So he learned from the video gaming industry?

So, did travel work for my job. Driving long distances was a normal thing, company van.

Had to go to corporate for a training thing. After that, to get home and flying, took me 14 hours. The drive is 12.

Next time I had to get to corporate, company tried to get me a plane ticket and I refused, each time boss tried any reasoning it was responded with “14 GODDAMN HOURS!” I got to drive.

I like flying… as in the act of flying. But I refuse to fly anywhere in a 12 hour driving radius because the entire song and dance before and after I have found maybe I save an hour or two… and I am FAR LESS in a murdery mood.

Frankly over a 12 hour driving distance I still start looking at logistics.

In 2020 I was moving into my house. Late night moving, 3am, I needed food. There’s a McDs across the street. A’ight. Gonna have to happen. Get the shitty little cheeseburgers that’s always been a dollar… no wait, they’re not on the dollar menu… actually there’s no dollar menu… fuck it… there’s the meal for them.

The two shitty cheeseburgers, small fries, small drink, over $8 plus tax.

I’ve never been back to one since.

Well… fuck.

I mean there’s a lot of us already on that team.

If you didn’t get the reference, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy but cursed so that her true prophecies would not be believed. She goes out and tells people of what’s coming and she’s ignored. She warns that if Helen is brought back to Troy, it’ll be the fall of Troy in the Trojan War. She warned the Trojans to not accept the gift horse from the Greeks but we all know how that worked out. That sort of thing.

So yes, there’s a lot of people on “Team Cassandra” who’s been saying the shit that’s coming is going to come, we’ve been laughed at, mocked and told we’re overreacting then told we’re not doing enough when exactly the things that anyone with basic pattern recognition and a high school history learning could predict.

This is my boat… THEN I got a lot of rational reasons I didn’t want.

Could you imagine wasting the rest of your life to make the world a better place?

I don’t have enough words for fuck right all the way off.

I’ve spent my life trying to make things a better place. I’ve been trying to pick people up, to learn, to fight hate, to get one step ahead, to educate, to do everything short of pulling out a whip just to get people to do the bare minimum to enact change in their life and vote. Yet I’ve been shown in more evidence that people are far more interested in their football teams (both literal and political) than making things better for people, have no desire to actually learn, and that hatred prevails. I’m tired and everyone is yelling at us to fight when I’ve been trying to rally to fight for the past goddamn decade… and even then I see the people calling to fight and it’s a bunch of people who are yelling to go out and do it without actually getting up to do the bare minimum to help another fucking human. And you want to come at me with that phrasing?

So lets be blunt. I’m tired of this fight. You want to save the world, best of luck to you. I’ll be in my corner and do the little things I can to survive and help those that need help do the same until the reason for survival is gone then I can wander off. Y’all (and by that I mean the rest of the world) can save yourselves, or burn, without my help just fine. It was funny years ago when I started saying “Call me Cassandra” when the things I was told I was overreacting came to pass. It’s stopped being funny for a long time now.

Neat part is if you don’t have family, it’s completely some banks problem.

Yup. Staying alive for the parents. After that, fuck it.

Plastic eggs are probably made in China, so with tariffs might be as expensive.

Unfortunately on my research, while Home Depot is the worst on this one, so is Lowe’s, Menards, and every other tool/home store…

Amazon in particular. We all should have absolutely buried Amazon years ago. Better late than never, but getting rid of DEI is not even in the top 100 horrible things Amazon has done.

I’m probably going to get shit on for this, but I’ve always supported Amazon until last couple years for one big reason, it gave competition to Walmart. Amazon’s union busting practices were learned from the Walton masters, those of y’all who remember Walmart having butchers? The reason they’re gone is they unionized and Walmart got rid of them. Walmart will invade a town, bullying them to build their store without having to pay for utilities or they’ll move to the next down over, run that store at a loss until all competition is gone then if it’s too small a town they’ll close it down forcing people to go to the central hub. They have training for employees to get food stamps while actively avoiding letting people work full time to avoid giving benefits… things they’ve been doing since Amazon was a bookstore in a garage.

And if you’re against Project 2025, the Walton Family was one of the three that proudly donates to the Heritage Foundation.

I am here to go against any of these big corporations and Amazon is number 2 on the list, both need to go down. But as someone who used to live in its hometown I’m just consistently baffled that Walmart is somehow teflon to the outright attempts to bring it down whereas Target and Amazon get them every time. If anyone wants to know on size of these companies, Walmart is number 1 company by revenue, Amazon is number 2. The next 4 companies are State owned by China or Saudi Arabia, and 7th had a CEO Luigi’d.

The Walton Family has heavily put money into The Heritage Foundation.

Kansas City and St Louis is pissed.

However the idiots in the rest of the state are celebrating. But hey, shouldn’t be surprised, they vote in bills that go against Republican plans so the Republicans they vote in just overturn them with “The voters didn’t know what they were voting for” then cry when we call them a bunch of fucking hicks.

“Party of Freedom”

Hey Texans. I have the freedom to walk down the street and buy weed at the weed store. Do you?

I’ll give credit where it’s due, in my state which is controlled by the same freedom, this is one we have.

THAT SAID, we’re the only state with the only (two) cities controlled by the state instead of the city themselves, which of course the state views the cities as enemies so… yea. “Party of Freedom” still applies.

I hope so too. However between Trumps Executive Order on voting and the way the people of my state and surrounding states are acting on this (they’re loving it) I’m not holding my breath.

It’ll probably be a good idea to steer clear of the US for a while (decades). I’d say pray for those of us that are trapped and want the hell out, but with the GOP we’ve got plenty of “thoughts and prayers” already.

Oh it might change if the the GOP gets their way. They want to strip out out the ACA or “Obamacare.”

Then we get to go back to where insurance dropped parents insurance on kids at 18 instead of until 26, back to limits on lifetime and annual coverage, and where you could be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

This was a state of affairs within my lifetime. You think it’s bleak now, it can in fact get much much worse.

Pretty much the fastest way to be penniless in the US medical bills. Hence why we have such shit outcomes, we tend to wait until the last damn second for anything medical.

And frankly, the $1000 winning the lottery is with insurance as well.

If you have to go to the Emergency Department, $1000 is you won the lottery.

One of the biggest troubles of being a US citizen is the conservatives will happily tell you “If you don’t like it, leave!”

Not being a conservative, I know my associates degree self is not gonna be terribly welcome to vast majority of the countries.