Posts made by surreality

@wahoo Take a look in the mirror, please. Seriously. You talk about how it's demeaning to accept certain kinds of help? That's condescending as fuck. Sorry, but no. You're spitting on good actions by good actors and for all your own good intentions, that's insulting as fuck.

No one here is trying to micromanage someone's food and sneer down at their food choices; they are trying to help in the way someone specifically describes needing help, and you are nit-picking at the helper for not doing it in your preferred manner.

Seriously. This is a 'get the fuck over yourself' moment, goddamn.

People taking shitty attitudes like this turn more people off to giving than any panhandler ever fucking did.

@Macha I woke up when they were taking my tonsils out, apparently, and tried to chat them up with tools down my throat.

I am pretty glad I remember absolutely none of this.

...while this thread is depressing enough to require some levity, can it please be kept on the rails, y'all?

@wahoo said in RL Anger:

@Alamias said in RL Anger:

@insomniac7809 Except according to the story the guys specifically said ' few dollars he could have to get something to eat.'

It's probably pretty demeaning to have someone over you shoulder while you decide what to get.

It's also pretty fucking demeaning to have someone apparently in the very comfortable position to give charitably to all comers condescend to you when you are not in the position to give to anyone, but still do, just with some discernment attached re: 'this request seems credible, this request seems sketchy'.

To be fair, if someone specifically claims they are starving and need the money to buy food, then turn down food being bought for them, I'm not going to think they intended to buy food in the first place.

Whether that's cover for some other totally reasonable need or not isn't going to matter at that point.

@Alamias This. I keep two packs of some travel basics (little floss packs, mini-toothbrush, wet naps, band-aids, small packs of tylenol/advil, tissues, safety pins, etc.) in baggies in my purse.

I pretty much never have money, but I will happily hand over the spare one of these, and carry the extra one more or less for that purpose. It is amazing how surprised and grateful folks have been for some basic things that seems SO simple to most of us. (Small packs of them are stupidly overpriced and when it's tylenol/that bandaid or eating? Yeah, eating is gonna have to win, but we need these things as people.)

@Taika I sooooooo wish that was all we had to do.

@wahoo said in RL Anger:

I'm willing to concede that Square is a weird thing to ask a stranger to use. I don't think that was the heart of this whole argument though.

For me, it is... but that's specifically because I have been through the wringer of what it takes to get one.

Most folks have no idea how it goes. They're so pervasive these days, it could seem like 'oh, anybody can just get one of those just like getting a paypal account' to somebody who hasn't been through it.

@wahoo I think people -- anyone, literally -- should use whatever tech they can.

This specific piece of tech, however, comes with an indication of a certain level of means and access to stable forms of untouched money/etc. and that's specifically noteworthy.

There may be similar 'questionable' variants available out there that are indistinguishable to the casual observer or are less regulated, and this would be a security concern for me personally.

@mietze ^ ALL OF THIS.

In our case, our bank changed hands. We still each have a personal bank account, but we need to open a business one for a square, requiring a minimum balance of like $500 we can never touch and similar. (Most are way higher, too.) Yeah, we just don't have $500 to park somewhere forever and pretend it doesn't exist.

There are also non-trivial monthly fees.

@wahoo If you were to make the case that keeping those hoops in place prevents people from pulling themselves out of debt in the first place, I'd be on board with that. This is also how people elevate themselves out of debt or poverty.

That said, they're there. Having a square is, as it stands, a pretty clear indication of not being in major debt or poverty, unless -- as we do -- it's borrowed. Which it very well may be! Many folks only use theirs intermittently like my mother does, so lending it may be a thing; I'm not going to assume otherwise automatically.

I am going to have some suspicion, regardless. There are people out there pulling cons, but you're right that most folks just don't carry cash these days, either, so if someone can do it, it's a good idea.

With my own experience re: 'can do it'-- minimum balances we can't maintain, having any medical debt disqualifying you, monthly fees, etc. -- I would still side-eye this intensely. (We also still use our 6, not an 11.)

You can absolutely still be unable to afford a place to live while meeting these requirements, especially in the more expensive parts of the world, so that'd be a factor, too. That said, someone who is a street performer or similar? Not even a blink. Hell, y'all please do this.

Art show weekend, complete.

Physically, the setup/breakdown is murder. We have to find a better way, and I keep looking for one. Seems like that's going to have to be a higher priority this year. We're leaps and bounds better than how things were before the business got handed off to me to manage, but there's a ways to go yet.

The folks in our room were all awesome, so even though there were few people attending, we kept ourselves entertained.

Still... I am totally out of my ability to people for a day or two.

Dear lottery fairies: please? Because not being able to shop at these things is also murder. (Three cheers for barter, though.)

I know the hoops I would have to jump through to get a square. We have to use my mother's for our business. We still have medical debt/etc. and while that persists we don't qualify, and I fully understand why that's the case even if it bites me in the ass.

That person may be borrowing someone else's also, so I'm not going to jump to conclusions here.

If not? Their bank account and financials are in better standing than ours, which we've been working steadily for years to fix at this point so we can do this for our business.

Then don't let them use it. No one should use something they know doesn't work for them.

I wouldn't allow the hospital to use hydromorphone/Dilaudid for me, despite it being 'so much stronger' than what it's emulating (morphine), due to the side effects, and their repeated insistence I should be using it instead.

I was their 'very nice cooperative patient'. They'd remarked on this multiple times. (This is probably because it was a ward full of 'what is even happening to this person' or people actively dying.) The day to day staff loved the hell out of me for this and was incredibly nice.

I warned them that on the Dilaudid, they'd have to haul me out from under the bed due to it never getting dark enough in the room to not have a stabbing perpetual light-sensitivity headache, and that anyone trying to take blood would probably end up bleeding more than me as I went quasi-feral. As I'd just been taking it before the ER to handle what we'd thought was a back injury... well, my husband just nodded along with my description of the effects, since he'd spent three days dealing with me living in a blanket cave and shrieking like a banshee at him when he turned on the lights in the bedroom's bathroom to take a shower in the morning, and threatening all manner of brutal tortures to him if he even tried to suggest anything like food.

Round two of that was really not on our agenda.

Medication sensitivities are real and not remotely fun. If you have one, pay attention to it, and insist on what works for you personally.

As a layperson, you're not going to understand another person's reaction to it if you don't have it yourself in anything but the abstract; you're just going to confuse yourself if you think they're experiencing what you do.

I don't get that at all. There was a mild flare of 'oof' like that when they were injecting it into a picc line, but that lasted five seconds tops, and we are talking about something that drops about an inch or so from my heart.

I just fall asleep, or lay there zen as can be.

@Darren Gods, this. Codeine and its variants always... nngh. Synthetics? Headache city on top of that.

Plain morphine? Yeah, that works without angst.

Can vouch for the furry one being heaven. See also: amusing to watch cats attempt to understand why their momma human now magically grows fur in her sleep.

ETA: Also slippery enough to double as a cat slide. Hop -> flop -> sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide -> thump may never stop being funny.

Dear motherfucker:

We are paying you enough money to buy a brand new luxury car to fix just this particular row of teeth, aspects of which you seem to be farming the fuck out to the lowest bidder, leading to predictable problems you have the dazzling gall to be surprised by.

I know you have your favorite scapegoats for everything, but unfortunately for you, I am able to both use google and read, so I am now aware of when you're trying to skate, dodge, or bullshit me.

I am also aware that you've been doing one or more of the following: not listening to information you've been told repeatedly, did not actually read the thing you've been citing or only skimmed for extremes, or are looking for a way to not make this just something you have to fix when it inevitably happens.

This is not good.

As a result, I feel compelled to say: YOU ARE A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WE ARE PAYING AN OBSCENE AMOUNT OF MONEY WE DON'T HAVE, DO NOT FUCKING SKIM THE RESEARCH, OR AT LEAST DON'T BE SO OBVIOUS ABOUT IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Sincerely,
-Owface McLiterate

@Coin Most places I've seen have linked it, as you quoted.

There are systems out there where positions and stats are linked in some form. That's all. Those are going to involve an exception to the universal statement. I don't see any drama there or reason for you to be making it.