Am an AEMT (advanced EMT). Work night shift. LOVE that shit. Hate the fact that the rest of the world insists on only existing dayside, so I have to get up during the day for appointments and school. I can’t have a sleep schedule because people don’t see an issue with making me do things at noon. How would they like it if I made them do shit at 2am?

Night shift is great. Life is better when the sun isn’t burning my retinas off and 90% of the population is sound asleep in their beds. I get to be in the earlier stages of my day as the sun is setting and ending it as the sun is rising, and that’s cool as shit. The best feeling ever is driving home as morning rush hour is starting and everyone is grumpy on their way to work and I’m on my way home to my nice comfy bed to sleep in peace.

Fuck shouldn’t you still be in elementary school? What happened to my fucking life?

I think e-bikes are such a problem in the US because we have such a car-sentric culture and the majority of people who are riding them seem to be people who lost their drivers licenses due to poor life decisions (AKA, dangerous driving or DUI) or are too young to get a drivers license in the first place. They take the same dangerous, stupid mentality and transfer it into their riding of the e-bikes. I drive an ambulance and every single day I see a suicidal idiot blitzing through traffic at top speed on an e-bike, running red lights and stop signs without even slowing down or looking, going the wrong way up one way roads in the middle of the lane, driving at 3am down the middle of the road with no lights (almost always going the wrong way and running stop signs), ignoring the blocked off bike lanes on the roads that do have them, or just generally being an absolute menace and an idiot. We have so many bikers getting seriously hurt or killed because of their antisocial behavior. I’ve almost hit a couple in my ambulance because they’re constantly pulling out right in front of me or simply trying to bike right into the side of my rig as I’m driving down the road doing the speed limit, forcing me to either swerve or possibly end their entire existence. They just assume that car drivers will get out of their way, which is a dumb assumption when most of the drivers are just as dumb and are fucking around on their phones. Suicidal fucking idiots with zero survival instincts. I have zero problems whatsoever with the ones who are responsible and follow traffic laws, but they seem to be in the low minority around here.

I’m in this meme and I don’t like it

I had a class where I had to write papers that couldn’t go above a certain word count or it would be an instant fail, it had to contain at least a minimum amount of text directly quoted and cited from my source material, and also couldn’t go above a 20% Turnitin score. I had every paper word-maxxed to the limit and of course Turnitin marked all of my quotations as plagiarized, it marked my entire citations page as plagiarized, and it also inexplicably marked every instance of the word “the” as plagiarized. Nothing else was marked plagiarized and I hit 20% on every paper I submitted. I complained to the instructor and told him the requirements were damn near impossible.

So I fully admit to being far too ignorant of how this works, but at what point does someone international do something about this? Are there not international arrest warrants out for Putin? When does an international court put out an arrest warrant for Hesgeth or Trump and make it so they can’t leave the country? When does the international community start sanctioning the US for this bullshit?

“Hey you, you’re finally awake”

My industry is weird (it’s in my post history, so I’ll just say it, it’s EMS). A lot of ambulance companies don’t have someone to actively maintain a website. They might have a website but it might be a year or two out of date. It’s easier and cheaper for a supervisor to make a “we’re hiring! Email me your info!” post on Facebook, especially when that’s where everyone is anyway and that’s how everyone else is doing it. It’s a very informal and very odd industry.

We have to do so many hours of continuing education every year to maintain our certification and I have a co-worker who does the coolest trainings. I finally asked how he finds them because all I can ever find is the dryest, most boring classes. Of course the answer was Facebook. It’s all on Facebook. If you want to get into a new specialty, if you want a fun training, if you want to connect with providers who aren’t in your immediate circle, if you want to learn a new niche or find a company or a job across the country you need Facebook.

I’ve never had a LinkedIn and I deleted my Facebook and Instagram years ago. I actually think it’s why I can’t get a new job in my field. I’m currently employed, get good feedback from my supervisors and peers, have tons of experience, and have good working relationships with the people I deal with outside my company, but most networking in my field is all done on social media and most jobs are posted on Facebook. I’ve been looking for a new job for months and have applied at multiple places and followed up and heard crickets, and yet I know people with the same exact job who were fired for cause and had a job the next week. The only job openings I’ve even found are places that coworkers with social media pointed me to, because they saw posts that the companies are hiring. I’m starting to wonder if companies are looking me up on social media, not finding me, and throwing me in the reject pile. The last thing I want to do is rejoin the metaverse, but I’m starting to think I’m wrecking my career by avoiding it. It’s so frustrating.

Ooh, thanks, I will have to look at that list when I get a minute. It’s weird, because most of the stuff I’m subscribed to is stuff I have no interest in and never would have checked a topic saying I am, so I’m curious to see what topics those communities would be related to that I might have clicked interested in. For example, it kept subscribing me to so many sports communities like basketball and football and I have zero interest in anything to do with sports, but I might have clicked an interest in something like outdoors or hiking.

I have a piefed account and maybe someone can tell me if I’m doing something wrong, , an instance thing, or if it’s a piefed thing, or a weird glitch, but I stopped using it because it kept force-following hundreds of communities for me. When I unsubscribed it would instantly re-subscribe me to them and then add more random communities. I like to be able to scroll by both all to view new stuff but also subscribed and just see stuff I’m interested in, not have my subscribed communities be hundreds of communities with tons of topics I have absolutely no interest in. It was things like niche sports teams, communities for towns on the other side of the globe from me, or stuff like hobbies or TV shows I’ve no interest in. There was no way to filter it to show things I actually cared about. I haven’t logged in in months because I got so frustrated. I feel like an old person who can’t figure out this new fangled tech. I’m 99% sure I wasn’t hacked either because I could hit unsubscribe, refresh, refresh again, and it would re-subscribe.

I’m not at all religious now, but I was raised Christian. There’s some awful, awful shit in the Bible, but Jesus was such a chill dude. If everyone acted like Jesus, the world would be an awesome place. He was just a hippie who drank wine and hung out with his bros and made friends with prostitutes and outcasts and condemned the church leaders who abused their positions. According to legend he was the legit son of God and yet when he was asked to judge sinners he was like yo dudes that’s not my place only my dad can do that I’m not worthy and neither are any of you, maybe instead of worrying about what other people are doing you should deal with your own issues, ok? Can you imagine if people actually lived like that? I’m not as familiar with other religions, but from what I know other major prophets were pretty chill, cool dudes too. If people actually followed the prophets of their religions instead of being assholes, religion would be great. Instead we have poor people being exploited, women and children being abused, and the entire system is fucked and corrupted because of human nature run amok.

Came here to comment on the religion part. Humans are biologically programmed to be in a tribe and we need an “other” and we need a bad guy. On its own religion could be a neutral or a good thing, but it fits that need for tribalism and a common enemy and feeling superior. It’s the same mindset as nationalism or racism or when fans of sports teams riot and beat the shit out of each other for no reason. If religion never existed humanity would have just discovered some other way to segregate ourselves, feel superior, order each other around with arbitrary rules even the in group can’t agree on, and isolate and kill those who don’t comply. Add in manipulative people who are all too eager to hop into leadership roles and use them for their own power and selfish gain and you have pure evil, but it’s the system, not the religion, that’s a distraction.

Thankfully I found a doctor who permanently took care of that problem forever :) I am one of the conservatives’ nightmares: a divorced 30-something single cat lady who can’t have babies, lives alone, and works a fuck ton of hours to pay all my own bills. I’m also useless as a housewife and I curse a fuckton. Meek tradwife/breeding material I am not.

I didn’t know either! Before I updated it things were a pain in the ass because I was hauling around my birth certificate, marriage certificate, divorce paperwork, and legal name change paperwork, and was constantly having to explain how I got from birth name to current name via marriage but also that I wasn’t currently married. It confused everyone when I was like “so here’s my legal name change paperwork but the previous name on that doesn’t match my birth certificate because it’s my married name but I’m not married anymore so here’s my married license that shows my maiden name which is what’s on the birth certificate and here’s my divorce paperwork showing I’m not married anymore”. So annoying and I was sick of having to be reminded of my marriage.

Turns out (at least in my state) all it took was sending in a notorized form ($7 at the UPS store), an official copy of my legal name change, and the fee for a new birth certificate (I think like $25). It took about 4 months, but I have a new birth certificate that is identical to my old one in every way, except it has my current legal name on it. Absolutely fills me with joy because now my social security card, passport, drivers license, and birth certificate all match and I’ll never have to haul around the rest of that paperwork again. One of my FTM trans coworkers updated his birth certificate and it shows his new name and his gender as male.

I’m a divorced cisgender woman who legally changed my name to something that is neither my maiden name nor my married name and got a new birth certificate to back it up. I wonder if I’d get around their stupid rules or if they’d just drag me out back and execute me.

Wow, this was super interesting to read, thanks for taking the time to respond.

I have a question, how much leeway do you have to get things covered? If the old lady calls you and says her insulin was denied and she can’t afford it, can you “accidentally” hit the approve button?

I had to have surgery for a medical issue. It was technically being controlled with medication, but the medication was expensive, difficult to get, and the side effects sucked and some of them were known to cause permanent damage. The permanent fix was surgery, and while that surgery was listed as covered under my insurance I figured that I was going to have to fight like hell to get it approved because my symptoms were under control with medication. I got home from work one day to a letter from the insurance company and I remember thinking “oh boy, here we go” and when I opened it and saw “your procedure has been approved” I was genuinely so surprised I sat down on the floor and had to reread it. I’ve always wondered if whoever did the pre-approval from my surgeon’s office was just that good or if someone at my insurance company was having a great day.

I work in healthcare. I feel like more and more people are wanting some sort of universal healthcare in the last few years, even if they are conservative, even if they’ll vote against it, and even if the term “universal healthcare” will have them up in arms. But the concept itself? They’re all for it, they complain that healthcare is too expensive and insurance companies aren’t covering things and the system needs to change. They’re getting there. It’s taking them getting fucked over for it to happen and most of us may be dead of completely preventable causes first, but they just might get there.

How dare someone who is dying of cancer and is too sick to work anymore get free Netflix! They can work for it like everyone else! I’m not subsidizing their Netflix /s