Loughla

I listen to podcasts all day while working and I am JEALOUS of your access to radio 4 and sounds. There is so much just insanely killer content coming out of the BBC in those avenues.

I guess I was talking more about depression and anxiety than anything else. That's awesome for you. Any way to keep that going, or did you see diminishing returns?

HN is really good at contrary takes, regardless of the topic. I'm sure I've done some. I guess there's value in seeing the other side of most issues, but sometimes it does feel pretty knee-jerky.

Don't you mean after the current era?

I'm with you. It's not for me but it's absolutely fascinating. There's something nice about letting go and just knowing that it's part of someone's plan. Again, not for me but I understand that appeal.

My experience is that psychedelics will not get rid of anything on their own. They provide you with a different perspective on what you may or may not already know is going on.

This perspective can help you process those issues, absolutely. But they will not solve anything. I was always interested in finding a psychiatrist or therapist that would help me process during a shroom trip, but never found one.

And resetting your brain is just a nice way of saying, confront every single demon you have all at once. Some people are strong enough, mentally, to process things like that. Most are not. Most will take the bad trip as a sign that they shouldn't ever do psychedelics.

I'm firmly in the camp of not using them to explore my problems. I know what they are already, and I know how to fix them. I used to love psychedelics when I was younger (and had less stress and obligations). Now they just panic me and aren't fun.

We used to call them trip sitters and it was a friend who helped keep you grounded. Rich people will always find a way to buy their way into a subculture.

Spiritual doesn't mean religious, is my opinion.

It means being grounded in something firm, whether that's inner strength or a reliance on an external deity.

Religion is not required for psychedelics, but a strong grounding in something is, in my opinion.

People have bad trips because there's something inside them that they haven't identified or dealt with properly. Anxiety and/or depression will ALWAYS flare up during your trip. It's best to deal with those properly (meaning change things in your life, not just medication) beforehand.

While they definitely serve a purpose, primary care is not that.

If you present with anything other than healthy and fine, the ones I have had to see are less than helpful.

They simply do not have the depth or breath of training as a doctor. They're very good at executing a plan as part of a care team, and even making changes to that plan based on patient need. But they just simply aren't as good as doctors.

There's a reason they're replacing doctors. . . They're cheaper. That's it.

I have a cousin who lives in Illinois and joined the Marines. He's 20 now. He can shoot fully automatic weapons in the military and has won awards for handgun precision and skill.

But he can't buy a handgun in his home state or drink a beer.

Make it make sense.

Okay? If I pay in and then get that benefit when it's my time to draw that benefit, it doesn't matter if it's my actual dollar or not. Technically right isn't the best right sometimes.

Also my point was that the original claim of 2/3 of the federal budget going to social programs is just wrong. It's well under half unless you count ss. Then it's about half.

Do you still get doctors for primary care? Our local hospital is hiring nothing but nurse practitioners now.

They're amazing in a support role, but not equipped as well for primary care roles.

The nurses at our local rural hospital are tagged and tracked wherever they go on the hospital campus. Time spent in one spot is part of their review.

I wondered why they zip in and out of the rooms, when just a few years ago they would spend fifteen to twenty minutes in each room. The patient load hadn't grown. The number of nurses has gone up, not down.

So I'm blaming the stupid metric on their evaluations for a worse standard of care.

One is following the law and the other isn't.

If the letter of the law doesn't enforce the spirit of the law, it was poorly written or it's out of date and needs to be amended.

In theory, the US system allows for those updates. In reality it's a little less clear. Currently we're absolutely moving to the fealty to the crown system and it's not great.

Any system that makes specific carve outs for anyone to not follow the letter of the law is not about enforcing the law, it's about maintaining control using arbitrary enforcement and chronyism (not sure of that spelling).

The system of workarounds for religious customs has always fascinated me. I will follow the letter of the law, because I have to. If I don't agree with the laws, I can move. If I was in a faith tradition and finding workarounds for the intent of the law, I would choose a different faith. To me it's very binary; either you are or you aren't [Religion]. Using technicalities on your deity just feels like a suckers game to make your current and any possible afterlife worse. Like God is just going to say, "oh man you really got one over on me." Makes zero sense.

It's like 50% if you also count the stuff I pay for that is a direct benefit to me at retirement (as does anyone who pays into social security).

So it might be a little nitpicky, and your point still stands. A lot of money is spent on defense and business, but not as much as the before portrays.

Where businesses benefit is in not paying the tax, instead of receiving payments. That's definitely a problem, but it's a different thing.

I bet you'll find that more people don't approve of what their representative is doing than do approve.

Low voter turnout allows for bullshit to slip through the cracks by targeting very small blocs of voters.

I genuinely believe that most problems in government would be fixed if voluntary voter turnout was around 99%, and that low rates, especially during midterms, is the largest threat to democracy in the United States as we know it to date.

I wish ranger Rick existed for teens though. My kids loved that when they were smaller, but now we have to spend a shit ton of effort to find teen appropriate content of a similar nature (hah!).

I went once. It feels like Disney Land but for the wealthy. I'll never go back, and I actually regret going to be honest. It's disgusting and it's right out in the open.

Something, something, Plato's allegory of the cave.

Yeah, have you ever been to Dubai?

Slavery is "illegal".

I'm convinced that the absolute modernity is only a sideshow attraction for the ultra-wealthy to visit Dubai. The real show is the servants.

Do you know what is happening with McConnell? Because the news is everywhere from he's fine to he's dead.

Edit: this is not meant to be snarky. This is a real question.

The step that a lot of people miss is letting their family know their wishes as well in very clear and strong language. Don't forget to do that.

Your statement is confusing. Please explain.

DNR means let me die and do not intervene in that process. Which is what hospitals would want if they were secretly killing people to harvest organs, right?

The amount of morphine available to the patients on hospice that I have known has made it very clear what the actual intent of those scripts is.

Granted, my sample size of 6 isn't great, and 3 were in terrible pain so it made sense for them, but they had ALL the opiates. . . One had liquid injectable morphine in case he couldn't swallow. He had no issues with swallowing and wasn't in pain.

I wanted to ask the doctor if the intent was to allow a calm end, but chickened out.

But what is it in football fields?

That's the usual measurement of size in the States and it's absolutely unbelievably ridiculous.

The one thing that is keeping me from riding the routes that I believe would be the must fun/scenic is the OBSCENE cost of those tickets. Granted, these aren't commuter tickets.

I would love a trip across the high plains and through the mountains by train. Just like I would love to take a cruise from the bottom of the Mississippi to the top.

But them tickets is too high.

Everything on your list but VA benefits and defense are very regularly called into question. Even VA benefits are questioned pretty regularly, but that tends to be put down pretty quickly.

Like almost everything, it's almost certainly false for some people. And almost certainly true for others.

It's almost like you can't paint an entire country with one brush?

When I was a kid you could get actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite. Now you can only get little firecrackers that don't even blow up little green army men.

It's really dependent on your state laws. My state allows fireworks, so you can get most things but they are very limited in size and explosive content.

What it amounts to is that most cities/counties don't enforce their existing laws in this area because people would have a shit fit, and they would arrest so many people that it's kind of impossible.

Something something banning things doesn't really work to do anything but make criminals out of every day people.

Why? If they do good work and meet or exceed expectations, who cares why they're doing it?