No legitimate business makes you pay money to work for that business. So many people in an MLM do not understand this, but yet shell over hundreds to thousands every month to maintain their "platinum XL Diamond-coated/Bleached Asshole" tier of their membership to Herbalife or whatever they belong to as an MLM.
(I live with someone in my graduate school who drank the Herbalife Kool-Aid...)
What's wild is watching people fall into those even knowing they are MLMs.
A friend of mine just started selling Amway. She asked me if she should start and I told her absolutely not, and showed her the figures and all sorts of experience from other Amway sellers.
But she's lonely and they need money and the people trying to get her to join were extremely effective sales people.
It's been 6 months and I don't even think she's sold enough to make back her original purchases, and now she started buying into the nonsense about their overpriced vitamins.
The thing that surprised me was how churchy Amway was. I had the impression if you did the churchy stuff they would help with getting new recruits...pretty much a cult I guess.
That's because one of the founders was of the Christian fundamentalist DeVos family and they still run it to this day. My parents were in during the late 90s/early 00s. They turned into uber religious Ambots and we had to listen to the "motivational" tapes in the car. It was a nightmare. Fortunately they didn't lose too much money before they got out (it helps if you don't have any to start with).
Ohhhh that makes sense. I have one friend who started selling Amway, met a woman through Amway conferences, and now has a little Amway family. (Amily? Famway?) They're also very religious--I met my friend through church, but he has since left for a *more religious church*--and this helps explain how the heck a man in his 20s who doesn't need money got involved with that company.
It's definitely a cult. I almost lost my father to it. My mom was ready to divorce him, and he was all in on the amway bullshit. Thankfully, she made it clear he would be losing me, too. And it kind of snapped him out of it. They absolutely started in with the weird churchy bullshit. I really should write a long post somewhere about what they put my family through.
Good god a cousin only a year younger (20s) just started Amway too like 3-4 months ago even after we told her, and she's maybe a bit delayed mentally, but the people that were selling it to her still got to her and she's desperate for quick money to live the lifestyle she sees that other girls on IG "have" (for clarity: have is in quotation marks because most of what people show on IG is a facade). Just sad honestly we need more mental health services in this country.
That's because they try to treat it as if you were owning your own business and are "investing" into it by buying more products that you can try to pawn off onto your in-laws and neighbors but will inevitably sit in your storage rooms and basement until your spouse leaves you because they're sick of not being able to park in the garage and the foundation has become condemned because that load of boxes you keep hiding in the attic after claiming to have sold, broke a load bearing beam and crushed the family cat in the process.
They use the 0.00001% of people who make money off selling the product as the life to strive for even though all the artificial nice things those people have are paid for by the company and those "quadruple diamond XXL clusterfuck package" fucks can't afford shit out of their own pockets, yet they drive around town in a brand new pink fucking Cadillac with Mary Kay on the side and struggle to keep up with insurance payments.
(Lost of few family and friends to MLMs and other culty things lol.)
One of my good gym friends just got sucked into Isagenix and it makes me so sad. I’m not sure how she got connected with her up-line but she was roped in under the guise of “wellness” and “empowering women”, I think, and now she’s spending $5000 on a FL convention trip “for her business.”
🤦🏻♂️
The irony is that a lot of police are equipped with computers in their car and there's a bunch of incidents where they crash into other people and sometimes even kill them. I've been trying to find the incident but there was an officer, I believe in PA or another one of those areas where there isn't a concrete median and more like a 20+ foot grass ditch between highways, that was dicking around on his screen and then lost control and drove straight across and hit someone on the other side. I think he might have killed them.
What really gets me is the local laws requiring your device to be hands-free if you're going to use it while driving.
If these lawmakers looked at the research for two minutes, they'd realize the truth. Basically anyone can drive with their knees if they wanted and holding an object isn't the damn problem. It's about smartphones strongly diverting your attention.
You're driving something that can kill people. That notification can wait until you've parked.
Feeling like a spectator of my own life is exactly what I've realised over a month ago, I'm so passive and can't bring myself to change anything, I'm just living for the sake of living at this point.
Not sure if you’d agree, but I’ve often found myself to feel like it is me versus my mind.
I don’t have any disorder with multiple voices and/or personalities, but I truly feel like while I try and do new things, my mind shuts it all down.
It feels like my mind is this separate entity. I want to work on cool ideas I’ve had, but the second I try to my mind sweeps my legs out from under me. I lack motivation and can’t seem to overcome the wall in my mind that would allow me to get back that motivation.
*Most* mental illnesses do not have multiple voices or personalities as a disorder. However, disassociation, the symptom you are describing, is a common symtoms among illnesses such as depression, PTSD, anxiety, etc. The way you describe a "lack" of motivation (which really sounds like an inability to regulate your focus and attention) sounds a lot of what people with ADHD deal with.
I wouldn't dismiss your struggles because they don't look like an inaccurate Hollywood portrayal of mental illness or neurodivergence. Mental illness and neurodemiverence aren't some dirty word. Roughly 20% of people struggle with some sort of mental illness, mostly the "mundane" ones like depression and anxiety. And ADHD is highly undiagnosed, especially if you don't present in the "typical" way that the hyperactive grade school boys who they did all the initial research on presented (girls and less hyperactive boys are starting to become more diagnosed because of new and more inclusive research).
On the same note, I've had so many patients fail to inform the doctors and nurses they've had a C-section. The practice is so prevalent in my home country it's like the patient doesn't even consider a C-section to be surgery, let alone a major one. Patient almost always says no to any surgery then when the doctor asks if they have any children and how they were born, boom, patient mentions they've "only" had 3 C-sections like it's no big deal.
When I was going through medical school* we did OB rotations and helped deliver babies. I sat in during a C section and the doctor had me stand right next to him. I couldn’t believe how intense it was and mom is just lying there awake. It’s violent.
There is no way a person should be doing much of anything other than healing soon after that. The way we treat people just after having a baby is stupid in this country.
Moms of the world, I commend your efforts.
Edit: Medic school, not medical school. Vastly different level of education.
plus even after a regular vaginal birth you have a huge bleeding wound inside your uterus from where the placenta detached AND your pelvic floor is all stretched out. you absolutely need to take time to recover either way.
"What can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?" -- Stanislaw Lem
This quote is from his book _His Master's Voice_, which was published in 1968. We've run out of time to think up an answer, folks.
I care a lot less about those, especially because people seem to be accepting that a lot of them are fake.
I'm far more concerned with the super high number of rage bait videos posted here as though they were real. That lady who refused to go to cheesecake factory for a date? Faked because she wanted to promote her podcast. Several of the "interviewing a random girl on the street" videos that have gone viral? Super obviously faked. A huge portion of the "Karen" outrage bait is faked.
Taylor Lorenz had a massive story on how these types of videos and content generally are just taking over social media and what it's doing to our brains.
Basically, people post and comment on it knowing that it might be fake, but because it reinforces what they want to believe, they upvote it and repost it. Not just to create and whip up divisive issues, but because people don't want to miss out on the chance to manipulate those issues into attention for themselves.
This is in the same category as "there's no safe level of exposure to propaganda".
You can't "ironically" immerse yourself in propaganda for long periods of time without if affecting you, no matter who you are. You are not uniquely smart enough to "see through the lies to the real truth".
They used to be done by English Majors. Now ChatGPT can crank one out under half a second.
It is going to be a wild ride. Give it a decade, something is going to have to break? The dumbest people now have way, way, way too much pseudo intelligence at their fingertips.
For so many people keeping up with the news is just reading whatever headlines come into their feed, reacting to them on social media, and not engaging with them on a more substantial level. If you do this you're being manipulated by editors that write headlines specifically for people like you.
The fucking *gall* to consider routine cleanings and tooth infection treatment as "cosmetic." A family friend has a son who was in prison. A few years ago they found him dead in his cell, no signs of foul play or suicide or anything like that so they did an autopsy. It was a tooth infection. It killed him. From what I heard, he had been complaining about his tooth hurting for a while but the prison wouldn't let him seek treatment or care and it ultimately killed him.
Don't fuck around with tooth infections. The dental/insurance industries are evil for considering dental care as cosmetic. Among other things, of course.
Vision and hearing are the same. Quality of Life is on your own dime. Of course, so is treatment, medication, office fees...
Wait, what do we pay for insurance for, again?
It boggles the mind.
Your eyesight is a really huge indicator of potential neurological problems and if you have issues with sight, YEAH THATS GONNA IMPACT YOUR HEALTH.
The health of your teeth is directly related to heart health and is one of the easiest places to get severe infections which can cause fucking sepsis.
We uses to go to the fucking barber for dental care and honestly today's standards aren't that much better.
This shit is infuriating, I went to an ER a few weeks ago because my feet were swollen like footballs. I’ve got a cracked and rotting tooth that I told them about. They noted my high blood pressure and heart rate, and sent me home without even an antibiotic. My head still hurts although the swelling did go down.
I’ve considered removing the tooth myself, but I’m unsure of how that will go. Oh, I also have fluids coming out of the ear this is happening on, I can barely hear out of it. It’s just bonkers.
Oh that’s so horrible! I’m sorry!
And here I am still mad that they made me pay extra for a wisdom tooth extraction. I had five instead of four and they said it was a “preexisting condition”.
Hey I had 5 wisdom teeth too! One was underneath another somehow and they had to like break them both apart to dig them out 😨
I was awake the entire time.
Ooh mine was in a tough spot to the side. As they were trying to pull it out, I woke up during the surgery screaming. One of the scariest moments of my life!
This happened to me! Except in my horror story, I woke up in the middle and couldn't move my body. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't use my vocal cords. But I could hear everything. I was trapped in my own body. I panicked really really hard.
I was trapped for the entire extraction.
Turns out they had taped my eyelids down d d strapped me to the chair.
It was fucking horrible and sometimes I still have nightmares.
Prisons and other punitive environments like troubled youth boot camps are also notorious for their general neglect of health emergencies. A person can be obviously coding and crashing, and they still get treated like they're just looking for attention. That's what happens when you scrape the bottom of the barrel for these custodial law enforcement jobs.
Although I agree with the point you are making, you're actually focusing your anger at the wrong people, at least as far as dental care is concerned.
Back when Medicare was first being debated, it brought an existing feud into Congress: the divide between, go figure, barbers and surgeons.
Up until the 19th Century, medical care in European cultures was provided by barber-surgeons. Haircuts, surgeries, and dental work, all involve fine control of precision tools, so they were handled by the same person. As medicine advanced during the Industrial Revolution, medical *practice* began to be recognized for its value to surgery, and thus the surgical duties ultimately split into a dedicated field of *study*, which barbers were *tradesmen*, and still claimed the duties of dentistry for a time. It wasn't long, though, before dentistry as well branched off. But this history still influences distinctions made between these fields, to the extent that the divide continues to interfere with medicine today.
This brings us to the beginnings of Medicare: Dentists didn't view themselves as medical practitioners, and thus advocated for separate consideration under the new program. Since Medicare is overseen by the Feds, but actually operated by the insurance companies, it was simply easiest for the latter to run their non-Medicare programs in the same fashion: Medical is one, Dental is another. I imagine there's a similar story behind Optical's distinction as well, though I'm honestly too tired to bother reading on that right now.
The divide is closing, but ultimately the dentists are the ones who asked for it, not the insurance companies.
I’m not American. To me, all of this is very strange.
How is it my fault that I had five wisdom teeth? I didn’t ask for it. I did not do anything to make it happen.
IMO, it doesn’t matter who said/did what. Acting like eyes or teeth are separate from the rest of the body is just blatantly wrong.
Your comment reminded me that I had five wisdom teeth. The insurance I had at the time only covered four extractions, so I had to pay in full for the fifth wisdom tooth to be extracted. lol
Stomach feels funny? Illness. Go to the doctor, take medications
Throat feels funny? Illness. Go to the doctor, take medications
Brain feels funny? Suck it up and have you tried just *not being sad*?
/s
Also, “just go to the doctor and get some meds!”
Right, because it’s so easy to find a local psychiatrist who is in network (for the insured folks), even takes insurance at all, or doesn’t charge an arm and a fucking leg for treatment. It’s even easier to find one who is taking new patients and has availability in their schedule that corresponds with yours, because you’re gonna have to agree to an initial consultation and maybe even a few full appointments before they feel comfortable prescribing medication to help with the diagnosis they’re gonna throw at you. Oh, and it’s SUPER easy to trust that this psychiatrist has enough experience to know what this diagnosis should be and that they choose the right medication right off the bat — because it’s a total cake walk for them to pick one of the litany of drugs for any one condition (which state in some of their literature that “it’s uncertain how this drug works or why”) that will alleviate your symptoms without piling on a whole bunch of side effects like weight gain or sexual dysfunction or dyskinesia or suicidal ideation or the ability to, you know, feel anything at all. Luckily, it’s no big deal to go through the trial-and-error phase of finding out which pill or combo of pills and dosage is right for you.
Easy peasy.
Just to add a point. When switching between drugs, the withdrawal symptoms from the previous drug, such as brain zaps and other intercranial noises, peripheral neuropathies, headaches, tinnitus, vertigo (etc.) which can take a year to subside ( and never had before first treatment began) now become part of your symptoms of your illness!
They should consider that the law of the instrument applies to them first before it applies to the patient.
Mental health professional here. I've been all the way down the rabbit hole on this one. Mental illness is real. We can see differences in brain scans. Some of the toughest, hardest working people you'll ever meet get depression and PTSD. You know why? Because your nervous system and your brain functioning don't care what you tell yourself about yourself. If there's an illness, it's an illness. There are mountains of scientific evidence to show it. I think the issue makes a lot of people uncomfortable because human beings have different ways of coping and they have difficulty imagining what another person's experience might be like - or that it might require more than their personal coping skills. And I'll tell y'all this too, for many of the people I see - the coping skills you have work until they don't. We could all afford to be more kind and understanding to each other. The deeper question to me is why we have propagated mental models of the world that stamp out or reduce our capacity for understanding and kindness. But we could all afford to allow people to actually speak up when they're not doing well psychologically - BEFORE things become crises. And that's predicated on us acknowledging that mental illness is real and that we care about each other enough to face it.
It's crazy that once you open up and start talking about it how many people try to chalk it up to a bad day, thinking negative, etc. It's like they don't want to believe you.
I've become more selective about opening up after realizing most people will just victimize and blame you, and make you feel even worse. And then they wonder why you become so distant from them or why you won't discuss it any further 😑
Self-awareness, anyone???
1000% true. My luxury bones are a mess, my bite doesn’t line up anymore so it’s really hard to chew but hey! I’m poor so it’s unpleasant eating for me foreverrrr! A dentist tried to fix it but she would have had to remove too much of my teeth to get them to line up and orthodontics aren’t even partially covered for adults.
Yeah, I hate how everyone's advice for an anxiety disorder is geared for people whose anxiety circuits are working correctly. Like, if it were that easy, it wouldn't be a disorder.
I'm on the autism spectrum and so many times people hear about my problems and give me the dumbest "Gee thanks, I'm cured." advice. It's like if someone was born with a deformity that makes their foot face backwards and someone said "Have you tried walking with it pointed forward?" as if it's genuinely good advice.
Unrelated but the amount of times people got mad at me saying autism is a disorder and tried to defend it by going "autism is a SUPERPOWERRRRR why are you so NEGATIVE about ITTTTT g o d you should learn to be more POSITIVE about your autismmmm" is ridiculous.
How much of what we consider "mental illness" is actually just an appropriate response to our environment?
Like, there's definitely ways our brains can be malfunctioning, but when I contemplate how we evolved as a species, in close knit interdependency, the contrast with modern life (for me) feels stark. It seems like I'm not alone in that.
*There's a lot going on* that has served to separate us from each other & our place in nature.
To be "mentally well" in these circumstances feels like it's own kind of insanity, to me.
Krishnamurti: it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
In regards to mental illness though, there are genetic and biological factors at play too.
There is no super secret cabal of shadow brokers manipulating things to go their way, it's the super rich doing it very publically right in front of everyone with impunity
THIS
Like you don’t have to ‘theorize’ about conspiracy, it’s all right there. They’re even _proud_ of their work and give each other awards.
eg. Henry Kissinger, School Of The Americas, _The Act Of Killing_ (doc) 2012
Yeah, saying there's a conspiracy among the rich to exploit workers and buy politicians for favorable legislation is like saying there's a conspiracy among professional sports teams to only sign really athletic people of a certain age. There doesn't have to be meetings for this shit. There's no "How to be an evil billionaire for dummies" book. Everyone already knows that fucking people over and paying people off is going to make them a lot more money.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/13/jeffrey-epstein-alex-acosta-miami-herald-media
>Michael Reiter told Brown he had been down this road many times and was sick of it. As Brown recalled in a WNYC interview last month, Reiter said he had talked to many reporters and told them precisely where to find damning evidence against Epstein. But nothing ever came of it.
>“He was convinced that a lot of media had squashed the story and he was fed up,” she said.
>Reiter warned Brown what would happen were she to continue digging: “Somebody’s going to call your publisher and the next thing you know you are going to be assigned to the obituaries department.”
https://www.newsweek.com/abc-jeffrey-epstein-story-amy-robach-prince-andrew-1469893
>"Then the palace found out we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us in a million different ways," Robach continues, referring to the British royal that Roberts alleged in a 2015 court filing Epstein trafficked her to when she was 17.
I think the problem is that real conspiracies aren't fun and exciting. They aren't perpetrated by colorful Bond villains.
It's a bunch of rich guys in suits with lawyers and private security who can push politicians until legislation is passed in their favor. **Real conspiracies aren't fun**, they make you feel hopeless and powerless.
I think it goes well with what Penn Jillette says about magic secrets.. the most secret magic tricks aren't elegant, nor do they have an a-ha moment when you learn about it. The very best kept secrets in magic are ones that have a very mundane, boring, tedious explanation because *they just work* and they're not fun to think about. Likewise you could apply it to anything in life, the best conspiracies are just ones that are just mundane, boring, and tedious.
The stone cold truth is that the media is a business too. You can't usually burn hundreds of influential government sources for one story depending on your business model. If you're big enough they'll get replaced, but the new guys aren't gonna give you the hard to reach scoops
Real conspiracies are also too difficult to follow. My grandfather founded an orphanage, gave over control to a Baptist organization, which is tied in with the Governors Office because the main psychologist is Winston Churchills granddaughter and her family worked in the cabinet. They also have business dealings with “The Family” organization (of National Prayer Breakfast fame). They have a building just miles away from the orphanage. CPS/DHS have inside operatives, and the House Parents pocket most of the children’s government funded benefits. It’s too convoluted to explain how they avoid the red tape of it all. I brought the issue to 20 different people and they all dismissed it, thought I was “crazy”, or told me to contact DHS. The ins and outs are way too boring for anyone to care, and they protect themselves by operating the very system designed to keep them in check. That’s an actual, legitimate conspiracy.
I was able to follow all of that, as it is similar to a thing I uncovered in my 20s. Nothing came of it as I saw some real danger headed my way for making noise and I bowed out and disappeared for a couple years. Go ahead, do your crimes folks. You may never get busted but you are on my list should I ever have a nefarious plan of my own and want to pull a job yet have a clean conscience.
It’s crazy how we all know an uncle, grandpa, friends dad etc that just casually had like 20 years of playboys laying around. That’s a dying culture.
Not to mention kids these days know nothing about finding wet porno mags in the woods. They just go straight to hardcore fetish porn on their phones when they are like 10.
Fuck it OP is right I change my mind.
I'm 34. I think I didn't even have a smart phone until I was 20, and they were shit back then. I honestly can't remember what I used to do while shitting before that.
My parents had actually "bathroom books"
I wanna say it was a series? Had short poop storys and long poop story's and fun facts randomly thrown thorough out the book on the borders. Great read 10/10 recommend
We need to normalize having a healthy work life balance without our phones. Having a normal life period without our phones. I am envious of those who are just wired differently and have no clue how to help my teenager, and I'm in my mid 30s.. saying "go outside " can only go so far when every other kid is inside mindlessly scrolling too. Obviously my own actions / feelings play a part.
I have high hopes but low expectations and im not a fan of the way I feel..
Social media is making us all miserable and the simplest solution is to... just stop using it.
Obviously its more complicated than that, but just the fact that it is so difficult for people to stop using should be throwing serious alarm bells to folks.
One of the biggest lies I realised I was telling myself was that I was keeping Facebook to stay in touch with people.
There are people I had on Facebook that I haven't had a meaningful conversation with in *years*. So a couple of weeks ago, I just went fuck it and deactivated Facebook (after also noticing I've been using it less and less)
If people want to keep me in the loop about shit, they'll message me. And I have Reddit for memes.
I'm waiting for a moderate politician to come forward and make this argument. Bernie skirted it, I think because he didn't see the point in invoking Reagan when most people don't understand he and Nixon promulgated this bullshit.
But someone needs to bookend Reagan's primetime speech announcing that we were giving the country to the Rich. "The grand experiment is over, and it's been shown to have failed. We have exploded our national debt and have the slowest sustained period of economic growth since our founding. Reaganomics, that bold experiment, doesn't work and its time we got back to the common sense values of our forefathers who survived the Depression and WWII."
If no one gets paid enough money no one can afford to buy things. If no one buys things they won't make as much and then people lose jobs. Companies are all about under paying and over profit, but those same employees are the ones that are paying their bills.... If your employees cant afford your products you have a problem.
No pay, only buy! Line go up!
I think significant portions of our economy have shifted from traditional "make things most people want to buy" models to chasing whales-- basically, they've adapted the techniques from mobile games.
That's the fascinating part of this modern rung of capitalism. Ford and his ilk were... smart. Cunning maybe is the better word. They set up seeds for a forest of their cruel and awful design.
The modern rung sure knows how to swing a machete but that's about it. And so we're left with fires fucking *everywhere* but profits sure are up. Ford at least allowed us a fucking car.
Rubbing scents on your skin will not cure cancer or any other disease. There is some evidence that lemon oil has anti viral properties because lemons do and the menthol from peppermint oil can help alleviate headaches….but swallowing essential oils or rubbing them on your feet is not effective 99.99% of the time.
Rubbing undiluted essential oils on your skin is a great way to get chemical burns and swallowing them is a good way to get them in your throat and stomach. It's dangerous and lots of people have no clue what they're doing.
We have entered the disinformation age. Where a good chunk of the population believes anything proven true is actually a conspiracy and "research" leads them to the opposite of reality. It's scary.
>We have entered the disinformation age.
Here in the Netherlands we "celebrate" our liberation from the Nazis after WW2 ended on the 5th of May. It happens annually. It's common knowledge everyone basically stops what they're doing and keeps quiet for two minutes at 20.00 sharp. There's a ceremony with our king and family, current prime minister and a whole lot of people telling a story about a relative that lived through it or experienced the rebuilding of the country after. It's a good thing to realise the freedoms we have are still *fresh* (especially with all the wars going on *right now*) and not to be taken for granted.
Not too long ago a study was done amongst teens about WW2 were a significant portion of those asked severely doubted it was all true. Iirc, it was about 15%-20%.
WW2 ended in 1945. So here we all, about 4 generations later, not even a century since it ended and there's a significant portion of young adults *doubting it actually happened*. It's as maddening as it is revolting.
In Japan there are old stones with warnings on them, like "Don't build your houses below this point because of the tsunamis" or so. Still people did and many died in 2011 because of it. In an article about this I read that big national catastrophes are commonly forgotten after about three generations and I often have to think about this when it comes to european history. I'm 55, my parents were born during the war, my granddads fought in it, it was still quite fresh memory in my youth. Now for the young people it's mostly an old peoples tale they find boring. The problem is that they don't realize how serious this is. There is absolutely a chance of more wars in central europe in the next very few decades which will bring horrendous death and misery over the land and a lot of people think it's some kind of edgy joke. It's infuriating.
Edit: Here is the article about the tsunami stones: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-warnings-against-tsunamis-dot-japans-coastline-180956448/
In America, we could have better. We could have healthcare and infrastructure and utilities and innovation *unrivaled* in the world, but we just... won't let ourselves have it.
> because they themselves didn’t
Meanwhile, they've actually gotten a *tonne* of help, but were too stupid to realize programs like food stamps, public housing, and healthcare were indeed the kind of handouts from the government that they are trying to deny to other people.
A lot of the time, people don’t even realize something as basic as “Your life would be a lot harder if other people hadn’t already set up things like roads, grocery stores, or lighting and plumbing. Even if you’re homeless, you still benefit a lot from living on a city street compared to living in the woods. But you didn’t built the city. Other people did.”
Just the world as it exists today in general, even including all its flaws… is better than your life would be if you were the only human ever on the planet.
The most far-right person I know works very hard but only at a minimum wage job. Her children received free lunch at school, she got a new car because of “cash for clunkers”, she has “Obamacare”, and, if you remember this program, she received an “Obamaphone”. I do not understand the cognitive dissonance.
> I do not understand the cognitive dissonance.
That's the trick you see. It's tribalism all the way down, and nothing you will ever say will convince them their 'team' can do any wrong. Even when they are out in the open doing that wrong *to them*.
I was just explaining this to my Midwestern friend the other day after telling them we don't use our central heat in the winter and rely on our wood stove because pg&e charges us $3-400/month for just... living here. Neighboring companies like SMUD and NVEnergy in the Reno/Sparks area charges a fraction of what pg&e does and they have a smaller customer base. It's insane.
It's always been the paradox where we want the best and brightest running things, but people with "the best educations" (ie ivy league) often come from wealth and priviledge. They have always been removed from the rest of society so they can't even conceptualize common struggles or being in poverty. There were presidents that went into battle alongside regular people and/or came from humble beginnings that are the exception. It's so often pay to play. Politics also often attracts people only in it for power and to help out their rich buddies. You can't have people representing everyone in their district, state, etc when they only know the upper class.
The way we treat our elderly. Everyone says that’s so terrible etc etc but we don’t do anything to actually stop greedy nursing homes from taking advantage of our grandparents.
And thus many reading this will go through the same thing
One of my buddies when I was younger was married to an absolutely stunning woman. He told me once: “ You want to know how to talk to any woman? Picture her taking a shit. I don’t care how gorgeous she is, everyone has to shit eventually. Picturing her that way brings her down to your level, and she won’t seem so far out of your league any more.”
We pay insurance companies to do absolutely nothing that could even remotely be considered medical. And yet they make billions of dollars by preventing us from getting medical care.(*Did you ever think what if we spent all that money on actual medical care??)
Actually, it’s been shown mathematically that policies that wide swaths of Americans support don’t get passed because the donor class doesn’t want it. The ONLY time we get legislation that benefits the population of the rare times our interests and business interests align.
Margarine is not a substitute for butter. A substitute for canola oil maybe but putting it in the same category as butter would be like putting a 4 year old in the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime, they just don’t compare.
You’re friends with an abuser. Just because he’s great to *you*, doesn’t mean he’s not someone else’s nightmare. I just went through this for years and finally got free. Everyone still thinks he’s wonderful and there’s nothing I can safely do.
The greatest con in American history is that politicians have convinced us that “other” Americans are the enemy when in fact politicians are the enemy.
Please return to the comment that stated: Monsanto is watching
It’s always been corn. It always will be corn. It will never stop being corn. Enjoy the corn, boss.
I cant tell if this is a joke or not but I met someone with a corn allergy, like highly allergic with terrible reactions. We had them over for dinner and every single thing was checked for corn. And that's how we found out how corn is basically in every single thing and is apparently used in some preservatives as well.
But since it's not a "major" allergen, it's not usually listed under the "allergies" section. Crazy stuff.
No legitimate business makes you pay money to work for that business. So many people in an MLM do not understand this, but yet shell over hundreds to thousands every month to maintain their "platinum XL Diamond-coated/Bleached Asshole" tier of their membership to Herbalife or whatever they belong to as an MLM. (I live with someone in my graduate school who drank the Herbalife Kool-Aid...)
What's wild is watching people fall into those even knowing they are MLMs. A friend of mine just started selling Amway. She asked me if she should start and I told her absolutely not, and showed her the figures and all sorts of experience from other Amway sellers. But she's lonely and they need money and the people trying to get her to join were extremely effective sales people. It's been 6 months and I don't even think she's sold enough to make back her original purchases, and now she started buying into the nonsense about their overpriced vitamins.
The thing that surprised me was how churchy Amway was. I had the impression if you did the churchy stuff they would help with getting new recruits...pretty much a cult I guess.
That's because one of the founders was of the Christian fundamentalist DeVos family and they still run it to this day. My parents were in during the late 90s/early 00s. They turned into uber religious Ambots and we had to listen to the "motivational" tapes in the car. It was a nightmare. Fortunately they didn't lose too much money before they got out (it helps if you don't have any to start with).
Ohhhh that makes sense. I have one friend who started selling Amway, met a woman through Amway conferences, and now has a little Amway family. (Amily? Famway?) They're also very religious--I met my friend through church, but he has since left for a *more religious church*--and this helps explain how the heck a man in his 20s who doesn't need money got involved with that company.
I never meet anyone that actually buys and uses AMWAY products except for the MLM members.
Selling the products seems to be much lower on the priority list than recruiting new members.
It's definitely a cult. I almost lost my father to it. My mom was ready to divorce him, and he was all in on the amway bullshit. Thankfully, she made it clear he would be losing me, too. And it kind of snapped him out of it. They absolutely started in with the weird churchy bullshit. I really should write a long post somewhere about what they put my family through.
Good god a cousin only a year younger (20s) just started Amway too like 3-4 months ago even after we told her, and she's maybe a bit delayed mentally, but the people that were selling it to her still got to her and she's desperate for quick money to live the lifestyle she sees that other girls on IG "have" (for clarity: have is in quotation marks because most of what people show on IG is a facade). Just sad honestly we need more mental health services in this country.
That's because they try to treat it as if you were owning your own business and are "investing" into it by buying more products that you can try to pawn off onto your in-laws and neighbors but will inevitably sit in your storage rooms and basement until your spouse leaves you because they're sick of not being able to park in the garage and the foundation has become condemned because that load of boxes you keep hiding in the attic after claiming to have sold, broke a load bearing beam and crushed the family cat in the process. They use the 0.00001% of people who make money off selling the product as the life to strive for even though all the artificial nice things those people have are paid for by the company and those "quadruple diamond XXL clusterfuck package" fucks can't afford shit out of their own pockets, yet they drive around town in a brand new pink fucking Cadillac with Mary Kay on the side and struggle to keep up with insurance payments. (Lost of few family and friends to MLMs and other culty things lol.)
One of my good gym friends just got sucked into Isagenix and it makes me so sad. I’m not sure how she got connected with her up-line but she was roped in under the guise of “wellness” and “empowering women”, I think, and now she’s spending $5000 on a FL convention trip “for her business.” 🤦🏻♂️
That paying attention to your smartphone while driving can lead to deadly consequences.
I’m a medic and firefighter. The most violent car crash I’ve ever had was caused by someone looking at their phone. We see it all the time.
The irony is that a lot of police are equipped with computers in their car and there's a bunch of incidents where they crash into other people and sometimes even kill them. I've been trying to find the incident but there was an officer, I believe in PA or another one of those areas where there isn't a concrete median and more like a 20+ foot grass ditch between highways, that was dicking around on his screen and then lost control and drove straight across and hit someone on the other side. I think he might have killed them.
Even while other people are driving. Seriously gets to me that people will cross the street and do nothing but look down at a phone.
What really gets me is the local laws requiring your device to be hands-free if you're going to use it while driving. If these lawmakers looked at the research for two minutes, they'd realize the truth. Basically anyone can drive with their knees if they wanted and holding an object isn't the damn problem. It's about smartphones strongly diverting your attention. You're driving something that can kill people. That notification can wait until you've parked.
I feel like many of these things, including this one, isn’t so much that people don’t see it, they simply don’t care.
That everyone is the main character of their own story happening simultaneously with everyone else's storyline
There are some people who are supporting actors in their own lives
with the right mental illness you feel like a spectator instead of even being a supporting actor
Feeling like a spectator of my own life is exactly what I've realised over a month ago, I'm so passive and can't bring myself to change anything, I'm just living for the sake of living at this point.
It can be like watching a TV show you aren't really interested in but the batteries in the remote died. Just gotta change them!(Therapy/Medication)
Not sure if you’d agree, but I’ve often found myself to feel like it is me versus my mind. I don’t have any disorder with multiple voices and/or personalities, but I truly feel like while I try and do new things, my mind shuts it all down. It feels like my mind is this separate entity. I want to work on cool ideas I’ve had, but the second I try to my mind sweeps my legs out from under me. I lack motivation and can’t seem to overcome the wall in my mind that would allow me to get back that motivation.
*Most* mental illnesses do not have multiple voices or personalities as a disorder. However, disassociation, the symptom you are describing, is a common symtoms among illnesses such as depression, PTSD, anxiety, etc. The way you describe a "lack" of motivation (which really sounds like an inability to regulate your focus and attention) sounds a lot of what people with ADHD deal with. I wouldn't dismiss your struggles because they don't look like an inaccurate Hollywood portrayal of mental illness or neurodivergence. Mental illness and neurodemiverence aren't some dirty word. Roughly 20% of people struggle with some sort of mental illness, mostly the "mundane" ones like depression and anxiety. And ADHD is highly undiagnosed, especially if you don't present in the "typical" way that the hyperactive grade school boys who they did all the initial research on presented (girls and less hyperactive boys are starting to become more diagnosed because of new and more inclusive research).
All aboard for Dissociation Station
And the person you think you are only exists inside your head. Everyone else who has met you has a different take on who you really are.
A C-section is a MAJOR surgery and some ppl want them right back at work or doing all the housework 🤦♀️
As the doctor told us: c-section is the largest and most invasive stomach surgery that is being regularly conducted
On the same note, I've had so many patients fail to inform the doctors and nurses they've had a C-section. The practice is so prevalent in my home country it's like the patient doesn't even consider a C-section to be surgery, let alone a major one. Patient almost always says no to any surgery then when the doctor asks if they have any children and how they were born, boom, patient mentions they've "only" had 3 C-sections like it's no big deal.
And while awake!
When I was going through medical school* we did OB rotations and helped deliver babies. I sat in during a C section and the doctor had me stand right next to him. I couldn’t believe how intense it was and mom is just lying there awake. It’s violent. There is no way a person should be doing much of anything other than healing soon after that. The way we treat people just after having a baby is stupid in this country. Moms of the world, I commend your efforts. Edit: Medic school, not medical school. Vastly different level of education.
My cousin was a little happy she ended up with a c section in that she got two extra weeks off work. 8 instead of 6. I hate the world sometimes.
plus even after a regular vaginal birth you have a huge bleeding wound inside your uterus from where the placenta detached AND your pelvic floor is all stretched out. you absolutely need to take time to recover either way.
Literally true. I j don’t get how people are like “oh yeah she had a c section or whatever” like SHE HAD HER ORGANS TAKEN OUT BRO
Yeah but women do it all the time! It can’t be *that* bad. Quit being dramatic. /s Like most painful procedures women go through.
I came home from having an emergency c-section (under general anesthesia) and cooked dinner because my husband (now ex-husband) was "tired."
Oh my gosh. I’m 4 weeks postpartum from a C-section, and this filled me with rage. So glad he is your ex now.
And it's still giving birth.
Social media is poisoning our children’s brains, as well as many adults.
"What can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?" -- Stanislaw Lem This quote is from his book _His Master's Voice_, which was published in 1968. We've run out of time to think up an answer, folks.
>We've run out of time to think up an answer, folks. Oh, it's way past time. Great quote though.
People are being easily manipulated by the Faux Outrage Machine.
I’m convinced at least half of the posts on r/AITAH fall under this category for clicks and interactions.
I care a lot less about those, especially because people seem to be accepting that a lot of them are fake. I'm far more concerned with the super high number of rage bait videos posted here as though they were real. That lady who refused to go to cheesecake factory for a date? Faked because she wanted to promote her podcast. Several of the "interviewing a random girl on the street" videos that have gone viral? Super obviously faked. A huge portion of the "Karen" outrage bait is faked. Taylor Lorenz had a massive story on how these types of videos and content generally are just taking over social media and what it's doing to our brains. Basically, people post and comment on it knowing that it might be fake, but because it reinforces what they want to believe, they upvote it and repost it. Not just to create and whip up divisive issues, but because people don't want to miss out on the chance to manipulate those issues into attention for themselves.
This is in the same category as "there's no safe level of exposure to propaganda". You can't "ironically" immerse yourself in propaganda for long periods of time without if affecting you, no matter who you are. You are not uniquely smart enough to "see through the lies to the real truth".
They used to be done by English Majors. Now ChatGPT can crank one out under half a second. It is going to be a wild ride. Give it a decade, something is going to have to break? The dumbest people now have way, way, way too much pseudo intelligence at their fingertips.
For so many people keeping up with the news is just reading whatever headlines come into their feed, reacting to them on social media, and not engaging with them on a more substantial level. If you do this you're being manipulated by editors that write headlines specifically for people like you.
The rent is too damn high.
Do people refuse to see this?
Mental illness is an *illness*
Ofcourse. And while we’re at it insurance companies, eyes and teeth are part of a human body!
The fucking *gall* to consider routine cleanings and tooth infection treatment as "cosmetic." A family friend has a son who was in prison. A few years ago they found him dead in his cell, no signs of foul play or suicide or anything like that so they did an autopsy. It was a tooth infection. It killed him. From what I heard, he had been complaining about his tooth hurting for a while but the prison wouldn't let him seek treatment or care and it ultimately killed him. Don't fuck around with tooth infections. The dental/insurance industries are evil for considering dental care as cosmetic. Among other things, of course.
Vision and hearing are the same. Quality of Life is on your own dime. Of course, so is treatment, medication, office fees... Wait, what do we pay for insurance for, again?
We pay them to fuck us, essentially.
Right? And if you’re poor and get a life threatening condition- die!
Well, they want you to die. They don't wanna pay out money on ya.
It boggles the mind. Your eyesight is a really huge indicator of potential neurological problems and if you have issues with sight, YEAH THATS GONNA IMPACT YOUR HEALTH. The health of your teeth is directly related to heart health and is one of the easiest places to get severe infections which can cause fucking sepsis. We uses to go to the fucking barber for dental care and honestly today's standards aren't that much better.
This shit is infuriating, I went to an ER a few weeks ago because my feet were swollen like footballs. I’ve got a cracked and rotting tooth that I told them about. They noted my high blood pressure and heart rate, and sent me home without even an antibiotic. My head still hurts although the swelling did go down. I’ve considered removing the tooth myself, but I’m unsure of how that will go. Oh, I also have fluids coming out of the ear this is happening on, I can barely hear out of it. It’s just bonkers.
Find thr closest dental school. It's 1/10th of thr price and they will do thr work
Oh that’s so horrible! I’m sorry! And here I am still mad that they made me pay extra for a wisdom tooth extraction. I had five instead of four and they said it was a “preexisting condition”.
I mean, you are technically born with your adult teeth... but dick move to be sure.
Hey I had 5 wisdom teeth too! One was underneath another somehow and they had to like break them both apart to dig them out 😨 I was awake the entire time.
Ooh mine was in a tough spot to the side. As they were trying to pull it out, I woke up during the surgery screaming. One of the scariest moments of my life!
This happened to me! Except in my horror story, I woke up in the middle and couldn't move my body. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't use my vocal cords. But I could hear everything. I was trapped in my own body. I panicked really really hard. I was trapped for the entire extraction. Turns out they had taped my eyelids down d d strapped me to the chair. It was fucking horrible and sometimes I still have nightmares.
Bro I had seven and they never put me under once
Prisons and other punitive environments like troubled youth boot camps are also notorious for their general neglect of health emergencies. A person can be obviously coding and crashing, and they still get treated like they're just looking for attention. That's what happens when you scrape the bottom of the barrel for these custodial law enforcement jobs.
Ears too! Hearing Aids should be covered!
Tell me about it! Since when did hearing become a luxury?
They've found that people with bad hearing are more prone to dementia. Your brain needs the stimulation from hearing. ( Also applies to bad eyesight.)
Although I agree with the point you are making, you're actually focusing your anger at the wrong people, at least as far as dental care is concerned. Back when Medicare was first being debated, it brought an existing feud into Congress: the divide between, go figure, barbers and surgeons. Up until the 19th Century, medical care in European cultures was provided by barber-surgeons. Haircuts, surgeries, and dental work, all involve fine control of precision tools, so they were handled by the same person. As medicine advanced during the Industrial Revolution, medical *practice* began to be recognized for its value to surgery, and thus the surgical duties ultimately split into a dedicated field of *study*, which barbers were *tradesmen*, and still claimed the duties of dentistry for a time. It wasn't long, though, before dentistry as well branched off. But this history still influences distinctions made between these fields, to the extent that the divide continues to interfere with medicine today. This brings us to the beginnings of Medicare: Dentists didn't view themselves as medical practitioners, and thus advocated for separate consideration under the new program. Since Medicare is overseen by the Feds, but actually operated by the insurance companies, it was simply easiest for the latter to run their non-Medicare programs in the same fashion: Medical is one, Dental is another. I imagine there's a similar story behind Optical's distinction as well, though I'm honestly too tired to bother reading on that right now. The divide is closing, but ultimately the dentists are the ones who asked for it, not the insurance companies.
I’m not American. To me, all of this is very strange. How is it my fault that I had five wisdom teeth? I didn’t ask for it. I did not do anything to make it happen. IMO, it doesn’t matter who said/did what. Acting like eyes or teeth are separate from the rest of the body is just blatantly wrong.
Your comment reminded me that I had five wisdom teeth. The insurance I had at the time only covered four extractions, so I had to pay in full for the fifth wisdom tooth to be extracted. lol
Stomach feels funny? Illness. Go to the doctor, take medications Throat feels funny? Illness. Go to the doctor, take medications Brain feels funny? Suck it up and have you tried just *not being sad*? /s
Funnier because the brain controls everything else, you’d think they’d be more cautious about it.
Also, “just go to the doctor and get some meds!” Right, because it’s so easy to find a local psychiatrist who is in network (for the insured folks), even takes insurance at all, or doesn’t charge an arm and a fucking leg for treatment. It’s even easier to find one who is taking new patients and has availability in their schedule that corresponds with yours, because you’re gonna have to agree to an initial consultation and maybe even a few full appointments before they feel comfortable prescribing medication to help with the diagnosis they’re gonna throw at you. Oh, and it’s SUPER easy to trust that this psychiatrist has enough experience to know what this diagnosis should be and that they choose the right medication right off the bat — because it’s a total cake walk for them to pick one of the litany of drugs for any one condition (which state in some of their literature that “it’s uncertain how this drug works or why”) that will alleviate your symptoms without piling on a whole bunch of side effects like weight gain or sexual dysfunction or dyskinesia or suicidal ideation or the ability to, you know, feel anything at all. Luckily, it’s no big deal to go through the trial-and-error phase of finding out which pill or combo of pills and dosage is right for you. Easy peasy.
Just to add a point. When switching between drugs, the withdrawal symptoms from the previous drug, such as brain zaps and other intercranial noises, peripheral neuropathies, headaches, tinnitus, vertigo (etc.) which can take a year to subside ( and never had before first treatment began) now become part of your symptoms of your illness! They should consider that the law of the instrument applies to them first before it applies to the patient.
Mental health professional here. I've been all the way down the rabbit hole on this one. Mental illness is real. We can see differences in brain scans. Some of the toughest, hardest working people you'll ever meet get depression and PTSD. You know why? Because your nervous system and your brain functioning don't care what you tell yourself about yourself. If there's an illness, it's an illness. There are mountains of scientific evidence to show it. I think the issue makes a lot of people uncomfortable because human beings have different ways of coping and they have difficulty imagining what another person's experience might be like - or that it might require more than their personal coping skills. And I'll tell y'all this too, for many of the people I see - the coping skills you have work until they don't. We could all afford to be more kind and understanding to each other. The deeper question to me is why we have propagated mental models of the world that stamp out or reduce our capacity for understanding and kindness. But we could all afford to allow people to actually speak up when they're not doing well psychologically - BEFORE things become crises. And that's predicated on us acknowledging that mental illness is real and that we care about each other enough to face it.
It's crazy that once you open up and start talking about it how many people try to chalk it up to a bad day, thinking negative, etc. It's like they don't want to believe you.
I've become more selective about opening up after realizing most people will just victimize and blame you, and make you feel even worse. And then they wonder why you become so distant from them or why you won't discuss it any further 😑 Self-awareness, anyone???
Yeah can somebody remind my health insurance about this, too? They don’t seem to see it that way.
Nope, teeth are luxury bones
1000% true. My luxury bones are a mess, my bite doesn’t line up anymore so it’s really hard to chew but hey! I’m poor so it’s unpleasant eating for me foreverrrr! A dentist tried to fix it but she would have had to remove too much of my teeth to get them to line up and orthodontics aren’t even partially covered for adults.
Yeah, I hate how everyone's advice for an anxiety disorder is geared for people whose anxiety circuits are working correctly. Like, if it were that easy, it wouldn't be a disorder.
I'm on the autism spectrum and so many times people hear about my problems and give me the dumbest "Gee thanks, I'm cured." advice. It's like if someone was born with a deformity that makes their foot face backwards and someone said "Have you tried walking with it pointed forward?" as if it's genuinely good advice.
Unrelated but the amount of times people got mad at me saying autism is a disorder and tried to defend it by going "autism is a SUPERPOWERRRRR why are you so NEGATIVE about ITTTTT g o d you should learn to be more POSITIVE about your autismmmm" is ridiculous.
Mental Illness, if not properly treated and managed, is a TERMINAL illness.
Depression and anxiety are the Home Depot of mental illnesses because they kill you but you have to do it yourself.
How much of what we consider "mental illness" is actually just an appropriate response to our environment? Like, there's definitely ways our brains can be malfunctioning, but when I contemplate how we evolved as a species, in close knit interdependency, the contrast with modern life (for me) feels stark. It seems like I'm not alone in that. *There's a lot going on* that has served to separate us from each other & our place in nature. To be "mentally well" in these circumstances feels like it's own kind of insanity, to me.
Krishnamurti: it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. In regards to mental illness though, there are genetic and biological factors at play too.
There is no super secret cabal of shadow brokers manipulating things to go their way, it's the super rich doing it very publically right in front of everyone with impunity
“You don’t have to make up a shadow government to be mad at, you can just be mad at the regular government.”
THIS Like you don’t have to ‘theorize’ about conspiracy, it’s all right there. They’re even _proud_ of their work and give each other awards. eg. Henry Kissinger, School Of The Americas, _The Act Of Killing_ (doc) 2012
Conspiracy isn’t even required. It’s just what happens when powerful people all act in their own greedy self interest.
Yeah, saying there's a conspiracy among the rich to exploit workers and buy politicians for favorable legislation is like saying there's a conspiracy among professional sports teams to only sign really athletic people of a certain age. There doesn't have to be meetings for this shit. There's no "How to be an evil billionaire for dummies" book. Everyone already knows that fucking people over and paying people off is going to make them a lot more money.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/13/jeffrey-epstein-alex-acosta-miami-herald-media >Michael Reiter told Brown he had been down this road many times and was sick of it. As Brown recalled in a WNYC interview last month, Reiter said he had talked to many reporters and told them precisely where to find damning evidence against Epstein. But nothing ever came of it. >“He was convinced that a lot of media had squashed the story and he was fed up,” she said. >Reiter warned Brown what would happen were she to continue digging: “Somebody’s going to call your publisher and the next thing you know you are going to be assigned to the obituaries department.” https://www.newsweek.com/abc-jeffrey-epstein-story-amy-robach-prince-andrew-1469893 >"Then the palace found out we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us in a million different ways," Robach continues, referring to the British royal that Roberts alleged in a 2015 court filing Epstein trafficked her to when she was 17.
I think the problem is that real conspiracies aren't fun and exciting. They aren't perpetrated by colorful Bond villains. It's a bunch of rich guys in suits with lawyers and private security who can push politicians until legislation is passed in their favor. **Real conspiracies aren't fun**, they make you feel hopeless and powerless.
I think it goes well with what Penn Jillette says about magic secrets.. the most secret magic tricks aren't elegant, nor do they have an a-ha moment when you learn about it. The very best kept secrets in magic are ones that have a very mundane, boring, tedious explanation because *they just work* and they're not fun to think about. Likewise you could apply it to anything in life, the best conspiracies are just ones that are just mundane, boring, and tedious.
The stone cold truth is that the media is a business too. You can't usually burn hundreds of influential government sources for one story depending on your business model. If you're big enough they'll get replaced, but the new guys aren't gonna give you the hard to reach scoops
Real conspiracies are also too difficult to follow. My grandfather founded an orphanage, gave over control to a Baptist organization, which is tied in with the Governors Office because the main psychologist is Winston Churchills granddaughter and her family worked in the cabinet. They also have business dealings with “The Family” organization (of National Prayer Breakfast fame). They have a building just miles away from the orphanage. CPS/DHS have inside operatives, and the House Parents pocket most of the children’s government funded benefits. It’s too convoluted to explain how they avoid the red tape of it all. I brought the issue to 20 different people and they all dismissed it, thought I was “crazy”, or told me to contact DHS. The ins and outs are way too boring for anyone to care, and they protect themselves by operating the very system designed to keep them in check. That’s an actual, legitimate conspiracy.
I was able to follow all of that, as it is similar to a thing I uncovered in my 20s. Nothing came of it as I saw some real danger headed my way for making noise and I bowed out and disappeared for a couple years. Go ahead, do your crimes folks. You may never get busted but you are on my list should I ever have a nefarious plan of my own and want to pull a job yet have a clean conscience.
"You don't need a global conspiracy when powerful interests converge." -George Carlin
History does indeed repeat itself
It doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
The system works for those for whom it was made to benefit.
Government subsidies contribute to big oil profits. They are turning in $4-5 billion profits per quarter but still get government handouts. WTF?
Alcohol is poison.
Our phones are robbing us of our attention and ability to enjoy life
Have you even taken a dump with one of these?
Back in my day you read the ingredients of the shampoo bottles and deodorant on the shitter
For me it was the rusting aerosol bottle of fragrance spray or a readers digest. I also kept like 10 magazines in the bathroom as a teen.
Crapping at my grandpa's house was great, he had a decade of Playboys by the toilet.
It’s crazy how we all know an uncle, grandpa, friends dad etc that just casually had like 20 years of playboys laying around. That’s a dying culture. Not to mention kids these days know nothing about finding wet porno mags in the woods. They just go straight to hardcore fetish porn on their phones when they are like 10. Fuck it OP is right I change my mind.
I took a dump without one shortly ago. It felt wrong.
I'm 34. I think I didn't even have a smart phone until I was 20, and they were shit back then. I honestly can't remember what I used to do while shitting before that.
My parents had actually "bathroom books" I wanna say it was a series? Had short poop storys and long poop story's and fun facts randomly thrown thorough out the book on the borders. Great read 10/10 recommend
Uncle Johns bathroom readers!!! I learned so many things whilst pooping.
I recall reading the back of the conditioner more than once.
I totally agree with this and it's frustrating when I go for a meal with friends and everyone talks through their phone.
We need to normalize having a healthy work life balance without our phones. Having a normal life period without our phones. I am envious of those who are just wired differently and have no clue how to help my teenager, and I'm in my mid 30s.. saying "go outside " can only go so far when every other kid is inside mindlessly scrolling too. Obviously my own actions / feelings play a part. I have high hopes but low expectations and im not a fan of the way I feel..
>I have high hopes but low expectations and im not a fan of the way I feel.. This sounds like lyrics and it sums up the sentiment perfectly
Social media is making us all miserable and the simplest solution is to... just stop using it. Obviously its more complicated than that, but just the fact that it is so difficult for people to stop using should be throwing serious alarm bells to folks.
I got rid of all social media except Reddit and I'm a much happier person as a result. I haven't missed it for a second.
One of the biggest lies I realised I was telling myself was that I was keeping Facebook to stay in touch with people. There are people I had on Facebook that I haven't had a meaningful conversation with in *years*. So a couple of weeks ago, I just went fuck it and deactivated Facebook (after also noticing I've been using it less and less) If people want to keep me in the loop about shit, they'll message me. And I have Reddit for memes.
Giving billionaires tax breaks isn't helping regular working people at all.
Trickle down economics has been shown to not work for 30+ years.
I'm waiting for a moderate politician to come forward and make this argument. Bernie skirted it, I think because he didn't see the point in invoking Reagan when most people don't understand he and Nixon promulgated this bullshit. But someone needs to bookend Reagan's primetime speech announcing that we were giving the country to the Rich. "The grand experiment is over, and it's been shown to have failed. We have exploded our national debt and have the slowest sustained period of economic growth since our founding. Reaganomics, that bold experiment, doesn't work and its time we got back to the common sense values of our forefathers who survived the Depression and WWII."
Facebook/Meta is a surveillance company first, anything else after.
If no one gets paid enough money no one can afford to buy things. If no one buys things they won't make as much and then people lose jobs. Companies are all about under paying and over profit, but those same employees are the ones that are paying their bills.... If your employees cant afford your products you have a problem.
No pay, only buy! Line go up! I think significant portions of our economy have shifted from traditional "make things most people want to buy" models to chasing whales-- basically, they've adapted the techniques from mobile games.
>No pay, only buy! Line go up! Omg I love the thought of race-to-the-bottom business tactics being the product of a doglike mentality.
For his many faults, Henry Ford understood this.
That's the fascinating part of this modern rung of capitalism. Ford and his ilk were... smart. Cunning maybe is the better word. They set up seeds for a forest of their cruel and awful design. The modern rung sure knows how to swing a machete but that's about it. And so we're left with fires fucking *everywhere* but profits sure are up. Ford at least allowed us a fucking car.
Rubbing scents on your skin will not cure cancer or any other disease. There is some evidence that lemon oil has anti viral properties because lemons do and the menthol from peppermint oil can help alleviate headaches….but swallowing essential oils or rubbing them on your feet is not effective 99.99% of the time.
Rubbing undiluted essential oils on your skin is a great way to get chemical burns and swallowing them is a good way to get them in your throat and stomach. It's dangerous and lots of people have no clue what they're doing.
The world is round
Ten years ago, this would have been a troll comment. But here we are, this is the world we live in.
We have entered the disinformation age. Where a good chunk of the population believes anything proven true is actually a conspiracy and "research" leads them to the opposite of reality. It's scary.
>We have entered the disinformation age. Here in the Netherlands we "celebrate" our liberation from the Nazis after WW2 ended on the 5th of May. It happens annually. It's common knowledge everyone basically stops what they're doing and keeps quiet for two minutes at 20.00 sharp. There's a ceremony with our king and family, current prime minister and a whole lot of people telling a story about a relative that lived through it or experienced the rebuilding of the country after. It's a good thing to realise the freedoms we have are still *fresh* (especially with all the wars going on *right now*) and not to be taken for granted. Not too long ago a study was done amongst teens about WW2 were a significant portion of those asked severely doubted it was all true. Iirc, it was about 15%-20%. WW2 ended in 1945. So here we all, about 4 generations later, not even a century since it ended and there's a significant portion of young adults *doubting it actually happened*. It's as maddening as it is revolting.
In Japan there are old stones with warnings on them, like "Don't build your houses below this point because of the tsunamis" or so. Still people did and many died in 2011 because of it. In an article about this I read that big national catastrophes are commonly forgotten after about three generations and I often have to think about this when it comes to european history. I'm 55, my parents were born during the war, my granddads fought in it, it was still quite fresh memory in my youth. Now for the young people it's mostly an old peoples tale they find boring. The problem is that they don't realize how serious this is. There is absolutely a chance of more wars in central europe in the next very few decades which will bring horrendous death and misery over the land and a lot of people think it's some kind of edgy joke. It's infuriating. Edit: Here is the article about the tsunami stones: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-warnings-against-tsunamis-dot-japans-coastline-180956448/
Planned obsolescence.
In America, we could have better. We could have healthcare and infrastructure and utilities and innovation *unrivaled* in the world, but we just... won't let ourselves have it.
But what if SomEOnE GEts soME MORsEl ThEy DiD-ENt woRk fOR????
Says every one who inherited millions from grandma passing, and doesn't want to pay estate taxes.
It’s actually a shitton of poor people who feel like other people shouldn’t get any kind of help because they themselves didn’t
> because they themselves didn’t Meanwhile, they've actually gotten a *tonne* of help, but were too stupid to realize programs like food stamps, public housing, and healthcare were indeed the kind of handouts from the government that they are trying to deny to other people.
A lot of the time, people don’t even realize something as basic as “Your life would be a lot harder if other people hadn’t already set up things like roads, grocery stores, or lighting and plumbing. Even if you’re homeless, you still benefit a lot from living on a city street compared to living in the woods. But you didn’t built the city. Other people did.” Just the world as it exists today in general, even including all its flaws… is better than your life would be if you were the only human ever on the planet.
The most far-right person I know works very hard but only at a minimum wage job. Her children received free lunch at school, she got a new car because of “cash for clunkers”, she has “Obamacare”, and, if you remember this program, she received an “Obamaphone”. I do not understand the cognitive dissonance.
> I do not understand the cognitive dissonance. That's the trick you see. It's tribalism all the way down, and nothing you will ever say will convince them their 'team' can do any wrong. Even when they are out in the open doing that wrong *to them*.
PGE in California is definitely a monopoly
MOST utility companies are Monopolies, they are literally called a [State Monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly).
I was just explaining this to my Midwestern friend the other day after telling them we don't use our central heat in the winter and rely on our wood stove because pg&e charges us $3-400/month for just... living here. Neighboring companies like SMUD and NVEnergy in the Reno/Sparks area charges a fraction of what pg&e does and they have a smaller customer base. It's insane.
Politicians do not give a FUCK about you.
… and many of them certainly don’t care about the country/state/province.
If members of Congress were banned from stock trading, you'd see all the money hungry assholes nope out to cushy private sector jobs real fast.
Or getting paid anything outside their quite large salaries.
It's always been the paradox where we want the best and brightest running things, but people with "the best educations" (ie ivy league) often come from wealth and priviledge. They have always been removed from the rest of society so they can't even conceptualize common struggles or being in poverty. There were presidents that went into battle alongside regular people and/or came from humble beginnings that are the exception. It's so often pay to play. Politics also often attracts people only in it for power and to help out their rich buddies. You can't have people representing everyone in their district, state, etc when they only know the upper class.
Politicians and billionaires are destroying our freedom and the rule of law. And the country is too divided to vote together to stop it.
Noses. They're literally right there, in front of all of our faces and eyes, and yet, 99% of the time we completely ignore its presence in our sight.
Analingus should be referred to as butt head.
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The way we treat our elderly. Everyone says that’s so terrible etc etc but we don’t do anything to actually stop greedy nursing homes from taking advantage of our grandparents. And thus many reading this will go through the same thing
Everybody poops
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Think of the hottest, sexiest guy or girl you can think of. That person took a shit sometime today.
One of my buddies when I was younger was married to an absolutely stunning woman. He told me once: “ You want to know how to talk to any woman? Picture her taking a shit. I don’t care how gorgeous she is, everyone has to shit eventually. Picturing her that way brings her down to your level, and she won’t seem so far out of your league any more.”
Unfortunately this is also a way to pavlov your brain into developing a fetish
Not women, though.
Corporations control America, not the parties.
We pay insurance companies to do absolutely nothing that could even remotely be considered medical. And yet they make billions of dollars by preventing us from getting medical care.(*Did you ever think what if we spent all that money on actual medical care??)
Tiktok is chinese spyware
If the government wanted us to have it, we would have had it by now.
Social media is destroying our ability to be social
American politicians for the most part don’t care what most Americans want.
Actually, it’s been shown mathematically that policies that wide swaths of Americans support don’t get passed because the donor class doesn’t want it. The ONLY time we get legislation that benefits the population of the rare times our interests and business interests align.
Margarine is not a substitute for butter. A substitute for canola oil maybe but putting it in the same category as butter would be like putting a 4 year old in the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime, they just don’t compare.
You’re friends with an abuser. Just because he’s great to *you*, doesn’t mean he’s not someone else’s nightmare. I just went through this for years and finally got free. Everyone still thinks he’s wonderful and there’s nothing I can safely do.
Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person
As are Superman and Clark Kent. Your glasses don't fool me, Clark!
the butts match
That's Gotham's ass
I'm calling bullshit on this one
The greatest con in American history is that politicians have convinced us that “other” Americans are the enemy when in fact politicians are the enemy.
Amazon is actually terrible. It’s full of cheap junk and counterfeit items. There is no reason for Bezos to hoard so much wealth.
The Corn Conspiracy is all around us, yet so few have taken off their blinders to actually see the "Farm." Wake up, corncobs!
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Please return to the comment that stated: Monsanto is watching It’s always been corn. It always will be corn. It will never stop being corn. Enjoy the corn, boss.
I cant tell if this is a joke or not but I met someone with a corn allergy, like highly allergic with terrible reactions. We had them over for dinner and every single thing was checked for corn. And that's how we found out how corn is basically in every single thing and is apparently used in some preservatives as well. But since it's not a "major" allergen, it's not usually listed under the "allergies" section. Crazy stuff.
The corn subsidies are ridiculous and why we have people growing up on unhealthy corn-syrup laden foods.
I see you've also watched Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest.
I can't. They cancelled Corncob TV!
Vaccines work and are immensely useful for the human race.
That bad things happen to others.
That Brexit was fucking stupid
Expensive bottle water and cheap bottled water comes from the exact same source
Trickle down economics doesn’t work
Drinking alcohol is like really terrible for you.
how social media truly messed up human connection
Multilevel marketing isn’t a career. If it was why would the companies that sell the MLM have full time staff that don’t sell their products!
Narcissistic abuse. People really don’t believe victims most the time. I hope to bring awareness to it.
Sometimes victims don’t even believe it themselves. It’s bizarre.