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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I don’t disagree that there is a strategy of downplaying not just Biden’s, but every politician’s health conditions.

    I used to have this absolutely incredible writing professor, who, at 85, told us on the first day of class that he was dying, and had been for 4 years. He even had a blog about his reflections on mortality that he invited us to read. He had prostate cancer. I don’t remember the details, but they couldn’t operate to remove it or do chemo, but it was the kind that is hormone sensitive. They gave him a drug that destroyed his body’s ability to produce testosterone, so the cancer just stopped growing. He died at 90 - 9 years after his diagnosis. 10% extra life for him.

    No two people and prognosis’ are alike but the possibility exists they might be telling the truth about managing it.








  • I know of an organization attached to a prestigious university that solely exists because at the end of some billionaire’s life, he decided he wanted to chuck some cash into a foundation to try to burnish his image.

    But he was so morally corrupt that his version of helping others was to mandate that the foundation focus on “helping” people in developing countries find business opportunities.
    Read: they assess how people and environments can be exploited for capitalism while focusing on telling stories about how that exploitation improved the quality of life for people there.
    Most of the professors who work with the foundation are very wealthy from their non-academic pursuits.


  • Not only do I have an increased range of motion, but I (very recently learned) that an old injury is causing spinal stenosis – my spinal canal is narrowing due to bone overgrowth on my vertebrae. (Car accident. I was rear ended.)

    About 20 years ago a chiropractor popped my neck by twisting it, and it so freaked him out that he leapt back from the table and did the heebie jeebie dance.
    He told me to never let a chiropractor pop my neck by twisting it ever again.
    Reasonably certain I could kill myself showing off doing yoga, like in that Dead Like Me episode.


  • I mean, everyone is already fucked, and that’s what keeps everyone else in check.

    Russia has made great efforts to hack municipal systems all over the world, and may actually have some control over Microsoft systems, owing to that credential hack last year that Microsoft still hasn’t confirmed is contained. (Recent Russian hacking campaigns are using malicious signed MSI files, so my bet is no…)

    China has all that communication equipment everywhere, with rumors swirling that it’s intentionally compromised. There’s also Tuya, a massive IOT company that produces its own products and also white label products. And there’s all the EV power inverters that can be hacked and used as a botnet to destroy electrical grids. Not that they need to, because apparently they can shut down the U.S. power grid remotely. And who knows what they’ve managed to do with the U.S.’s backdoor access into telecom systems.

    The U.S. has its own devices, hacking, and infiltration efforts, although as a U.S. citizen, my awareness of them is decreased due to U.S. media.

    But my core point is that there’s basically a digital Cold War happening. And the U.S. is all but surrendering, making successful surveillance, hacking, and sabotage campaigns more likely.
    If a situation goes hot at the same time that large parts of U.S. see poisonings or health issues en masse due to tampering with water supply chemical or filtration systems or even the possible destruction of drinking water systems, the explosion of natural gas lines as C&C systems over pressurize domestic lines, followed by a prolonged grid-wide electrical outage, the U.S. will have basically no ability to do anything but focus on domestic issues.


  • Sleep has always been a challenge for me. Unmedicated I will either not be able to fall asleep until 2-3 in the morning, or will fall asleep around 11-12, and wake up at 4-5 am.

    Throughout the years I’ve tried various modifications to my sleep routine, and am no stranger to medications to help me sleep. (Doctor supervised, while paying attention to all side effects and interactions. Do not try to manage your own sleep without significant research. Case in point: Long term use of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) has been linked to dementia.)

    I’ve found that of the things in my sleep routine, the melatonin is the best tool I have to facilitate falling asleep, and having an outlet for my energy during the day is the best way to ensure staying asleep.

    It’s also useful to note your surroundings. During winter I’m woken up a lot at exactly 4:40 am, because a neighbor uses their remote start, which causes their car to beep 4 times. (It’s very annoying, because they park on the street outside of my place and start their car as they’re walking to it, so it’s not as if the beeping is for a useful purpose.)
    Is something else environmental happening?





  • I told my friends back in mid-October of 2023 that I thought the Hamas attack was probably 1.) heavily influenced by Russia, and 2.) going to throw the election to Trump or whoever the Republican candidate was going to be unless he could get that thing zipped up and a peace deal in place within a month or two.

    So stupid. Biden could have done better so easily. But here we are, I guess, witnessing the oligarchy take over the world, using Trump and Musk as patsy’s, letting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Ukrainians die by the hand of genocidal fuckwits.


  • Is he really an illegal immigrant? And is he guilty of the crime that he was in the hearing for?

    If he’s here illegally, then deport him. If he’s here legally, let him have his trial, and let the rule of law prevail by meting out whatever justice is deemed necessary. Sure, a crime may invalidate a visa or legal standing or whatever, but you still have to have the damned trial. Innocent until proven guilty.

    Trying to arrest him at his pre-hearing to rendition him is fucking wrong. And trying to punish the judge for trying to block that miscarriage of justice from happening is doubly so.



  • I bear the same name as my father and his father. They both died when I was a young - over 30 years ago. I sometimes still get texts asking me if I’d like to “sell my house at [the address of my grandfather’s house that sold when he died in 1989].”

    If the best that data miners can do is text me because they think I’m a 100+ year-old, then Musk’s sloppy efforts are going to be even worse.
    Waiting for the day I get arrested for not having paid my own child support.