Knowing a lot of families are going to be affected by this, this a tragedy no matter who or what is to blame. This is scary as hell all things considered, but we (or at least I) have to remember that a vast majority of investigations following crashes like this implicate a series of tiny but compounding errors. Regardless, it will still take time to figure out.

My speculation based on the video that could point to human error: It appears the aircraft were possibly closing in on each other somewhat perpendicularly for an extended amount of time. With their relative speeds/distances to the crash point, the aircraft may have appeared as remaining at the same point in each other’s respective windows, with nighttime glare and light pollution effects making scale and distance hard to judge.

However, just from a momentum and maneuverability standpoint, the aircraft with the “right of way” here was almost certainly the jet on course for landing, and it would have been the helicopter’s responsibility to establish and maintain visuals.

But who knows at this point. All I know is I’m tired of tragedy in every form.

deleted by creator

The other day, I cracked open a tote of some high school papers and keepsakes that I haven’t laid eyes on in 15 years. Found a notebook inside where I wrote these yearly journal entries of big takeaways and thoughts I had each NYE starting as a freshman.

What I wrote as a freshman at 14, right down to my exact handwriting, I could have written yesterday. What really hit me was how well I had summarized my entire psyche in wide-ass crayola marker. Like shit, I couldn’t have said it more succinctly myself, self.

Are we indeed the same people we were in those “Stand by Me” years and the added baggage of aging and externally changing has only served to complicate us, to easily confuse ourselves with what we do? Is continually adding to the sum total of our lived experiences even helpful if some of us have already lost ourselves to a heap of internalized hardship?

But who am I now if I am not also what I have lived?

…

Yeah im all good here just another civilian casualty of shock and awe ruminating the night away 👈😎👉

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Exactly, I was confused by their warning because actually working a holiday at whatever rate shouldn’t (and in most cases doesn’t) make you forfeit any holiday pay benefit that all employees get.

I’m just thinking about how literally insane it is that you (and the collective “we”) are essentially forced take this coverage because your employers offer and purportedly cover part of the premium. Sure, you could shop around elsewhere but would end up paying full MSRP on premiums, including in the ACA marketplace where you wouldn’t be able to utilize any income-based premium credits.

And so you “accept” this coverage (are forced into it because it’s the “best” deal you’re gonna get) and then have payroll deductions taken out, 1/5 of your pay that could have bolstered some kind of medical savings account, aaaaand after all this they call it a BENEFIT?!

Goddamn, being any kind of worker in the USA where your employer is large enough to require an offer of insurance makes the vast majority of “consumers of health insurance” the captive audience of the entire fuckin rigged industry. Insurance tied to the workplace is such a scam. Anybody who says there is a “free market” within the the health insurance industry is full of stupid.

But why would I want a truly free market for healthcare anyway? I don’t want options like I do for buying furniture, running the gamut between IKEA particle board and hand-turned solid mahogany, cheap to bougie and everything in between.

I don’t want to settle on the “silver plan” just because I’m fine with mid-tier, real wood-veneered furniture. I want one option and that is the standard of care for whatever health thing is necessary at whatever point.

Single standard, single payer.

I’m so fucking tired of stupid shit like cancer which nobody asks for just ruining people’s lives because even if they beat the absolute shit out of the cancer they STILL PAY FOR THE CANCER one way or another, be it with actual money, begging for donations or forgiveness, or simply ruining your financial future with medical bankruptct. Jfc I hate everything about all of this.

But we should certainly accept anyone who has had a true change of heart in voting for Trump and regrets it or even felt pressured to vote that way in the first place.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Man, this is the only explanation for the closure of the lone Italian place in town a few years back.

No Italian restaurants currently exist in a 50 mile radius.

Town’s haunted now.

Zpoopa del giOHNO

The worst part is knowing that they’re (most likely) just listening to the loudest voter in their household even if other opinions manage to exist in their family.

I only remembered my dad talking about Bush or scoffing at this or that “donkey” thing so I thought it was Bush and the elephants I was supposed to like. I know I would have voted as such in something like this because I didn’t know any better at 6-8 years old, although I’m not finding the kids’ age ranges in this mock election. Anyway, I still didn’t know any better in junior high, I remember voting for Bush again in a 7th grade social studies poll on the 2004 elections. I recall the teacher saying even the results amongst one class were usually a pretty accurate reflection of the actual election results, right down to the goob who voted for Nader.

It took me going to college in the purplest damn section of a pretty red state for me to come to terms with what I actually believed and felt about people and politics. Further education was definitely key, and intertwined with that, it opened me up to people. Just talking to people in an environment where you’re all on essentially the same operating level day to day is huge.

My dad kept doing his thing in the small town where everyone knew everyone and somehow managed to sleep with everyone, too. He turned into a Trumper. I did my thing and I admit, it took me a lot of those four years of working on projects and getting pissed about loans together but really just enjoying life with a modestly diverse, pretty tolerant student body (still a lot of white raised-as-protestant types) to undo the damage of a conservatively skewed and Catholic childhood. But I can tell you that by 2014 I was annoyed at myself for not caring about the 2012 election, this first time I could vote. And you can guess I most certainly never even considered supporting Trump or any of the terrible things he represents when he suddenly-to-me showed up.

Would it make any reasonable sense for my dad to go to college at his age? No, probably not. But how do we get people to “simply” live around and be exposed to more people with relatively little prejudice in social status?

Do we just … Idk where I’m going with this I got high but wait just a tick here did I just reason myself into communism ^fuckityshit

I feel like I just read a Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle label.

I uninstalled the McDonald’s app last November(?) when they tried to make me accept their bullshit binding arbitration T&Cs.

Saving money, feeling better, not supporting fascism.

I love geography and boy oh boy was I excited to visually confirm that Ohio is indeed The Sweaty Ass Crack of America®!

I got carried away drawing the rest of the human creature American specimen. Thoughts on better knuckle placement?

I’m sorry but why does he look like an aging emo?

I love this! Free cat scratchers might not seem like they have much value, but has anyone seen the price of those ready-made things?! They’re pushing $20 for a large-ish flat scratcher at lower volume places like TSC, but Target isn’t much better, still $10 for a 10" x 18" flat cheapy.

Down with bougie cat cardboard!!!

[Warning: ridiculous existential musings incoming from your question. I lost someone recently and I’m questioning everything.]

What if the Religious Right is some kind of modern-day antithesis to the Tree of Knowledge, its grotesquely interwoven branches of congregants luring others to eat from, and live within, their Tree of True Evil?

What if, at the Fall, Adam and Eve were merely releasing themselves from their creator and captor, from God himself, through eating the forbidden fruit? And that Eden was no utopia, it was really just a prison?

What if God is the bad guy here? And the Religious Right are a reflection of God’s actual being and not the God described so perfectly in Scripture?

What if God is now manifesting himself through the Religious Right, rather than Scripture, to convince more of his “children” to return to his “watchful” guard, to be rewarded in Heaven, to live with Him, in Him, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, all Glory is Yours Almighty Father, forever and eeeeveeer??

I mean, he put us here, right? Why can’t he just stop the whole thing in its tracks? Or … Maybe he doesn’t have all the power in this sticky Creation situation? Maybe…

Wait. Why does God sound like a scumbag ex?

Guys, what if we have it all backwards?

What if we have a Mom God, and Dad God just made up that bullshit about the rib to explain away any questions about a possible Mom God, let alone ever giving her a written word? (I made her, so I speak for her.)

What if we’re in the middle of some sort of nasty interuniversal deity custody dispute??? Maybe Mom God didn’t want us to suffer, so we were emancipated, and our entire existence was supposed to be Deity-Free, but Dad God couldn’t handle not having control, taxing the shit out out of us with biblical directives even he doesn’t follow, instead of receiving some secure attachment to Mom God via knowledge of the physical realities of this world.

Is Dad God just looking to yank all his kids back, and I mean all of them, no matter how willing or unwilling they are to go home with Almighty Daddy? But he can’t, because he can’t just rapture us outright, or the jig is up, and so we have to live according to see who gets lucky enough to stay at his house and drink all the Holy Mountain Dew and eat all the Holy Hot Pockets we can guzzle down?

What if the Devil isn’t a fallen angel at all, but actually Mom God being slandered and literally demonized by Daddy? And Mom God was only here trying to bring us knowledge of our own autonomy and ability, to set us free?

… Maybe Dad God is only trying to get more child support so he can buy more simulators on Steam and never actually play them because he’s greedy and lazy and every other deadly sin he likes to project onto us. I mean, we were made in his image, right? No wonder everyone is capable of inhumanity. Dude wants to keep us locked up. That seems pretty inhumane.

Yet he says he is perfect. “Yeeahhh, everything wrong you filthy humans is because of that damned snake in the tree!!!” No, we were always the way we were, Dad God, that “damned devil” was just trying to help us get out from under God’s graceless grace.

We are a forgotten Steam sim, mommy tried, and daddy never loved us.

^{ahhhhh im so high sorry guys}

Edit: apparently I can’t spell deity.

Alright. As I yield to yet another cannabis-laced existential crisis, picking idly, furiously, at my own damn identity and supposed role in whatever this place, space, realm is … Well, this hit me (pun shockingy not intended) and my current mental state so close to home, it’s not even funny. Except it is. In a bittersweet way, I love it.

I love this style of webcomic (bookcomic? lul) and I feel like I’m about to dive headlong into another beautifully depressing, identity-shattering rabbit hole like I did with Elan School.

Edit: I’d never seen this or the full book before, so if you do check out Elan School (which is non-fiction btw, at least in this reality, hahaha), be warned, it’s a lot longer than 22 pages. So worth it though. A wiiiild ride.