Oh

Oh no

Not the person you replied to, but you make a great point. There’s most certainly ulterior motives for joining forces. However, I would prefer to work alongside and run against (in future elections, may the voters work to keep them in existence) a relatively honorable opponent using this tactic as a means try to keep their seat, rather than their turning farther right, emboldening and embodying every trait of a traitorous enemy.

I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but this seems so off-the-charts guaranteed to backfire on him. What even mild Swiftie isn’t going to figure out (or hasn’t already) just how fake this endorsement is? Of any celeb to fake, Taylor seems like a such a flamingly dumb choice in terms of the fandom’s social media engagement.

With all these increasingly stupid moves… Is he really that detached and senile, or is there more behind his [team’s] style of psycho-political warfare going on?

I don’t think I’ve seen it pondered anywhere on social media, so I must ask: Does it not seem like Trump is purposely trying to throw the election at this point? If that’s the case, I fear the heightened degree of nefarious intent for whatever guaranteed political unrest we will face in November. I don’t think this is baseless conspiratorial thinking on my part, unfortunately.

Or … Or … Maybe his patently obvious mental decline has eroded away just enough of his super-sized ego to let in juuust enough reality for him to consciously recognize that he is going to die soon whether he likes it or not, and now he doesn’t give a shit-a-minute if he wins anymore. Can you imagine?

Ahem… Loosh dentshursh.

I’ve never heard of this guy before, so I had to research. Wikipedia entry for his early life: “Pool was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a firefighter and his mother sold cars. Pool attended a Catholic school until completing the fifth grade and left school at the age of 14.”

Whelp. That explains a lot. I have yet to hear him speak or read any quotes on wiki or elsewhere. Though I can predict a certain cadence of speech and lack of even the tiniest depth of understanding of whatever he’s talking about.

So which do we think came first? Private school or the dumb?

Nobody seems to like you here, Mister Bias Bot…

Don’t forget the rectum bleacher! You’ve gotta whiten up all your pearly bits when grooming personally with these here personal grooming products! From teeth whiteners to skin toners, nipple brighteners and our ever-popular melanin relaxers, they’re all conveniently listed in this one incredibly inconvenient list! No matter which parts of your body, which orifices, which end of your digestive tract you reeeally want to whiten up: Lighten Up, We’ve Got You (Un)Covered!®

Fun fact! If the talking pump has buttons (usually four on each side of the screen), press all of them from the top down right when it starts yammering at you, and one or more of these magical button presses should shut its trap!

I, too, hate being audibly ad-blasted at the gas station.

I wonder if the effect would be akin to mixing every paint color and getting “super dark greyish black-brown” as a result.

My guess would be “super icy horrifying franken-fruit.”

It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.

(Please take the following as pondering general discussions of obesity between doctors/patients and not specifically directed at you.)

This was a really thought-provoking summary for me, your belief that doctors are telling people to lose weight out of “laziness.” If a suggestion like this is lazy, are patients who don’t listen to their doctor somehow not lazy?

The idea that doctors make weight a scapegoat seems prevalent in American healthcare (probably because we’re generally obese, myself included). It feels a lot like projection of one’s “laziness” (mentally it’s much more complex than that) onto a doctor, even though that doctor has probably seen hundreds of cases with the same predictable outcomes and knows that appropriate weight management would head off more serious treatment.

Frankly, I think doctors are anything but lazy when they are “forced” to order and perform risky and invasive treatments on a patient who refused to meet them halfway before the treatment became necessary in the first place. I get it, nobody likes being told what to do, especially when it seems (and literally is) so personal. But doctors also don’t like to be told what to do (“fix me!”) when a patient deigns even the gentlest suggestion to take some control of their issues at hand.

I am 15lbs into the obese BMI category myself, but 30lbs below my highest weight. The severity of my issues (joint pain, lethargy, depression, etc.) has palpably lessened losing that 30lbs very inconsistently over the last four years. If anything, I think doctors need to better read the psychological resistance many people have with weight loss and then illustrate to, rather than tell, patients how to attain weight loss in ways that don’t seem restrictive.

That 30lbs of mine, could I have done that in 30 weeks or fewer? Sure, but I didn’t want to feel perpetually hungry. In fact, I never even set a goal weight. Instead of thinking “Idgaf about my weight” or “I must lose 20lbs by Christmas!!” I just made the tiniest changes, the biggest one being taking advantage of times I wasn’t hungry by (gasp) not eating.

… Shit, I guess lazy weight loss works, too!

I think maybe it’s both? Too harsh of sentences (in some cases or jurisdictions) might contribute to a general police mindset which “conflates” the legal repercussions of rape with murder. This leads to or reinforces victim-shaming questions like, “do you really want to ruin their life over this?”

The rule of law and law enforcement need to strike a better balance in both directions I think.

So I am still tapering off Zoloft since this “aha” realization only happened this week… Everyone please take my extra serotonin, please!!! (/s)

For real though, being depressed was its own terrifying animal and I hope anyone suspecting it gets the help they need. I’m glad I could work through it with meds and now therapy, but it’s crazy how delicate the balance needs to be with brain chemicals!

I had definitely thought that as well! But then I googled it and found there can be “major interactions” between Adderall and Zoloft, and that Adderall can actually affect serotonin (not sure if it promotes more serotonin or inhibits reuptake). It must be some kind of compounding effect?

But great point on the Zoloft! It seems it was definitely an OD factor, especially if there is more serotonin floating up there “naturally” and the re-uptake inhibition becomes way more effective. 😬

(I’m still actually dealing with tapering off Zoloft, but oh my gods I am so much less physically anxious already.)

On the flip side, too much of that sweet, sweet serotonin will fuck you up. At the very least, it’ll make you sweat like a stuck pig while you (unknowingly) begin tiptoeing toward the precipice of full-blown serotonin syndrome.

Source: Was on Adderall 30mg plus tiny 25mg Zoloft dose “for anxiety maintenance” for two years. Well, at some point this past fall and spring, I must have started making more serotonin naturally or magically idk, not a doctor or witch doctor. And I only recently reread the serotonin syndrome symptom shortlist and finally put two and two together. One’s face should not literally drip sweat walking around a 74° house to grab laundry and one’s heart rate should not be spiking to 160bpm merely attempting to put gotdamn makeup on that very same face, the face full of fuckin sweat fountains.

I wasn’t just maintaining my anxiety, I physically manifested my anxiety in all the worst ways.

Noooo!! You’ve managed to both unlock a core memory about some unnameable PBS show featuring clock-loving clown ladies AND INSTANTLY RUIN IT!!!

wot in the nation of tarn

And not to mention tough for their UNDERAGE CHILDREN!!!

^/s

Soooo, I kind of got déjà vu reading this article because … Six days ago I “foresaw” the relevance of “weird.” Comment thread here (I think) or just check out post my post history.

The author brings up a ton of specific points I called out, including using similar words like “flip” the script and referencing how “basket of deplorables” was too directed. Were we all thinking sbout “weird” in this context six days ago already? If not… I am weirded out, y’all.

Your style of sarcasm is so well done, nobody realizes the /s is implied. A+++ seller, would buy vote AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!

Am I the only one who didn’t realize the film Hillbilly Elegy was based on this particular guy’s memoir? No wonder it left me with a bad taste in my brain.

I remember deciding to watch it back when it was promoted on Netflix (in 2020-21?), going in completely blind to its background and bent, but wooed by the branding of it being “nominated for awards” and the imagery of a frazzled-looking Glenn Close.

I’ll try to reflect on what I thought of it then without reference to what I know now: The whole movie was uncomfortable, felt weirdly holier-than-thou, and made me question what was supposed to be so good about how this guy was “overcoming” traumatic circumstances. I don’t think I finished it in one go, only doing so because Glenn Close and Amy Adams brought talent to these painfully stereotypified roles. (I had just finished Sharp Objects, so you can imagine how disappointed I was that Amy had to work with so little substance, no pun intended, in this role’s storyline.)

I remember thinking I really disliked the actor who played JD Vance for having such flat personality and boring acting skills. As it turns out, the actor did a helluva job! Bravo!

I hadn’t seen this before, and it was generally really enlightening that these Trump supporters have genuine concerns for the working class, obvious as that should be by now. It just sucks that they’ve been hoodwinked into thinking that Trump is their savior from the corporate oligarchy that is clearly affecting us all. Misplaced reverence to a guy who is a mechanism in the same pro-corporate atmosphere. If only they realized that the Democrat party (flawed as it is) actually works toward their interests with policy (edit: toward improving wages, taxing the ultra rich more fairly, healthcare ideally for all, social programs, etc.), rather than attaching themselves to this “not-a-career-politician” who couldn’t care less about them. Maybe not all hope is lost on trump supporters, but the cult of personality is much too strong and has been for a long time.