Lost Shadow by Gunship

But after experiencing 15 or 5 for a few weeks 35 feels almost like spring. A few weeks ago I was half frozen at 35 with 2 jackets on, yesterday it was in the mid-30s and I took off my one jacket and was just in short sleeves because I was starting to get sweaty.

Does anyone remember “drain the swamp”? Anyone with half a brain knew it was a joke, but it’s amazing how they don’t even pretend to be the good guys. It’s endless comic book levels of villainy.

My cats often sit and smell me when I come home, and if I’ve been petting or cuddling with other animals I get the look of absolute betrayal and they go and sulk for awhile. When one of my cats was a kitten he used to smell my feet whenever I got home from work and if I’d been sweating he’d keep chasing me around and biting my feet until I got in the shower, but thankfully I trained him to stop that 😂

Well, I have a job, a roof over my head, food in my fridge, and for the first time in my entire life I’ve the ability to actually start doing hobbies and figure out what I actually like and who I am and I’m not being entirely held back by finances or people, although I’m still in a very financially tight spot. So I’m blessed for that.

On the other hand, my first waking thought every day is how lonely I am, it’s always the thing that keeps me awake, and I can’t sleep more than an hour or so at a time without waking up having panic attacks because I’m so miserable and alone. It’s not even about being in a relationship, I don’t even have a single friend anymore that I can just send a text to or talk to about something funny that happened in my day or anything. I’m so fucking lonely. I just want someone who will tell me about their day and share memes with me or something and make me feel like I’m not alone on this damned earth.

“When someone tells me he is politically neutral, I always ask which politics he specifically has in mind” - Baptism of Fire (The Witcher Book 5)

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

We Were Told by the VLDL crew. If you aren’t familiar, they are YouTube creators out of NZ who started by make skits lovingly mocking video games and now have expanded into stuff like doing TTRPG and own their own studio with the biggest green screen in NZ, but they actually seem like really sweet, down to earth guys. I haven’t listened to their podcast since some of their early episodes, but it’s basically them just chatting with each other or a guest about random topics and it sounds like listening in on a conversation between some good friends. They don’t take themselves seriously and their first podcasts they liked to joke that they’re “3 white men doing a podcast, something that has never happened before”. Topics I listened to included mental health, the fact that two of them were an extra in Avatar and one actually has a blip of recognizable screen time and what it was like, their careers, having kids (one has a kid, one doesn’t want kids, and one is on the fence, and they even stopped to get the opinion of their woman producer when they started talking about how pregnancy affects women’s careers because they acknowledged it was sort of weird not to let a woman talk). I really need to add their podcast to my gym podcast playlist, I’ve just been catching up on podcasts related to my job.

Speaking of which, super niche, but if you have any interest in learning anything about EMS, I highly recommend the EMS 20/20 podcast. It’s two paramedics who are good friends who either review cases sent to them or who give each other DnD type medical scenarios and roll D20s to determine outcomes and there’s tons of educational stuff but it’s also really funny and light hearted and makes me laugh a lot.

Interesting! I also agree the second option sounds far more likely. I was raised super Christian (am not anymore) and I never understood or agreed with the belief that the Bible can’t be mistranslated, deliberately or accidentally. It’s been hundreds of years that humans have had their hands on it and humans suck. Of course it’s been twisted and misconstrued.

I always assumed children were charmed by the fae rather than overpowered and taken by force.

From my understanding, it’s not referring to the eye of a physical needle, but the city he was in when he made that analogy had a small gate known as “The Eye of the Needle” that was meant for human passage and not carts/large animals, which would go through the main gates. You could theoretically force a camel through it, but it would be nearly impossible. I heard that long long ago from some video that analyzed the meaning and context behind biblical stories and have no idea if that’s actually real, so I’d be happy to be proven wrong or right.

I’ve read a few of OPs posts and I don’t want to sound harsh but can’t tell if they’re genuinely looking for help or if they’re just stuck in a self-pity-I-need-a-savior loop. OP, are you a bird who is flying repeatedly into a window while there’s an open door right there because you’re too terrified and traumatized to realize you could just fly away, or are you truly locked in a cage? You’ll never know unless you ask for help opening the door. Maybe it’s locked and the key is unreachable, but maybe someone will hand you the keys. Yes, in today’s world funding is being cut, but it still exists, and there are still organizations that help victims.

Now this part is harsh and maybe it’s unfair to you and if so I apologize, but you can either start to be an adult, start to help yourself and ask for help and see if you find any, or you can realize that you don’t actually want help, that you’d rather stay in your miserable situation and aren’t actually looking for change. Because I see people who hate the awful situation they’re in but are so trapped in a victim mentality to actually want to stand on their own 2 feet and escape. I grew up in an abusive home and it was nowhere near as bad as what you are living in but it’s hard getting out and re-acclimating to the world, but you can either be miserable and trapped for your entire life or you can start to do scary things and take the chance that you find a way out of this.

I work in EMS. I will be at work on Friday. I want to participate in the general strike, but if someone in my community dies or has a worse outcome because my ambulance isn’t in service then I feel like it is defeating the purpose of a general strike which has the ultimate goal of helping the general public. I have just determined to not spend any money and to express solidarity with anyone who is participating or speak out if I hear any negativity towards the strike.

It doesn’t hail in the winter, and hail is larger. Hail comes down in pellets due to the fact that it’s made by water droplets falling down, getting blown back up into a cold cloud, freezing, getting blown back up to freeze some more, and so on until it’s heavy enough to overcome the updraft and fall to the ground. Sleet is like rain that freezes as its falling, but doesn’t become the soft gentle snow, and the difference between sleet and freezing rain is that freezing rain is liquid until it hits a frozen surface.

Yes, around here the difference between freezing rain and sleet is that freezing rain is liquid until it lands and it freezes on contact with a cold surface and sleet is solid as it comes down.

If its winter, you walk outside and the precipitation is very loud and stings like hell when it hits you it’s sleet.

Rise Against is always my “The world is fucked I’m so mad” band. All their stuff is great, but Re-education(Through Labor), The First Drop, and Mourning in America are so incredible and so relevant.

If a dragon flew overhead right now I’d be absolutely delighted, run outside waving and shrieking “OMG look everyone it’s a fucking dragon I can’t believe it I’m so excited” and promptly be incinerated by said dragon.

I mean, it’s mostly the older range of the spectrum, but I’ve absolutely seen 50-something year olds become acutely confused suddenly and ultimately get diagnosed with a UTI.

Source: 8 years in EMS. I get called by panicked family members all the time.

Older people (like 50s and above) often get acutely confused as the first symptom of a UTI. They’ll go to work, come home, and then an hour later they’re arguing with the clothing in their closet because they think it’s a family member and talking to faces they see in the walls. If your older family member just out of the blue starts acting “crazy” with no history of psych problems, drug abuse, or dementia, it could be something serious like a stroke, but it’s probably a UTI. UTIs also go septic super fast in older people so they definitely need treated sooner rather than later.