Opinions, art, debate
This is why younger people need us, oldsters:
This is not a new thing. This is a forever thing. Thirty years ago, men and women got together and complained that there are no worthwhile women and men for them to date. This tweet could have been written in 2002 if Twitter existed. I spent half of my youth in these conversations. This is not a new societal trend.
And by the way, 100% of the women in those conversations from 20 years ago, including me, are happily married and childed.
OK, this is simply too good not to share:
AI tells me that this is real: “A municipal child-protection project in Büren, Germany, recently launched a campaign titled “Sommer – Sonne – Sicherheit” specifically intended to raise awareness about preventing sexual boundary violations at swimming pools.”
I’m still not entirely sure this is real but after PowerPoints aimed at teaching rapey migrants that it’s important to respect women, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything.
Leaving aside the issue of lawsuit avoidance, we shouldn’t forget that doctors are human. When I was pregnant with Klara, I was observed at a clinic for high-high-risk pregnancies. You have to sign a contract at the beginning of the process, promising to follow exactly what the doctors say or they stop seeing you. The doctors don’t want to participate in the actions of a primadonna mother who is killing her baby by not following the required procedures.
Once there was a stupid, unqualified nurse who couldn’t find Klara’s heartbeat. It’s not surprising since it was unlikely that the baby’s heartbeat would be located in my armpit where she was looking. This absolute moron informed me that “hmm, I think something is wrong” and went to look for the doctor. I was perfectly calm because Klara was kicking up a storm but when I saw the doctor running in with an ultrasound machine, his shattered, terrified face almost made me cry. He’s human, he got attached to the baby he was trying to help me bring to term over months.
The doctor who actually delivered Klara cried with tears, his hands shaking, he was so happy. So yes, nobody wants to take on a patient at 39 weeks who has been doing nobody knows what and then have a dead baby on their hands.
Again, yes, lawsuits. But the idea that doctors and nurses (with the exception of that heartless moron at the clinic) don’t get emotionally invested into their patients is wrong.
You can be a very special cookie all you want but don’t expect others always to accommodate your very special cookiness. A woman was kicked out of the special clinic where I was observed during my second pregnancy because she had a raging diabetes and just couldn’t give up donuts. She kept ranting about that loudly and explaining what a victim she was. We can condemn the doctors for heartlessly removing her instead of effectively colluding with her in harming and possibly killing the baby.
Imagine an alcoholic who, between AA meetings, drinks himself into a stupor. People who use AI for therapeutic support between therapy sessions do something similar. It’s more productive to quit therapy altogether because you are undoing the work done in the sessions.
Our Dean had an administrative assistant, Vicky. She retired last week but the Dean won’t be allowed to hire a replacement because our Chancellor “doesn’t believe in the concept of administrative assistants.” I have no idea what this means. I also have no idea who will do the enormous amount of work that used to be done by Vicky.
We weren’t overpaying Vicky. We were so not overpaying her that she had to get a second job at McDonald’s to make ends meet. Still, we will now save that modest salary by not hiring a replacement.
Our university does, however, have money to build large, hideous, and completely unnecessary buildings. A new building for the School of Pharmacy was recently finished. My friend is a professor there and she says she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she was shown her new lab and office in that expensive building. Everything is designed in the most stupid way possible. The lab is a very bizarre shape for no reason anybody can identify. In front of the professors’ offices with paper thin doors there’s a large game area for students. The idea that professors might sometimes need to think or write didn’t make it into the calculations.
“We’ve lost a large percentage of our students,” my friend says. “We aren’t filling empty professor positions, so students don’t come. There’s no money for professors and staff. But we have a shiny new building we can’t use.”
“Be grateful,” I said morosely. “We have neither professors nor a new building.”
Not just more. Almost four times more.
Hot weather is the absolute worst.
We started seeing a lot of hand-drawn signs around town with the words “Be like Emme.” We were curious what the signs meant, and I searched the community FB page.
It turned out that Emme was a local 10-year-old who recently died. She died, people! I’d understand signs saying “Remember Emme” or “In Loving Memory”, but “Be like Emme”?? In what way should we be like Emme?
Think about yourself: suppose you did well and became worth, say, $100 million. What do you do next?
Me?
Ass sitting. Spending it on family and friends. Doing odd hobbies. Work ain’t gonna happen. Why in heck should I? Just the annual return on that (say 5 million after taxes) is more than I can spend.
I don’t want or need a 300 foot yacht. Don’t need to take a sub to Titanic. Not interested in going to Mars. God bless those who have these ambitions but I’d rather hang out with friends by the pool.https://x.com/Mark_E_Noonan/status/1940127883474981159?t=weMiawupPtQyFnXRPPQA6g&s=19
Are people in earnest about this? That they’d be happy to sit by the pool and do nothing in the prime of their lives? Every time I’ve tried to take “do-nothing” days, by day two I would start getting depressive and develop symptoms of exotic illnesses.
What are people going to talk to their friends about by the side of that pool? Gossip? Celebrity news? The post was written by a man, so I assume he isn’t planning to breastfeed and try to recover from giving birth by the poolside.
If I somehow came across $100 000, I’d buy this house:
Plant a ton of trees around it and then continue doing exactly what I’m doing.
Or probably this one:
But I’d continue working exactly like now because I’m loving it. Why would I be doing it at all if I didn’t?
Most of the aspects of my life I constituted myself and I’m happy with how I did it. Of course, I wanted three kids but that was out of my hands.
Absolutely no food gives me such consistently healthy blood sugar readings as borscht. Every diabetician I’ve talked to stares at me like I’m a moron when I start listing the ingredients: a crapton of potatoes, beets, carrots, tomato sauce. Cabbage, sour cream. Plus, I usually eat it with a large raw onion on the side. And I don’t eat small, dainty portions of borscht either.
But every time, it’s sensational blood sugar readings.
Genes are real, my friends. Borscht is medicine for Ukrainians.
Also, in what concerns high-carb things, I tolerate potatoes in modest quantities. But not a grain of rice or a couple of strands of spaghetti. Lentils are poison to me. Because potatoes are more natural to Ukraine than rice or lentils.
I don’t want to be that person but I’m starting to think that Trump is posting angry messages about Elon again to conceal that the BBB is a dud and had all of the juicy parts stripped out of it.
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