In the trash? Just get a dog, and put the dishes back in the cupboard.

The problem here is “abortion” gets conflated with “reproductive health care”. There are all sorts of reasons a woman might require aborting a pregnancy that have nothing to do with birth control.

My daughter had an ectopic pregnancy about 10 years ago. The procedure she underwent would be considered an abortion, even though there was no chance of survival. She was concerned the procedure would affect her ability to become pregnant later. But now I have 2 year old granddaughter that loves popcorn and 3d printed flexi animals and getting bopped in the head with marshmallow toys.

My cousin committed suicide in 2018. A few months later, I had an extremely vivid dream that I found him working in a non-descript factory that didn’t make anything I recognized. We were in the cafeteria, and I couldn’t get him to respond to me. I knew I had to get him out somehow, without alerting the managers. All the doors were locked, big double-wide things with push-bars like you see in schools.

Somehow, I found my way to a maintenance closet up high on a wall. I found out there that management was looking for me, but didn’t know where I was (I had to fly to get to the closet, yes, if I’m aware I can fly in my dreams). In the closet I found a little bit of thermite, in a blister package like you would find in the checkout aisle at a supermarket.

By this time, my cousin was back at his station, doing non-descript factory work, and still not responsive. I grabbed the thermite, found him, and led him to the doors. I poured the thermite into the lock, and tried finding something to ignite it. By this time management knew where I was, and they were coming toward us. I still hadn’t lit the thermite.

And I woke up.

Does he have a Patreon?

So expensive though. But the last time I was there, they just filled the bag with fries instead of using one of those little cardboard boxes. I ended up throwing half a pound of fries away.

Next story:

Company emails were formatted First Initial Last Name @ Companyname . com. I have a common nickname I’m known by. Nobody calls me by my given name, and my nickname had a different first letter. My company email uses my given name. Pretend it’s clastname@company.com.

I start getting phone calls from customers, suppliers, people outside the company, etc. that any email they send to me is getting bounced back. When I ask what address they’re sending to, they’re using an email created using my nickname. Pretend it’s dlastname@company.com. So I tell them it’s wrong, give them the right one, and fix it one caller at a time.

This gets old, and it happens while the IT manager is talking to someone else in the department when it happens again. I walk over to her and ask if it’s possible to have a second email address based on my nickname, because I’m getting a lot of calls about people using that instead of my official address.

“Absolutely not. If I give you a second address, pretty soon everyone is going to want one.”

One of the engineering managers is standing there. He says “I don’t want one.” Another engineer speaks out “I don’t want one either.” IT manager is pissed, but stands her ground. I don’t get another address.

Pretty soon, I get a phonecall from a college intern that was planning to come back for the summer. He says my email address doesn’t work. I explain the issue, and give him the right address.

He says “That’s not what’s on the webpage.”

For some stupid reason, the company webpage had everybody’s email address on it. Except mine was wrong. When IT made the page, they put dlastname@company.com on it. But since that was wrong, all email was returned to sender.

I talked to the IT contractor about it, and he basically said “That’s stupid. It’s a 30 second fix, I’ll take care of it.” And a few minutes later, I had two email addresses and the issue was fixed.

I used to work at a company with a…slightly incompetent…IT department. A couple stories:

We had a problem with the company network crashing, about once a week. It was an ongoing problem for almost a year.

The engineering department used Unix based CAD workstations. The rest of the company used Windows. To run Windows apps, we engineers had a Citrix server that would we would remote into, and run Office apps from there. One day, one of the engineers discovered an admin app that would let users logged into the Citrix machine to send instant messages to any other user. It was both useful, and abused, because the messages weren’t tagged with a sender. You could pretend to be anybody.

One day, an outside IT contractor (the internal IT department was incompetent, so they hired a contractor) discovered a log of all the messages. He came into Engineering, and just told us the log existed, and to be more ‘professional’ when sending messages.

He must have told the IT manager, because next I know, the entire department is called into the VP’s office, interrogated about the IM app, and sent home while they decide what to do. Sent home without pay.

Over the next few days, engineers were called in one-by-one for meetings with HR. Turns out, the IT manager told HR we were using the IM app to purposefully crash the network. Never mind that the contractor told her that wasn’t possible. She was intent on finding a scapegoat.

HR decides to suspend everyone without pay for a week. But nobody is fired because there’s no proof and no “confession”. While everyone is out (I found out later) the network crashes.

Things get back to normal, time passes, and a couple months later, the network just stops crashing. No more problems. It turns out, IT had installed the wrong printer driver for the engineering plotter in another department. This other department only used the plotter about once a week, so they just used the plotter in engineering. It was overwhelming the network whenever it was used. This was fixed quietly, without fanfare. We engineers only found out about it a few years later, after the IT manager left the company.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html

I’ve been meaning to get a bidet, but I need to install a new electrical outlet first.

Bounties.

I might sympathize with them more if they didn’t work just as hard protecting Republican sex-offenders.

Give America all your oil.

Is immolation illegal?

I had this idea a few months ago, and found a thread discussing the same thing from several years ago. Seems like nothing came of it.

I currently use Syncthing to keep a lot of items synced across a few of my devices. It’s completely decentralized and fully encrypted. Instead of synching files, what if it could be used as an instant messenger? No central server to interrupt service. No single point of attack. No more requiring a name or phone number, just exchange a QR code to begin communicating.

I think this would excel at group messaging, especially if some members are out of service occasionally. Reconnect, and all messages get distributed.

There must be something out there that already works like this, but I don’t know of a serverless system.

A lot of people are offput by having to choose a server before creating an account. If that could be automated somehow I think Mastodon would be more popular.

Sounds like PTSD to me. Your fight/flight mode is getting switched randomly to flight. For me it was “freeze”.

It’s canned in a factory that reeks of old cement and lubrication.

Downtown of a small town in the middle of winter, late at night when nobody’s around. Cold enough that the snow squeaks under your feet as you walk, but no wind at all. Just the memory of the smell of sub-zero air makes me think about a destination with warm walls a nice cup of hot tea waiting for me.

We aren’t going to stop being prejudiced against each other until we meet other species to turn our prejudices outward.

To Kill A Mockingbird

And read the book.

Maybe you’re in the wrong communities. There are a lot fewer people here than on Reddit, so you’ll run into the same people more frequently.

I’m not sure what concessions you’re looking for. If someone is being a troll, or just boneheaded, block them for a month or two or forever.