Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book about this called Nickel and Dimed. She was a full time journalist and set out to get a job at a diner and find a place to live on the salary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
Matthew Desmond's books Evicted and Poverty, By America are amazing, well researched, easily readable books about poverty in the US. I can't recommend them enough. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1158230630/poverty-by-america-book-review-matthew-desmond-evicted
I'd remind you that lots of doctors made a lot of money by unnecessarily prescribing Oxycontin that the spiraled into the opioid crisis.
Wait, so where were these insurance companies then and why weren't they acting as "checks" on these doctors? It couldn't have just been a minor oversight by the insurance companies either, considering it did spiral into a nationwide crisis.
Sociologist Matthew Desmond has an amazing book called Evicted that talks about criminal act evictions and profiles people who have been the target of them. The book follows very low income renters in Milwaukee through years of their struggles to find and keep housing. It also follows individual landlords from the same neighborhoods. It's technically an academic subject and is impeccably researched (the notes section in the back could be its own book) but it reads like a novel. It won a Pulitzer iirc.
He also just published Poverty, By America last year. I've only just started it, but it's just as readable. He explains overly-complicated regulations and social services red tape in a way that's concise and easy to understand, and he illustrates their consequences through his interviews with real people. His books should be required reading for every American.
I always feel cheated as an asexual/aromantic person. We shouldn't be forced to live with roommates for the rest of our lives just because we don't want to get married, which isn't really a choice, it's just our orientation like anyone else's. It's also so much harder when neurodivergence and/or social anxiety is an issue.
No one should be forced to get married or have roommates (or both) just to keep a roof over their heads. Everyone is entitled to have a little bit of privacy and comfort in their lives, especially if they work hard for it.
I can't believe I feel like I have to justify the desire for a studio apartment with no roommates.
I thought their whole reason behind repealing Roe v. Wade was about "letting the states decide." Of course that was total bullshit, otherwise this wouldn't even be a question.
You must live below the people in the apartment next to me.
Why are people like this. Really. I want a serious, well thought out answer from people who act like this. I would be fucking appalled if I found out people had been losing sleep because of me. Or they weren't able to concentrate when working from home, or had to get a bluetooth converter for their tv to connect headphones because otherwise they can't even enjoy tv with all the stomping, banging, furniture moving, and door slamming. I would feel so fucking guilty and especially embarrassed for coming off as such an entitled piece of shit. I literally cannot comprehend that there are people who know they're disturbing others, in their own homes, day and night, and they either don't give a shit, or they get mad at the person they're torturing for asking them nicely to keep it down. Or both. And yes I have brought it up with my landlord countless times. They could give a fuck. The next step is to contact the city and have them come in with a decibel meter or something. In my state, landlords must ensure "peaceful enjoyment" for tenants. But I'd have to prove it's over a certain level, then deal with filing a complaint and/or civil court or whatever, so nothing ever changes.
This is one situation where I think an eye for an eye is perfectly reasonable, because after living through over a year of daily constant noise, I think my next door neighbors aren't deserving of a single moment of peace from now on.
"IDF says..."
Of course. What reason would they have to lie? /s
Maybe we should wait until there's been a more neutral investigation before deciding it's one hundred percent true.
What I never understand about major news stories is that so many people take everything they see at face value and then consider it indisputable fact. When there's an international war going on, no one thinks that just maybe we're only getting a fraction of reality communicated to us? That it must be the worst game of telephone in terms of accuracy? But then if someone even suggests that maybe there's more to the story, they're conspiracy theorists or they get told what "side" they're on.
We should all be at least somewhat discerning. There's so many different actors with interests in this war. We have no idea what else could be going on that we will never, ever hear about, nor how much spin is being put on the stuff we do hear about.
Everything conservatives write sounds like that sovereign citizen tryhard faux legalese. Like there comes a point where trying to be too eloquent just makes you sound fucking dense.
I hope so. You'd have to be crazy to think like that otherwise.
"Nothing happens in god's world by mistake." "God never gives you more than you can handle." Etc etc.
When 1 in 6 women has been sexually assaulted in their lives (and many men and NB folks), that's a really fucked up thing to say. You never know what someone's been through, and I've personally been through a lot of awful things. I guess it helps some people to tell themselves this kind of shit, but it is impossible to me to think of any kind of meaning that would make being a victim of violent crime "positive" or "worth it" or "a learning experience" blah blah blah. I think the term for that is "toxic positivity."
So either "everything happens for a reason" is utter bullshit, or god is a sadistic fucking asshole.
Pretty sure he was about to do that, only to have republicans take it to the supreme court where it was struck down. I don't get why there's still this narrative of Biden being the bad guy because he can't just wipe out all student debt, and why some people keep framing that as his choice. I thought we all watched that SCOTUS case play out in real time.