They hate the site and yet they still decided to turnip?

I’ll be honest, I know that the Epstein thing was/is supposed to be the unifying matter that Republicans and Democrats all agree on, but outside of online discourse, I haven’t heard any MAGA discussion of the topic in weeks (or longer).

Maybe I’m just in an anomalous social circle, but from my perspective, it seems like there’s a vocal minority of MAGA online who make a ruckus about this, when in person, they just don’t give a crap.

So, I hate to think it, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter what excuse Republican leaders give or what story they weave. I’m guessing they could literally just release mountains of evidence and fully admit that Trump did it, intentionally, and he enjoyed it immensely, and his popularity with MAGA would probably only drop a couple of percentage points (and that’s if it didn’t actually go up for him “telling it like it is”).

I ordered a blueberry bagel, and I very specifically wanted only the one blueberry, not the dozens of others that were also baked in. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, I’m afraid I must deduct one star for this miscalculation.

You fuckers joke, but this is totally not accurate. If your employer is large enough and you’ve got money to hire a lawyer if/when things go wrong, there’s a legally mandated program referred to as FMLA in the USA that gives you the right to 12 whole fucking unpaid weeks of time away from your job if the company that your employer contracts out to handle these things approves of your request and your medical providers properly fill out all the paperwork necessary. So suck it Europe. And suck it Asia. And suck it Africa. And suck it all the other continents that don’t have FMLA.

Based on my experience, “those people” actually believe(d) that the US government is literally paying every person south of the border vast sums of money to come live here. If I had a dollar for every variation of “if you’re broke, travel to Mexico and cross the border back into the USA, they’ll give you a free debit card” I’d literally be able to afford to fly to Mexico, cross back over into the USA, and then be disappointed that nobody’s getting those magical debit cards conservatives are convinced are being handed out like candy. And I’m brown enough I’m sure I could be confused as being “Mexican”.

I just lean into that part of my boomerism. No, for any SANE person reading this, I am not a member of the baby boomer generation, which is the original meaning of that word. I just happen to be older than 33, so to 77.8% of the current internet, I’m basically ancient.

Sometimes when people are experiencing loss or feeling emotionally fragile, what they really need is a whimsical story from a time in my personal history where everything was simply just better overall like in ancient history.

When I was growing up, we literally did not even have a computer to tell us what to think. We had a Britney Spears and colorful Asian ninjas to teach us right from wrong. Our phones didn’t have “data” and we got charged ten cents a message to send somebody a text, so we used our words wisely, because they also put a limit on how many letters qualified as a text. None of these smiley faces and penis-looking vegetables bullshit either.

One time I got locked inside a tanning booth run inside the gas station in Westerville Plaza. I guess all the employees went home and it was so far out, I could not get signal on my Nokia. Ended up typing up a message and then I threw my damned phone out the door the instant I pressed send, somehow my best friend Malika got my message about an hour later the sheriffs showed up. I was burned to a crisp and smelled like a fried bologna sandwich but I survived thanks to the technology of the day. So really, we don’t need all these Googles and YouTubes and Instagags. Just need sturdy phones that can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Which is how we should all live our lives.

Halloween pumpkin? In THIS economy?

You’re not fooling me OP

I can only speak to personal experience in the USA, but the post covid years have drastically accelerated things in my part of the world. Every “public” service seems to be gimped these days. I could try to write a brief summary of the highlights and it would still be a wall of text. DMV, is fucked. Social security office, is fucked. Post office, is fucked. Court house, is fucked. School system, it’s fucked. It’s all fucked. What are we even paying taxes for and why do they seem to be going up?

The worst part is, this whole charade has bled over into the private sector as well. Try to go to the doctor, it’s fucked. Go to the hospital, it’s fucked. Try to buy groceries, it’s fucked. Go get your car fixed, it’s fucked. It’s all fucked. Why is the cost of everything going up so much when almost everything is getting more and more fucked?

Anyway, I know this sounds pessimistic, and there probably are exceptions of things that are getting better or at least are maintaining. It’s just hard to see this all going anywhere but down, that’s the problem. Almost everybody I know is worried about layoffs at work, but at the same time, we’re all stressed because we’ve got too much on our plates trying to do the job of 2 or 3+ people for pay that certainly does not reflect the effort. Makes you wonder how this doesn’t all fall apart immediately.

And fuck. I’ve skipped over all the details, yet still ended up with a wall of text.

I’ve heard in the latest season the kids finally qualify for social security but now they’re being hunted down by rogue agents at the AARP who are jeopardizing their ability to live on a fixed income.

Honey I’m on a fixed income and I can’t afford to eat lunch even the once. That’s why the good lord invented cigarettes.

We’re all beetles on this blessed day.

It was purely a guess, but I wondered if butterflies and moths rank up there in terms of number of species. Sure enough I checked Wikipedia and apparently it’s the second largest order of insects.

Back in the day when I first discovered Wikipedia Random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random, I was always amazed at how often a species of moth/butterfly or a species of beetle would show up. Like if the feature is truly and genuinely completely randomly showing me a page on Wikipedia, and assuming there’s not even a page for each and every species of these insects, it was still impressively frequent.

Though, I just played with the link for a few seconds as I was typing this up, and I didn’t get one single link to an insect, so maybe they’ve changed how they pull random stuff or maybe the ratios of insect to non-insect articles has changed over the years.

My insurance premiums are closer to $12,000 a year (basically a hop, skip, and a jump from $1,000 a month).

It certainly isn’t the most expensive plan I found, but it was up there. I knew about all the shitty practices by insurance companies, but I tried to do my research to ensure that my prescriptions and doctors were covered, and I hoped that with a plan this expensive, I might be a bit insulated from the worst of it.

Then I had an emergency. Three things that my insurance did not cover really stood out to me.

The ambulance was considered out of network, so I am on the hook for 100% of the cost. You don’t have any choice about which service picks you up.

The doctor was out of network, so I have to pay 100% of his charges. I know he probably approved my treatment or reviewed my test results, whatever, but I never saw him and the only treatment I received came from the nurses.

I was given 2 ibuprofen. They cost me $45. I was given several different and conflicting reasons why, but ultimately, I’m on the hook for that.

If you’re going to name your dog Muffin, you should consider bringing balance to the force and upgrade to Muffins instead.

Muffins =<~~>= Sniffum.

Personally, I’ve been compiling a cache of datacentric interpolations of real-world metrics used to synergistically integrate human intelligence with the intersection of science, technology, mathematics, arts, and philosophy since the moment I was born, and let me tell you, this is what I was born for.

I feel like by answering this I’m feeding into OPs sick and twisted furry fantasy, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

That being said, I’m also feeling lazy and pedantic, so I’m going to say human being.

Watch The Squid Game and take a shot every time someone says something in Korean.

No, it’s because money is green and money is the root of all evil so since plants have roots, plants are also green. Except for all the myriad different species and cultivars that aren’t green at all, they ain’t got no money. They ain’t got no car to take you on a date. Tthey can’t even buy you flowers.

This is a dream job!

I mean, nightmares are dreams, too.

You gave up on Reddit because mods can ban you for random reasons unrelated to your behavior? That’s one of a small set of problems that’s literally much worse and more prevalent on Lemmy.