Why are mental health patients strip searched in mental hospitals here in the USA?
I've been through a few hurricanes and a couple tornados. I could see where some folks (like the landed gentry or people with families) might be afraid of them and the damage they can wreak, but personally I find them exhilarating.
Stepping out into 70 mile an hour winds and 3 feet of rain or watching a tornado rip apart buildings is humbling. No matter how strong we build our walls, the raw power of nature can still tear them down.
Honey, I haven't worked in two years because of mental illness and I haven't had insurance in three. I'm trans and live in Texas as well so Trump's election feels a lot like a death sentence and I've already lost most of my old friends and family to bigotry. Just since the election I have had four strangers clock me and yell slurs, one guy even followed me 40 miles and finally gave up when I stopped at the police station near where I am staying. I am so afraid that I get physically sick whenever I leave the house. If I didn't have family who could take me in and support me while I try to put my life back together I would be homeless, or more likely dead.
You're right, I don't live in fear of losing those things because I have already lost them. From the other side of those fears, you can lose everything and life still goes on, I promise.
Sounds like the local wildlife might have been dining on exotic fare.
Are you familiar with Project Semicolon? It's an anti-suicide thing and they use the semicolon because it is unnecessary and using it is a choice by the author that there sentence could end, but they have chosen to continue. Your top level comment has very similar vibes to some of the things that the group advocates.
The founder did eventually decide to end their story and they kind of faded out, but the message is a good one.
I agree with you about the power accepting your own mortality grants. All human stories end in death, pretending there is any other option is delusional.
If it helps, humans are really really really really really bad at predicting the future. We don't know what's going to happen until it does and even then knowing how that changes what comes after is still unknowable.
For example many of the promises Agent Orange made on the campaign trail would have disastrous consequences for everyone, which might be enough to shift the balance back by the midterms.
Look, I am as heartbroken as anyone that the two crazies that tried, missed (or never got a shot off). But that's something else. If you're not trolling, you should probably talk to a mental health professional about those feelings.
Touching grass. It's important to remember that the entire world isn't online and the world isn't as dire as all of us chronically online doomers would have you believe. Things are chaotic-shift-in-the-status-quo bad, not civilization-ending bad.
The wheel turns, right now it's in a muddy rut and the people on the bottom (sexually active women, people of colors, and the queer community) are drowning, but all the little people on the outer edge are eventually in the dirt. Fuck the world, fuck the country, the people you have personal relationships with are the only thing that matters because all we have is each other.
Personally I have been trying to be more proactive, which has helped me have a sense of agency amidst the chaos. Everything I own fits in my car in case I need to leave quickly because of a climate disaster or the legalization of hunting trans people. I haven't bought a new thing (used, diy, or do without only) since lockdown because it's significantly cheaper and makes me feel like I'm doing my part to fight final form capitalism. I've also been exploring alternate ways to support myself and live that are more sustainable.
Hunter S. Thompson carried a revolver on him for most of his adult life for that exact reason.
... He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks ...
— Some friend of Thompson's after his death whose name I forget and am too lazy to look up (I have the quote unattributed in my notes on Thompson). But it's quoted on Thompson's Wikipedia if you're not as lazy, lol.
This is more to do with trans erasure and an attempt to denormalize transness. It's limited to schools because Republicans have been slowly destroying the education system in the US for decades in an effort to only allow christian mythology to be taught and any subjects that might question that or offer an alternative ethos eliminated.
Make no mistake, anti-trans legislation is not to protect cis people, it is to drive us (trans people) back in the closet and out of public life. It's clearly spelled out almost exactly like that in the Project 2025 document.
It also is the easiest in point for this sort of activism because the democrats have entirely abandoned trans people and many of them are also (quietly) transphobic. Just look at how many people blamed Trump's win on wokeness and identity politics and the entire "lgb without the t" movement.
So, no there isn't any evidence (at least that I've seen) for trans people being predatory in bathrooms. I have seen lots of stories about trans and "trans-looking" cis women being assaulted, threatened, and harassed in bathrooms. In all fairness though trans people are about 1% of the US population (~3.3m individuals) so statistically it's happened at least once, probably.
This has nothing to do with protecting kids but I wanted to add a few more bible verses that Christians also should contemplate more often.
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
Matthew 7:15-20, that is red text (a typographical feature of some bibles, mostly the king james version, where direct quotes from Jesus are set in red text)
"If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet."
Matthew 10:14, That's also red text.
"If possible, as far as it depends on you, be peaceable with all men."
Romans 12:18
"But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?"
1 John 3:17, a small caveat to this one: brother may refer to other Christians (which is how some versions translate it) but Jesus used brother and sister to refer to all people, and since John was his bestie, it seems like the more fitting interpretation.
This is the most accurate map of the united states ever created.
Also no one in America takes people from States with a direction in the name (Like South Dakota, or Northern California) seriously. Get your own name or get lost.
Oh darling, if I had real money, I would use it to sow chaos and undermine the world's financial markets.
But most of all, if I have to live in this bullsh!t cyberpunk reality, we might as well have shadowrunners/Edgerunners/mercs. So I'd recruit as many paramilitary mercenaries as I could find and set them on the task of sabotaging critical corporate infrastructure, kidnapping any oligarchs we could find vulnerabilities for, and doing brazen, overt terrorism kind of stuff.
The idea being if I can cause enough chaos perhaps the people of the world might finally have enough and force change for the ultra wealthy.
We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.
As a trans person I really appreciate the existential dread and emotional violence of the quality reporting at the Onion. It's a shame they can't solely cover how awful and despicable we all are.
Just the other day I was at an elementary library passing out copies of Fucking Trans Women to any male presenting children wearing jerseys or religious symbols. After words I went to a women's restroom to find victims to groom and assault.
Someone needs to hold us accountable and I am grateful the Onion has taken up the mantle.
It was called NationState. Basically you had your own little country to manage
SCP-50091 is boyardee class anomaly located in [data expunged]. The object is a 300cm hole in the ground of [data expunged] and contains a seeming endless amount of [redacted] soup.
Pfft, everyone knows the cool kids use Lynx.
We have fun collective names. A group of white men is called a podcast, for example.
Omg, that stupid game that was released with the book ate like six months of my life.
I mean to be fair if you were involuntarily hospitalized, you actually were a prisoner.