This is a bit of a silver lining, though:

Anxiety that resolved within the first five years was so unassociated with greater risk that the odds were similar to those without anxiety — a finding that Dr. Glen R. Finney, an American Academy of Neurology fellow, called “a welcome addition to our knowledge about anxiety and dementia.” Finney, director of the Geisinger Memory and Cognition Program in Pennsylvania, wasn’t involved in the study. The results were also largely driven by participants under 70. ”We have known for a long time that stress increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who wasn’t involved in the study, via email. “This study agrees with earlier studies that therapy aimed at alleviating anxiety can help reduce risk for (Alzheimer’s disease). But, it’s the size of this study that is particularly compelling.”

Don’t worry; if he sees jail time (and given how other similar cases have gone, he won’t) he’ll have a nice cushy job waiting for him at the Sheriff’s office the next county over when he gets out.

ACAB.

Probably because it used to be that being ostracized from our towns/clans/whathaveyou was basically a death sentence.

Getting criticized for something could potentially lead to the town/your family driving you out. Either through the people listening to the complaints deciding you weren’t ‘good’ for the town, or others dogpiling on with their own complaints, real or imagined.

You have to remember, there were bandits, wild animals, and deadly weather outside the protection of our small groups. And that’s assuming you got to survive the ostracizing in the first place.

The Bible gives a rather chilling example: if your kid is disobedient or troublesome, drag them to the front of the town and loudly criticize their behavior. Then, it is the moral imperative of the town to assist you in stoning your kid to death.

With things like that being a social norm, is it any wonder we developed a fear of criticism?

My aunt lives in an HOA that was formed because the city wanted to cut down a big forested area to make a cookie-cutter neighborhood. The forest protected a watershed and was home to many native animals.

So the few people who lived there formed an HOA to gain all rights to the area; sold a few more properties to developers with strict rules so the houses built didn’t impact the wildlife or water, and set a large chunk aside as a ‘community park’ that really is a forest with a few walking trails and a nice pond.

The HOA fees mostly go towards maintaining the forest; planting natives, paying top-grade arborists to care for the trees, setting up bird boxes, stuff like that.

That being said, I’m well aware that hers is an outlier, and most HOAs are just excuses for bratty busybodies to harass their neighbors.

Went to Five Guys and made the mistake of ordering the Grilled Cheese.

It was a burger bun, turned inside out, with a sad slab of half-melted American cheese between the pieces.

Never going back.

The last time they tried going it alone they couldn’t either lol.

Parties exist in part because it costs millions of dollars to run. What we really need to do is fix that problem first, or we will always be ruled by the rich, or their bought-and-paid puppets.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

C. S. Lewis

If I recall correctly, he forgot to switch accounts before posting that one.

I remember that! The write up by the guy who found their remains was pretty interesting.

One line really stuck out to me: ‘at that point they were in a survival situation, although they probably didn’t realize it yet.’ He really detailed out how, without making any obvious mistakes (from their perspective), they ended up in a deadly situation. From their point of view, it was situation normal… until it wasn’t.

They’re certainly working on it.

The one thing we still have going for us today vs in the past is that debts used to be inheritable. So if/when a Company worker died (and they often did, as most Company Towns were formed around very dangerous jobs) then their wife and children were on the hook.

That meant that if their surviving family had no job, or money to pay off the debt, the Company basically owned them at that point. And the Company could even sell the debt to a person who could pay it—and that got the payee a slave.

(Yes, technically, the person who bought the debt had to pay their newly acquired person a wage, so that person could pay them back to earn their freedom. But as there were no laws as to what wage to set, all they had to do was pay their new indentured servant such a pittance and charge them such high fees for room & board that they would be stuck working for their new owner forever—and even pass the debt on to their heirs, if they ever had any.)

Or, the family could simply be sent to debtor’s prison to rot.

I expect to see these old laws make a comeback at some point, especially if they get Project 2025 rolling.

Oh dear. Education has really failed this country.

Even in cases where companies may have the workers’ best interests at heart, company towns ultimately lead to a lack of personal freedom. If churches are selected for residents at the company’s whim, that means that other denominations and entire religions are left out in the cold. Choices—whether bad or good—are taken out of the residents’ hands. Recreation is dictated by companies, and anything that may be perceived as uncouth or immoral is no longer an option. Personal exploration is thinned to none, and a utopia quickly becomes a force of oppression.

In the case of less well-intentioned towns, matters get only worse. In some locations, companies would compensate workers with a scrip—a monetary substitute that was valid only at stores owned by that same company. As there were no competitors for these monopolistic stores, buildings, and services, the price was fully at the discretion of the owner. Housing costs, groceries, and other necessities then became exorbitantly priced.

Since the company that owned the town knew that all the residents had steady, reliable jobs, some of them allowed shoppers who were financially strapped to simply charge goods and services to a tab as needed. Of course, this meant that workers quickly racked up large debts—debts they were obligated to settle before they ever even thought about leaving the town.

As for the actual living conditions in such towns, they were far from the idyllic neighborhoods many might have aspired to. Houses were built as close together as physically possible, so as to allow the greatest number of workers to reside there. Besides lacking privacy and being shabbily built, one could only hope a home in the neighborhood didn’t fall victim to a fire, or else the whole lot would go up in flames. Beyond that, company towns were also typically surrounded by fences or guards. This was allegedly for the workers’ protection. But in areas throughout the South, the truth was rather transparent: as free laborers and convict laborers were housed in the same areas, both groups fell victim to equally abhorrent treatment.

Please, go and read up on Company Towns. They were never a good thing, and often a very, very bad thing.

You’d be surprised how much effort people will put into proving you wrong.

Project 2025 is their platform. Notice how long they’ve been working towards implementing something like it.

They just know everyone will hate the idea, so they tried not to say it out loud until they were sure of victory.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. -Winston Churchill

They just didn’t finish the sentence. ‘There are no openings for someone of your heritage.’

That’s because what they’re really obsessed with is ‘rules for thee but not for me’.

We actually have our own map system, although of course you can use Google Maps too.

Honest question: have you considered getting him desensitized to the sound? It’s totally doable; hunters teach their dogs to not be afraid of the bang from their guns after all.

To paraphrase Mark Stanley, corporations only have three rules: get the money, get the money, and get the money.

Don’t think they do things like supporting Pride because they care; it’s only a sign that they want to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But, in that same vein, when they’re supporting a topic is a good sign of is the majority of society’s feelings on the subject.

Polls can be gerrymandered to hell and back, talking heads on the news can make all kinds of claims. But since corporations chase money above all, they spend a lot of money getting very accurate ideas of what our society likes/dislikes.

Think about it. 50, hell even 30 years ago, no corporation worth their salt would have claimed to be in favor of Pride, because it would have been suicidal for the business. Society’s majority take on LGBTQ+ back then ranged from hate and disgust to ‘eww, fine, but not in public!’

Now, corporations fly the Pride flag all over the place. It definitely shows that society is much more supportive of LGBTQ+ and minorities.