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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Sounds like you’d get more mileage by donating the money to a mental health related charity, or a lobby group that advocates for mental crisis coverage under universal insurance, than buying a bullet resistant car.

    I like to make this equation with Hungarian “ingenuity” under communism: We were producing canned goods for the population, but the design of it was so bad, regular Russian can openers couldn’t handle it. With lack of P-38/P-51 in the eastern block, we had to come up with our own specialized can openers specifically targeted at these poorly designed cans, and also distribute them to the population. But really, all that would have been necessary is to just simply redesign the can again so that it’s compatible with standard can openers again.

    Bullet resistant cars and gun violence are an effect of bad design. The bad design is lack of social services.








  • I’m older now, but basically my maternal grandparents used to have us as kids nearly every weekend over at their place. They’ve lived a five minute walk away from us, which is a big thing on the edge of downtown of a big city. My paternal grandparents used to live on the other side of the city and we saw them once or twice a year maybe.

    Now that I have my own kids: the maternal great grandparents and the grandma live a five hour ride away. We visit them once a year. They never visit us. The grandpa is an idiot and zero contact.

    The paternal grams (my mother) tries to visit as often as she can. Which is not a lot, because she’s anxious about overseas travel. Grandpa is dead.

    Basically my children will be growing up without knowing a fun, strong grandfather figure, while I had at least one growing up. And they’ll only be seeing their grandmothers once a year each. While I had the caring and wise words of mine all the way into my young adulthood.

    The image of a nuclear family for me was always siblings, parents, grandparents all the way until my father died in my twenties, and then it kinda broke apart. I cared less about my relationship with my grandparents back then, and by the time I came to my senses it was too late. Either death or dementia has taken them. I don’t plan on repeating the same mistakes with my mother, who is nearing 70 now.