61below

[61below]

i think a big reason that I get frustrated with the "liberals have never made anybody's lives better" is that in the US it used to be legal for insurance companies to charge you more if you were sick or even just straight up deny you the ability to sign up for them if you already had a "pre-existing condition", and this was only stopped by the passage of the ACA during Obama's term. but a lot of people who talk about politics on here are too young to really be affected by that since they would have been on their parents insurance (which the ACA required insurers extend until you're 26). and this was all done via politicking and not blowing up insurance CEOs mansions or whatever.

I'm not saying that the ACA fixed insurance forever, god no. but "you can't deny someone insurance for being sick" is a massive change and people don't realize it!

Most adults want the law’s prohibition on insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions to stay. Two thirds (67%) of the public say that it is “very important” that this provision remain in place, including most Republicans (54%) However, only about 4 in 10 people (39%) are aware that that provision is part of the ACA.

#I still have residual worry that ‘if I go get diagnosed with xyz’ that I’ll have to worry about loss of rights in the future

[61below]

saw a teenager in a TikTok comment section asking what it was like “being alt in 2012” and I was like what the hell and I left like 8 comments talking about how it was the same as it always is. You find your niche & friends & carve out a space for yourselves & some people will love what you do & other people will hate it and it is what it is.

but what is super funny is how what is considered alt continuously changes, like what is considered “the karen cut” today—staple of middle aged women—was edgy when I was in high school. A lot of emo and scene kids had asymmetrical stacked bobs.

When I got an undercut, nobody in my town had one. Only me. People reacted like I got a face tattoo and my principle actually tried to figure out whether I could be suspended for it, but there was nothing explicitly against it in the school handbook (and in fact tapers and fades were protected to allow Black students to have certain hairstyles so my haircut ended up being covered by rules fought for by Black parents. Thank you).

So it’s so funny to see elementary schoolers just walking around with half their heads shaved now.

Idk I remember when I was a teenager and adults who were teenagers in the 90s would tell me I didn’t know what “real emo” is and my trends were stupid, I promised myself I would never lose my sense of wonder & whimsy at evolving & emerging subcultures.

And I haven’t. I love seeing what the kids cook up and how the trends I loved at their age are discarded and rediscovered and recycled again and again.

Anyway the kid in the comments said “thank you for educating me about 2012” and I felt like the laziest funniest anthropologist ever but the truth is that historians are always starving for primary sources & it’s funny to think we are all a primary source for a little pocket of time.

People today are deeply obsessed with the 2000s emo scene, mosh “culture,” etc. etc. & I just think of it as the life I lived so it’s cute to think I have important insight on something that simply happened while I was there.

And y’all do too. I like humanity idk.

#dude I ::rocked:: my Karen cut back in ‘03. stop sign red and purple and crunchy enough to mimic a hedgehog 😅

[61below]

#it’s actually supposed to be -sen and we were going to fix it when we got married but it turned out it would mean waay more work so we didnt

[61below]

you can’t support autistic people and support the police. No amount of paint jobs or sensitivity training can stop police from killing with impunity

#it’s still April #autism awareness #b e a w a r e #acab #Miami pd

[61below]

Elon Musk bought the company. He has nothing to do with the development. #CosplayEngineer

#the fact that elong muskrat has dared tarnish nikola teslas name is his WORST CRIME IN A LONG GODDAMNED LIST

[61below]

#candy crush #definitely property destruction #which lbr the state cares about faaaar more than any actual violence

[61below]

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

#mYet-h #miette #yet like yeti

[61below]

Congratulations! You are now a Magic-User!!

#HOW CAN I PICK JUST ONE?? 😅

[61below]

Thank you ice pack, thank you excedrine migraine, thank you blackout curtains, thank you past self for making chicken feet soup, thank you aura for the early alert

#meanwhile in minnesota #migraine mantra #pain meds work when you take them EARLY

[61below]

Lmao how is this real, "the ambient sounds of the world were wrong, sir"

#one of my high school choir teachers was from Concordia (I know right ??? *swoon) #he told us that one time they were on tour in Europe and performing in a cathedral and mid performance gunshots rang out in the square #but dr. clausen would not stop conducting. so they kept singing. #now. I’m a rural midwesterner so to be fair gunshots are a routine occurrence and never* a sign of violence but of self support. #(*p r i v i l e g e) #but he always made it out to be a rejection of the violence of the world and to keep making art in defiance anyway

[61below]

Height gap romance except the shorter one is frequently depicted in situations where they are contextually taller. The taller one sitting while the shorter one looms over them. Both of them lying in bed with the taller one’s head pressed to the shorter one’s chest. The shorter one straddling the taller one’s lap and leaning down for a kiss. The taller one on their knees as the shorter one tilts their head up. Please, it makes me go feral

#babygirl hua cheng is the only true hua cheng 😅 #(bonus: this is only true when Dianxia is there. otherwise he is an unhinged abomination)

[61below]

Being a young adult is so strange. You enter a coffee shop. The 20 year old girl waiting behind you cried all night because she just came to a new city for university and she feels so alone. That 27 year old guy over there works a job he is overqualified for, he lives with his parents and wants to move out but doesn't know what to do about it. That one 24 year old dude already has a car, a house, and a job waiting for him once he graduates thanks to his dad's connections. The 26 year old barista couldn't complete his higher education because he has to work and take care of his family. The 28 year old girl sitting next to you has no friends to go out with so she is texting her mother. That couple (both 25 years old) are married and the girl is pregnant. The 29 year old writing something on her laptop has realized that she chose the wrong major so she is trying to start all over. We are not alone in this, but we are actually so alone. Do you feel me

#when I graduated in ‘09 it was the height of the impact of the 08 crisis #I also graduated with a soc degree that I had shoehorned into a ‘business’ degree bc the initial plan was for me to help mr61below run shop #… that wasn’t an option #so I ended up working as a florist. then in direct support. then I got in with local government #(not even human services work initially. my first job was literally clerical 1 #I did not plan to end up in human services especially in a position that ‘didn’t need a degree’ technically but you know what?? holy hell #having a degree helps ME do my job a LOT. bc at its heart my degree is as much #‘how to ask a question how to find the info how to piece that info into an answer and how to communicate that answer’ #part of why I get pissy about those who cry that liberal arts degrees are soft and useless is that those same people have -media literacy #it’s like they think all college is is regurgitation of facts (((like how no child left behind turned high school into))) #and imo it’s the main root of the whole anti intellectualism driving the ‘go into a trade instead’ movement

[61below]

if you don‘t personally own one but your roommates/parents do and you are allowed to use it, that counts as yes

#iron exists for sEWING #bc I’m the elder millennial with grandma hobbies

[61below]

Hell Gate, as usual, has the best coverage, + now it’s basically the only fair coverage of campus protests. im a couple days late to this one but I was backreading news today and it stood out to me.

[61below]

YOU’RE TELLING ME THIS IS A 1 TO 2 YEAR OLD DOG??? YEARS??? THIS THING??? YEARS????

(SOURCE)

#irl Pokémon #fennic dog

[61below]

the fact that “the vibes here are rancid” is a power that the jedi actually have is insane to me

#Empath #with a side of Impending Sense of Doom thrown in with my occasional migraine #is this a trauma symptom or a super power? idk! both?? both! #((do I have a heightened sense for others’ emotional states bc I’ve HAD to learn? or bc I’m autistic and oversensitive to gd EVERYTHING? #*glares bc I can hear a fucking lightbulb* #**glares harder bc i have smelled sickness that no one else can smell and then that person shortly after ended up in the hospital** #sometimes the vibes ARE rancid #hypersensitivity is fucking exhausting

[61below]

there’s absolutely nothing better than reading a 100k word fanfic, that is until you remember you have a body that is starving, thirsty and incredibly sleep deprived and hasn’t used the bathroom since the sun set 8 hours ago

#entire work ::unless:: it’s more than 75k #it’s not so much about finishing it in one sitting it’s ‘my phone is old and likes to crash’ and it’s annoying trying to #scroll like I’m diving into the Mariana Trench #also I pay attention to the ratio of chapters to word count bc short chapters break my concentration too easily #(not a crit. not at all. this is me kicking MY brain for being once again unreasonable about little shit)