ConstableJelly

So many layers.

First two books in the series were "Fellowship of the King" and "The Two Trees" so...I'm not entirely convinced they were even very original stories...

We replaced our HP OfficeJet with a Brother this year. I don't even know what we were thinking getting the HP 5 years ago or so, it was gross overkill for us. But of all the things it could do, it was most consistent with printing like shit and jamming paper. Part of the problem was that we just print too infrequently, but having to replace overpriced cartridges from HP didn't help. You also have to install apps for wireless printing (or if there's a workaround we didn't bother with it).

The Brother is a color laser printer and it's perfect for us. No apps needed, super quiet and hassle-free (there have been no paper jams or transmission errors), and the print quality is crisp as hell.

I had thought for years that ACA had eliminated these kinds of plans. I'm guessing I heard about that being included in one of those infamous earlier drafts before the free-market neo-liberals ripped it apart.

Thanks for the response. If I'm understanding correctly, I too am completely flabbergasted that family physicians have worse work life balance than ER docs. That seems like the opposite of everything I've heard about practicing medicine (although I'm in the States, and get 90% of my info from Scrubs).

What action(s) would the government take to help the supply of family physicians? (disclaimer: I'm asking out of ignorance and curiosity. I solemnly swear I am not a conservative sea lion or provocateur).

I can't see this as anything other than a losing scenario for just... sensibility and maturity in general. Neither DeSantis nor Hannity are serious people, and there's simply no way this debate isn't just chum for the rabid fanatics who enjoy their malevolent circus act.

Agreed. If undocumented workers are so critical in your community that your farms would collapse without them...why don't they have a path to citizenship? We know the answer, of course, but that should be the problem we're solving, not just permitting them to get driver's licenses as a shoulder-shrugging pseudo-solution.

I can appreciate wariness toward the kind of tribalism you describe in your last paragraph, but in this case the BBC has actually acted irresponsibly, and you quoted one of the big reasons why from their own article:

The survey was not statistically valid since the respondents were self-selecting and Get The L Out is an active campaigning group on lesbian issues. But while Angela acknowledges the sample may not be representative of the wider lesbian community, she believes it was important to capture their "points of view and stories".

#1, Get the L Out is not "campaigning on lesbian issues," they're campaigning on anti-trans issues. Their stated aim is not to improve the social status and wellbeing of all lesbians or something, but rather to exclusively define lesbianism for all lesbians in such a way that excludes trans women, full stop. From their own website:

Lesbians are exclusively same-sex attracted.
Lesbians do not have penises.
Lesbians do not want to have sex with men who identify as trans-women.

Because of this, #2, the article is in no way and never was "a description of the problems within the queer community" (Get the L Out makes this helpfully clear in that the tagline of their group is "Lesbian not Queer." The article is, in the most generous interpretation, a description of a radical trans-exclusionary group's grievances deliberately obscured to masquerade as "problems within the queer community."

And #3, at least most of the respondents (to my recollection and again, self-selected from a group by definition pre-disposed to this grievance) had never felt direct pressure from a trans woman for sex, but rather felt pressure or fear of condemnation due to their own discomfort with trans acceptance.

There are actually many other issues with the article, and the BBC has dragged an anchor in making any corrections. I don't think this discredits them as a news source in general, but this and other examples do show a pattern of transphobia in the organization at large.

I know this isn't a convenient response, but Shaun has been leading some concentrated pushback against BBC's transphobia for like a year. Check out some of his recent videos for a detailed answer. https://youtube.com/@Shaun_vids

It's just a way to subscribe directly to content sources rather than subscribing to a creator's social media account or a subreddit or something. So if there's a blog you like and you use your RSS reader to subscribe to that blog, any new posts will be fed directly to your reader. Obviously, the benefit then is that you have a central portal with a direct connection to all of your selected content sources.