At the tail end of a massive maintenance shutdown (16 hr days for everyone, for 2 weeks) the mill leadership started a site-wide meeting with pictures and stories of their recent trip to Japan. How they went golfing, the great meals they had, their trip to the mountain, etc. They finally wrapped that up and proceeded to tell us that cost of living raises were going to be small that year due to them being “unsure about next year’s profit margins”.

There was a pretty steady wave of resignation letters for the 6 months following that meeting.

lol, American teachers don’t get paid enough to get edgy haircuts and active shooter drills take up too much of the curriculum to leave room for electives. Silly gooses. Liberalism is for the bourgeoisie.

Have you met babies? They are eating, pooping, suicide machines.

Throw in a decade or two of “marijuana is bad and will leave you addicted and homeless” just to grow up and find out “nope that was primarily just a few greedy bastards shoving opiates down our throats” and wham, you’ve got yourself a generation primed for escapism.

Let’s say you break your leg. Your first reaction is usually “HOLY FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT HURTS” and your mind will do anything to try to escape it. But if you turn your attention towards it and focus on it directly, you can start to slightly diminish it by picking it apart. Is it a throbby or stabby pain? Is there an underlying itchy sensation? If you accept the pain and embrace it, it helps reduce it by seeing it for what it is and, more importantly, is not: You are not dying, even though your brain is reacting like you are.

The Buddhist mindset is kind of like that, but for all of your reality. The zen doesn’t come from running away, it comes from seeing and accepting everything as it is and understanding that the only thing you can control is your mind’s reaction to it.

Signed, Someone who’s broken a lot of bones and done a lot of meditation (still a shit Buddhist though)

A suggested edit:

But has now divorced him in favor of a Democrat-aligned LGBTQ-supporting, drag show-hosting bar owner who was groping her in the theater she was kicked out of. She was also giving him a handy.

This brings me joy and I want to make sure her support network is fully aware of it.

A link to what I’m sure is a trustworthy source: https://www.tampafp.com/colorado-rep-boebert-apologizes-for-theater-behavior-now-faces-questions-on-boyfriends-background/

Celebrities, oddly enough, typically enjoy attention and the best way to get that is relevance maintained by frequent appearances. Many popular shows (even up-and-coming ones) have cameos from otherwise unrelated actors.

And global warming, and economic policy, and generally accepted medical practices, and immigration, and religious rights, and gun violence, and and and

In fact I’m usually quite shocked when anything comes out of their caucus that can loosely be interpreted as the truth.

I have never felt more emotional support in my entire life than when I stepped into women's spaces, seen as a woman.

As a women that, granted, had some serious questions about gender in my younger years this has always blown my mind because it’s so multi-faceted.

Women are more emotionally supportive, but it can quickly spiral into an almost gross-feeling and superficial reinforcement. Everything seems to be “valid” or demands an emotion-ridden hullabaloo, whereas the men in my life have always been more direct and straightforward, unafraid to call out my general jack-assery or quip “yeah, that sucks” when there’s not much else to be said about my general state of affairs.

The flip side of this is that women tend to be more sympathetic/vocal to general life events and encouraging to mild up or down days, whereas men tend to cock an eyebrow and ask what you’re so excited/upset about when you show up to work “having feelings” on a random Tuesday because your spouse threw a fit about leftover spaghetti that morning.

The dichotomy is fascinating to me, to watch unfold every day with every interaction. I find myself (not correctly or incorrectly) leaning towards men in times of crisis (muted response), and towards women in times of -life in general- (exacerbated response) because it gives me the mean/median output of (normal human response).

However, this doesn’t mean men only have “regular” mode or “crisis” mode, or that women only live in an amplified wave of “normal” and “slightly less normal”, and I think that’s where we find our faults. Our definition of the masculine and the feminine revolve around a dead sun that no longer serves us well. Men ARE emotionally supportive, and women ARE reserved/stoic, it’s just not always what you expect at the time so it gets glossed over and deleted, to the detriment of everyone.

Women didn't have to demand other women for suffrage, they had to demand it from men. It is the same here for emotional liberation.

Spitting straight-up facts.

Option 1) An on/off switch for my uterus without medical intervention. Periods are bullshit.

Option 2) Night vision for my eyeballs so I can dodge dog toys during midnight bathroom ventures.

My industry has largely moved to uniforms. I say we get them all coveralls and be done with it. It’s a job, not a fashion show.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial purveyor of poo was a researcher, because they are always hauling weird shit around. I was once asked why I was carrying around 40 toothbrushes and when I responded with “for fish stuff”, the looks only turned more confused. I can only imagine being a well-traveled researcher trying to return through customs with my latest batch of study materials.

I think it’s easy to focus on “only 900 users” and completely gloss over the fact that thirty six BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS were shoveled into this dumpster fire. That’s an inconceivable amount of money that’s being sucked from consumers (aka humans) via ad costs passed on in the form of higher product fees so 900 people can traipse around a server being supplied by what I’m convinced is an ultra-rich robot in human skin.

Someone reboot this reality please, I fucking hate it.

A friendly reminder: dust off the fan blades before you switch directions. I forgot to do this last week and dumped dust all over my bedspread right as I was about to get under it.

Some fish have little “hairs” on their body that are very similar to the “hairs” humans have in their ears to detect sound. As part of a trial to regrow damaged “hairs” in people with noise-induced hearing loss (soldiers, factory workers, etc), we had to uh, induce some damage so there was a test subject for the drugs. Turns out, tooth brush heads work really well for transmitting high-frequency waves through small volumes of water. Also turns out that I was not cut out for trials requiring living things. It was rough on the psyche.

They already found him guilty in the 2022 defamation case. The 2019 case is for the same thing (at a different time, he did it more than once) so the judgement effectively covers both cases. He’s already been found guilty, now it’s just time to determine damages. Again.

And if he keeps repeating the same lies, they’ll keep charging him. Now it’s just a game of “will he stfu or go broke first?” My chips are on “broke”.

A tired dog is a happy dog. I would recommend a VERY long walk or a trip to the dog park when you get home from work. Being kenneled all day and night with a brief respite while you are home and awake will lead to some serious pent-up energy, especially in puppies. We have two large dogs we’ve had since puppies and avoided rampant destruction by having a long yard for them to play in, but it requires us to be out there with them playing fetch and running them silly every day when we get home and again before bed. If we don’t, they just sit around outside begging to come in because ultimately they want to be around us.

You could try an actual luffa, which is from a squash-like plant.

Don’t limit yourself, hoses are also great for spraying unruly children and innocent passersby!

Have you seen what the cops here do to handcuffed people already on the ground? You’re fucked either way, may as well try to stay in a defensive posture with the ability to (try to) ward off physical attack.

Also, police confrontations aren’t known for creating calm environments. People make rash and sometimes unreasonable decisions when they are scared or feel threatened.