You overestimate how much nature we step in on a given day. It’s usually basically cement everywhere

US didn’t really ban it because they didn’t like it. While there was a women’s group protesting against the alcoholism in the country, I don’t think it would have had any traction were it not for the anti union push.

Saloons were a great meetup spot to make unions. Everyone from work was already there. If companies could make saloons illegal, it would make it harder to make unions. But there was a problem. The US got a lot of its tax revenue from alcohol taxes.

So they pitched the idea of replacing alcohol tax with income tax, making the budget balance (in fact much improve!). So it got passed to benefit the US government budget, and help the union situation for companies.

It was not prohibited for long. As you stated, it quickly went awry. But it didn’t matter. The US government now gets its income tax, plus alcohol tax now. Saloons became less popular since they were gone long enough for habits to change.

I’m not against gun ownership. I’m against zero gun ownership regulation. Requiring background checks seems like a no brainer but we cannot even get to that part. The next I would suggest is a weekend long course on the proper use, safety, cleaning, and storage of your weapon before you are allowed to buy one. Finally, I think we should have that class reupped every 2 years to keep your license to own the firearm. It’s a dangerous thing to have around and most good gun owners would support some of this, even if it is a hassle. It could be made fun too though. Free ammo for some range practice or something. Maybe a few for the class covers that, I don’t know. Consider it a meetup with other people with similar interests.

We found awesome people at our local gymnastics place that did adult classes

But… those places all price gouge too :(.

I know you didn’t ask about things that could be wrong, but I just want to make sure you have tried everything before you give up. The US healthcare system (and most healthcare systems, really) are not good at diagnosis for uncommon things. You got something that 20% of the world has? They’ve got you. But if you have an oddly presenting issue, there isn’t really a Dr. House to figure it out.

So I want to make sure you’ve checked the things you can. By the way the lurching going to sleep thing isn’t super uncommon. I twitch dramatically when drifting off to sleep if I have something or someone snuggled up against me, or even if I am on a small couch and my feet touch the ends. Seems like a response to an unfamiliar potential danger the body reacts to.

Anyways, have you moved in the last few years? Maybe there is mold or a small gas leak.

Have you tried dramatically changing your diet? It’s possible you picked up some horrible GI bacteria that your immune system attacks its waste or something. You could try high dose probiotics too. Many people with unrelated seeming symptoms like brain fog see improvements, and it’s an area that is totally understudied.

Did these symptoms start with a covid infection? Long Covid is still very poorly understood and seems to range from post exertion tiredness, to brain fog, and other neurological disorders.

I assume they drew labs to make sure your blood wasn’t high or low in anything. If not, ask what labs they can draw.

I feel like it’s even possible your water supply could be contaminated by something, so maybe switch to bottled water for a bit if you have a suspicion your building you live in may have bad pipes.

I suspect I would die trying all of these things, but if not, and I knew the end was coming, I would seek out and spend as much time as I could doing what was important to me. Before, I would have said hiking the PCT. Now that I am married and have a child I would spend everything I had to make as memorable a trip as I could to spend my last days with them. I might even steal a page from Violet Evergarden and write letters to be delivered to my daughter through various years of her childhood, and of course love letters for my wife.

Ugh now I’m all sad thinking about this. Hope everything turns out okay for you. There’s always things to try. It’s not over till it’s over.

So they shouldn’t bother trying to fix the errors of their ways?

I will try. This comes up frequently these days with my Trumper friend, so this could be valuable to discuss here.

I think it would be fine for them to compete provided we can ensure a level playing field. I don’t know what that would entail, but studies should be done to get it figured out. Is it a blood draw for testosterone levels (maybe not… sometimes that’s naturally high for either cis gender)? Maybe estrogen? Maybe it’s number of years post transition, though I see difficulty defining the start.

Definitely a tough issue since if we get it wrong and be too accepting or not accepting enough, many athletes will suffer. I would love to hear some more ideas and thoughts on this. I’m tired of getting shot down trying to talk to this guy.

Good insurance! Our child born this year the hospital bill looks like around $8k after insurance, but we keep getting other bills from the provider’s offices so it’s hard to say exactly. Fortunately my wife has a secondary insurance of some sort we can submit the $8k to get that knocked down to hopefully $4k. If it works. It’s been months trying to get it sorted.

No I think it’s the opposite. They expect people to get pregnant and have kids (though with abortion and birth control that is happening less- hence targeting those recently). This is designed to make sure they stay poor so that the wage slave class stays well populated.

Health insurance still leaves you with a large bill. Expect like $10k for the hospital part for a lot of insurances. Don’t forget the obgyn visits throughout the pregnancy (probably only $25-$75 per visit, depending on if you need a specialist). Labs are extra. In fact, the one that really tells a lot of info (lots of recessive gene issues can be found with it) is like a $750 lab that insurance doesn’t usually pay for (“it’s too new, and not required”).

People are telling you your mind is different. It’s not. I enjoy visiting cities because I enjoy seeing and experiencing that. But I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s like you step outside your door and you are constantly seen, so you must act appropriately. You can’t fully relax that way.

I enjoy backpacking because of the solitude and closeness with nature. I enjoy more rural housing (not crazy rural… maybe an acre per home) for that same reason. I also don’t want to worry I’m bothering the neighbors inside my own home if I walk too loudly, or am watching a movie.

Lemmy loves compact cities and I see the arguments, but maybe you’d have had to grow up in one to really appreciate it.

“When your vacation becomes your vocation, you will never have a vacation again.”

C sucks to write and take care of memory, but it’s nice for super efficient code for use on smart watches. Samsung ditched it (tizen- native apps written in C) in favor of wearOS (java?), and their battery life is now less than half what it was.

My brother had a huge truck for a while. Strangely, this size actually affected his driving. All the sudden he felt justified cutting the half-mile long line to get onto the highway and cut in at the last second. “Might is right” he said. “They always let me in because they are scared of this truck.”

Ugh. I hope this isn’t typical but I feel like it is. I told him that was awful and he just shrugged.

Woah. Never knew that was illegal before. We need that law back.

No that was the entire reimbursement

When my job that I did covering at other locations, the company would pay me per mile to get there. It was in 2007, and they paid $0.55/mile. I think with inflation that should be much higher now.

I think that was a calculation that was just gas and wear on the car.

To give some context, if I remember correctly, Tuvix wasn’t just “clearly against the split”. He was desperately trying to save his own life, crying out “doesn’t anyone see that this is wrong??”, before they essentially killed him.

So I guess that means corporations are actually hoping for a recession so they can “tighten the belt” and fire some workers and the remaining ones will work extra hard to make up the difference. Again.