I was going to call it a “small” city but Google told me that 300k is mid-size so I went with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The city is ~350 sq km and our tiny downtown area is probably about 1 sq km, so the entire city is kinda like a suburb. Heck, I’m from Houston which is known for its urban sprawl, and yet there’s lower population density where I live now.
I’ll just use the same criteria you gave as an example.
Edit: I live in a mid-size city (300k) on the east coast.
I’ve had mine since before I started driving ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I noticed in my late teens I had a lot of freckles on the left side of my body and very few on the right, and I didn’t start driving until I was 22. I did spend 2 years in high school with a much darker tan on my right arm from hanging my arm out the window of a boyfriend’s car with no AC, but still have more left-arm freckles.
Have you seen the panda that was raised by zookeepers? The zookeepers had to teach it to break bamboo, which was hard for them so they often grimaced while doing so. The panda learned to make a similar face, seeing it as part of the process. They’ve even caught the panda making the grimace after breaking the bamboo, like it realized that it forgot to do the thing and had to make up for skipping that step.
That’s a good one. A few others that help with my executive dysfunction are:
HR response isn’t the only thing though. A number of years ago, my (F) partner (M) was sexually harassed by his female boss. He didn’t report it to HR, but he did sometimes bring it up around his friends. He had multiple people who base a lot of their identity on their feminism/acceptance/equality views tell him it wasn’t possible for him to be a victim of sexual harassment.
And then if he brought it up around more normie people, especially guys, the most frequent first question was, “Is she hot?”
The responses he got from so many people were part of why he never took it to HR. The other part was that she was smart enough to never do it in writing, so it would have been he-said-she-said. It was just easier to get a new job.
My dad wrote software in the 90s and developed a pretty good name for his business. He once got a call from Microsoft saying they wanted to package his software in their newest OS builds. Holy crap, right?! That would be a major break!
They told him they needed to do some deep interviews to set the plan in motion. I can’t remember if there were supposed to be 4 calls total or if it was on the 4th call, but after a couple conversations my dad realized the questions they were asking were to reverse engineer his software. They were never trying to make a deal; they were trying to learn what they could so they could rewrite it and not pay him a dime. He told them to pound sand.
There were a few other conflicts he had with Microsoft. I was young and didn’t understand it well, but my whole childhood I knew Bill Gates led a shady as fuck company and thought he was an awful POS. It honestly still kills me to admit that he (now) does some good in this world.
My partner has an Anovo affected by this and he knows the details better than me, but IIRC the app allows you to set times to change temps or things like that. The device still works without the app, but you lose the convenience factor of being able to monitor or make changes at a distance.
H&R Block has prioritized these worker-focused things since 2020, and in the past year its stock price has frequently broken its record high since going public in 1962. Its CEO has been interviewed by Fortune magazine about his commitment to keeping a “work from anywhere” policy at the company. The business is “winning” by the most public metric used to determine that, and I think their commitment to these exact things is a big part of why.
It’s amazing: when you treat employees like human beings, you tend to have better employees, and better employees make you more successful. /shocked pikachu face
I want to know this answer too…
To clarify for anyone else who might be unaware: It’s not a toilet; it’s a bidet. It’s like a wash station for your underside, so you still do your business in the toilet but then come over here to wash. So, much like there’s no flush in a sink, there’s no flush on this.
Thanks for the clarification on your intent. I understand (and appreciate) skepticism; however, I took your original comment to be a dig rather than helpful criticism, but your clarification here helps me read it more positively.
Someone else commented and used words that aligned with my intent behind the comment, which was just to leave open the door that there are nuances I may be uninformed about. But I recognize I could have been more explicit about what research I had done to maybe establish a little more credibility.
Thanks for responding with such a level head!
Ah yeah, in both cases I’m referring to they were saying the gerrymandered districts meant their blue votes for president didn’t count. I agree that the apathy strongly affects the overall outcome!
In one case, I tried to correct the perception by saying basically when I said here (popular vote determines the state’s allocation of electoral college votes), and I was “corrected” by my acquaintance that the president race is determined by electoral vote, not popular vote. 🤦🏻♀️
True, some states are too extreme to ever flip. Then other states like Texas or North Carolina are perceived as firmly in one camp, but they might not be if everyone actually voted.
Exactly what I’m trying to help counter! In just 24 hours I heard two people I know from Texas mention that the presidential vote was affected by gerrymandering. I did my research to confirm that was wrong and have been trying to help fix that false belief since then.
And what you’re saying now is, “What you said doesn’t align to what I think, so I’m sure you’re wrong.”
So here’s proof:
Of the 50 states, all but two award all of their presidential electors to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state (Maine and Nebraska each award two of their electors to the candidate who wins a plurality of the statewide vote; the remaining electors are allocated to the winners of the plurality vote in the states’ congressional districts). (source)
Ok, fair point, lol.
That’s precisely what prompted this post: conversations with friends in Texas who said their presidential vote didn’t count because of gerrymandering.
I agree districts are fucked, but that doesn’t affect the electoral college outcome. Texas is leaning more blue every year and getting everyone who feels like their vote doesn’t matter out and voting anyway is the first step to changing it. (One example source)
The state has 30 million people. Of those, 8M are in the Dallas area, 7.5M are in the Houston area, and about 5M between San Antonio and Austin. That means over 20 million of the state residents live in one of the 4 largest metro areas which are all majority blue.
Yet only 11M voted in 2020. National average turnout in the 2020 election was 66% but Texas was less than 40%, and it’s because of the exact sentiment you called out.
I’m from Texas (but don’t live there now) and I know how disheartening the voting season always felt. I want to fight the perception I’ve heard now from multiple people in Texas that their vote for president doesn’t mean anything, because it absolutely could if everyone gets out to vote.
Do you have a primary care physician? I think this going on for 2 weeks warrants talking to them about it. If it’s not changing, then the urgent/emergency need isn’t there. Getting to a specialist could be months or over a year though (took me 10 months for first-available appointment with a cardiologist who specializes in dysautonomia issues like I have; someone I met in the waiting room waited closer to a year and a half).
Alternatively, if you have insurance many of them have a nurses line you can call and get input. Like you mentioned you would do as an EMR, they’re likely going to recommend you go to the most extreme care (ER) because they don’t want to risk being wrong. But they might be able to talk you through your doubts. And hey, if it’s insurance they have motivation to get you to the cheapest care possible, so maybe they wouldn’t recommend ER after all, lol.
Lastly, since you’re stuck in decision paralysis, it might be worth taking some actions on your own to see if you can improve the situation. Obviously this isn’t the smartest option, but I know I’m stubborn, cheap, and have white coat anxieties after being dismissed for my health issues my entire childhood, so I tend to go this route often. (Heck, I waited until my mid-30s to seek care that ended me with a cardiologist despite having the symptoms literally as long as I can remember.) You mentioned potassium deficiency and my immediate thought when reading “palpitations” was electrolytes as well. If you have a history of high blood pressure ignore this, but if not, eating salt and getting magnesium/potassium can help a ton. My cardiologist insists I eat 7-10 grams of salt a day. It’s a fuckton, but hell if it doesn’t make me feel worlds better.
ETA: I just want to reiterate my last idea above is a bad suggestion. But I know that’s likely what I would do, so I mention it anyway. Also I had frequent palpitations throughout my life as some of the symptoms I ignored, but I didn’t actually know those were “palpitations.” I thought “my heart is just beating hard/fast today,” and that palpitations meant something…else. It was less than a year ago when I learned it just meant awareness of your heart beating, and I can’t even explain what I thought it meant before that, other than more than that.