I'm also joining the group coming here from All, I've never heard of this, but just wanted to chime in and say I'm sorry some of you have to DYI your own healthcare because the system is failing you, please be safe and healthy.

Ooh, can I share a sweet story instead, because this made it pop into my head and it's a memory of a wonderful person that I wish everyone could have known?

I used to work at this small business when I was younger, and one of the employees was an older guy in his 80s who had retired and worked a few hours a week just to keep busy. He loved us teens and twenty somethings and we adored and respected him.

As time went on, the assistant manager left and I ended up being promoted to assistant manager. And eventually daylight savings happened and the clock changed. This employee came in for his first shift after the time change and looked half dejected and half embarrassed and he quietly explained to me that he didn't know how to change the time on his watch, that the previous assistant manager had always done it for him, so now he was trying to deal with his watch being an hour off. I happily changed the time for him, and after that I changed it for him every time change. Even after he retired for good he would come in during my shift and give me his watch and I'd set it forward or back the hour so it could be right and he'd be thrilled every time.

I wasn't smart enough to make that choice this time around, but next life being born into a rich family is my number one criteria :)

When I was in my late teens/early twenties I truly thought that in ten years I'd own a home for sure, with some hard work and dedication.

Ten years later, I don't even get to buy groceries every week or eat every day. I've lost 30 pounds in the last year just from skipping so many meals.

I can't wait to see what the next ten years holds.

And if one more person tells me I should make sure to invest for retirement... I can't even feed myself, what you want me to invest? My retirement plan is work until I'm too old/sick/injured and then off myself.

About a month ago I was at the gas station filling up my 24 year old clunker when a homeless guy came up and asked if I would give him enough money for a coffee. I was going to lie and say I didn't have cash on me, but it occurred to me that I'm one bad day from being in his shoes every moment, so I checked the emergency stash I kept in my car and on impulse just gave him the whole pile of it. Idk how much it was, not a ton, but a handful of ones and maybe a $5 or a $10. And yeah, a week ago, that bad day happened. My husband dumped me via text message, and now I'm very, very close to homelessness in the next few weeks or months if I can't find a place to go soon. It's not always drugs, or addiction, or laziness. Sometimes it's making what look like good decisions and just getting fucked over.

When Trump was running for president the first time I always said that the "good" thing about him was that he said what he thought and so you always knew what he was thinking, but the bad thing was that everything he thought was insane and terrifying and full of hatred.

One of the men I've most respected and most trusted in my life told me once (at the time a teenager) that when he was in his 20s, women in their 20s were so hot and seeing a barely clothed young woman was so hot. But he said that now that he was in his 40s, women in his 40s were so hot and whenever he looked at a woman in her 20s all he could think of was that she could be his daughter and that he just felt protective and there was nothing hot or attractive about her.

I'm a woman, but when I was in my teens and early 20s guys in their teens and early 20s seemed so attractive and anyone older was not it. Now that I'm in my early 30s I'm so attracted to men in their 30s and I look at teens and guys in their early 20s and they just seem like babies to me. I actually deal with a lot of young guys with my work and they're all cool people and I love talking to them, but dating them? Ugh, no thank you. They were in elementary school (or younger) when I was graduating high school. So yeah, I think for a lot of people your goalposts move as you move, and that's not a bad thing. I also am curious as to whether I'll someday find 60 or 70 year old men hot, but I've got a long ways to go.

When my cat was a very little kitten he didn't quite realize he wasn't human and would sleep in bed with the humans, tucked in under the blanket on his back with his head on the pillow. If one of us got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night he'd get up and go use the litter box. Our bedroom was down the hallway from the bathroom and the litter box was in the room across the hall from the bathroom so you'd turn one way into the bathroom and he'd turn the other way to the litter box. If he finished first, he'd sit in the hallway and wait until you were done and go back to bed with you, and if you finished first you could hear him frantically trying to clean the litter box as quickly as possible and I'd always stay in the hallway and wait for him to finish so we could complete the ritual together. Gosh I miss when he was a little guy.

When I was an EMT working on the ambulance one of my paramedic partners was this absolute sweetheart of a man. Military vet, looked like a good ole American boy, but actually read studies about how women and minorities are treated differently in healthcare and genuinely recognized and cared that it was a problem and strived to do better. One day we were working and had a paramedic student who was a young guy full of energy and confidence.

We got called out for a woman in her 20s with a cardiac issue. I don't remember if she felt like she had an irregular heart rate or if she felt like her heart was racing, but either way, by the time we arrived on scene everything was back to normal. She reported that she'd been having this problem for a few months, had seen cardiologists and the cardiologists told her something was wrong, it was not anxiety, it was cardiac related, but they couldn't catch it happening so they couldn't diagnose yet but were still in the process of trying. She had even worn a portable heart monitor and had no episodes. She was frustrated that she just couldn't catch it in the act because she just wanted to know what was going on, but she had been told if it happened again to go to the hospital for monitoring.

Our paramedic student sat down with her and began asking her all sweetly oh honey, are you sure you aren't anxious, you sure you're not stressed, how is your mental health? You know anxiety can be weird. As I was about to lose my mind my partner stepped in and took control of the call away from the student and reminded him that an actual cardiologist had already diagnosed her with not anxiety so maybe stop being an asshole.

The most satisfying part was after the call was over. My partner pulled the student aside to give him feedback on how his interaction had been less than cool. As the EMT (Aka low man on the totem) it was most definitely not my place to step in, but as a woman I couldn't help myself. I cut my partner off and launched into an absolute tirade about how hard it is to be taken seriously by medical professionals as a woman and how I personally have experienced it and how bullshit it was for him to talk down to her in any situation let alone when she'd already said a doctor told her it wasn't anxiety. I ranted him into the ground and my angel of a paramedic just sat there quietly with a smile on his face and let me go off on him.

I'm convinced that Trump could murder someone live on camera and then claim it wasn't him, a shapeshifter did it, and get away with it and still have a voter base defending him.

Lemmy for me is all Linux, politics, boobs, anime and sports. I'm a straight woman who hates sports and anime, has a surface interest in Linux but doesn't wish to debate about it, and likes to be knowledgeable about both world and US politics but hates the anger. I'm really debating if Lemmy is for me, but I won't go back to reddit and I need someplace to browse when the insomnia strikes.

The sad thing is, my brother has a name like "Benjamin". My mother is a very mentally ill individual and is extremely militant about her children's names "I chose your names and you will go by exactly what I named you!" and refused to let him go by "Ben" or let us call him "Ben". Except, outside of the house he always went by Ben, she just didn't know it. I always called him Ben when we weren't home, because it's what he wanted to be called. So kids like this would have to bring a form home and get their ass kicked by mom for going by a name they aren't supposed to? Fuck that.