Without the evolutionary pressure to maintain high melanin levels in the skin, and possibly also from interbreeding with Neanderthaal, European people's got paler.

Someone mutated to have eyes that were paler and more sensitive to light, which was useful during the longer nights further north, and that mutation spread.

So it's a bit of both.

Itinerant Summer Camp Counselor on Indian Reservations

Do you know what the poorest county in the US is? Neither do I, but at the time, it was Todd County, SD, where the Pine Ridge Reservation meets the Rosebud Reservation. This is raw desert. This is nobody's ancestral lands because nobody would or could live here long-term. This is just where a big section of the Lakota people got shoved.

We would go into a town, and set up our weeklong free program for the local kids. We stayed with locals, or slept on the floor of churches in sleeping bags. We had to bring in all of our own supplies and most of our own food, partly because there was nowhere to buy anything but also because if we ate what the locals had to serve us we got malnourished and depressed –we learned this the hard way, and almost crashed the program two weeks in from burnout, we were so miserable. We would do our best to give the kids some fun, some education, and a good lunch but ultimately they just wandered in and out as they would and other than enforcing "no fighting" in the program areas we were powerless to do anything more.

I live on the West Side of Chicago now, a block away from a permanent homeless camp. I've been homeless myself, briefly, before I got my life turned around. I'm no stranger to urban poverty. But as bad as it is, I would take it over rural poverty any day. At least in the city you can get up and walk away. Resources are underfunded but they're there. Out in the desert, on the rez... all you have is the community, and the community is broke.

He touched a waitress in a way she didn't want to be touched.

big oof

Thanks, Satan's Maggoty Cumfart, I know I can always count on you.

Yes it's a slur. Slurs work like this: "You are like {minority group} and {minority group} is bad so you are bad." It's an insult to the individual addressed and an entire group of people at the same time.

It's income rather than assets, so if you fall into debt due to medical issues or whatever you can declare bankruptcy and still have your pension.

Angels with Dirty Souls

Image my disappointment upon becoming old enough to rent R-rated movies and finding out the only one I wanted was fictional.

Honestly? Forty years of practice, anxiety spikes, external motivations positive and negative, fugue states... and I'm still barely getting by. I just paid $600 of late fees because I forgot to file my state income tax ten years ago. I'm sure I did them when I did my federal, I just... never sent it in? I guess???

pulchritudinous

such an ugly word, yet it means "beautiful"

Set up monthly donations to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, volunteer as a PP escort, open up my (Illinois) home to women and families who need to travel for reproductive healthcare.

This isn't off the top of my head, my spouse and I discussed it years ago, before the previous election.

You should still be able to apply for refugee, asylum, permanent residency, or citizenship in other places. Whether or not that's realustica and feasible is another issue, but legally, you're fine: Your citizenship status at home won't affect your ability to seek a new home.