Some people are genuinely apathetic or feel like it doesn’t directly impact their life, but a lot of people fall for the propaganda of “both sides are the same” and that it makes no difference either way, and a lot of people are intentionally disenfranchised by various voter suppression efforts by Republicans. Then there’s the electoral college nonsense which leaves the populace of 43 states with essentially no say in who the president is, leading some to wonder why they should bother, not being mindful that their vote may carry weight for the federal legislature and state/local elections. And many people are just too busy surviving to worry about anything else.

For my part, voting straight Democrat in a heavily Republican-leaning state, my vote literally means nothing at all because my state will inevitably give all of its electoral college votes to Trump, and will elect nothing but Republicans to the federal legislature and for almost all state/local offices. But I voted on the first day of early voting, and I will vote in every election, because we have to show support for change if we ever want there to be change. There are enough left-leaning people in my state for it to be a swing state (hell, we had a Democrat for governor 2003-2011, and he was popular), but so many see their votes as meaningless simply because their fellow left-leaners also aren’t voting…

They are too busy with the laptop to have much attention left for patients.

I’m a nurse practitioner, and can confirm this: I spend at least half of my time tapping away at the computer, checking boxes, and completing often-redundant forms for insurance and regulatory compliance and whatnot. It’s really frustrating, and there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Yes, but to clarify: the time constraints are imposed by for-profit healthcare businesses trying to optimize billable time because insurance will only reimburse for so much time, rather than being imposed by the insurance companies directly. (It’s generally not quite as silly in the non-profit sector.) I work in healthcare in the US: we all hate how it works. The system sucks and it interferes with the quality of care that can be provided, leaving patients worse off just so that greedy can be fed. It’s just asinine that anyone who has no medical knowledge/training is making decisions about how patient care can be implemented, especially where there’s a profit motive involved. We really need to pivot to single-payer or national healthcare system, and abolish for-profit ownership of hospitals.

Not getting to have “schooling”. I was “homeschooled”, in that my parents kept all 8 of us kids at home and didn’t bother to provide much in the way of education beyond reading and basic math. The lack of real education I was able to overcome, but the gross lack of any socialization has left me struggling with poor social competency to this day.

If she says she’s on birth control but you haven’t seen it, dont believe her. If she pressures you not to use a condom, don’t consent.

Don’t marry someone before you’ve known them well for a few years. Don’t ignore red flags, such as them telling you that they see other people as pawns or them pressuring you to empty your 401k to put it into their financial/realestate schemes.

If your partner doesn’t treat you with kindness and respect right now, then they are never going to, no matter how many times they say they will if you would only just do this or be that - nothing will ever be good enough for that kind of person, period, full stop. And, no, they won’t change, no matter how much you do, and no matter how much you love them.

Do learn what “love bombing” is. Then find out if someone is grossly irresponsible with money or hiding a severe alcohol problem before you move in with them.

There are a lot of people in this world who will take advantage of your kindness and naivety, if you let them, so be mindful of how people treat you and those around them before you make commitments to them.

Not everyone is awful.

Edit to add: don’t ignore your friends or family telling you that they think your relationship is unhealthy, or that the person is mistreating you or others, or may be taking advantage of you. Even if you don’t have much respect for the person telling you this, stop and listen and reflect, because red flags don’t stand out to you when you’re wearing rosy tinted glasses.

I’m a nurse. We usually recommend at least 350 calories, but ideally with a meal, but it also depends on the medication. For some, it’s to slow how quickly the medication is absorbed and/or reduce side effects, and isn’t necessary for the medication to work (e.g., stimulants, some antidepressants). For others, taking with food is necessary for the medication to be absorbed effectively so that it works (e.g., Latuda, used to treat mood and psychotic disorders).

In my hyper religious, Southern Baptist upbringing, I often heard Christians say that Christianity is not a religion. The mental gymnastics employed to explain this position were varied. Most often it was “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship [with God]”, or something along the lines of “Christianity isn’t a religion because it’s true”.

“Religion” in general was thus deemed a bad thing, because it was a term used to encapsulate all the other (and thus false) faith-belief-philosophy systems that were used by Satan to lead the world away from God. It bears noting that Catholicism and other major denominations always all fell under that umbrella of “other”.

It’s a toss up between

1. R telling me she was on birth control, I guess thinking it’d keep me around if we had a kid, then when our kid was age 4 she said she had cancer and disappeared for several months. Turns out she never had cancer and just said that so I wouldn’t think poorly of her for abandoning her child to run off with a guy in another state. …Her child that she was barely present for anyway.
2. D getting me to empty my 401k to buy a house as an investment property for “our” retirement, only for her to keep it in the divorce. I could have pushed for it to be sold and gotten at least some of my money back, but she would have put up such a fight that I’d have spent in attorney’s fees as much as I would have won from the sale, so it wasn’t worth the fight to me, and she knew that.

What’d I learn from these? Not a whole lot, it turned out: my next relationship wasn’t much better. But at least I figured out to end that one before it got TOO too deep.

Sounds like it could be interesting to try snow biking. Doesn’t often snow here, and when it does it rarely sticks. Maybe 1-3 actual accumulations per year, so my gravel bike is suitable practically all the time. It’s just the cold that makes it unpleasant to me - layering when it’s 50F is fine, in the 40s F is doable if it’s sunny. Anything below that is just miserably uncomfortable to me because of cold wind to the face and the need to adjust layers as I warm up and cool down.

Got hired at the same time as another guy. Don’t recall why, but I was in my boss’s office when he decided it was time to assign us offices despite us being in training and not needing them for another few weeks, so he grabs his admin assistant and off we go to verify which offices were open / available. I got the one with a window.

I definitely feel better overall when I ride my bike regularly. My mood is better, I have more energy, and I sleep better. I got into it around the time I separated from my ex-wife, and I think it’s a significant part of what kept me from falling into a serious depression when I got divorced.

I hate running. I hate swimming. I hate lifting weights, or anything in a gym. Hiking is nice, with the right company. But I enjoy biking around my neighborhood and along the city greenways. I was wanting to be more active, healthier, etc. but couldn’t find anything I actually would stick with until I found an activity I actually enjoyed. Lately I’ve been feeling pretty down, getting uncomfortably close to a major depressive episode, but riding my bike for a while always makes me feel a bit better, at least while I’m doing it. I think not biking, due to it being winter, is indirectly part of why I’ve been down - I just haven’t been doing much that is enjoyable while dealing with a lot of stress including some major life changes.

Fwiw, I’m a psychiatric nurse. I’ve read the science news articles that say exercise is better than anything and the ones that say it doesn’t do much. I’ve also read some of the actual research/journal articles. The reality is that we’re not really certain how much difference it actually makes, but it probably depends on a variety of factors that vary from person to person and based on the type of exercise. We do know that people who are physically healthier also tend to feel better mentally. What I have seen personally, and experienced myself, is that exercise helps with mood, but it’s not a cure-all, and it’s not instant, and it makes a difference if it’s something you enjoy doing independently of it’s health benefits. Exercising outdoors, particularly in green spaces, probably also helps.

As an aside, and having nothing to do with your thoughts or arguments, I’d like to take a moment to communicate that the common talking points of “it’s a plant” and “it’s natural” regarding marijuana should come with massive asterisks, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that cocaine and heroin come from plants too. And that there are synthetic THC-related products which aren’t generally distinguished from the actual plant products in such discussions. There are also highly concentrated THC products, such as oils, which are pretty inarguably incomparable to using the plant as it occurs in nature.

So, we can nitpick about maybe banning concentrates and delta-8 and whatnot and maybe only legalize the plant in it’s natural form, right? Well, that brings us to another point: modern marijuana strains have been bred to have a THC content dozens of times higher than what occurs in nature, as well as a dramatically lower relative ratio of CBD (CBD counteracts some of the bad of the THC, by my limited understanding, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion), so calling it “natural” now is more than a bit misleading. It IS a plant, but so are poppies (from which we derive opium/heroin), coca (doesn’t even need processing to get the cocaine), and belladonna (deadly nightshade, from which we derive digoxin), and, well, nobody here is arguing that those are safe to consume on the basis of their being or deriving from plants.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Private browser mode in many browsers disables plugins by default, and also doesn’t do anything to stop trackers or data collection. All private mode does is keep your activity private from others who also have access to your device (e.g. family members, roommates), by not saving browser history/cookies/etc.

Also, VPN’s can be helpful, but there are ways to “fingerprint” individual users behind VPN’s by how they move their mouse and click speed and what websites they visit etc… I imagine plugins like AdNauseum could help with that. It’s a clever idea, I’ll have to check it out - thanks!

I contend that it’s chaotic good.