Oh, and speaking of Charley we were lucky enough to have the Charley Crockett/Leon Bridges show come through, holy crap, I’d seen both of them live before but getting TWO great performers in one night, wow. And that intersection between county and R&B is such pleasant music.

I saw Joshua Ray Walker open for Marcus King and didn’t even like his show but looked him up and found his recorded work to be incredible, THEN he found out he had cancer and that was part of why the live show was weak, nothing to do with his music, and says he is recovering now, but I felt so uncharitable thinking the show sucked when he was dealing with something so awful.

But anyway - I do use streaming but like you find bands other ways, opening acts, radio, sometimes Brooklyn Vegan, that site posts about bands I’ve never heard of, I listen and find stuff I like (and a lot I don’t).

https://www.floridahealth.gov/licensing-and-regulation/midwifery/index.html

Not nurse midwife - those deliver in hospital here. Certified licensed midwife.

Midwives here are licenced, I had most of my kids at home and the midwife could handle slight complications, and did. Babies die in hospital births too, I’m sure all experienced OBs have lost moms and babies, birth is not always safe. Midwives have better outcomes here but can (and are required to) turn down high risk clients so it’s not an apples to apples thing.

But they certainly aren’t like you are characterizing, they are very good specialist medical providers- is Canada so different?

ETA: with the first two we did not have insurance, midwife did a sliding scale billing according to income, with the second set I had insurance but preferred home birth. With two of them (the first and last) they would have come at home or in the car anyway, I had very short and intense labor, am close to hospitals but midwife got to me in 5 minutes, time to set up and catch the baby. With one I had to be induced so she still attended but at birth center not home.

Good. Pay us all overtime then, at time & a half.

I’m an accountant, but how TF is physical therapist not professional? 3 year grad school program for Doctor of Physical therapy, at 21k per year here. That is the education requirement. Then state licensing and jurisprudence exams, continuing education.

You know what isn’t a professional job here? Politician.

My personal opinion - if he had not SHARED it with anyone and it was AI, I would chalk it up to teenage boy messing around, nobody was hurt, right? Sharing it with his friends is different, so different. That is distribution, and hardcore bullying that should get you expelled, if one punch gets her expelled. I don’t really have any idea of what the laws say when it’s a child doing this with a peer.

Was he expelled though? Only physical violence is an expellable offense? Making porn of a classmate and sharing it doesn’t get you expelled? What the fuck?

Yeah for what I’d pay for a burrito at Chipotle I can go get a burrito at a local place instead. I am not a chain restaurant person anyway, but the prices are equivalent now, there’s kind of no point to them.

I do actually go to Panera sometimes because it’s across the street from my work, it’s so expensive but do feel like I get some nutrition at least. And there is no local bagel place so I get those there sometimes too. But my kids who used to eat more junk food from chains are meal prepping their lunches now to save money, with no input from me they just got tired of it. I don’t think they’d go back now they are used to making food that they like.

Inheritance absolutely widens inequality, all unearned income does. Here in the US I’m pretty sure most of that money will land in the pockets of long term care providers though. People expecting a bailout when their parents die may be disappointed.

And I’m sure that $ won’t mostly end up in the hands of the aides actually DOING the care, that would help inequality. No, it will go to execs and owners and make it even worse.

Ooh a debutante. Does he get a fancy dress and a coming out party? How exactly do you get jumped into that club?

Kind of. I was a teen in the 80s and had kids in the 90s and 00s. The 80s were hard, the economy was not great, where I live you can always get a job (even now, and even back then) but to make rent we had 6 people working the minimum wage jobs. 3 couples in one house.

I did buy a shitty house cheap (there don’t seem to be any of those anymore) but then we had 4 people living on 15k a year, could not maintain a house, could not improve much because the insurance was so high.

Downtown was dead, Ybor was dead, there was blight and violence, so much violence and crime.

Now it seems everything is fancy and safe and pretty and so expensive. Downtown has apartments but out of reach on a regular salary, you still need 6 minimum wage workers to rent a house.

As Hayes Carll says in his American Dream song: “Nothing changes, even when it wants to.”

Our independents are conservative mostly, signs in front about Jesus and probably don’t even traffic in contraceptives.

Oddly, best pharmacy near me is Walmart. Not kidding. The pharmacists are so good, didn’t even blink when my trans kid got T, they will call to try to get the doctor to modify prescriptions to include or exclude generics for the best cost, they do immunizations (I get mine there not at the doctor, usually, much easier to schedule) & when Adderall was sold out everywhere they found it for my kid who needs it, when estrogen was sold out everywhere they found it for me. They can always quickly get my vials of injectable sumatriptan, other pharmacies can’t. The combo of ridiculously powerful market share, mostly not affluent customers, and very good pharmacists who have been the same people for 15 years now, we got lucky.

Yeah I wish only for a few things that need a bigger base, sub for my city on Reddit was so helpful, and I miss Normal Nudes and Naked Progress, the NSFW stuff on Lemmy is more onlyfans girls & AI stuff, Reddit had such a massive reach they had everything, more people means more niche stuff.

Overall though? So much nicer here. And I am not sure you can have both, it’s probably nicer because it’s smaller.

Clone Wars

Mississippi Goddamn.

I think it’s systemic for sure; but also true that the only thing you can directly control is your own choices, so maybe this is a sort of hopeful take?

But like, what sort of choices are gonna lead you out of poverty, if you land there? I got out with school and then job, but does that even work anymore? Crime, maybe but that would take so much intelligence to pull off it is usually the realm of the already rich. I know a guy whose sister did topless dancing and was so good at saving the money she bought a house with it, and went to school after that, but that seems a one-in-a-million story.

I do think individual choices can send you TO poverty, but can’t really see how they can get you out, it’s more luck than choice.

That one doesn’t help them, though. I just mean the dogs are all scratching up everyone’s floors, but then they declaw the cats? I can get a couch cheaper than getting the floors refinished. And puppies CHEW stuff too. Our dogs have done more damage than our cats.

We would never consider it because we had kids and dogs and the cats needed their claws. But yes it should be banned. We don’t declaw dogs.

I wish we’d trained them to sit still to have them trimmed, as now the kids are grown and dogs not puppies either, but it’s no big deal. Just don’t get expensive furniture.

Sure, but we also drank in parking lots because there was nothing to do, had guys physically grabbing at us instead of just yelling stuff, got bullied in school more, and the violent crime rate was something like 10x what it is now. Oh, and our friends were dying of AIDS as well. And the bay was polluted, and downtown was so dead we could walk around it like a ghost town.

I will never understand nostalgia. There are good things and bad things about every time. But even with the fuckers trying to pull us backwards now, there has been progress.

No. Boobs are luck or money. Ass is work, dedication, commitment.