Glad you’re still here with us. For a variety of reasons, I’m similar. The average person is pretty pro-NHS, but when it comes to politicians, there seems to be a lack of political will to change anything.

I think something that makes it harder is that it’s not just a case of funding (though that is also needed), but a restructuring to reverse some of the insidious privatisation and outsourcing that’s so prevalent these days. Additionally, there needs to be more money put into skilled administrators — whenever there’s talks about cutting the fat from the NHS, pointing the fingers at “unnecessary” administrative staff is an easy tactic, but a lack of skilled administrators means that medical staff have to spend more time filling in forms and chasing up referrals.

A while back, I spent a couple of weeks in hospital despite there being nothing medically wrong with me

My carer had died a few months prior, and social care services were fucking around a lot so I spent a long while without any daily living support at all, except the occasional friend travelling across the country to spend a weekend helping me. A friend who hadn’t heard from me for a while called emergency services, because they were worried I might have tried to kill myself, because the last thing they had heard from me was pretty concerning in that respect (I was in a bad place mental health wise).

When paramedics got there, they found me on the floor, having had a fall. I hadn’t even in a week, and was severely dehydrated. They took me to hospital, got me hydrated and stuff, but then I was in limbo for a while. They couldn’t discharge me, because it wasn’t safe to send me back home without care. But the various services that were meant to be supporting people like me just weren’t working. It was basically like the NHS and social care services being the meme with two versions of spiderman pointing to each other.

And so I took up a valuable hospital bed for multiple weeks, in a place that wasn’t well situated to even support me. It made me so angry because of the inefficiency of it all. It’s all so preventable, but there’s so much inefficiency.

And that’s not even counting all the x-rays I’ve had following a fall that I had because wheelchair services were fucking me around, so I had preventable falls that cost the NHS more money.

Yeah, but my point is that there’s currently a lack of political will to do that

Define robot.

I don’t think I am a robot, but the world often makes me feel like I am (it’s the 'tism)

“single payer healthcare is forever”

The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.

I don’t disagree with her point though. In the UK, after decades of neoliberalism reigning supreme, I am often extremely depressed at how it’s changed things culturally. I was born in the 90s, so all of my life, I have seen the people who are struggling most scrutinised ever closer, and the state becomes more and more like a business.

If the NHS didn’t already exist, I can’t fathom there being political will to implement it right now. There would be far too much outcry over people “reaping rewards from the system despite not contributing to it”. There was that kind of opposition when the NHS was founded too, but far less of it. It was a different world. As I understand it, the Reagan and Thatcher era of politics were a big part of what caused things to change.

Learning the history helps ground me. A political philosopher I read a bunch of last year who influenced me greatly was Frederic Jameson, who advocated that we should “always historicise”, because connecting to our history is a great tool in resisting the cultural logic of late stage capitalism.

Or to put it a different way: the society we live in has a way of making itself seem eternal and immutable, but things have not always been this way, and they need not always remain this way. If AOC spearheaded a campaign that led to single payer healthcare, but the scheme was later repealed, that achievement would still last forever, in that it could serve as a template for those in future.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I’m just depressed and trying to clutch at hope. I’d say I don’t know if it’s working, but hey, I’m still alive — that’s something. I should probably get some sleep though

When I want to treat myself, I shave, exfoliate and moisturise my legs, and change my bedsheets. It’s divine.

I used to shave my legs because of the nebulous patriarchal pressure that many girls and women experience. But now I do it for good reasons and it’s much more liberating

Great explanation. I’m a biochemist who loves nerding out about this stuff (and practicing science communication), so I came into this thread prepared to explain more about this works. However, your comment has left me with nothing to do but to be appreciative of your excellent comment

Yeah, same here. I can remember a few different scattered interactions I’ve had with OP — enough that if they never posted again, I would notice their absence.

I wouldn’t say that trauma dumps are fun to read, but as someone who has plenty of trauma of my own, being able to relate to a random internet person has sometimes been a rare source of solace for me.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m going to share with you a sentiment that I don’t imagine you’ll be able to fully process right now, when everything is still so raw and jumbled, but I hope that in time, it might offer you some comfort, as it did for me.

When I lost my partner back in 2021, it made me think a lot about legacy — in particular, the fact that deciding a person’s legacy is a task that falls to the people who are left behind. On the days where the grief hurts particularly badly, this idea helps me to stay focussed on the duty I feel to carry my partner’s memory forwards, through embodying his virtues and learning from his flaws. It’s a heavy burden, but one I’m glad to carry.

It’s okay if thinking this way is too much for you right now, especially as you have so much on your plate in terms of logistics. I just wanted to share this with you because what you said about your dad’s birthday touched me. Your next few birthdays are going to be pretty rough, but I hope that in time, you’ll be able to remember the joke about how you’re your dad’s birthday present in a way that’ll still hurt, but in a warm, loving way that inspires you to continue making your dad proud. He might be gone, but you’ll always be his birthday present — a birthday present that will continue to become even better as you continue to learn and grow.

I’ve never lost a parent before, but I relate to what you describe about feeling untethered. That’s another part of why I commented. My partner used to be one of the tethers connecting me to the world, and losing him meant I needed to find new ways to anchor myself so that I could be the tether that holds his memory here. It’s disorienting and exhausting and the worst part is that when you feel like you’re beginning to adjust, another wave of grief will hit you when you’re least expecting it. Grief doesn’t happen all at once, nor does it follow a predictable path. Be kind to yourself over the coming weeks and months.

Good luck with taking the dog to the funeral home on Friday, and good luck with supporting other members of your family too. I hope that the funeral logistics go smoothly enough that you are able to find some time to begin the long process of reorienting yourself. And please don’t feel the need to reply to this comment if you don’t have the brain space for that. God knows you’ve got enough obligations on your plate

Truly, this is the socialist utopia I am fighting for.

From each according to their ability; from each according to their needs. If you have plenty, it’s only reasonable to share with the cumslut

Defeat the cumslut by becoming the cumslut.

!You know you want to!<

Oooh, pretty! I especially like the red dress, and the outfit on the bottom right, they really suit you.

I also love anyone who wears black lipstick. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of men like a bold lipstick, and black is the boldest one can be in this respect

Edit: I totally know the difference between left and right, and definitely didn’t get those mixed up

“leftist” means a heckton of different things depending on who you’re asking. Some people strongly feel that “leftist” means something distinct from “someone who is left wing”, whereas others don’t make that distinction. Of that latter category, some people use “leftist” to mean someone who is leftwing in an absolute sense, whereas other people use it in a relative sense, such that they would consider Bernie, who is on the leftmost fringes of a not very left wing (but more left wing than the GOP) party, a leftist.

I agree that when we’re talking about politics, it’s important to try to be precise in what words we use (especially when discussing politicians whose views may have shifted over time, as you highlight). However, the reality is that there is no single, agreed upon definition for terms like “leftist”, and no authority by which we can definitively say who is using it wrong or right.

Even if Bernie isn’t a leftist, he was certainly perceived that way by much of his party, who don’t care about making granular distinctions between “Socialist Democrat” and “leftist” when for the Democrats, both of those collapse down to “way more left wing than we want to go”.

Though I would also note that the person you’re replying to didn’t explicitly state that Bernie was a leftist. This isn’t just me being persnickety — I get that they did heavily imply Bernie was a leftist. The point I’m trying to make is that there are a lot of people who don’t think Bernie is/was a leftist, but, as one of the more left wing people in his party, could have been a passageway towards getting more candidates who are genuinely leftist (and indeed, some of the Dems pushing against Bernie likely shared this view)

Research has actually shown that people respond better to people with Scottish accents. Apparently at least one big company (might have been British Gas?) factored this into their decision about where to base their upper tier customer service call centres

I mean, that is the definition of ragebaiting

I didn’t know about the reformulation thing — is it Adderall that’s affected? I’m not personally on Adderall, but I like to be aware of the overall landscape of ADHD meds due to having many friends with ADHD (and also being a nerd)

If corporations can get the benefits of legal personhood, then they should be subject to the penalties too.

It certainly can, but it’s far from typical. Whereas it’s not uncommon for lesbian/sapphic sex to last for hours, such that I’m pretty confident that the average duration of sapphic sex is going to be much higher than the average duration of heterosexual sex

I think there’s more to it than this. In my experience, sapphic sex is less focussed around orgasm, which means there’s often periods where the sex/making out is sort of enjoying the good vibes (no pun intended).

In contrast, men that I have slept with can become overly fixated on the idea of me orgasming, which always annoys me because I’m quite difficult to bring to orgasm, and they don’t seem to get that orgasm != good sex (they’re certainly correlated ofc, but one doesn’t necessarily mean the other).

Women also tend to take much longer to reach orgasm, which can mean that sapphic sex tends to be quite dynamic in terms of positions, tempo, use of toys etc… Like, if I’m going down on a partner who can only orgasm through oral sex, and I know that the position I’m in will start causing me pain before she’s anywhere near orgasming, then I might opt to switch things up to be in a position that’s restful for me (so I can resume oral afterwards) but still stimulating for my partner.

TL;DR: I think the biochemical wakefulness can’t hurt, but I think sapphic sex going on for hours is mostly sociocultural

It took me a long while to find someone who actually appreciated weird stuff like this. There are plenty of folk like us out in the world, it just takes some time to find them sometimes.