Grant_us_eyes
No bio...
User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
5mo ago
IVF
One element I feel gets ignored and/or glossed over is the cost. IVF procedures in America cost anywhere from 10k to 30k - there seems to be a wide gap involved, and IIRC, the cost a friend of mine paid was much, much more.
There's also no guarantee the procedure will take, and the longer a woman puts it off, the longer possible existing complications can remain undiscovered(again, this is what happened to the same friend.)
Thankfully, they were able to go oversees to have the procedure done again, but staying a month in Turkey is abit beyond the means of most people.
I wish people were taught better about this, but I worry we've moved to the point where the majority just assumes medical science is basically a magic wand that automatically fixes everything.
Grant_us_eyes
5mo ago
The easiest way I've found to loose faith in the justice system is by talking with your so-called 'experts'(Lawyers, Law Enforcement) in their actual field experience.
I imagine it's similar in other fields, as well.
Grant_us_eyes
5mo ago
Characters like Miles Morales generally have pretty high approval ratings because he is an interesting character in his own right and they didn't just make Peter Parker black.
People can repeat this as many times as they like, but I refuse to believe it. At best, it just feels like historical revisionism.
Miles was very much made as a black Spiderman, and only worked when they actually, y'know, killed Peter off. It's telling that the only way they made Miles work as a character when matching him up with the original was by changing the original completely - making him older, wiser, and a little more cynical.
No, Miles is just a bad collection of racial tropes pasted onto the original, and very much a racial takeover of the worst type - oh, and he has a hot blonde girlfriend, because that's what always happens with black characters in American comics, for some reason.
'Comic book popularity' is a worthless measure when the entirety of comic book sales in America are outshone by a single manga series. 'But the movies' are a worthless measure given all the sheer effort they had to do to make it work, and when people talk about 'Into the Spider-verse', all I hear is stuff about Miguel O'Hara.
So, no, I disagree. I place Miles alongside all the other race-swaps - worse, because people keep trotting him out as 'one of the good ones', when he really, really isn't.
Grant_us_eyes
5mo ago
Good god, it's been a while since I've cracked open my econ degree.
TLDR, M1 and M2 are basically how much free-flow, readily available cash is in the hands of the public(as opposed to Banks, the federal deposit, and other entities.)
Or, put another way, how much money do civilians and John Q Public have available at quick notice.
If it's been falling, well... that means they have less cash on-hand. Why that is could be due to... well, a long list of reasons.
Also, that redefinition of m1 annoys me to a horrendous degree for some odd reason.
Grant_us_eyes
5mo ago
You're underestimating the national divide that existed post-Civil War.
Up until World War 1, there was an honest question among those that considered such on wether or not any of the Southern states would actually fight for America, period. (Instead, they turned out in droves that carried a consistent trend... up until very recently. Funny, that.) Most statues were put up as a meager act of concession, allowing pride to a defeated foe who nevertheless gave a good fight.
It's not as if the South had anything else in the aftermath.
Grant_us_eyes
6mo ago
I would suggest 2016 was less the cause and more the 'masks off' moment.
Hanging around various fan forums in the early 2000s, one common thread I saw pop up time and time again was the typical 'Whatif' of 'What would you have done differently in the treatment of the South post civil-war' and the thread wouldn't even get past the first page before the notion of 'Kill them all' would get thrown out.
Ground-level liberal/progressives have had a common genocidal fantasy toward Southerners for a very long time, with very little if no pushback against it.
Grant_us_eyes
6mo ago
And part of it is just that Southern primary education more or less lies to its own people about this part of history.
Ah, yes. This old canard.
Sorry, but I had to take 400-level history courses on Southern history before the notion that 'Well, the Civil War may have had other factors beyond slavery that caused it' even got brought up.
I'll believe my own eyes and experience, thanks.
Grant_us_eyes
7mo ago
It makes perfect sense. I'm already paying thousands for said car - why does it not include the necessary software already?
new car
If I wanted to get a new car to replace the one I have(I don't), I couldn't even go with the latest make and model as they literally don't release them in America any more.
Nor am I skeptical that I could purchase one with similar performance and at a similar price. The MRSP for the model I own has gone up, not down. That's not normal.
Hopefully I won't have to find out any time soon.
Grant_us_eyes
7mo ago
Which is a third-party prosumer item that not everyone has.
That's the point. You shouldn't need a third-party item to understand where the fuck-up is. Even if it's a hidden option in the background, cars come natively with enough computers that you should be able to pull up an error-code read-out without spending additional money.
Instead, we get new cars and trucks with 18 different cameras built in so the software can construct a to-down view when backing up and then wonder why everything is so expensive nowadays.
Grant_us_eyes
7mo ago
Ah, I see you do not live in a location that has a Wendy's fast food restraunt.
It's probably for the best. Better to suffer in ignorance and not know the glories you have deprived yourself of.
But, yes. Back when I was exhaustively cataloguing my weight loss on a week by week basis, eating bread at a holiday meal would mean the difference between not gaining any weight if I didn't, and gaining several pounds if I did.
Which is an absolute shame, given all the recipes I have for various types of bread. So it goes.
never to become fat in the first place.
In a perfect world, yes. Ah, if I only knew growing up what I know now.
Can't say I ever hit the lethargy you're describing when I lost weight, however. Not sure if it was my overall slow path toward weightloss or not. If anything, I ended up with more energy, not less.
As for the hunger, eh. I just sucked up and dealt with it. I doubt that's good advice for other people, though.
Grant_us_eyes
7mo ago
and it will revert as soon as the person goes back to eating naturally.
Amazing. If you go back to the diet that was making you fat, you will get fat again. Will wonders never cease.
Sorry. I should probably hold back on the sarcasm, given that this is the motte, but this is the one 'secret' about dieting that I rarely see people point out - you can't stop.
Dieting isn't an on-off switch - it needs to be a conscious decision to moderate your diet aimed at long-term goals and body improvement. Once you reach a certain age, you can't just shovel crap into your face and expect to walk it off.
Dieting is a permanent change to your life, and the sooner people acknowledge that, the better.
Conversely, if someone wants to enjoy themselves sucking down baconators and Dr Pepper by the bucket, well, I can't stop them. Maybe they'll get more enjoyment out of life doing that then I will, I dunno.
Grant_us_eyes
7mo ago
storming the capitol building
Why should storming the capital building be any different than when rioters stormed the White House?
People constantly try to paint the Jan 6 protest as something extraordinary, when it was just the right wing seeing what the left had been doing for the past four years and deciding to use a tool that apparently works.
Don't blame the protestors for assuming good faith and not realizing that left-wing protests were being sponsored and applauded by the various institutions kicking around.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
Well, it was less 'settling' and more 'being forced to move there due to the British crown of the time trying to get rid of two problems at once'. The history of the Scots-Irish is certainly... colorful.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
Diverse but isolated.
People try to claim America as a melting pot without looking at the mechanics(Nevermind that the phrase itself referred to New York City). That's the part that always sticks at me when I look at my very local history and see the various ethnic settlements that developed.
Certainly, you have diverse ethnic settlements that look from a modern standpoint to be very close to one another... but when you stop and take a step back, consider the time period they developed and the lack of coherent infrastructure, and you realize that these self-same settlements were in the middle of fucking nowhere and would take a good number of days to reach the nearest town or transportation hub, nevermind the nearest city.
Diverse, but isolated. Now, there is no isolation; we are all in the pot together, and it's slowly starting to boil.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
Female Dating Strategy.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
Counterpoint: Political groups have had no issue taking the supposed insults from their opposition and turning it into a badge of pride, regardless of the format.
'Yankee Doodle' was supposed to be an insult. For a more recent occurrence, 'Keep your Rifle By Your Side' was supposed to be atleast slightly satire, until people listened to it, went 'Holy shit, this song slaps' and started using it unironically.
It's a phenomena that's not really new by any stretch.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
I recall an article/blogpost from way back when about a woman doing exactly tit for tat, though if you ask me for specifics, I'm afraid it'll take a while for me to find it.
It did not work out the way she was expecting. Spoilers: The guys loved it.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
Is there a way?
There is not.
You can paint a picture all you want, but you can't ignore the canvas. Fiction nowadays trying to include such elements just come across as obnoxious political screeds that after a certain point makes me throw them in the trash.
Just because I can read Eclipse Phase doesn't mean I don't roll my eyes at some of the elements they include, and despite my initial interest in the webcomic 'O Human Star', once I realized the analogy they were going with some of the setting elements made me severely pull back in my interest in seeing where it was going to go.
I'm sick a tired of people trying to force obvious modern age propaganda down my throat, and it's gotten to the point with most modern fiction that I default assume they'll include it until I learn otherwise.
Grant_us_eyes
8mo ago
but the US Civil War did not fundamentally slow the trajectory of US economic or geopolitical rise.
The US Civil War occurred at the right point in history, around the time of the Industrial Revolution, to allow for this. While the South was economically devastated(and was so for at least a century afterwards), the Northern regions now had an entire breadbasket of cheap agricultural workhorses to harvest from without caring about the consequences.
Grant_us_eyes
9mo ago
getting outcompeted in a capitalist world
Are they getting outcompeted, or are they simply not giving people what they really want?
One of these days, I'm going to finish that essay in my head regarding the character of Joshua Graham and how he relates to modern religion.
Grant_us_eyes
9mo ago
He's basically a hunting dog, then.
Well, take him hunting.
Get him started with scent/tracking, work on fetch/retrieval, off-lead commands, all that good stuff. You may have a 'backyard', but depending where you're living, said backyard may be too small to accommodate the work you'll need to do.
Grant_us_eyes
10mo ago
A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house.
Honestly, yeah, that's pretty much how it works. I remember a time before the wider internet when things were far more niche, and getting two star wars(or your niche topic of choice) together and watch the sparks go. There was very much a sense of 'Okay, exactly how much can I let my freak flag fly around this person' with alot of this stuff, alongside the simple passionate releif of 'Holy shit, this is someone who UNDERSTANDS'.
it's a real thing that happened.
Statistical outliers. Growing up, I never once encountered a fan of Star Wars who was a woman.
Grant_us_eyes
10mo ago
You get to enjoy it after a while, then eventually you find you can't imagine yourself living without it.
Preaching to the choir, speaking for myself. Mind, it can be easy to fall off the bicycle for some people. There's a wide gulf between people who do this in their early twenties/thirties and the guys who are still doing this well into their twilight years.
Maybe I'm just biased, as I hang out with alot of older guys who are still fit and active.
testosterone
I'm hesitant to give chemistry all the credit, but that's due to my personal experience. I've gone from 'I hate PE' in high school to 'I need to do this for my own well-being' as I've gotten older. I feel there's a critical mindset there that's more prevalent(or becomes more prevalent) in men(which isn't common to begin with, imo) that's less prevalent in woman.
I don't see any of that. I see satire pointing out how America has a tendency to fall all over itself in supporting Israel without question, and that some people are just a little bit tired of that.
Your take on the matter kind of proves his point; Israel seems above criticism, and any negative word in their direction is taken as support for their enemies.
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