come across someone w seething hatred for it you're understandably like, what the fuck is this person's problem? But also if you've seen someone take it Too Far, any mention of it understandably becomes a red flag

Like imagine if you really liked Pokemon and you're like, "I really don't see why people would hate this unless they're just assholes for no reason?" Like it's a totally normal opinion opinion to have. But also imagine if you took a quiz and learned you were a Bug type and people stopped talking to you because they were like "It's in your nature to be emotionally manipulative." It would also be totally normal to be like "Oh okay fuck Pokemon fans then."

Now you may be like, "But the latter situation doesn't happen!" and that tells me you are fortunate because you have not dealt with the worst that the west coast of America has to offer

All this is to say, I too was once a "Let people have fun" person, and then I met gay people from Portland and now I am not that person

I'm in the "it's fine if you like reading your horoscope but I don't think the US president should utilize it to make policy decisions" camp

How am I still finding more things to hate Reagen for???

THEY PUBLISHED A SEA TURTLE PATTERN IN THE STYLE OF THE OCTOPUS!!

$122,000. And the thing is so shodily designed that the accelerator can become that easily stuck. It isn't even all one piece.

$122,000. That's more than my entire household income, and we're 3 adults with full-time jobs.

If you gave that $122,000 to Feeding America, that would provide over 1 million meals.

That's $122,000 more than Tesla paid in taxes.

This video might just single-handedly caused every single cybertruck to get recalled...

The fact that Microsoft Word has to be a subscription is upsetting. I already paid for it why do I have to pay again

Yes please be mad about it, genuinely- You used to be able to purchase a single disk to install it and use it forever after that initial purchase of one key. It sickens me to see all this stuff which used to be a one time purchase be shunted under a subscription now.

THIS

"Why is pirating going back up?!"

This. This is why. People don't mind paying a high price for software if it's only the once, or every 4-5 years.

But having to pay a high price regularly? Especially in the cases where you lose access to your own work if you don't?

That's why people are pirating software.

It’s possible to buy a non-subscription version of Word; Microsoft just intentionally makes it very difficult to find (and also expensive).

However, I know a guy who knows a guy website: MS Office Pro for $50. If the link starts going to a Page Not Found, just search the site; they usually have some form of this sale available. 

Worth noting: while $50 is still more money than $yo-ho-ho, that money is a great way to make VERY clear to Microsoft that we DO want one-time-purchase products, not subscriptions.

My laptop just died. If it can't be fixed and I need to replace it, this post is gonna be a real life saver, because my family has been sharing an old version of Word that came with a limited number of lifetime licenses, and we're fresh out.

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

Get LibreOffice. It's fully compatible with MS Office, but it's free and open source. You're welcome. :-)

Astrology's weird bc if you've only ever had fun with it and come across someone w seething hatred for it you're understandably like, what the fuck is this person's problem? But also if you've seen someone take it Too Far, any mention of it understandably becomes a red flag

Like imagine if you really liked Pokemon and you're like, "I really don't see why people would hate this unless they're just assholes for no reason?" Like it's a totally normal opinion opinion to have. But also imagine if you took a quiz and learned you were a Bug type and people stopped talking to you because they were like "It's in your nature to be emotionally manipulative." It would also be totally normal to be like "Oh okay fuck Pokemon fans then."

Now you may be like, "But the latter situation doesn't happen!" and that tells me you are fortunate because you have not dealt with the worst that the west coast of America has to offer

All this is to say, I too was once a "Let people have fun" person, and then I met gay people from Portland and now I am not that person

This has made me realise why although I love tarot cards and casting lots and tea leaves and stuff, I hate horoscopes with an absolute passion: Because the tarot cards conceptually deal with "I" (Whether that's I-the-reader or I-the-client) and horoscopes are about "YOU" (You-the-passer-by).

Your coworker who is incredibly into reading tea leaves or geomancy: If they want to pull you into that, they need to sit you down, offer to read for you, ask you questions. You need to engage with the process, and it is the norm not to read for someone who isn't present or interested, and any reading is temporary and keeps changing (Ofc if you keep reading for one person over and over and the same motifs keep appearing, you might start to get an association between them and a figure- but they have to keep engaging for that to happen!) - If you don't want to keep playing, all you have to do is stop sitting to have your cards read.

But if your coworker is into horoscopes, once they know your vague birth month they can start offering up vague readings basically indefinitely - ie "Oh, such a Taurus!" And read that into your every move. Even if they don't have your birth day, they can project astrological events onto you ("You need to be cautious about that new job offer because of Mercury in retrograde" No Tarquin, I want to grab it with both hands because I have manoeuvred for years to get it and it's finally happening, etc).

And we don't seem to have a good social script for stopping it that doesn't devolve into "Let people enjoy things/at least it isn't the Catholic church/astrology never hurt anyone/being annoyed by this is antifeminist and antiqueer" even though "Please stop speculating on my life through the lens of your spiritual practice that I'm not involved in" should be enough.

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.”

- A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré

Neurotypicals seem to never realize that playing along when someone initiates an interaction with you is orders of magnitude easier than initiating an interaction. And it's not just because of the typical reasons like "fear of rejection" or "fear of embarrassment".

You have no social life and you want to get invited places. Someone invites you somewhere. That's easy (well, in comparison, because it may still be difficult for other reasons). All you have to do then is just play along.

But if you're initiating the interactions, there are many more calculations that have to be done. You have to figure out what to say to them. You have to figure out in what situations it's okay to approach them. You have to figure out how to read signs of interest. You have to figure out how often to approach them, because too little is disinterested and too much is clingy. And even if you do everything right, you probably still won't be invited anywhere because they may like you enough to interact with you if they happen to be near you but not enough to invite you anywhere.

And when you try to open up about struggling to socialize, you're met with "that's not true, you got invited to this one place this one time, you're just being negative".

bowl with (no) pearl earring

BEST MOM BRACKET; ROUND 1

Ritsu Nagai only really shows up for one chapter but she KILLS it. She's the mother of the main character, who is kind of a pragmatic asshole that tries very hard to pretend he doesn't have emotions but whoops, he has em. When we finally get to meet the woman who raised him, its a very "Ah yeah of course its someone like you". Just like her son, she's pragmatic to a fault and holds logic above all else. Only difference is that she's more successful at keeping to her word and keeping her emotions down. She's a doctor, and a fucking good one at that. Her emotionless pragmaticism somehow wraps right back around to being incredibly attentive and caring. Below are some manga panels of what really made me love her character. Even if you don't want to read the whole manga, Please read Chapter 44 for this amazing woman!

Mama nagai supremacy 💕

The creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

The function of a growl is as a warning. It is a communication that violence is available as a tool, but is not preferred. Other outcomes, besides your death, are available and should be considered.

But the creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

If your death is the goal, then growling will only serve as a delay and may result in your escape, which runs counter to the goal. There will be no growl, no warning. There will be no snarl or hiss or bluster. The creature that bares its teeth with the intent to kill only does so to bring closer its fangs to your demise.

The creature that growls does not want to kill you, but will if it must.

I advise you to appreciate the warning. You may not receive another.

#writing#I’m way more terrified of an animal looking at me the way I look at baklava than I am of growling and snarling#grace makes art

so glad i checked the tags on this one

The person giving you boundaries doesn’t want to hurt you.

WATCH THIS VIDEO

a very, VERY important post. spread everywhere and screen record the video to your phone. or message me and ill happily send you the video. give to every woman and girl you know.

bc as they both said / demonstrated, its not only super easy to do, but super easy to miss.

Ladies be aware and careful. Guys call out assholes who even think about doing that to someone.

And not just ladies. Last time I circulated one of these sorts of post, a gay male friend mentioned a similar thing happening both to him and somebody he knew.