Even without attribution or ever reading this quote before, I just knew it had to be Sir Terry Pratchett and I was right.

That man was unmatchable in his wit and wisdom and how he packaged life lessons on simply being good people into entertaining stories. The world is lesser without him.

Silicosis is typically caused by years of breathing in silica dust at work, and can worsen even after work exposures stop. In recent years, after decades of inaction, the federal government finally took several important steps to reduce the incidence of this ancient and debilitating disease. Under the Trump administration, all that progress is going away, in but one example of the widespread destruction now taking place across the federal government.

Silicosis first caught the attention of the federal government in the early 1930s, when hundreds of workers hired by the chemical company Union Carbide and its subsidiary to drill a tunnel through a mountain of almost pure silica died of silicosis. Most of the workers were Black, and many were buried in unmarked graves. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, issued a report on the widespread problem across factories and mines, informing businesses that control measures, “if conscientiously adopted and applied,” could prevent silicosis.

Weird as in unusual? Sure

Weird in a bad way? Definitely not

It makes sense to feel uncomfortable about this because it’s probably something you haven’t seen other people do. But it’s awesome and would bring many people joy to see someone doing it. Go for it!

Ooooof

Awwww, my childhood family cat, Boots, did this.

Ah, so there is a subscription for guided workout sessions through Apple Fitness. I have that as a part of my subscription and it doesn’t have any kind of recommendation feature though; it’s just a subscription to watch guided workout sessions if you want to go seek them out.

The watch still has all of the health and workout tracking features available without it. Garmin is slated as more of a fitness-based watch so it doesn’t surprise me they might have different features than the Apple Watch does.

I’m trying to think of what Apple Watch features are paywalled and other than buying apps that aren’t necessary or a part of the core device, I’m not thinking of anything. Are there particular features you’re thinking of?

Or how God supposedly created all people in his image, but wait, no, not those people 🙄

Adding onto this, there are way more jobs than you likely even realize or will learn about. Figuring out what you enjoy and are good at might help you figure that out, but sometimes you just need to get out there and start trying things. You may still not know just from college.

I had never heard of one of the jobs I ended up getting (Business Analyst) and it introduced me to the career I’m in now: Product Management.

Product Management requires me to communicate with folks of wildly different backgrounds (end users, software developers, designers, business execs, etc.) and I need to both understand their needs plus help them understand the same things as each other. To do so, I need to understand people and context and basically translate information through a those lenses. I also look at data and a wide array of opportunities then evaluate their priority. It’s a job that uses my natural talents and it’s genuinely fun for me.

But I had no idea the role even existed until I was two years out of college and into the workforce, and still had little clue what the role actually did for two years after that.

Anecdotal observation I received from a doctor’s office indicates there may be some change in the insurance industry…

Last month I saw a surgeon who does not take insurance, but her office helps people get all the pre-authorizations done to file an out-of-network claim. They told me that of the codes they bill, there’s one that used to have a 50/50 chance of getting approved. But after 12/6/24 they see it come back approved every time.

Without more data to back this up I recognize it’s not enough to say anything for sure, but this does point to insurance companies more broadly approving claims.

I used to use em dashes all the time and now I find myself rethinking my writing styles because of people like you and it’s obnoxious.

Isn’t this more of a lemmypeepost?

Unless fines become a % of a person’s wealth. Make everyone feel it equally.

That’s hard to deal with. You are clearly an empathetic person with deep concern and care for this friend.

When dealing with grief, the best practice is to not seek solace/comfort from someone on a more inner circle of the grief (with the circles being like immediate family > close friends > extended family, and so on). Like it would be generally seen as inappropriate if a man’s wife died and her coworker went to him to process their grief.

Your friend’s ‘joke’ about murder summarizes simply how a lot of victims feel like rape is a loss of self, of personhood, in a way that parallels the loss of that in death—except the victim has to live through it and process it. So getting back to the grief circles, with rape those same circles may exist except with the survivor at the center. And it seems like you needed your own space to process the grief but you were trying to respect the circles and so you didn’t have support in that.

I’m just rambling thoughts that all mirror what you’ve said—I think I’m just trying to acknowledge what you experienced in my own words.

I hope you and your friend are more at peace now or at least on your way to it <3

I appreciate your thoughtful response and consideration of how you phrased this originally. I know you are making the point with the best of intentions in trying to ensure that the word “rape” isn’t diluted down.

I struggled for many years to move beyond my experiences of being raped. I’m in a good place now, but it took time. I generally wouldn’t say I’m suffering from it any more (even if there may be moments where I’m triggered), so I think the comment here just hit me hard.

I also know there are other victims who have gone through weird levels of guilt and self-doubt because they haven’t felt the level of suffering that’s “expected.”

We both have the same desire here, but slightly different stances on where that line should be drawn and that’s ok.

Kind of amazing how recognizable that particular bit of concrete at the angle it’s shot from is.

I’m responding a second time because I think this is an important point to make as a top-level response.

the suffering of a living victim is an essential part of what makes rape rape.

This is a fucked up take. This says that a rape victim must suffer, and if they aren’t suffering, then it wasn’t rape. Just, no. People process things differently. Some will be more and some will be less traumatized by being raped.

Forcing a particular experience onto a victim, saying they must feel a certain way, is just so incredibly problematic. A victim can feel whatever they feel and process a crime against them however they want. And the way they do so doesn’t change whether a crime was committed against them.

Edit: And with a very literal reading of the statement, it also says that if someone kills their victim after raping them, then it’s not rape—because there isn’t a living victim who is suffering. I’m sure that’s not what you meant, but it’s important to think about these things and how we convey them.

From the details given, it’s not clear if the person was dead or only unconscious at the time of the assault and it’s not clear whether the attacker knew either.

I’m not clear on your second point; you say that it doesn’t seem right that defendant knowledge matters in one case and not the other. So if:

1. Defendant commits arson not knowing they kill someone in the building > call it murder
2. Defendant sexually violates a body not knowing if they are dead > don’t call it rape?

It seems like not calling it rape is what would apply a double standard here based on defendant knowledge.

Our society treats bodies as an extension of a person; for example, we do not harvest organs from a body if the person didn’t consent to be an organ donor while they were alive.

Your focus on the victim’s suffering as what determines the severity of the crime seems problematic to me. If a victim doesn’t let being raped destroy their life, do we not punish the rapist as severely? We distinguish between manslaughter and murder based on pre-meditation and intent, even though the victim is still dead in both cases, and similarly I think that focusing on the attacker’s actions and intent should be the key factor in calling their actions rape.

If the defendant were going to a morgue or funeral home and defiling bodies, I may feel differently but given the timing here it feels way too grey to not treat it as rape.

FWIW, I’m coming at this conversation as a rape survivor myself. I know the level of mental devastation it can cause. And personally, I don’t think that treating the sexual assault of someone who may or may not have been dead yet (and if they were dead, had been so for no more than 30 minutes) as rape takes anything away from the severity of the crime or my experience as a victim of it.

And anyway from a semantic perspective, according to the article it is being charged only as attempted rape.

I mean, the dead can’t consent.

Also the article says “unresponsive passenger.” We know now the person was dead, but that doesn’t mean the rapist was clear on that fact at the time.

I was so lucky to share a life with her! I also went on autopilot with her demands and would be asleep within seconds of my adjustments so I barely noticed them.

Don’t be surprised if your little man picks up new needs! I think that’s common as they age, and it sounds like you and I agree that it’s worth giving them everything they demand. I hope you have many more good years being his arm pillow!