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Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I switched to standing-only at work about 10 years ago and it's been great, except for a 2-year stretch where the cleaners in the building I worked in would somehow find a free desk chair and push it under my desk every. single. night. So every morning when I got to work there'd be an office chair sitting on my standing mat and I'd have to find somewhere to put it. I tried moving it far away, finding a chairless desk on the other side of the building, but somehow they kept finding me a chair I didn't want and rolling it onto my mat. Eventually I got a little guest stool and would pull that over onto my mat when I left, and that worked as a decoy chair and kept them from adding a chair. Maybe this comic was about them.

  • Nah, flip that around. What's a random crackhead going to do with a stolen car? Vs an already-organized and knowledgeable business like a towing company who wants to add a lucrative side gig. That's who's doing catalytic converter theft, too.

  • Because some scammer told them they could fire people if they did.

  • Let's say it's normal to keep someone on pain meds for 4 to 8 days after surgery. Each day, you assess the patient and check a number of factors to determine when to stop pain meds, like: how much pain do they say they're in? How much do they wince when they walk? How comfortable do they seem? Do they seem distracted when talking to you? Etc. Each of those assessments is subjective, and therefore can be influenced by biases you don't even realize you have. Over a year, maybe that means you stop pain meds on the 5th day, on average, for Black patients, and on the 6th day for white patients. You're not really withholding pain meds from any one patient. Each patient probably doesn't really notice the difference. But over time, that slight difference compounds and adds up to poorer quality of care for one group.

    This is why it's so important to measure things like this subjectively, and look for and fix the reasons they're happening. It's very hard, probably impossible, to fix these issues by just assuming that well-meaning people will be able to be completely unaffected by bias. And sometimes people overcorrect: managers in tech are less likely to give Black employees critical feedback, for example, because they don't want to be racist, and that behavior harms Black employees by not giving them opportunities to correct behavior that's holding them back from advancement. Again, tiny behaviors that compound at scale.

  • It's also implicit bias, though. Health care providers have to make assessments of their patients constantly: does this person need more pain meds? Can we discharge them? Do they need surgery or just physical therapy? And implicit bias (for example the very well-known bias that Black women can 'handle' more physical pain than white women because they're 'tougher') will be one factor in these thousands of constant little decisions. If you looked at any one decision you probably couldn't find fault with it, but they add up over time and if you look at the data you'll find statistical trends. Black women are more commonly recommended to have C-sections than white women, all other factors being equal. That's not because individual doctors hate Black women, but it's because unconscious biases affect their decision making, and because race is considered as a risk factor for certain treatment decisions.

  • People never want to confront how close they are to hardship, so if they hear about someone struggling they want it to be the result of that person's actions, not just that the world is unfair. Just ignore them; they aren't dealing with their own shit as healthily as you are.

  • I've been struggling with this too, but doing ok mostly. Here's what works for me:

    1. Spend time with people who make me feel hope instead of despair. It sounds like you know some entitled assholes; don't spend time with them if they don't improve you.
    2. Focus on local. What is happening right around me? What can I do to make it better? How am I interacting with my immediate environment?
    3. Focus on what is improving. In many, many ways it's better now that it has been at any time in human history. Women have more freedom and power now than they ever have. I can learn anything I want to, find out anything I want to, almost instantly. More people are aware of systemic oppression now than ever before, and more people are willing to resist it than ever before.
    4. Pick what to be mad about. There are too many things to be angry about, so I try to pick the ones that I think are the most worth it. For me, they are: wealth accumulation (we've come so far, and built such a great civilization, and we let a few rich fuckers loot it. It was a mistake! We tricked ourselves into thinking it was a good idea! But we're realizing it's not, and it's fixable) and systemic racism in the US (Black infants in America being twice as likely to die before they reach a year old than white infants is UNACCEPTABLE). Yeah, there's an infinite amount of other shitty stuff, but I'm only one person.
    5. Picking and choosing social media/other news sources that don't send me into a doom spiral. I don't go on Twitter. I don't go on Reddit any more. I don't have Lemmy on my phone (sorry Lemmy, nothing personal, but it's a bad doomscrolling hole for me). I go on Discord and I read blogs I subscribe to.

    I believe that a person can only handle three big things at a time, and everything else needs to take a back seat to those three. You have your business, your family, and your medical debt. Those are your three burdens. When one of them gets light enough, you can take on something else. Gender equality and entitled rich people and identity politics are not your burdens right now. They can take a back burner until other stuff gets better for you.

    Good luck, it's hard.

  • It's regular scrolling but when the longer you do it, the worse you feel, but you still feel compelled to do it, it's called doom scrolling.

  • The first time I joined a gym, they gave me a free orientation where one of the staff asked me what I was planning to do and showed me how to use the gym's equipment to do that stuff. Results come from consistency, and consistency comes from goals, and even a short conversation can help set good goals that are achievable and that can support consistent behavior.

  • But the specialized equipment can be obtained for less than $20 and then you're set for a while! I love sashiko, for all the reasons you listed. I have a pair of project jeans, but now I've mended all the holes in my clothes and need to make more I guess.

  • Fiber arts: popular ones like knitting and crocheting, but I also have a spinning wheel and really enjoy spinning yarn. I used to have a loom, but I didn't really enjoy weaving so I sold it. Lately I've been really in to darning socks and visible mending generally. Fortunately there are tons of fiber arts meetups and online communities so it's easy to find other people who are into any niche area.

  • I also have a Pixel 2 XL! (Because I got it refurbed for $50...) But either way hi phone buddy!

  • Lingo was amazing! My husband and I played through it together; he's better at 3d navigation so he navigated, and I'm better at word games, and we had a blast. We should try some of the custom maps!

  • Maybe the owners care more about running a sustainable company that makes good games than they do about getting a bunch of money.

  • It's a tough role to cast, since the books never describe what Murderbot looks like at all, beyond "has a face" and "has short hair but no body hair" and "some organic parts on arms but not on legs". And Murderbot can pass as human if someone doesn't know what SecUnits look like. No indication of height, build, complexion, features, nothing. So anyone they cast is going to look wrong to a bunch of readers because their mental pictures can vary so widely.

    Mine is somewhere between Gwendolyn Christie and Robocop. But I like Alexander Skarsgard and I'll definitely watch this. He has a good "I am 100% done with everyone's nonsense" expression, which is vital.