2016 and the yeas since, but especially the US presidential election that just happened, have absolutely destroyed my faith in the people of my country.

Always figured the govt was fucked, but that the average Joe had a shred of good in him. After the bullshit of the 2016 election, the 4 disastrous years after, and the 4 years following of nonstop Nazi rhetoric from Trump… 74 million of my neighbors decided he’s the guy who represents them; and another 90 million or so decided not to lift a fucking finger to intervene.

No. Good people are a minority. I’m surrounded by hateful bigots who will go as far impairing their own quality of life if it means they can can harm others by doing so. This country and the majority of its inhabitants are evil. We deserve what’s coming.

I have some vague memories from around middle school, but pretty much nothing prior to that.

Highschool and later are locked in, but before that goes from hazy to brick wall real quick.

I’m impressed with the amount of people who can actually remember what they were like as a 10 year old. I’ve got some pictures n’ shit of myself from back then, but honestly that might as well be a completely different person, and I can’t tell you jack about what’s going through their head.

I was an active duty surgical tech in the US military; promoted fairly quickly and ranked up to Staff Sergeant at about 3 years. Shortly after taking that rank, we had a perfect storm of deployments, a retirement, a medical separation, etc that left me as the highest ranking enlisted in the surgery unit, which made me (a still-kinda-newby-surgical-tech) taking the responsibilities of basically a charge nurse. Chief among these was attending morning morning briefs with the top dogs of the hospital (high ranking officers) and giving report. Fortunately I knew where to access the OR’s metrics, so my report was always just a summary of our case load, average times, etc.

This lasted only about a week until we got a new Master Sergeant and Tech Sergeant. Apparently I got some pretty high praise from those top dogs for stepping up (not like I had a choice) and doing a decent job – but that was PURE luck lol. I only did well because things went relatively smoothly on their own. If there was an emergency or something I would have had no fucking clue what to do; and all the junior enlisted seemed to just know that I wouldn’t have been able to do shit for them during that time, so everyone kept the smaller fires to themselves during that time.

It was a weird time.

They’re complicit.

…if we were made for these times, whoever made us is evil.

This is a weird one, but grocery stores for cultures other than my own.

For one, there’s SO MUCH cool shit and delicious foods I never even knew existed. I think the biggest factor though is it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to actually traveling. Can’t afford the real thing.

While I also love their restaurants and cultural events, there’s something about being served or attempting to showcase major cultural highlights in some event that kills the authenticity of the experience.

In their grocery stores, I’m surrounded by that same culture, but none of it’s about me: the other shoppers don’t give a fuck about me, the staff only interact at the checkout… and other than that it’s just me and a can of… some kind of sauce? I can’t read it… but some elderly Asian woman just grabbed two of them and the rest of her cart is filled with what will undeniably become an amazing meal… fuck it, I’ll give it shot!

The drinks and junk food too are also usually a safe option to find something both very different from what I’m used to and very tasty.

Definitely spent more than a few bucks on things that weren’t… eh… compatible with my palette, but finding out is part of the experience.

Idk. Weird thing to get excited about, but it’s a good time.

Lots of talk about which search engine to use; surprisingly little talk about extensions.

Block or Highlight Search Engine Results is my personal recommendation. Whichever SE you use, when you see a result that’s AI slop or a garbage website like Forbes, just add bullshit.com to the filter, set to hide, and you’ll never see that trash in a search result ever again.

Be diligent about it for a good week or so, and your search result quality will absolutely explode, whether your using Google, DDG, or several others.

Just wanted to follow up - did the presentation a few days ago. Went great, and I got the reaction I was hoping for from the audience. I saw some combination of shock, anger, horror, and most importantly compassion on just about every face infront of me (class of about 70 people).

Wrapped it up by hitting them with a quick spiel on “If you think this needs to change - or stay as is - that’s up to you: submit your answer into the ballot box on November 5th.”

No idea if I spurred any into action any who weren’t already planning on voting, but there was definitely some energy in the room. That went about as well as I could have hoped!

Thanks for the assist!

Months ago a headline popped up with ‘spanked’ instead. I’m a little disappointed it didn’t take off.

/shrug. No insight on the effectiveness of the design; that’s just what’s in use now.

This reeks of sea lioning.

Putin and everyone fueling his dumbass war can go suck a dick and choke to death on it.

Lol wut. Surgeons bitch when they’re wearing so much as a headlamp. A bulky-ass VR headset will never be a thing in the operating room beyond the odd techy doctor who’s in a VR infatuation phase.

The Davinci surgical robot has a VR headset kinda built into it so surgeons can see in 3D when they’re doing robotic assisted surgeries, but that’s not something they wear : it’s a little station they sit at and just lean forward into, no straps or weight or anything.

Just play WoW on a private server and stop supporting Blizzard’s anti-user business model.

We’re ultimately ‘just a tech’. We make enough to pay the bills, but not enough to make things like the check engine light not-terrifying.

It’s a good foot-in-the-door job, especially if your path of entry is like mine (enlisted USAF, they just told me “You’re going to be a surgical tech!” and I was like “Cool! …what the fuck is a surgical tech?” and they covered all my training for it).

I generally discourage people from actually paying to go through a surgical tech school, cuz if you can afford that, then you can afford to go to nursing school, and nurses make about twice what we do.

Super cool experience, but not a good long-term career choice.

Hands themselves stay clean, but through my gloves/gown, I’m regularly elbow-deep into blood, guts, and poop.

Surgical technologist. It gets pretty nasty.

Pay is kinda shit though, so I’m trying to switch over to nursing.

That’s what I’m getting at - it would. Maybe not officially, but the infighting would be intense.

Stupid doctors. Starting in the medical field, I had this notion that a doctor is this kind of universally intelligent, best-of-humanity kind of person.

Some of them are.

But some of them are absolute dumbasses who happen to have a photographic memory that carried them through med school… Like, full blown trumpanzee, falls for conspiracy theory bullshit, superstitious nutjob, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed idiot.

It shouldn’t be possible. No one who makes it through med school should be mentally capable of instantly plummeting to the rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study (which fortunately most of those types deliver at least passable quality of care).

Veteran here. Speculation - take it for what’s it’s worth (not shit). There’s a weird notion that the military is always just going to default to red, and while the total count definitely does lean red (cuz, y’know… most of us are fuckin dumbasses who vote against out own interests…) there IS a split… maybe… idk, 60-40? Point is there’s a lot more blue in the military than we’re typically painted as.

So, civil war. First off, not gonna happen cuz we don’t have the spine for it. We’ll just continue to bitch at eachother from the comfort of our couches; and while that bitching will probably get louder and we’ll probably see some increase in domestic terrorism, it will not get to the point of actual war. But if we did… the military isn’t going to just pick a side; it’ll turn into the world’s largest shitshow of infighting. Then once we’ve sufficiently hamstrung ourselves, we’re going to get our asses handed to us by the enemies across the globe we’ve been collecting like fucking pokemon via our shitty foreign policy.

Tldr, the sides of our civil war are basically two yipping lapdogs that will bark louder and louder at eachother until we eventually prompt our pissed off neighbor to come over with a shotgun. The actual war that happens will kill both dogs well before we get to the point of a civil war.

I’ll take all the ammo I can get. I feel like the focus is usually on the fetus, so I’m trying to move the spotlight more onto the (absolutely horrific) maternal impact… but tbh most of the folks voting against abortion rights don’t actually give a fuck about the mother, so some focus on ‘pro life actually kills more babies!!’ would probably be a more effective attention grabber for the voters who actually need to be swayed.