birb_cromble
No bio...
User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
8hr ago
I recently started Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski. After his last book, it's not what I was expecting.
birb_cromble
9hr ago
I am a bit surprised by the verdict - mostly because I figured this would be swept under the rug in some sort of deal before it ever went to trial. The fundamental problem here is that a judge asserted her authority well beyond her remit, and the golden rule of power grabs is that you shouldn't make a push unless you're certain that it will work.
Did this judge think she was safe? If so, was it because "everyone does it", or was she so high on #resisting that she was thought there was no world where someone would actually punish her?
birb_cromble
12hr ago
You misspelled longer.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I still had to give her a hard time about the timing, though. 1:30 in the morning after a grueling day is not exactly the cinematic peak I had envisioned
I have come to the conclusion that women are incapable of discussing heavy topics with a man unless he is falling asleep on his feet.
Regardless, congratulations.
birb_cromble
2d ago
The consensus around my more liberal acquaintances is that Bill Clinton is basically a Republican, really, and even if he weren't, it's old news. Why are you even bringing it up?
birb_cromble
2d ago
Thank you for the kind words
birb_cromble
2d ago
I genuinely appreciate it
birb_cromble
2d ago
Years ago, I was in a bookstore, and I realized I had forgotten to put my watch on that day. I asked the woman standing at the same shelf if she had the time. She looked me dead in the eye and said "don't talk to me".
She literally would not give me the time of day.
Fast forward a few years. I'm doing a particularly raunchy musical. I've lost a lot of weight, put on muscle, and I'm down to about 7% body fat. Part of the performance involved working the audience, and at one point I realized somebody had their hands down my pants. Looking down, I realized it was the same woman from a few years before. I pulled her hands out of my clothes, gave her a finger wag, and moved on.
birb_cromble
2d ago
You might be on the low end of things by the average, but the variance is high.
birb_cromble
3d ago
What the hell do you do for a living? Assassinate high profile political figures?
birb_cromble
3d ago
if you keep at something, you will get better, but you mostly will always feel like you suck exactly as much as you feel like you suck at the start
Don't knock nowhere PA. I've done a few tournaments there, and even though I'm 95th percentile strong, a surprising number of those guys could ragdoll me.
birb_cromble
3d ago
I don't know why I'm doing this, but I can't exactly stop myself. Maybe it'll help someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation in the future.
I visited my father in the hospital today. The drive down was awful. I traveled the highway by myself for several hours, alternating between grief at what was happening and absolute self-loathing that I had not made the journey to visit more often over the last several years. I try to get there at least four to six times a year, but it doesn't feel like it was nearly enough.
When I arrived, I wandered through the hospital in a daze. The facility is gigantic, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes to even find the reception desk. The staff was friendly, but every one, from the security guard at the weapon check to the thoracic surgeon, had become numb to the suffering that people experience inside those walls.
I had last seen my father over Thanksgiving, and I was shocked at how thin he had become. He seemed to be taking things well, but the hospital also had him dosed to the gills on an antidepressant that sees off label use as an "appetite stimulant". It's hard to tell how much of that is organic.
I have always been a good actor, and that was vital today. I could tell that he was glad that I was there, but he was clearly more worried about all of us as he was himself. I kept it together whenever I was in the room. I made sure I absorbed everything the medical staff said, kept up conversation, and even got a few smiles from a joke here and there. When I had to leave the room, however, I couldn't hold it together anymore. The click of the door produced an almost pavlovian response. The hurt felt like a living thing trying to claw its way out of my chest. I could barely breathe. I threw up into more than one trash can. But when I got back to the room, I pulled my shit together, because that's what he needed.
We spoke with the oncologist, who told us that the cancer has metastasized. He was very clear that a cure is off the table now - at best, we're looking to buy time. They'll be using a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy in an effort to slow the progression.
Last summer, the doctors said he was cured. The scans had repeatedly come back clean, and there was no sign of it anywhere in his body. Fate is cruel like that sometimes. I wish it weren't.
Some of you here are Believe. If you do, I would ask that you pray for not just him, but anyone who might be experiencing the same thing.
birb_cromble
4d ago
I think it's not just stable families, but stability more generally. Having and raising a kid has a 20 year time horizon. I have a hard time even picturing what 2045 is going to look like.
birb_cromble
4d ago
You (the State in its formulation as society, which is clearly the you being referenced here) don’t do anything
But to answer your question, you should be the one to make the choices that define your old age, without expecting someone in far away location to contribute.
My original intent was the much more personal question. I appreciate that you took the time to answer both.
Maybe this is a tangential ramble at best, but it gives me a moment to take my mind off of other matters.
There are a lot of replies down-thread that boil down to "just have kids bro", that seem to be dripping with a kind of smugness that suggests that it truly is that easy, and any complications that come along with it are speed bumps at best.
I think a lot of people here forget that this forum is wildly unrepresentative of the broader (US) population. By and large the average poster here is:
- Physically healthy
- Extremely high income, and high net worth.
- Mentally functioning, either by being sane, peculiar in a way that can work well in some environments (hello fellow autistic software developers), or wealthy and/or insured enough to be under treatment.
- High in conscientiousness ratings.
All of those things together are a great set of qualities for people who intend to be parents. My father and his wife are like that, and my youngest brother is growing up to be an exceptional young man.
The thing is, my father is dying, and we're not sure if he'll live to see my brother graduate highschool. He's done what he can, but the rest of us are going to have to try and fill a gap in his life that can never be filled. No man can truly know the hour of his departure, but the average life expectancy for men in that side of my family is about 63. I'm old enough now that even though I am in a stable, committed relationship, I simply don't know if I will live long enough to properly raise a child.
On the other hand, you have me, my brother and sister on my mother's side. My mother lacks any formal diagnosis, but she is crazier than a shit house rat. She casually lets it drop that "the angels" are giving her advice these days (though it's generally good advice so we don't fight her on it), she's had a lifetime of substance abuse problems, she's had a history of violence and abuse towards me and my sister, and she's never really been able to hold down a job in any meaningful way.
As a result of all of that, none of us really have any idea of how to be a proper parent. There aren't exactly "how to not stab your own kids" lessons regularly available at the local library, so my brother and I are both terrified of having a child and fucking it up.
My sister has two kids, but she is, more than anything, a cautionary tale. She's not just crazy, but evil in a pure way that almost makes me believe that demonic elements can truly hold sway in this world. She has absolutely no compunctions about lying, cheating, using physical violence, or stealing to get her way, and sometimes she will do it just because she thinks it's funny. Her older child is schizophrenic and has been in and out of involuntary committals since he was a teenager, when he's not being held on drug charges. He's tried to kill my sister and her husband at least once already. I haven't spoken to any of them in many years after she tried to have multiple family members arrested on (false) human trafficking charges and attacking my brother with a brick.
I did my best to raise and protect my brother growing, but it was a case of the lost leading the lost. At present, he's kind of drifting through life working a retail job and living with his dad after a bad breakup. He's keeping out of trouble and keeping his head above water, but only barely.
The difference between me and those two is my father. He met all those criteria later in his life and did his best to impart those values in me. I was already damaged, so it didn't all stick. Even still, I've absorbed the virtues of hard work, tact, thrift, and reliability in a way that has allowed me to carve out a small life where I'm not constantly in fear of going to sleep hungry or without a roof over my head.
My sister got none of that. She's a mess. My one brother got a little of that. He's doing better than her. My youngest brother got more of that than I ever did from a loving, supportive network of family and friends. God willing, he'll do better than I ever will.
I probably won't have children. I'm too old. I found a partner late in life, and she can't have kids due to a medical condition that has rendered her infertile, and I don't really believe there's anyone else out there for me. Even were it possible, I am terrified that I would do it wrong. I don't really have any example of what doing it right looks like.
For people who say "just have kids bro", what do you do when the people like my mother and sister have kids? What do you do to make sure those kids even have a chance? Are they simply meant to fall through the cracks so long as the overall metrics look good? Do you try to disincentivize that from happening in the first place?
On the other side of the coin, what do you do with people like me? I've lived below my means my entire life (no vacations, extensive savings, retirement) so as to not be a burden on others. I've tried to do what good I can in raising my brother, but I have no biological children of my own. Should I be left to rot in my old age, like some of the replies suggest?
What do you do?
birb_cromble
5d ago
I am going to try to be there as much as I can. I know that no matter what happens, I'm going to feel like I haven't done enough, and it's probably true.
He lives three hours away. We've always had a bit of a precarious relationship - he's only been in my home three times in the last twenty years. He doesn't disapprove of my lifestyle, but he doesn't really understand it. There's always been a gulf there that I feel like I've never been able to bridge. I just wish I had more time to keep trying.
birb_cromble
5d ago
My father is still in the hospital. He wasn't doing well after the biopsy so they kept him for observation, only to discover pericardial effusion. They removed 350 ccs of fluid and placed a drain. We are still waiting on results from both the biopsy and the drained fluid.
Every single symptom he has could be explained by an infection, or by metastatic cancer. We're all sitting on a knife edge waiting for the results. He's lost 20 pounds in the last three months.
I had to go back home for work, but I'm hoping to get down again on Friday. I want to see him, and I think he wants to see me, but I'm afraid that I'm going to break down in front of him. He's my father. I don't want to put more of a burden on him that what he has already endured, but I don't know if I'm strong enough.
birb_cromble
7d ago
Civil Engineer II at a national contractor
I work for a company that takes federal contracts. I've been involved in multiple interviews in the last four years.
I can't give you exact numbers, but I can tell you that less than one candidate in 20 who makes it through the HR filter is a white guy.
birb_cromble
7d ago
blistering Scottish accent
What the hell? Tavrosi is supposed to be something like a Thai/Swedish creole.
I guess the elements I liked were the parts where the protagonist had to navigate court politics.
This kind of subplot gets much more pronounced as the series progresses.
birb_cromble
7d ago
It rapidly moves away from Dune. It feels more like CS Lewis than Frank Herbert by the third book, with a little cyberpunk thrown in.
birb_cromble
7d ago
The series as a whole has issues with uneven pacing. The first book in particular is almost entirely setup.
I'd recommend grabbing the book of short stories called Tales of the Sun Eater. It should let you find out if you like the broader setting and writing style without quite so much investment.
birb_cromble
10d ago
I appreciate it, Internet stranger.
I know writing here is just screaming into the void in some ways, but sometimes you need to do that to even know what you're feeling.
birb_cromble
10d ago
My father just got out of a biopsy. It looks like his cancer might be back. They're keeping him for observation overnight, and I'm heading down in the morning if he's physically up for a visit.
I feel adrift. Throughout my life, my father has been one of the only points of stability that I have ever had, and I think he's dying. Every success that I have ever experienced is because I listened to his advice. Even when our relationship has been beset by physical distance, I've always felt that I could rely on him in a way that no one else in my family could offer.
What do you do with a pain so enormous that you can't even feel the edges of it? How can you be there for someone when you don't know what to do?
birb_cromble
10d ago
A campaign to expel them all would be a monumental geopolitical undertaking, dwarfing anything in recent US memor
"It's hard so we shouldn't even try" is a pretty common rhetorical tactic that I see on this topic, and I'm going to take this opportunity to address it.
It's a pernicious mindset that argues that there is no value in incremental improvement. It's akin to saying that since you can't shove an entire cheeseburger down your gullet in one bite, you might as well curl up in the fetal position and starve to death. To quote Barack Obama, it's letting "the perfect be the enemy of the good".
The Trump administration, for all its flaws, allegedly managed to deport 605,000 people who were not legally residing in the US in 2025 alone. This does not count individuals who returned to their home country without any state interaction. These 605,000 individuals were deported over the strident objections of institutions all across the country, which attempted to use legal strategies and manufactured public sentiment to stymie those deportations to the fullest extent possible.
You can argue that those 605,000 deportations were bad on the grounds of morality or realpolitik, but it's difficult to argue that they are not happening. You can say that you would like them to happen faster, but you cannot argue that 605,000 is orders of magnitude larger than what had happened from 2020 - 2024.
It's fairly clear that the US has the state capacity to do something here, because they're doing it.
Is this a common thing?
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