i hear you, fellow texan. no fan of ercot, but reading this thread has been infuriating.

for anyone else reading my comment - some years ago, i lived in oklahoma for a little while. years of drought, one year a lot rain. lots of trees with a lot dead branches weighted by new growth, then that winter an ice storm hit. trees bigger than my car came crashing down and it was all over the town i lived in. for three days in the silence, you could hear branches cracking and falling. two houses down a tree went right through their living room. one end of our street was impassable for several days until someone could cut one tree into small enough pieces to clear it.

needless to say, power was out. parts of town had power back within days, some parts of the state, if i remember correctly, didn’t have power for weeks.

grid stability or redundancy couldn’t have prevented that problem.

https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-20071208

erhoslab is still around, last i checked. nice guy, nice voice, no screaming.

excellent, thank you for this! i think you and the other poster made my day!

😆 some days i feel unhelpful! i was thinking after posting, i don’t mind saying i’m a therapist, just prefer not to identify my specific field/licensure.

edit - … as i’m trying to make myself not-too-identifiable.

helping professional. i won’t be more specific here.

i’m hearing this about our state DFPS - as far as i know, you now only need to be 18 and you need to have graduated high school. then you get to destroy families.

welcome to fashion. you can add things to the body that emphasize good stuff, detract from stuff you don’t like, draw the eye in a particular direction, create an illusion, break up an expanse, etc.

enjoy!

i posted about having this experience on reddit a year or two ago and people were pissed? but yeah, empty shelves and barely any employees. it sucks, because i used to enjoy going there to see what’s new.

i believe you can do this if you choose and when you’re ready. i won’t lie - it’s not easy, but you may decide if is easier than staying. the dv hotline can direct you to local services, including housing. be careful if you begin to explore your options; he may escalate.

(800) 799-7233. if you can safely search, they also have text and chat contact online.

no, you shouldn’t have to do that calculus. but i want your kid to be okay if it ever comes to that.

this is the way. there is a place for policing in society, and it should be composed of highly trained, educated professionals held to a high standard.

true, but in inpatient settings they have tools at their disposal and a context supporting safety that you lack. they have - locked doors, lots of people who can be summoned, people trained to restrain, injectable medication. probably other stuff i’m not thinking about. there’s likely also an increased understanding of that person’s issues, level of risk, and current medication and sobriety. even several hours of observation plus a secure environment gives staffers an advantage police lack.

so i work in mental health. it is very likely that i will have to call police on a client at some point. i have training that works well in some circumstances, but there are limits. i have, in fact, been one of the people here on lemmy that has pointed out people working with others with mental illness and disability manage things without guns.

i think police need training to work with people like this and to de-escalate in general. i think i lot of them need treatment for their own PTSD. i think they fucked up here.

but i don’t think it’s realistic either to think that they can, in practice, handle things the same way a nurse with many years of experience and additional tools can. and i would also point out that many social workers (not my profession but related, just the last field i saw stats on) have been assaulted by their clients.

i think the parents could have handled it better. i think it’s possible cultural attitudes toward mental illness or other factors unique to the family played a part in their decision-making.

and as another parent of a person with developmental disability (plus serious mental illness), i think it is wise to prepare yourself and your child for how you might handle circumstances in which you or someone else needs to call for help. i don’t think it is safest for your child or for you (or others, obviously) for you to refuse to call until there is a body.

but i also understand that your experience and your child are not the same as mine.

i just wish the cops hadn’t fucked up, and i wish the family had done it differently. for all the good that does.

edit - extra words, a wrong word

A V E R A G E takes a heck of a lot of poor folks to balance the billionaires.

they asked me and others to leave the house when i called (active suicidality and psychosis). i told them we would not, that i was sitting next to him on the floor and two minors were in their rooms nearby. i hoped they would be less likely to do something stupid when they knew there were three other people here and one actively witnessing and close to him.

i think it ensured they were more thoughtful entering my home, and he was calmer when they entered because i remained.

fortunately, i had calmed him enough and taken the weapon that this was even a possibility. i suspect it doesn’t hurt that we’re white.

i thought you were serious. and then i thought you weren’t. honestly, now i’m not sure, but i’m impressed either way.

what the heck… you’re really super into amazon, huh?

i mean, a great many people don’t appreciate being told they are murderers. it provokes defensiveness rather than an openness to pro-vegan arguments.

i don’t approve of the tax cuts. look, i’m middle aged and my future doesn’t look good. i’m hoping for… well, a better old age and death than the one that honestly seems likely. i talk to a lot of people without a place to stay, food, safety, or medical care.

my point to you was, i’m not going to not vote for Biden because he didn’t manifest total financial freedom for me in the last four years. i don’t think third party has a chance right now, and i’m terrified for myself, my family, and the people i work with if we get Trump.

i genuinely believe splitting the left will only enable Trump to win, and i’m not convinced there’s any coming back from that. as bad as things are for most of us, i believe it can get a lot worse - and some of the the people i work with tell me what that looks like in places where government isn’t functional at all any more.

i don’t believe there is anyone in any party who is going to eliminate my student loan debt in the next four years. but i am grateful that i paid $0 this month instead of the $800 it would have been.

yes, even though i didn’t get my $20k forgiveness, i’m sure current admin would be SUPER SUCCESSFUL in pushing through forgiveness of all student loan debt. no pushback from the right at all. /s

yes, even though the right is attempting to dismantle education at all levels, i’m sure the left could absolutely succeed in making quality higher ed free for everyone in a single term, no problem. /s

seriously though, i don’t think it’s worthwhile to pin our hopes on any administration achieving hugely improved outcomes on any complex issue in one or two terms. on a societal level, i think things decay and fall apart more easily than utopia is realized. i’m hoping for slow progress. i’m not holding my breath or shooting myself in the foot voting third party right now and expecting a miracle.

final thought as i write this - has utopia ever been realized on any significant scale? only for some, and only for a time.

i think that’s definitely a part of it.