I do recommend Philadelphia in general. The cost of living is much lower than cities of comparable size, especially on the East Coast.
Like, yeah, our house is only 1200 square feet so the third "bedroom" is basically exactly big enough for my desk, a bookshelf, and a chair but our mortgage is also less than $900 a month, even with us having a garage, two parking spaces, and a small yard. Other rowhomes (basically a townhouse?) in my neighborhood regularly rent for about $1100.
@l-b-heuschkel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@aria But, if your partner can still get off, you're fine -- right?
Oh, yeah. I mean, let's be honest. I could suffer massive brain damage, lose a leg, and have half my skin peel off and we're totally good as long as @insomniac7809 can still bang one out before breakfast.
(In truth, bless my husband and his sweet little heart. After I told him what happened, he took one look at that OBGYN walking past and called out "Hey! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" in front of everyone in the waiting room. Much 
<3. I picked a good one.)
@macha said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Yeah. I refuse to put up with doctor's shit, anymore.
There was a time I went in to an OBGYN about a (small, temporary) issue that was causing me severe pain, he (because of course it was a he) told me he wasn't going to do anything to treat it until it got exponentially worse, and then calmly informed me not to worry because I could still have sex (which I hadn't asked him).
Because clearly, clearly the fact that I was in severe pain was of no concern, as long as I was still bangable.
Every time I've let a medical professional bully me, I've ended up worse off than I was before. My patience for doctors and their stupid bullshit is non-existent and I have reached the point that I say exactly what I think, right to their face, and make no apologies for it. If they don't like it, I don't really care.
@silverfox said in The Work Thread:
I got the intervention job I wanted!!! Basically, I get to build the role from the ground up!!!
Congrats!
@moth said in RL things I love:
Summer dresses with functional pockets.
Seriously.
I can fit my wallet and my phone in one pocket.
eShakti. They'll customize to your measurements or make style adjustments for $10 and almost every one of their dresses comes with pockets by default.
You're welcome.
@silverfox said in The Work Thread:
I hope this stays awesome and you can keep that flexibility!
We've had the opposite happen. Husband worked an hourly job and kept getting overtime because of poor hiring decisions, then took a job as a salaried position. He was still asked to work overtime, but didn't get paid any more. (It's an industry where they don't have to pay overtime, first position was.)
Yeah, I was able to claim overtime in my previous role, but they were generally a pain about approving it. The flipside of no longer being overtime-eligible at my employer is that it means you're bonus eligible at year-end, where bonuses are tied to your annual goals rather than your time spent. I think I'm going to prefer the latter. We'll see.
Apparently, the promotion to my new role involves switching me from being an hourly, non-exempt employee to an exempt, salaried employee.
Like, wow. For the first time in 15+ years of a professional career, I have a manager who has actually recognized that it doesn't matter if I walk off for two hours at 3PM because I need to go to the post office and the library before they close and then sit on my laptop writing communication drafts at 8PM, as long as a) I'm reachable and b) I'm getting my work done.
It's like my employer has recognized that I'm actually a fucking adult. Weird.
@ganymede said in Crafting Thread Part ?:
I love this chart so much.
Same. Same. You can literally say "oh lawd, he comin" to me at any moment, on any day, utterly without context and I will burst out laughing.
@wizz said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
"I refuse to wear a mask or get the vaccine because I have anecdotes about two or three people wearing masks or getting vaccinated and still getting COVID. Why would I take any preventative measure if it doesn't completely magically 100% work?????? I openly admit that I have done little to no research and seem kind of proud of this for some reason? You can try to provide me with even a basic understanding of medicine and scientific methodology that I very obviously lack but I will just call everything you painstakingly labor to give me 'opinion' and stand by my dumbass mouthbreather ignorance because it childishly eases my anxiety to put my fingers in my ears and go LALALA IT'S NOT REAL IT'S NOT REAL despite being a grown ass adult."
Fuuuuuuuuucking christ why is this EVERYONE IN UTAH I JUST I CAN'T ANYMORE
I really feel like the United States, as an entire culture, just needs to spend about five years or so being raised by my mom. Like, don't get me wrong, the woman has issues. She has issues, believe you me, but.....
When I was little and I threw a tantrum in public, it didn't matter where we were or what we were doing, my parents would just pack me up and leave. Halfway through dinner at a restaurant? Doggie bags. Middle of the grocery store? Full cart returned to an employee with apologies while they marched screeching toddler-me out of the store. After about half a dozen goes at it, I decided that I liked going out and doing things more than I liked having fits, so I stopped having tantrums in public.
Didn't even matter if you were someone else's kid. Didn't matter where we were or what property you were on. Drop me off at school and find a pack of kids bullying someone? She'd yell at you to knock it off and get your asses inside before she called your mother. Running around the neighborhood acting all crazy-like? She'd scream at you to get out of the damned street before you got hit by a car.
I really, really feel like we could just use a collective National Mom (tm) who is sick of everyone's shit and prepared to give anyone within earshot a piece of her mind.
Horimiya is an absolute adorable marshmallow of a show. Good on you for stepping outside of your usual sphere.
This is where I frantically tell to anyone who listens that even though 95% of all things are shit, that 5% still exists for anime, and if anyone needs a starting point, let me know.
Giant Dolly Parton, Queen of the Universe meme now out of the way, double-posting to say....
I have not read the Shadow & Bone novels and was not familiar with the Grishaverse when I started watching the show. That said, I did thoroughly enjoy it, even without any understanding of the world it was set in beyong my own understanding of actual history and catching the influences on each of the fictional cultures presented. Would I have understood more if I'd read the books? Definitely, but then I also would've walked into the show with expectations, so maybe it was actually to me advantage.
I would actually appreciate some solid recommendations, @Solstice. There is some great anime out there, I'm sure, but I definitely grew up in the late 90s/early 00s when it was taking the general nerd world by storm, complete with overzealous fans who insisted that all anime was great and fantastic and must-watch and and and purely based on the fact that it was anime, without any regard for whether or not it was actually good. That put me off it for some time (with the exception of Miyazaki, who is beautiful and charming and I adore everything he does) as those sorts of fanbases often do.
I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch more than a few episodes of Dr. Who precisely because of overzealous Whovians I know, as I didn't quite understand what was happening in the ones I tried and I absolutely did not want to deal with their reactions if I asked.
Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed Shadow and Bone, BUT...
I started a rewatch of The Nanny and I am genuinely surprised at how well it holds up. Also, Fran Fine is officially now my style icon, big hair and all.
@crawfish said in Crafting Thread Part ?:
@aria I made her a golden tabby with dark points.
Eta and black eyes.
Yeah, her description of black hair and black eyes really does not lend itself to cat paintings.
@crawfish said in Crafting Thread Part ?:
Symonesse and her proteges: Mia, Raymesin, and Ripley.
Symonesse is halo'd in gold paint but the scanner doesn't pick it up well.
ETA: it's looks bomb asf in person.
Someone commissioned a Mia?!?!
@greenflashlight said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I don’t think anyone was being very serious about this being an actual goal.
Recognized and agreed, but it feels like the kind of joke that only gets made by people who believe they would never be subject to it. I don't know how Aria feels, but that can get under my skin.
I'm not, like, offended or anything. Not even close. I totally get where that mindset comes from and occasionally mutter things not entirely dissimilar under my breath as vehement reactions to things (usually sexual violence and/or child abuse).
More of a "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey guys, maybe let's not say things accidentally in support of policies enacted by actual literal Nazis and I don't mean that in the Godwin's law kinda way."
@ortallus said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
I got a home TENS unit and it's a dream. Cost me all of 35 bucks, and it's like a massager on demand. I f'n love it.
I had to look up what that was and then I did and went "THE BUZZY ELECTRO-THING THE CHIRO PUTS ON MY BACK" and got very excited. I didn't know they were available for home use, she said while stretching out the back muscle that's been fucked up from a car accident for twenty years.
That's awesome! Enjoy.
Guys. Guys. I really super hate to be the party pooper here, especially as the resident "angry feminist" who thinks vasectomies should be far more common place, that men should take ownership of their own birth control as well women, that pregnancy shouldn't be a "consequence" that happens to "sluts", etc. etc., but....
This is how you end up with state-backed eugenics programs.
And no, I don't just mean in countries we don't like. I mean, like..... Indian Health Services were still sterilizing women who came in for regular services in 1976. That may seem like a long time ago, but for context? That was the year my parents met. The state of Oregon was still enforcing sterilization as part of 'social protection' in 1983. Think that seems like a long time ago? Several of us were born that year, or right around there. The state of Washington still has mandatory sterilization laws on the books.
And that does not include horror stories coming out of ICE detention centers as recently as last year or the pretty horrific "Ashley Treatment" being conducted on a disabled girl in 2007 that included a hysterectomy and fusing her growth plates together so she'd be easier to take care of and the 2010 debate within the medical community of whether or not they should do that to more disabled people.
While I understand that y'all are definitely trying to come from a good place, at the very least this should be moved to the Politics board if you're going to keep talking about it, but more than that, I'd strongly suggest giving some reconsideration to supporting government enforced medical procedures complete with fitness tests for 'the improvement of society' and what that sounds like.
Like, for real for real. It ain't shiny and good, lovelies.
@greenflashlight said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@too-old-for-this said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@ganymede That's what I was saying. I wasn't advocating tube-tying over vasectomies, just showcasing how much easier it is for men to get it than women, and yet men will scream bloody murder at the idea of having it done like it will end their lives for forever.
I've heard things on TV that make it sound like men consider their virility a defining aspect of their personality.
I had a friend once come to be pretty much just flat-out distraught because he was getting married and his wife didn't want to take his name.
His wife who, I should note, has a graduate degree and a semi-recognizable name as a professional artist.
Apparently, he felt that his family name was "the only thing he could really give her" and definitely did not appreciate my opinion that if the only thing he was offering his future wife as a part of their marriage was his last name (and not, y'know, things like love, understanding, emotional support, companionship, patience, divisions of household labor, shared financial security, an equitable share in raising their future children, and generally just a life together), that he was gonna make a real shit husband.
I was not invited to that wedding and I have zero regrets.
TL;DR - Dudes get weird about a whole lot of shit there's no need to get weird about because patriarchy tells them to and patriarchy is toxic and bad for everyone.
<just gonna leave this here>
