roughly 2200 miles, and no

Farthest away I have ever lived from where I was born? About 5500 miles. Again, neither were home. Don’t know if I have a place that is really a home no matter where I am, because I have moved around a lot in my life.

wasnt that a joke on south park? or did they do a different joke making fun of the same thing?

And if your pfp is a profile cross-section of a human head with a baby curled, and sleeping, where the brain would otherwise be?

That is the moral thing to do. What I am discussing is that if they are interested in enforcing the law, as it is, they need to go after the businesses illegally employing them. That is not what they are interested in though, this is just a show of power.

Yes, if they really wanted to stop illegal workers they would hold the employers at fault for the charges. If they were actually worried about theft, and fraud, they would be going after employers and contractors, not the peasantry. This is just a violent display of who is on top, and demonstration of how small you are.

Yes, they leave out that the protests work because they are displays of very large amounts of people who, while peaceful now, they have reason to believe can become violent. Without being backed by the threat of violence, or seen as a diplomatic out to a movement that is, otherwise, violent, they don’t really work.

I mean Alexandria made a variation of Polo Sport called Gamer, and it is just one of their line-up

I wasn’t correcting you, or saying otherwise. Just condensed version of what you said, and adding that it just makes the whole idea flawed from the outset.

The changes they pick up on are responses to a lot of different things, not just lying, so even the premise is fatally flawed.

Isolation of individuals and the growing loss of ownership of, well, everything.

This has been what I do with mine. Most of it is pretty fucking “well duh” type stuff, however working with people to hold you, and you hold yourself, accountable for making progress in these ways. The part of having someone to hold you to account, this is often where a therapist is the most useful. However, in this situation, this isn’t an option, so you need to reach out to others.

Take your meds. If you need meds, but can not currently access them due to finance issues, there are sources out there that may be able to help. This is not often easy to navigate, but it may be something that saves you.

Try any method you can find, that is from a reputable source, to keep your sleep on a schedule, and get at least 6 hours per night. This is way more important than many wish, but generally everyone knows it is vital to health, including mental health.

Make yourself accountable to someone for daily improvement progress - eg find a friend, family member, online gaming buddy, whatever, that you report to, on a routine basis, to report the regularity of maintaining these routines. This means whatever you need to do to keep your living space clean, and in order, routine exercise, adherence to a healthy diet, maintaining the framework to keep yourself on track, like keeping your phone calendar up date, keeping lists of chores/errands you need to do, working on maintaining a hierarchy of needs (most immediate things to do, and most important), etc. This is the big one though, this person is allowed to criticize you in your failings on this, and you need to take that criticism, and use it as a call to focus on these areas. You may need more than one person willing to help. If you are isolated, there are online groups for these things. No this isn’t a great alternative, but it is better than nothing, and living in despair.

You need to audit your behavior. You need to make a record of the things you do that are mentally taxing, and thus can harm your mental health. Do you spend all day, every day, at work, or stressing about work? You need to find a place you can vent this stress, and look for advice on how to disengage with work enough stop burn out, but still do what is expected. If what is expected is just too much, you need to recognize it, and work on finding a lower stress income. Do you doom scroll? Well look into apps that help you regulate the time you spend online. Also, audit your experience with the platforms you engage with. If you find one is mostly something that adds to your stress, depression, despair, etc. work on just cutting that out completely. Look at your personal relationships, and really try to assess whether or not your relationships are healthy, if not, how can they become healthy? If there is not foreseeable way to make it healthy, go low-contact, pilot no contact. If your daily life has any improvement because you no longer maintain contact, then it is time to drop them.

Social activity. This will depend greatly on how much socializing, and what kinds, you can handle, etc. This one is much more tricky, especially since anxiety, anhedonia, and other negative aspects of your mental health really affect how hard this is. However, you need to work on getting some sort of in person social contact. It needs to be regular, and I don’t mean like all the time, but that there is a routine set-up for it. Local hobby groups, activities at the local library, publicly held events you may attend, try to work out a specific time period where you, and at least one friend/family member, can spend that time together doing an agreed upon activity.

Do things that allow you to put your thoughts into more of an order than they may currently be. This could be a journal, personal blog, etc. Just something where you can dump your brain, look at what came out, and apply some structure to it.

Spend time outside. Be it with people, or alone, just force yourself to spend time outside, especially in places you can see nature, see green, etc. If you just sit there observing it, it will help to maintain wellness. This is subtle, and takes a while, however it does have a real impact.

There is more, and I can ask my therapist, when I see her this week, for resources for all this, and I can update with what she says, if she is willing, which I do not see why she wouldn’t be.

What to Do if You Can’t Afford Therapy -

https://wtdiycat.vercel.app/

There are many, many, places all over the US that basically fund their local government by pulling over people who don’t live there, and fining them. They absolutely abuse their authority to do this. There are so many infractions, many very vaguely worded, and broad, the cops can basically pull over anyone, just because they want to, and they do. There are also plenty of people out there with long standing video evidence of being harassed by the police, because the cops don’t like legal things they do, or don’t like their families.

https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admits-predictive-policing-program-violated-constitution/

If you think this is the end of these programs, prepare to be wrong.

I don’t think these factors are specifically unique to the US, some more than other. I think a lot of the environmental stuff you can see in many places, lead is not just a problem in the US, we are just more talkative about it.

https://www.cgdev.org/publication/combatting-hidden-epidemic-lead-poisoning-ideas-eu

Yes the lead is one of the many issues i didn’t get into, it is on the decline though. However, microplastics is the new lead. We know it affects the endocrine system, as of yet, though, we do not know how, or what the effects will be. Point being, blaming this behavior on education isn’t shooting at the right target, and there are so many targets.

yes, it is so relieving that this right wing populist trend seems to be failing in our closest neighbor. Hopefully the failure of this administration will wake a lot more places up, and create a greater push back against this trend to the far right.

Amongst wealthy countries, the US scores above average in science and reading comprehension, and are only really showing lag in mathematics. In terms of critical thinking, this has been a baked-in element of the curriculum, that was intentionally baked-in, for a long time now. Most countries are this way, and those that have dedicated time to specifically critical thinking, as its own subject, are relatively new, and not many do it, in primary education, yet. So this means the US is not unique in how poorly students are taught critical thinking, amongst countries with similar levels of resources.

Also, baby boomers demonstrated a lower level of critical thinking skills, than kids do today, they also show sharper cognitive decline, earlier in life, than X, and millennials have been. So is it that the conservatives have been trying to disassemble the public school system, to move funds to privatized education, thus eroding the common access to education? If so, why does the US actually score well compared to its peers? Why is it that the oldest common generation is actually the worst of the common generations, still alive, for things like critical thinking, and cognitive decline?

So there is some other factor(s) that make the US seem to stand out on this issue, amongst peers. Could it be US media specifically empowering the voice of morons, because outrage drives viewership, and profit is the only goal to US news/media companies? Is it that the elites within the conservative party have redesigned their entire party structure, and playbook, to empower morons, because morons vote for them more often than not? Is it a combination of these factors, and others, that have been shaping the US in this fashion? Could this be why we have been seeing greater, and greater, pushes from political influence groups, in other countries, that have ties to US wealth? Things like dismantling the NHS, establishing US style media as the dominant party in places like europe (murdoch family owned outlets getting larger pieces of the pie, and pushing sentiment to dismantle not for profit sources, like the BBC, and NPR/PBS, for example), far right parties, trump cocksuckers, putin cocksuckers, etc. have been on the rise for past ten plus years? Could it also be that people are growing increasingly disaffected with capitalism, and there are a lot of people lashing out, lacking understanding of what is causing life to be more difficult, and reaching out, in desperation, to anyone who sounds different from those who got us here, even if it should be obvious those people would likely make these specific issues worse? Is it that these things are also compounded with a growing desire, amongst the growing disproportionately wealthy set, to push all the bad aspects of societal structure, to hasten its collapse, and then swoop in to take over directly?

IMHO it is all of the factors in the previous paragraph, and others I haven’t bothered to bring up, and not so much the education system, at least not yet. Sorry for the word vomiting in this post.

I mean, it probably had an impact, but even the 1/4 pounder with cheese meal at mcdonalds is 12 dollars here

The second amendment was written so that there would be militias, who could act quickly, in spread-out, often frontier locations, in case of foreign incursion, giving the military proper time to respond.

he threatened to release the video of him and cardinal wuerl spit roasting a luxury couch.

I was more implying that if this blows up in the their face, the public statement will be it was a mistake, made from ignorance, to evade responsibility. Sorry if that didn’t come off clearly. Making sure implication gets across online sucks.