ONLY CHILDREN NEED NOT APPLY

United States news. Posted from THE FUTURE! Hell yeah!

Those are pretty ladies and cute outfits! Hope they drink sufficient amounts of water and stay hydrated, else time may not be kind to their skin.

I’m not defending it nor am I saying it’s typical, but it’s not that hard to spend $500 per person per month on groceries.

It’s definitely doable (and then some) for folks living in high cost of living places. I recently went on a quick weekend trip to such a place. I knew I didn’t have the type of money to dine out, but I figured I could suffice on a few staples from the grocery store. I visited several different stores, and the prices were all about the same (i.e. insane). The little pint (or half pint?) Ben and Jerry’s was $10 - 12. A container of romaine lettuce was $8. A package of Oscar Meyer sliced deli meat was $15. These prices are easily 3 - 4 times what they typically cost where I live.

Also, a lot of people shop at the kinds of stores where you can find everything from apples to Apple watches. And when people do their “grocery” shopping, they’re buying bulk paper towels, a case of wine, a new Switch game for the kids, cosmetics, cat litter, clothes, 30 pack of batteries, a couple azaleas, and a partridge in a pear tree and then calling that their grocery bill. So, it’s not exactly a fair label nor an accurate assumption that the grocery bill is just groceries (i.e. food).

And honestly, if you mean HOW as in how can they afford it: $500 x 4 = $2,000 or $24,000. A lot of money, sure, but median household income (in the USA) is like $80,000 and I’m guessing that $500 a month per person is above median expenditure (especially if we’re excluding the folks that like to include the partridge in their grocery bill), so most people spending that much on food would be earning way more than median income.

Any pretty much any physical job comes with copious risks to your body and health, yet these types of employers typically don’t pay for employee health plans nor do they pay enough for employees to comfortably afford their own. Why would anybody want to risk severing a finger, breaking a leg, getting bitten by a dangerous snake, a nail to the hand, etc if they don’t have to, especially knowing they can’t afford the treatment and it could lead to lifelong pain and disability?

World War 3D

This is only tangentially related, but it touches on why I barely trust new shows anymore.

I kept hearing praise for a show called Severance (not on Netflix, though) and it sounded like it was something I’d like. Still I resisted the urge to watch it. It wasn’t until several fucking years later, they released a second season.

So, after the second season came out, I figured I’d give it a go. The firs season left me irritated because the season finale resolved almost nothing, left everything open. I’m pissed just knowing how betrayed I’d have felt if I had watched the show when the first season came out and then just got left hanging for years.

Then I watched the first episode of the second season, which fortunately provided some answers, and decided, fuck everybody involved with this project. I’m not getting invested because the potential for them to do another non-answer cliffhanger and just leave fans/viewers without any type of closure is just too much.

But back on topic, yes, I agree, Netflix quite often takes too long to release follow-up seasons on a lot of shows I watched and liked. I know some of it is outside of their control, but it seems to happen quite a bit to the point where I do wonder how much of it is actually out of their control.

I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true. Maybe it’s because I’m not wealthy or connected enough to have access to the good stuff, though?

The bills for my latest medical emergency are rolling in now.

The $1,000 USD ambulance bill is almost a relief, since I’ve heard others say their ride cost several times more than that. I declined pretty much all medical care in the ambulance and all offers for medication/treatment, though, so maybe that’s part of it. Had I lost consciousness, I likely wouldn’t have been able to say no.

The $2,000 USD emergency room bill? That’s just the part that I have to pay out of pocket. The actual price they charged my insurance is $6,000+ for my slightly more than 90 minutes on a stretcher in the hallway. And it doesn’t seem to have covered anything specific because the imaging (which I didn’t even need), treatment, medications (which I would have refused if I knew how much they charged but they don’t know that and can’t tell you ahead of time), individual nurses, etc are all billed as separate line items. I was even charged thousands of dollars by a doctor I never even saw in person. I joked in another thread recently about $45 tylenol, but that’s actually true. I’m paying $45 for 800mg of tylenol.

Months later, the billing part isn’t even finalized. New claims/bills showed up literally 2 days ago, well after I thought I was done paying. Thousands of dollars out of pocket, on top of paying a thousand dollars a month for insurance.

At least the medical professionals that treated me were great.

My uncle’s name is Sir Benjamin Theodore Jameson Preston Livingstone Senior the Third, but he was better known as One Ball by his family, social circle, neighborhood, and coworkers. He lost a testicle to an alligator attack when I was 12 and ever since then, that’s what everyone calls him. Supposedly couldn’t have children, but somehow he did end up with a daughter. Granted she had blonde hair and blue eyes, so who knows where that might’ve come from. Certainly didn’t come from Jing Ho’s family.