We’re spending all this money on detention centers and ICE and we’re going to run out of immigrants eventually. Gotta have the next group of people ready so all that money doesn’t go to waste and we don’t have to lay off our newly hired thugs.

I’m not familiar with In-N-Out, but I would honestly be ok with this if it meant that in 2016 they weren’t paying a living wage and now they are.

I know that’s probably just wishful thinking though.

Dang, that’s rough. It sucks that neighbors can really affect your quality of life so much. My first apartment was great the first 2 years and then I had an unemployed couple move in below me and all they did 24/7 was sit outside under my windows and heat/ac unit and smoke and it filled my apartment with smoke (I’m really sensitive to smoke and get horrible migraines from it), talk loudly, and have really loud sex at all hours of the day (which was amusing but obnoxious). Shortly after they moved in another couple moved into the apartment that had a balcony adjoining ours and they were potheads who were too lazy to take their dog out to use the toilet, so they just let it out onto the balcony to go right onto the floor. It smelled so bad we couldn’t use ours anymore or open the door to it. I was so grateful when my lease was over and I could GTFO. My neighbors in my current apartment are fantastic and I’m in terror of the day one of them moves. As a long time night shifter sometimes I’m worried that I’m the loud one, I try to be quiet but I’m just nocturnal by nature and I’m on the top floor.

Sound can also travel very oddly. I grew up in a house where my sibling’s bedroom was between my bedroom and my parent’s bedroom. I could have the radio on in my bedroom and turn the volume down so low that you couldn’t make out individual words if you were standing a few feet in front of the radio, and you couldn’t hear it at all in the hallway or my sibling’s room, but somehow in my parent’s room it was obnoxiously loud. I remember one time I had it on just loud enough to hear my music in my room and I went to my parent’s room to talk to them and almost had to yell to be heard over it. I had to use headphones all the time and I couldn’t have private conversations in my bedroom if I didn’t want my parents to hear.

I’ve noticed lately if I go into “all” and sort by “top” 6 or 12 hours I get all posts with zero comments and maybe one upvote. It’s like the non-existent algorithm wants me to see stuff I and no one else cares about.

I was an EMT going to school for cyber security. I had done all my gen eds and was just starting the actual computer classes when I realized how this all was going to go and decided that the money wasn’t worth dealing with the tech world and the risk of constant layoffs. Got my Advanced EMT, dropped out of college, and am going to be going back to school to get my paramedic certs. Pay is not nearly as good as a career in tech and the hours are insane, but if you have a pulse and a cert you’ll always be able to find a job somewhere (and if it gets to the point that you can’t, everyone else has already been fucked over).

I always forget you can get just the card without the passport.

In my state you can apply to get your ballot by mail, but you have to do that for every election (which reminds me, I need to send my application in for the next election). If you don’t do that you can go in person to the voting location that is predetermined for you based on your address. They have a list of everyone who is registered as eligible to vote in person at that location. When you register to vote you get a voter ID card in the mail which is basically a little paper card with your name, county, and the location that you vote at. You just take your voter card with you to vote and they cross you off the list and give you your ballot to vote in person. If you already registered to vote by mail but you forgot to send your ballot in you can take your mail-in ballot to your in person location and they’ll tear it up and let you vote in person.

For people who might not be in the US and don’t understand why this is a bad idea in the US and proportionately hurts poor people, proof of citizenship is usually a passport. A passport costs $130. You need supporting documents like your birth certificate, SSN, and a drivers license/state ID to get it. For your first passport you usually have to make an appointment to go somewhere authorized like a library, post office, or courthouse to apply, and then they send the application off and it can take weeks to months to get back, depending how backed up the processing agency is (and I’m sure there will be artificial delays during voting years if this passes). Also, they are passing laws limiting where you can go to apply, so now libraries and the post office are losing the ability to process passport applications, so people will have to go to the county courthouse, which could be a long drive from where they live, especially if you live in a rural area. For people who don’t drive, or only have one car that is shared with another working adult, or use public transportation that has a limited range (or just doesn’t exist in most of the US), or are disabled and can’t travel far, this can be a huge problem.

Also, all these places are only open during normal business hours, so you probably have to take time off work to go apply. Federal minimum wage is only $7.25/hr while the living wage is actually much higher (living wage for 1 adult living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment where I live was considered almost $23/hr in 2024), and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren’t getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.

I have a neighbor right now that has an obnoxious exhaust on his ridiculous looking lifted truck. For some inexplicable reason he goes out almost every night at midnight and redlines the fucking motor for a minute or so. On New Years Eve he redlined the damned thing for over 5 minutes straight. It kept hitting the rev limiter and cutting off then turning back on. I was praying the thing would blow up. It’s so damned obnoxious. I don’t know what he’s compensating for, but stop taking it out on the environment and sleeping children.

Homeschooling is an antisocial behavior. Most parents who homeschool are doing so because they want their child isolated from the public school system and away from “the world”. They want to be the only influence in their child’s life and they want to solely shape the outcome of who their child is. That’s antisocial as fuck and incredibly unhealthy for the kid, but the parents don’t care as long as they get what they want.

But why wouldn’t you want your child to have the highest chance of having enough money to survive, or the best chance of getting a job they want? I know so many homeschooled kids who ended up working for exploitative employers or doing really hard labor for really shitty pay because they weren’t educated enough (both academically and in life skills) to get jobs doing anything else. To just be like “well, you don’t need money to be happy or do well in life so I’m going to give my child a subpar education” in this economy is just naive at best and cruel at worst.

My landlord doesn’t accept thoughts and prayers.

The studies that show that homeschooled kids perform better academically are actually flawed. Adults who were homeschooled are much less likely to finish higher education and statistically have lower incomes than adults who attended school.

https://crhe.org/research/

Ironically, if Greenland ever did become part of the US all those people that Trump is pretending to care about will instantly lose free or even affordable healthcare.

Why is Trump sending free healthcare to other countries while US citizens are dying of easily preventable illnesses because they can’t afford medical care? I thought he was all about America first?/s

I haven’t had Pizza Hut since I was a kid. It’s not great pizza, but you used to be able to sign up for the summer book club at the library and get prizes for reading so many books. I was a pathetic kid with no friends who read nonstop to cope with the loneliness and boredom and one of the prizes was free coupons for personal pan pizzas. We were the kind of barely middle class that thought burger king was a huge treat we only got once a year, so earning a pan pizza was the absolute shit as an elementary school aged kid. My mom always took me there for my end of summer reward lunch and it always felt incredibly special.

My ICE loving MAGA coworker trying to rile me up: “These damned liberals drive me crazy”

Me: “I agree, but not for the same reasons”

I love candy corn. I like sticking it onto my front upper incisors like I’m some weird harvest vampire. Yes I’m an adult.

I’m a woman and I’m all about doing things for the people I love, but I don’t really cook. I’ll happily unclog a shower drain, put together furniture, change your spark plugs, but I hate cooking. Nothing makes me feel attracted to someone quite like when they cook for me; it makes me feel so loved. I joke that the worst part of being single is having to make my own dinner and do my own grocery shopping. I eat so simply now because I refuse to actually cook for just myself.

Winnie the Pooh! The episode where they fall down the wishing well instilled in me a lifelong fascination with wishing wells.

I also used to watch a lot of the old Thomas the Tank Engine