#i hate the american healthcare industry

[dangraccoon]

ugh.

I'm sorry I've been so absent. I'm really trying to post more for you all.

more info under the cut

i think ive mentioned that i have various health issues and conditions before

the big ones affecting me right now are seasonal affective disorder, fribromyalgia/chronic pain syndrome, and plantar fasciitis in both feet and on top of all that, i am currently transitioning.

theres a lot of financial strain on me at the moment; my fiance's income is the only one we have. i'm too disabled to work a regular job but not disabled enough to receive disability income. thanks america. but yeah i owe over $1400 to various medical offices in addition to the ongoing copays for my various meds (a month's worth of t is $60), thanks america, AND i'm about to turn 26 next month, after which i will no longer be able to be on my parents' health insurance, thanks america.

all that to say that if i continue to be somewhat absent I'm very sorry

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

If you want to know what IShealth insurance bureaucracy looks like, I work at a company that (among other things) disputes denied insurance claims for hospitals. Aetna just upheld a patient's denial because their doctor dialed the wrong number so our doctor didn't answer. Our doctor didn't answer. Because Aetna had the right number. But Aetna dialed it wrong. So now Aetna gets to refuse to pay tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more, for this patient's hospital stay.

[an-absolute-trainwreck]

im fighting against my eczema and im losing

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabriella Ferrigine at Salon:

John Oliver on Sunday's episode of "Last Week Tonight" delved into how former President Donald Trump's second term could hypothetically play out given that polls give him an edge over President Joe Biden. “You can go on his website and see it all laid out, and it’s pretty alarming,” Oliver said, before playing a clip of Trump articulating his plans to dismantle trans rights. "I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth," Trump said in the clip. "No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong with the wrong gender," he added, claiming that it is a concept "never heard of in all of human history" until it was recently invented by "the radical left." "That is really the Trump experience in a nutshell right there," Oliver said. "Hateful ideology, a promise to make life harder for minorities, all wrapped up in a non sequitur so stupid it is inconveniently funny. The radical left invented trans people a few years ago? I’m sorry. What?!? Did they put it on 'Shark Tank' and I somehow missed it?” The host then brought up a number of Trump's other plans if he assumes the presidency again, including mass deportation, requiring local law enforcement agencies to implement controversial policing tactics such as stop-and-frisk, slashing funding for schools that implement a mask or vaccine mandate, and impose a universal tariff of at least 10% on all imports.

"He's promising to get revenge on his enemies," Oliver said. "At rallies he’s told supporters that ‘I am your retribution,’ which sounds like something you’d hear out of the mouth of Megatron rather than a major presidential candidate." "He's been specific about who will be on the receiving end of that retribution," Oliver added, before showing footage of Trump claiming that he will "root out communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they'll do anything — whether legally or illegally to destroy America and destroy the American dream." "Was he falling asleep at the end there?" Oliver jokingly asked. "Second, it's not usually a great sign when a politician starts referring to groups as vermin, unless of course they're running for mayor of Zootopia and they're gunning for the little Rodentia votes."

[...] Project 2025's 900-page handbook, for example, includes plans for dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it is "one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry." Oliver observed other initiatives included in the handbook, such as installing a pro-life task force to replace Biden's reproductive healthcare task force, disassembling the FBI, defunding the Department of Justice, outlawing pornography, and more. Speaking about the two figures spearheading Project 2025, Trump associates Russ Vought and John McEntee, Oliver said, “Their goal here is clear: To assemble an army of vetted, trained staff who can begin dismantling the administrative state from day one."

On the most recent episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight that aired last Sunday, host John Oliver had an alarming segment about how Project 2025 would harm America in a multitude of ways.

See Also:

The Guardian: On HBO's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver on a second Trump term: ‘Really does promise to be far, far worse’

Can We Still Govern?: The Public Opposes Trump's Plans to Politicize Public Services

From the 06.16.2024 edition of HBO's Last Week Tonight:

[sparklecareforrealjustice]

The fact that people arent allowed to have any criticisms with sparklecare lest they be blocked by KC and the main community, just shows how toxic it is.

Like KC is selling merch, she has a patreon.

She cant be serious when she is saying its a "personal comic"

If its all personal and you dont want a huge fandom. Why do you have a patreon, sell merch, and want to publish the comic??? /nay

At this point it feels like KC is taking advantage of her followers. Like bun can grab that bag, but dont say its entirely personal when its clearly not. When people work with you to make the comic, when you have people to design characters for you, when you want it to be published.

When you involve other people in your work, it is no longer just about you.

And if you can't handle critique, you can not handle your comic being published.

-Hadron, from the Sly system

hadron, i have always felt this, and this is incredibly well said. kittycorn brushes off anything negative about her comic by saying it's personal, and made to comfort her and for her to vent, and that's all. but... kit has a team. kit has the zcp, who, like you said, have made characters for and work on the comic alongside kit.

i am not denying that there are personal elements in the story - there very clearly are, and if it wasn't obvious enough, there's a good handful of self insert characters kit has too. but kit cannot use the "i have trauma, it's my trauma comic" excuse to brush off everything people have to say about it when it isn't just her comic anymore. there are legitimate issues with the writing and some of the messages (especially in v4), and any talk about it is being swept under the "you're just hating on a disabled queer creator!!!" umbrella when it shouldn't be.

on january 1st, 2024, the website used to say this about the comic: "Sparklecare is a webcomic that is meant to be social commentary on various things, including the healthcare industry, ableism and attitudes about mental health, and trauma and the experience of being a victim of trauma. Though it has bright colors and relatively silly characters (being cartoon animals and with punny names) the message of the story is actually rather dark in nature."

but as of february 9th, 2024, it was changed to this: "Sparklecare is a webcomic about trauma and the cycle of trauma. It's based on a real-life experience I had in a real-life hospital, and I created the story as a venting way to heal from the trauma I experienced. It also doubles as criticism of the American healthcare system and the way its hurt me and others like me. This comic is created with the intent to heal from my trauma and hopefully help others feel less alone in their experiences and maybe give them a space to heal as well."

again, i am not denying that the comic is personal to kittycorn. but people are allowed to be upset that the thing they like changed. people are allowed to think something could be done better than it is.

-mod polly 🧊

[great-purple-ape]

Navigating The American Healthcare System | South Park: The End Of Obesity

And then people ask why I hate the medical industry.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

American things that I hate (I promisse I love my american moots and you guys have some cool things, like DC and smores):

- That they use the terms America and american to define themselfs when it's actually the name of the whole continent.

- Their metric system. Specially MILES. I hate miles (and foot and inches). I'm not gonna walk 500 miles, I'm gonna walk aproximadely 804 killometers like a normal person.

- That they gave the rest of the world amazing things like: wars over petrol, the south americas dicatorships, the silicon vallew culture, televangelits and the alt-right.

- Kanye West, Chris Pratt and similar celebrities.

- Trisha Paytas. She deserves a place just for her.

- Chihuahuas. They are stronger than they look and they scare the shit out of me and then as if it wasn't enough people will often laugh over the fact I'm terrifield of a chihuahua.

- That you guys don't have universal health care. Just the fact that when someone gets in an accident or passes out or is hurt after trying to kill themselfs or someone finds an injuried or disoriented person on the streets they teach you to call the police as a first response because the person may not have money for an ambulance is wild for me and probably took lifes. Brazil's universal healthcare is not the best (mostly because of corruption and bad use of public money) but it's centuries better.

- That your entertament industry causes problem to strugglying writers, actors and other artists to find a ground because their native country preffers to import american things. Is not only fault of the U.S propaganda so I don't hate it that much in relation to the U.S.

- Hamilton. The songs are good. But I think it's overrated. Also I genuinally don't get the obcession with the founding fathers, maybe is because my country nacionalism is based on hating most of our historical "heros" and villans alike and not knowing the ones who were genuine heros.

- Mount Hushmore. Stupid fucking rock. People could have sculpted anything but they choose a bunch of probably racist old man and one day when the alliens find that they will at first think all humans religiosly pray to the big rock heads. Also wasn't it sacret native american grounds?

- American Football. Firstly you aren't even using your foot. Second that ball is weird as hell. Thridly why? Fourth head injuries everywhere.

- Baseball. Okay I don't hate it I just don't get it.

(On the other hand Basketball is great and American Basketball is perfection. I love the NBA)

- All Adam Sandler movies. All of them. Yes, even that one.

- Jim Carrey.

- Donald Trump and Trumpism (or the thing that elected Bolsonaro)

- American poems (JK, I actually love American poetry as much as brazilian poetry and just wanted to say one nice thing about america after hating on a whole country soo much)

[embryhallowed]

I finally posted something on my main socials in vocal support of Palestine, outlining the history and violence of the Nakba, listing various sources including many anti-zionist Jewish voices.

I got one comment, from a woman I went to college with, who is Jewish, and who moved to Israel after Trump was elected.

Her response was pretty much what I expected. She said it seems like my only point is that the Israelis deserve the violence and had it coming, that I'm spewing revisionist history, asking where my essays about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on are, and that I'm writing all of this from the safety of America, which is a country that is "worse than Israel by every metric" and she ends with telling me to fuck off.

So yeah, pretty much what I expected, if not a little weak sauce?

Like, it is not revisionist to tell the history of the Nakba. 750,000 people displaced, 15k killed, 500 villages destroyed. It's not revisionist to talk about the massacre of Kafr Qasim where Israeli police killed 48 unarmed civilians, 23 of which were children and the youngest was 8 years old, and then an officer responsible for the murders was put in charge of "Arab Affairs" in a nearby city. It's not revisionist to say Israel funded and supported Hamas to crush secular progressive movements in Gaza. Those things happened. It is well documented. They happened. They did. You can Google it and it will be the first result you see. And these things have continued to happen ever since.

I've been vocal for years about how it's fucked that America killed a quarter of a million Afghans, how Obama bombed the middle east so much that children in these countries grew to fear says with a clear sky, because the drones could fly on those days. I've talked about Yemen and Syria, I've talked about how AMERICAN influence made all of these situations worse. I've talked about Saudi Arabia and how they murdered an American journalist and nothing was done about it, but the reason THIS gets an essay right now is because it feels like we are witnessing genocide in real time, and most of the people in this country seem fine with it.

And like. "You're sitting there safely in a country worse than Israel."

Ma'am, idk what to tell you, you chose to move from America to Israel. Dunno what to tell you there. Otherwise, I HAVE BEEN VOCALLY CRITICAL OF THE USA FOR YEARS. I've openly said that the CIA, the industrial war complex, and American capitalism, has been the single greatest source of evil and suffering on the globe in the modern era. Like, I hate American government, politics, and the influence we have on the globe. We ARE the evil empire! WE'RE the baddies! I've been saying this for AGESSSSS.

IDK guys. I just gotta spew my feelings out here so I don't pop off to her. I have my sympathies for her, because she moved to flee from Trump and to ensure her mother had the healthcare she needs to live. She's married and now has a baby, she lives in Haifa. I understand why she's angry and defensive, I fully sympathize with how scary it must be for her.

But like. That doesn't change history. It doesn't change the fact that zionist military forces violently forced people out of the city of Haifa and cleared it for new Israelis. I've wondered, how old is the building she lives in? Did Palestinians live there once before her? I've never said the Israeli civilians "had this coming" but this situation IS a ticking time bomb, which is what leftist voices have been saying for ages.

She also said "we've offered peace and they never take it!" Iirc Israel hasn't actually met to negotiate with Palestinians for like a decade?? And like. WHAT HAVE YOU OFFERED?! "Hey guys, stop resisting us and we promise to stop taking your land and bulldozing your homes. I know we already did that like 70 years ago and completely ignored the borders we, Israel, agreed to, but believe us! We'll for sure hold up our end of the bargain this time! Also no we still want to have an ethnostate and we still want to treat you as second class citizens." WHAT PEACE OFFERINGS???

She said "you haven't offered any solutions!" I'm not here to offer the perfect solution for peace in the middle east, I'm here to say genocide is wrong, I'm here to elevate the voices of Palestinians and anti-zionist Jews. You already had the bones of a "two state solution" when the UN carved up the land, and Israel didn't respect that (not that it was great to begin with). And honestly, if you say "I kinda think a single secular state where everyone gets equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity" you will get crucified??

Anyway. I'm just ranting at this point. I knew I'd get blow back for speaking out, but it honestly wasn't as bad as I expected.

I just hearted her comment and will reply later, though idk if she'll see it, since she promptly unfriended me. Also unsurprising.

Anyway, free Palestine

[sanguinifex]

Fun fact: did you know that American insurance and healthcare companies still HEAVILY use faxes in 2023?

Yup. Faxes.

If you’re old enough to drink, your parents might have one in a closet. If you’re a little older than that, you might have seen it on a Mr. Rogers rerun, or if you’re a bit older than that, when that episode first aired. Weird oversized desk phones with paper reels in them? Sometimes office-capacity ones that double as printers? Ring a bell?

Well, you see, twenty-first century American capitalism tends to form duopolies or triopolies, explicit monopolies being illegal since the previous century. And how do these companies hold onto users, how do they create dependency and up the cost to switch? They deliberately avoid interoperability. Apple vs Android vs Microsoft. Google Drive vs OneDrive (plus, in the corporate world, AWS). Epic Systems vs …there are others, but all the medical systems I’ve interacted with since college use Epic. Which is only ever pronounced ironically. Anyway, all these different insurance and healthcare companies are keeping all their very important info and documents in individualized and often proprietary databases that they can’t mutually access. Sometimes you can’t even open the native filetypes on different software, like how Mac word processing had to be exported as .doc so you could open it on the Windows school computers to print it off your 2-gig flash drive.

Here’s the magic of fax. The US telephone system is a public utility. While the provision of service to your phone and my phone may be handled by different entities—again, courtesy of twentieth-century monopoly breakups—it is illegal for one service provider to not be interoperable with another service provider. It is standardized like railroad gauges or 0.7 mm pencil lead. You can have a T-mobile phone plan and call someone who has Verizon and be able to hear what they say, and it won’t be distorted, pitch inverted, or translated into Swahili simply because of the difference in cell carriers.

This means that fax is the ONLY universal document format in the United States. You can use it to transform a paper form into a stream of fax data, which can then be turned into another paper form or into a PDF file on someone’s computer via conversion software (which, this being America, there are multiple proprietary programs for, none of which can talk to each other except by fax). You can also convert a PDF into a fax, and then print it or convert it back to a PDF at its destination. Yes, it’s possible to send a fax that has never, at any point in its life cycle, been a physical piece of paper!

So yeah, the US healthcare system and also property insurance runs on faxes, literal grandpa technology, because capitalism hates interoperability so much that it’s sabotaging an industry, insurance, that only exists because of capitalism. Also interoperability should be mandated on the same international level as the Geneva Convention and if tech companies position themselves as digital infrastructure, we should nationalize them.

But yeah, that’s why I have fax machine duty on Wednesdays at work.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

Hello. simply, I am wondering what you believe is the best solution towards preventing gun violence within schools. Not an anti 2A questioner - guns are good and necessary. Nonetheless, the plague of these shootings has got to go..

i answered a similar question like a week ago but i was in a rush so i wasn't able to answer it thoughtfully enough. so i'll answer again.

second, somehow get the media to stop sensationalizing school shooters. i don't know exactly how this would be done because of the first amendment but i'm sure we could figure out something. even if it's just some industry wide self-regulation or something.

i think these two things would have the largest effect /directly/.

however, i believe that school shootings (and mass shootings in general) are really symptoms of a much larger issue: moral and social decay. and i can't take anyone seriously who doesn't take /that/ issue seriously. because without addressing that you're only addressing the symptoms, not the disease itself.

moral decay sounds ambiguous but you know what i mean. everyone knows what it means. it's shorthand for how disconnected, nihilistic, and narcissistic our society has become. we are more isolated and atomized than ever. we have no social trust. no community. wealth inequality. a mental health crisis. criminals walking our streets. families are broken. no one believes in anything. our media glorifies materialistic greed and self-indulgence.

then we act surprised when our society produces broken people full of rage and resentment?

so, some things that could help the /real/ issue which might help the issue of school shootings /indirectly/:

build denser, walkable communities. increase policing and get tough on crime -- clean up communities. invest in mental healthcare (this includes increasing funding for schools to hiring social workers). universal healthcare in general tbh. create a new type of "family planning" that emphasizes making families and making them work (financial resources, discounts on recreational activities, marriage counseling, parent-child counseling, etc). universal basic income. honestly, we should probably start censoring our media again (nothing too draconian but there should be /some/ standard). immigration control (i know the libs hate to hear it but ethnic diversity is negatively correlated with social trust). tax reform. land reform. education reform (more civic and patriotic oriented and also more emphasis on extracurricular activities and community-building). make my cult the state religion (i'm mostly memeing here but i do sincerely believe america is in desperate need of a new post-christian religious awakening). protectionism (bring back jobs that pay well).

first, it's important to note a few things.

most mass shootings are not school shootings but gang-related. school shootings are extremely rare statistical outliers -- you're about as likely to be killed in a school shooting as you are to be killed by lightning. guns used to be more accessible and there were virtually never any school shootings until recently. it seems clear to me that this is some type of social contagion more than anything.

none of this is to say that mass shootings aren't an issue or that we shouldn't try to mitigate them. the point is, this is a sudden and relatively recent phenomenon and, while tragic, it is not something to lose our minds over. if you're paranoid about school shootings you need to ask yourself why you're not also paranoid about lightning or cars or plane crashes or random animal attacks. and if you /are/ paranoid about those things then maybe you're just an anxious person and should probably seek therapy.

we can't live in fear. speaking of alcohol, alcohol causes a lot of harm. but we, as americans, have decided that it's worth the risks. that there is some inherent /good/ in having access to alcohol. that the benefits of having access to alcohol outweigh the harm it causes. we are a free people. and freedom is dangerous. there is more to life than maximizing "harm reduction."

but now for some possible mitigating solutions

first, we need to secure our schools the same way we secure our courthouses or airports. our schools are just as important as these institutions and we should protect them as such. this should be the bare minimum standard.

second, somehow get the media to stop sensationalizing school shooters. i don't know exactly how this would be done because of the first amendment but i'm sure we could figure out something. even if it's just some industry wide self-regulation or something. but getting them to stop plastering the names/faces of the shooters everywhere and publishing their "manifestos" and all that would go a long way.

i think these two things would have the largest effect /directly/.

however, i believe that school shootings (and mass shootings in general) are really symptoms of a much larger issue: moral and social decay. and i can't take anyone seriously who doesn't take /that/ issue seriously. because without addressing that you're only addressing the symptoms, not the disease itself.

moral decay sounds ambiguous but you know what i mean. everyone knows what it means. it's shorthand for how disconnected, nihilistic, and narcissistic our society has become. we are more isolated and atomized than ever. we have no social trust. no community. wealth inequality. a mental health crisis. criminals walking our streets. families are broken. no one believes in anything. our media glorifies materialistic greed and self-indulgence.

then we act surprised when our society produces broken people full of rage and resentment? i've heard someone describe it as a "slow motion riot" and riots are the voice of the unheard. well, our society is sick and disconnected so there are more "unheard" than ever.

so, some things that could help the /real/ issue which might help the issue of school shootings /indirectly/:

build denser, walkable communities. increase policing and get tough on crime -- clean up communities. invest in mental healthcare (this includes increasing funding for schools to hiring social workers). universal healthcare in general tbh. create a new type of "family planning" that emphasizes making families and making them work (financial resources, discounts on recreational activities, marriage counseling, parent-child counseling, etc). universal basic income. honestly, we should probably start censoring our media again (nothing too draconian but there should be /some/ standard). immigration control (i know the libs hate to hear it but ethnic diversity is negatively correlated with social trust). tax reform. land reform. education reform (more civic and patriotic oriented and also more emphasis on extracurricular activities and community-building). make my cult the state religion (i'm mostly memeing here but i do sincerely believe america is in desperate need of a new post-christian religious awakening). institute a new militia system (kinda memeing but also serious). protectionism (bring back jobs that pay well).

basically just reform society bro. our society is deeply sick and requires some pretty fundamental change.

[civildisorderstream]

An Example of Centrism

Most people think of politics in the sense of "this side vs that side" in America, as we are a two party system. Republican vs Democrat, Conservative vs Progressive, etc. The concept of a political spectrum, or horse shoe, or two-axis graph of some sort - all of that is nonsense. What people think, believe, and wish of their government doesn't cleanly fit into that sort of thing and... okay, I started this entry with a specific intent and I'm not going to derail myself.

Suffice it to say, it's easy to dunk on Republicans and they suck, but there are Democrats that suck too. No, not all of them. I'm not a blind anarchist sort. I refer to these Democrats as Centrists, and honestly they refer to themselves the same and pretty openly at that. Where we'd differ is defining what they stand for and how much they accomplish in the country. To them, they are enlightened, above 'partisan' stuff (which doesn't make sense but I'll take that another time), and always seek to bring both sides to the table for compromise. To me, practically speaking, they are a group that seek to keep things in the country exactly as they are; any legislation passed to help marginalized people is extremely kneecapped or narrow in scope, and any legislation to help wealthy peoples (which Republicans do) is explained as, "We need that money to help win elections." Even though they do next to nothing with the power. But notice how in my view, they are conservative in nature. What does that make Republicans and the alt-right? Regressive. Holding the line in a bad situation vs making a bad situation worse. I hate both groups, obviously Republicans more, but Centrists are not heroes.

That's a LOT of world-view explanation for what should otherwise be a quick news comment. I'll do a talk video / stream sometime about that stuff so people can get to know me. On to the meat.

President Biden is choosing a new chief of staff soon, as his current one is going to leave. As far as I know there's no official pick named (I searched the news to be sure nothing changed as of writing this) but the name Jeff Zients has leaked to the press. Now hey, that's not a name most people would know, and the chief of staff isn't exactly a position most Americans concern themselves with. This guy, however... hoo boy.

Zients is a guy that has actually worked with Biden in a way before. He worked for the Obama administration specifically. He was in charge of healthcare dot gov's rollout, back when "America is going to help people with healthcare!" was something we all got blueballed on. As people would recall, the site's rollout was something of a disaster in functionality. And here's the thing... it was probably Zients' fault. See, the guy has a work history in the private sector with the healthcare industry. So, yeah, we had a conflict of interest situation over a decade ago with this chucklefuck.

And now here we are, 2023, with this guy about to be chief of staff to the POTUS. His connections to private industry still alive. THIS is why I hate centrists; they don't see this as a problem, they see it as a strength. That oh, he'll convince his buddies to come to the table and not be as rich. Which never happens. Ever. I'm almost 40 years old and I am tired of this crap being sold to Americans over. And over. And over.

Here's your citation, the Associated Press. I'm going to slam my head in the freezer door for a bit.

[lnane]

zero pressure to explain this to my american ass if you dont have the energy, but like.

whats sweden like, as someone who lives there? im always fascinated to hear about other parts of the world from the people who know them best, and i dont hear much about sweden in general, so ive got a lot to learn.

if thats too broad of a question, some suggestions: how do you feel about the weather, or the politics, or the holidays?

whats a nuisance yall joke about (like, over here in usamerica, its usually the military-industrial complex, or costly healthcare)?

or, whats something unique about sweden, or something that you think more people should know about it?

well we can do this in order of things that pop in my head, very disorganized.

to start of with weather: its getting too hot. the weather is actually pretty comfortable most of the time, and these last summers have been the best ive managed in my experience with heat, but you can tell by the climate that its too hot. its too dry, and theres very little snow during winter. its still cold as fuck, but no snow somehow. I wish it rained more. but on a day to day basis, weathers comfy. A bit windy sometime.

holidays i got very little thoughts on myself. theres a few of them and most are just days off. Im not too fond of the way we celebrate them but then again ive only been allowed to and wanted to drink for 2 years worth of them, so i havent gotten into it yet (yea alcohol is the biggest reason we actually still celebrate things i think)

politics is a fucking hellscape rn. the barely disguised neo-nazi party recently got the most amount of votes in the election so the right wing parties is in control. Theyve already started talking dumb shit about climate politics and immigrants. Not looking up. Beyond that i dont know much about the political landscape.

I dont know what a typical swede complains or jokes about because i dont hang out with a lot of them. I know gas prices is a common thing right now. We also have a trend in comedy calling norwegians idiots, which doesnt make sense because we hate denmark way more.

Its hard to say whats unique or special bout sweden because to be all of it is normal. Only real things you need to know is 1. if a swede tries to claim they cant speak english with you, only plausible conlusion is that they didnt finish middleschool (passing grade in english is mandatory), 2. anything that is a traditional swedish meal is pretty much garbage. Its mostly mildly spiced meat, potatoes, and some sauce similar to gravy.

I guess one thing thats a big difference from the american perspective is how our education looks through the years. First 9 are mandatory, ages 7-15 grade 1-9, in stages called Low, Middle, and High stage. After that, you legally have the choice to keep studying or to do something else (socially and economically you dont have that chocie), and at that point you choose your own education. The most common ones being things like Civics, Naturesciences, Technology, and Fine Arts (Art, Dance, Photo, Music, and theatre). Theres a bunch more but these the top picks. Usually lasts 3 years which after you should be around 18 years old and most of the time expected to apply for uni. And during that time you do get money for going to school (seperate from loans, and not a lot of money).

I can probably provide some more detailed information about what its like here with questions about specific parts, but keep in mind that i also know very little about this country. I just live here

[bastart13]

I’ve had a lot of fun recently coming with with female mercenary characters for TF2. I really liked where the concept art was going with making them all individual characters rather than simply “if the characters were women”

The design style is fantastic for distinct simplicity so I tried limiting myself to basic colours and shapes to make these

and I’m pretty confident they pass the silhouette test!

Character names/bios under the cut!

Heavy

Name: Marie Jarrett

Age: Mid 30s-40s

Height: 6’5

Nationality: American (Hawai’i)

Bio: Raised in Hawai’i, growing up she developed more and more drastic measures to fend off the tourists swarming her home. Land mines, electric gates, guard dogs, none could stop them for long until she picked up her trusty minigun to send her message. But even still, she hears the click of cameras in the night.

Eventually, she left her home to explore the world. Enthralled with the image of seeing different wonders across different countries, she’s always disappointed. She’s travelled every continent and still finds nothing that lives up to her expectations. No place, no person. She’s outgoing and open to new experiences, only she usually hates them.

Mercenary life is a great opportunity to earn money, see sights, meet new people and kill them after they don’t meet your expectations. She hates New Mexico and takes every opportunity to destroy the buildings and insult her employer’s tastes. She finds some people she tolerates within the mercenaries as she hasn’t yet visited where they live. However much she hides it, she has a deep, instinctual fear of the Engineer.

  Soldier

Name: Linda Smith

Age: Early 40s

Height: 5’10

Nationality: Canadian

Bio: Canada’s perfect woman… or so she claims. The star of war propaganda posters and clearly decided for the role because of her great tactical assets. She’s there to motivate people into the fight. To spread the glory of Canada and inspire her allies. She believes she has higher orders than anyone else she’s working for (ignoring the fact she hasn’t heard from them for a good few years) and is determined to follow them to the letter. She may have lost the letter but she remembers it good enough.

She represents the ideals of Canada: polite, friendly, apologetic, and pacifistic. None of these are contradicted by how she throws around rockets. That’s not what Canada means. She’s superior to everyone around her and graciously educates them on how to improve through example. She loves her French and British allies and will kindly tell the Americans how to be better.

She’s motivating and actually fairly competent, it’s just that competency might be misdirected. She’s damn good at rocket jumping, shooting her shotgun, and supporting her team, it’s just that you really need to get it in her head when she’s meant to be doing it.

Scout

Name: Patricia “Pat” Herald

Age: 50s-60s

Height: 5’4

Nationality: English

Bio: In her years, Patricia has learnt fear… and she’s learnt to laugh in its face. She wakes up at the crack of dawn, ready to leave at the drop of a hat, boots polished and laced the night before. Her years have taught her that with a gun and Jeremy by her side, she can survive!

The postal route of Appleby-in-Westmorland.

She’s been chased by geese, dogs, cows, elderly ladies, and when her postal route had her delivering post during the war, she developed a taste for blood. Nothing will stop her from delivering her post on time. Every day before 6am, every postbox will have their letters and parcels. One chucked across barbed wire, another house jumped over a river, another house miles into the country with dogs on her heels, she WILL get there and she’ll get there FAST.

But after a couple of decades, she needs a change of scenery, and the Gravels wars are just the holiday she’s needed. With her trusty black and white cat by her side (ignoring the yowling and scratches) she reckons it’ll be great time to enjoy herself.

Quotes: “Oh, hello, Human Jeremy.”

“Bloody fucking Ethel! Building her house out in the country… surrounded by bloody hills and rivers!”

Pyro

Name: Nikephoros Papadopoulos

Age: Late 20s

Height: 5’11

Nationality: Greek

Bio: Survival of the fittest. Nature gives and nature taketh away. If you’re not prepared for that, well, Pyro is more than happy to teach you the lesson. They embody the old values of the Greek gods: f*ck or fire. She indulges her every whim and unfortunately for the people around her it often involves arson.

One year for the Olympic games, she was given the noble title of torchbearer. On complete coincidence, the Olympics shifted to primarily water sports. Underwater sprints became the hot new trend!

She’s merry and chatty, never missing the opportunity to talk to other people about herself and her world view. She can’t wait to spread her gospel to help other people improve themselves (though she always gets a laugh out of those who go out screaming in the flames). She can’t help it if she has a sadistic side.

Engineer

Name: Mikawo Kojima

Age: Early 20s

Height: 5’0

Nationality: Japanese

Bio: Japan’s early-rising industrial revolutions in technology are best exemplified in Mikawo, a young upstart determined to rise to the top, learning everything she can and building the best of the best. Unfortunately, she’s never been the most creative but when you happen upon other people’s blueprints and happen to construct them first, what does it matter who came up with the “concept”?

At first, she appears to be every bit the quiet and demure young woman people expect, only when silk hides steel, that steel is a massive automatic sentry gun. She’s motivated by a distinct contempt for the people who get in her way. Especially those who try to be better than her. She enjoys the flexibility of English, especially the cusses, and she has no reservations about swearing up a storm, even if she still refuses to give a straight rejection, preferring instead to give a small “I’ll think about it.”

Quotes: “This GUN is fair use on your head!”

Demo

Name: Qingzhao Zeng

Age: Late 40s

Height: 5’3

Nationality: Chinese

Bio: The Zeng family has a long-standing family trade in demolitions and explosives, traced down the line all the way to the Song dynasty. Luckily, Qingzhao has sisters so, you know, it’s not all that important. She doesn’t even have to stop smoking and drinking. She hasn’t blown herself up (that much) so clearly, it’s working. Precision is for other people to worry about. She’s apathetic to a T, having seen everything. Measurements come from the heart. A pinch of gunpowder there, a splash of paint there.

Her family has a deep-seated rivalry with the DeGroots. Long ago in ancient China, a Zeng matriarch woke up in a cold sweat, a message from the stars to let them know of their Scottish rivals. Due to being a continent away from each other, the families have actually met each other only a handful of times, but the hatred needs to be kept up because, what if?

Turns out, Qingzhao has met Tavish even before finding employment under the Mann brothers. One drunken night, the two of them had a short, whirlwind friendship, sharing secrets and declaring each other to be their best friends. Luckily for them, they both forgot the night, merrily hating each other as tradition dictates. However, headaches and flashes of this terrible night haunt them both. Could they really get over centuries of hate and become friends?

Absolutely not.

Sniper

Name: Ansa Aaltonen

Age: 27

Height: 6’2

Nationality: Finnish

Bio: Snow. Sugar. Cocaine.  Her life is run by many white powders. Ansa is a professional sniper, with a sharp eye and a steady hand… when she isn’t also high as a kite, lost in the snowy wilderness of Finland and screeching to the sky. When you’re up in the dark and cold, you need something to give you a little pep in your step. It just so happens Ansa liked having a bit more pep than most.

She’s there for a THRILL. There’s nothing better to get your heart pumping at 200 beats per second than a good headshot, embracing the chill, and a hit of sugar. She no longer feels the cold or heat or even pain, shrugging it off until she collapses. It just makes her feel alive. She’s efficient, fast, and determined to get her kicks.

She has an unusual taste, living off fermented fish and tree bark. To most people around the Finnish wilderness, she’s nothing more than an urban legend, but she’s very real and she’s looking for some excitement, happily found in employment in the Gravel wars.

Spy

Name: Yvonne Pleshette [Real name N/A]

Age: 30s

Height: 5’8

Nationality: American (California)

Bio: The silver screen calls to his woman and she’s happy to answer. She trains herself to act in every possible role she can, having a wide range of accents, body languages, and backstories. To truly test herself, she gave up her identity long ago. Lately she’s been going by the name “Yvonne.”

The world of Hollywood is cutthroat and full of backstabbers so she learnt to cut throats and stab backs. While some people tell her the terms are metaphorical, nothing else has given her more roles. Living the mercenary life is simply gathering research for her roles (and earning some much-needed money in the process).

She presents herself as a classic film star, despite being a minor name at best, mostly because she’s always changing it. She has high standards but a cheapskate personality. She’s a bit of a bitch, happily criticising others, especially if they’re working with her. What can she say? She’s a diva.

[Slutshames other spy]

Quotes: “Ugh, actors these days, they know nothing about getting into character. They still have names.”

“’AHHHHH—’ Wait, no. Once more from the top. Scream in agony.”

Medic

Name: Susan Monks

Age: 30-40s

Height: 5’7

Nationality: American (New Jersey)

Bio: The American Healthcare system. Is there a more glorious sight? The exploitation of pain. The money. The debt. The fear it strikes into the entire population it’s designed to help. To Susan, there’s nothing better. She squeezes every last drop from the people she helps, working on a purely transactional lifestyle. She’ll never help someone unless she has all of their insurance information and the payment secure in her bank, and god forbid she ever accept help. It’s not like she can afford her own prices.

She’s very self-aware of her own corruption and proud of it, though she refuses to be exploited in the same way, suspicious of anything “free” but also doing her best not to pay for anything.

That said, she doesn’t much care for how good a job she does. In her eyes, asking for surgery is one thing. Asking for successful surgery is another. She has a variety of skills in both cosmetic and military medicine. She just wishes the license board would stop sending her “malpractice” letters. Ugh, stick to your own business. “Disappearing” all their messengers is becoming a pain.

Quotes: “Why get someone else to do something for you when you can scrounge a way to do it yourself?”

[alliswyattonthewesternfront]

started and finished Elizabeth Catte's What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia in an hour, hooting and hollering in vindication

I fucking hate being the face of "white poverty" and the patronizing, fake-ass pity of the right and the left. I hate that we are treated as a white monolith, when more people in Appalachia identify as African-American than Scots-Irish. A largely white population does not mean 100% white, and the history of black activists from here should not be erased. I'm sick of being treated like I must not be used to being around non-whites by people from western NY who didn't have a black student in their entire graduating class.

I fucking hate having to constantly correct people on coal industry history, because it IS important, especially in the context of U.S. labor history, but now most of us work at Dollar General, Pizza Hut, or Walmart and it distracts from the shit we need to deal with NOW.

I'm sick of having to explain about the history of anti-slavery and anti-segregation here, because you NEED to understand it in order to understand why Appalachia has been deprived of government aid since the Civil War, and no the War on Poverty does NOT count, shut the entire fuck up. But everytime I explain this to people they want to stop learning there because they want it to absolve them of any guilt, and smugly "not all whites" about it.

I'm sick of seeing the fucking endless stream of photographers that take exploitative photographs of us. That lecture us for being backwards, religious yokels, and then in the same breath condemn any woman who dares to be an unwed mother as morally base. who take photos of us covered in dirt and dealing with injuries we've wrapped up our selves, always implying it is distrust of "newfangled medecine" and not the lack of accessible healthcare.

talk all you want about us being violent, gun-toting hicks that hate outsiders. but if I was Hobart Isom and saw you in the mountains with a camera, I'd probably have shot you too.

Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, these are ALL problems here, that need to be addressed and eradicated. But that's everywhere in America! Every single fucking place in this horrible country!! This is not a uniquely southern problem, not a uniquely Appalachian problem. If you don't know about the KKK's second wave and its roots in New Jersey, shut the fuck up and come back later after you've read a few books.

Nowhere in America is safe for trans people. Nowhere. I understand why people point out the especially regressive and dangerous policies that are spreading through the south, but don't act like I won't have to deal with this shit literally anywhere I go. There are more trans teens in West Virginia than anywhere else in the country, are we just supposed to abandon them?

I'm also fucking sick to absolute bastard death of hearing about Deliverance, of the incest jokes, from people who don't know the name Carrie Buck, and how the myth of "degraded pioneer stock" was used as justification to sterilize women against their will in West Virginia.

Don't lecture me about healthcare here if you don't know who Eula Hall is.

If the names Robert Payne and Huey Perry are news to you, maybe go fuck off before you treat Appalachia as your precious white ethno state and erase black activists here. Never fucking talk to me about Hillbilly Elegy unless you're setting up a cage match between me and J. D. Vance. I hope he dies. I hope he dies painfully.

And I am exhausted by these tired, played out caricatures of us being sold back to us. I'm as guilty as anyone of surrendering to shame, of poking fun, of perpetuating the stereotypes either to make money off tourists or to set myself apart from the "bad southerners"

Why don't more of us who can, leave? Why do so many young people here leave for college, only to eventually return sometime after graduating? Because we know our self-appointed social betters will not do anything to change things here. We want better for Appalachia, we want more for the people here, and nothing changes here until we start doing it ourselves. Just look at the eastern Kentucky grassroots prison abolition movement, the Appalachian Queer Film Festival, Appalachian OUTreach. It's exhausting and it never seems to change, and we will keep doing this shit anyway even if it's until the heat death of the universe

[antiterf]

I'm "dependent on the medical system!" I'm a "lifelong medical patient!"

And I would still be even if I wasn't fucking transitioning!

I have depression, anxiety, adhd, eczema, arthritis, I was born with a fucking deformity that needed surgical correction that's still slightly deformed!

And I'm a motherfucking American on top of it all! My life plan is determined by if I'm going to have insurance or not because I'm screwed otherwise!

I have a lot of drugs but doctors still look and go "eh I've seen worse." I like to call myself an old man because of that and my cane and I turn 20 in a month!

And yeah, the money I pay is a lot, I hate it. Sprinkle in the American and you have the fact that I'm dealing with possibly the most complex medical care system in the world the second I turned 18. Buying a fucking house is easier than this shit. Medical care and college are my two main priorities when it comes to spending money, and college is easier to figure out how to pay for than medical care.

But the problem with that isn't me. It will never be the people who are getting this treatment.

I pay so much because of drug monopolies and the extremely high charge that I get with these treatments. My issues with being dependent on the healthcare system is the healthcare system itself, not me.

Maybe instead pretending like you care about the abuse of the medical industry and telling trans people that being dependent on it is The Worst Thing, try to do something to make it better. You can easily talk about overpriced drugs instead of telling those who already have a chronic illness that we don’t want to transition and be dependent on the healthcare system.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Corruption

“Corruption” conjures images of bags of cash changing hands in deserted parking garages, but I’d like to propose a simple and concrete definition that goes beyond that: “Corruption” is when something bad happens because its harms are diffused and its gains are concentrated.

Here’s what I mean. West Virginia is known as coal country, but coal is actually a small, dwindling industry in WV; WV’s biggest industry is chemical processing, dominated by Dow — chem processing, like many industries, is heavily concentrated into a few global monopolies.

WV has a water crisis, with frequent “boil water” advisories. Its origins are in the chemical industry — specifically, in a regulatory proceeding where state regulators sought comment on whether to relax the EPA’s national guidelines on chemical runoff into drinking water.

Dow, acting through the manufacturers’ association it controls, argued the people of WV could absorb more poison than the national average because they were much fatter than the median American, and when they drank, it was mostly beer, not water.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

No, really.

Here’s the thing. I’m not qualified to set the safe levels of different kinds of runoff in water-tables. It’s probably not zero (at least, not for most chemicals), but it’s also not “anything goes.”

It’s a question that requires subtle, interdisciplinary expertise: chemistry, health, environmental science. It’s an area where people of good faith can disagree.

These thorny, high-stakes technical questions that cross disciplines are the norm, not the exception.

Even if you have the technical knowhow to evaluate whether wearing masks fights covid, that doesn’t answer questions about vaccine safety, or whether zoom-school will turn your kid into an ignoramus.

Answer those questions and you’re left with still more: should you get in one of Southwest’s recertified Boeing 737-Max airplanes? Is the code specifying the reinforced steel joist that holds up your roof adequate, or is your building gonna collapse?

Should you eat carbs? Will your 401k preserve you through a dignified retirement? Answering all of these questions definitively for yourself requires earning 50+ PhDs, but also, people who have those PhDs don’t all agree with one another.

In a technologically complex world, there will always be official advice whose technical arguments we can’t understand. Our only reassurance is the process by which that advice is arrived at.

We may not understand the arguments, but we can recognize an open, independent process refereed by neutral regulators who show their work and recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest.

We don’t always understand what goes on inside the box, but we can tell whether the box itself is sound. We can tell judges are financially interested in outcomes, whether they publish their deliberations, whether they revisit their conclusions in light of new evidence.

That’s all we’ve got, and it depends on a balance of powers that arises from a pluralistic, diffused set of industrial interests.

When an industry says with one voice that West Virginians are so fat that we can poison them without injury, it carries a lot of weight.

(so to speak)

It’s a stupid argument. It’s a wicked argument. It’s a lethal argument. It’s the kind of argument that might get you laughed out of the room if it is filled with hundreds of squabbling chemical companies looking to dunk on one another.

That’s the thing about conspiracies (and Dow was, in fact, engaged in a conspiracy to poison West Virginians to enrich its shareholders) — they require a lot of discipline, with all the conspirators remaining loyal to the conspiracy and no one breaking ranks.

The bigger a group is, the more it struggles to keep a united front. That’s why there’s so much billionaire class solidarity. Sure, it’s hard to maintain unity among a clutch of grandiose maniacs, but it’s much harder to maintain unity among billions of their victims.

Monopolization is corruption’s handmaiden — not just because it lets Dow hire fancy lawyers and “experts” to dress up “fat people are immune to poison” as sound policy, but because the industry can sing that awfful song with one voice.

Dow spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to win a policy that will save it millions — and cost the people of WV hundreds of millions or even billions in health costs, lost productivity, and, of course, the intergenerational trauma of ruined and lost human lives.

The reason millions in gains can trump billions in losses is that that the millions are reaped by just a few firms, who can wield them with precision to secure the continued right to impose costs on the rest of us, while the losses are spread out across the whole state.

For Dow to corrupt West Virginia’s legislature, it need only tithe a small percentage of its winnings to political causes and dark money orgs.

For West Virginians to fight corruption in the cash-money world of political influence campaigns, they have to overcome their collective action problem and outspend Dow — all while bearing the human and monetary costs of Dow’s corruption.

America is a land of manifest, obvious dysfunctions, and close examination reveals their common root in corruption.

Take the health-care system: Americans pay more for worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world.

Their healthcare is rationed by faceless, cruel bureaucracies. They ration their medicine or skip necessary procedures. Patients hate this — but so do doctors and nurses, who have to hire armies of bureaucrats to fight with insurers.

Everyone hates this system. Everyone knows it’s rotten. Everyone — except for a handful of pharma, hospital and insurance monopolists, and the propagandists they pay to busily race through the crowd, busily swapping hats and shouting, “SOCIALISM! BOO! SOCIALISM!”

But while the US healthcare system is terrible at providing healthcare, it’s very good at jackpotting for monopolists. They reap billions while costing the public trillions, and they hand around millions to keep that situation intact.

We can see that in action right now. Nina Turner is running to take over a Congressional seat in northeastern Ohio vacated by Marcia Fudge when she joined Biden’s cabinet.

https://www.dailyposter.com/dems-launch-proxy-war-on-medicare-for-all/

For 30 years, every Congressional rep for Ohio’s 11th supported Medicare for All — a commensense measure to end the long waits, price gouging and cruel bureaucratic rationing of for-profit care. Unsurprisingly, Turner also supports M4A.

https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/1404793650895331337?s=20

In response, a group of corporate, establishment Congressional Dems have launched an all-out attack on Turner’s candidacy, joining forces with health-care lobbyists to raise vast corporate fortunes to support her primary challenger, Shontel Brown.

The seven Dem lawmakers attacking Turner have collectively taken in $5m from pharma and health-care monopolists. James E Clyburn alone has pocketed $1m from pharma. He’s leading the charge against Turner.

https://twitter.com/TaylorPopielarz/status/1405121330433957888

Before Clyburn accepted $1m worth of pharma money, he co-sponsored Medicare For All legislation. Now he’s its most bitter opponent, insisting that it’s political poison (a majority of his constituents support M4A).

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/live-blog/south-carolina-primary-live-updates-democrats-vote-2020-candidates-n1145296/ncrd1146076

One million people in Ohio lost their jobs — and health care — during the pandemic. The system is murdering and maiming people. It’s a wasteful boondoggle that’s bad for everyone except a tiny minority of shareholders and the corrupt officials who accept their blood-money.

It’s not just healthcare. Think of Exxon Mobil’s crime against humanity and Earth: the 40-year coverup and disinformation campaign to delay action on the climate emergency. Exxon spent millions, made tens of billions, and cost us all trillions.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crisis-crime-fossil-fuels-environment

The megadroughts, once-in-millennium heatwaves, raging wildfires, annual floods-of-the-century and zoonitic plagues Exxon bought with their millions were objectively a very bad deal — but their concentrated gains beat our much larger diffused losses (so far). #ExxonKnew.

But corruption creates policy debt, and the interest on that debt compounds — in a degraded environment, worsening health, precarious work, and a collapse in trust in institutions. The corrupt have a structural advantage, but it’s not a sure thing.

Take Ohio (again). The GOP-dominated Senate passed legislation to ban Ohio cities from offering municipal broadband. Now, municipal broadband is the best internet in America: cheaper, faster and more reliable than anything the telecoms monopolists offer.

There are ~900 (mostly Republican) towns and counties where people get their internet from their local government:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

And they fucking love it, just as much as their Comcast-burdened peers elsewhere hate their service:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180808223947/https://www.consumerreports.org/phone-tv-internet-bundles/people-still-dont-like-their-cable-companies-telecom-survey/

Muni networks are better at everything to do with the internet: connection speeds, price, and customer service. There’s only one area in which they underperform relative to telecoms monopolies: generating profits for shareholders by overcharging and underinvesting.

There’s only a tiny minority of people who’d trade good internet service for profitable internet service (namely, the people receiving the profits). But the pro-monopolists have concentrated gains, while the public experiences diffused losses.

That’s why the Ohio Senate passed its budget bill banning municipal networks. But when the budget was reconciled in the Ohio House, the measure was killed, thanks to an all-out uprising led by the people of Fairlawn, who stepped up to defend Fairlawngig, their muni ISP.

The victory for muni broadband is a triumph of evidence over corruption — proof that the diffused nature of corruption losses can be overcome. It’s cause for hope, especially in light of this week’s collapse of the antitrust case against Facebook.

https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-antitrust-case-against-facebook-very-much-alive/

Facebook escaped justice by citing the theories of Robert Bork, Nixon’s chief criminal co-conspirator and Ronald Reagan’s court sorcerer. Bork insisted that anittrust law had but one purpose: to keep prices down.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/28/dubious-quant-residue/#incinerators-r-us

Any other consideration, especially political corruption arising from market concentration, was out of scope.

The court agreed. No surprise; 40% of the US Federal judiciary has attended a lavish “Manne Seminar,” junkets where they are indoctrinated into Borkism.

But the absurdity of ruling that Facebook isn’t a fit subject for anti-monopoly law is the beginning of the end for Borkism, prompting bipartisan calls — led by Elizabeth Warren — to explicitly redesign American antitrust.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/facebooks-surprise-antitrust-victory-could-inspire-congress-to-overhaul-the-rules-entirely/ar-AALCJz8

Corruption has many costs: monetary, human, environmental. But every bit as important is the cost to institutional credibility. Remember, none of us are capable of understanding the technical nuances of the dozens of life-or-death decisions we face daily.

If we can’t trust our institutions — if we don’t believe that regulators are neutral, good-faith experts in ardent pursuit of the truth and the public good — then our very idea of shared reality collapses, as Snowden has written:

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1

It’s hard to overstate the sheer, reeling epistemological terror of institutional collapse. When the EPA allows the chemical industry to poison America, how can you know whether the products in the store can be trusted not to kill your family?

https://theintercept.com/2021/06/30/epa-pesticides-exposure-opp/

Remember, the Flint water crisis came about as the result of corruption: the promises of “experts” that taking shortcuts to save money would come out all right, despite the copious evidence to the contrary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Water_Crisis

What parent of a permanently damaged child, poisoned by lead deliberately introduced to save pittances for a tiny group of people, could ever trust any “expert” process again?

Michigan Republicans saved millions at the expense of billions, but the gains were concentrated among the wealthy white taxpayers of the state who enjoyed cuts to the top marginal rate, and the costs were born by the Black families of Flint. That’s corruption.