I think it’s mostly because of the repeated rounds of compression artifacts that compose this image and the ultra low resolution, but yes, if I squint, I do see two Darth Vaders making out.

It is because this is how these things do be. QED.

Decent source of protein, but ungodly levels of sodium.

Have you noticed the new way of promoting horrible food by telling you it has lots of protein

Kind of, but it’s definitely nothing new in my part of the world at least. And I’m guessing you weren’t around in the USA for the Atkins craze (or just didn’t notice) when grocery shelves and fridges/freezers were littered with high fat, high protein versions of just about every ultra processed food item you can imagine with giant call outs on the front about how much protein they had (and then fat content only disclosed via the nutrition label).

The behavior that makes my eyes roll are the foods that emphasize their protein content despite the product not being a particularly good nor dense source of it. For instance, a 50g cereal bar with a spiel on the front along the lines of “3 grams of protein in every serving”. Okay, so like, okay? And? I probably get more protein every night from the spiders I swallow in my sleep.

But if they wake up then they’ll be woke and they all agree that woke is bad.

Being unemployed is very high the list of why I cut back, and my unemployment is directly caused by the Trump administration. Nearly everybody I know that is fully employed, across all kinds of different careers and industries, has had cutbacks/layoffs at work with threat of more to come, so they’re all very cautious about spending in general (not just holidays). Even self-employed folks in what are typically solid trades seem to be struggling more than I would have expected.

Personally, I’ve decided I’m not traveling to see family this year and I’m not buying any gifts, aside from a few toys for younger relatives. Since I don’t know how much longer I’ll be unemployed or if I’ll be able to find something with comparable pay and benefits to what I had, it doesn’t make sense to spend on gas, vehicle maintenance, stamps, etc for the foreseeable future.

As an aside, I ended up at Walmart this morning on Black Friday, though I wasn’t going for any of the sales stuff. I was dreading it. While I’m sure it was busier than a typical Friday morning, it was an “I’ve seen it busier on a random Tuesday night in April” kind of situation. I know that the situation at one Walmart I was in for 30 minutes or less on Black Friday doesn’t count for squat and there are a plethora of reasonable explanations as to why it didn’t seem particularly busy, but it does fit suspiciously into the general theme of a struggling economy with lots more people than normal cutting back due to concerns about their economic outlook. It will be interesting to see the official data, though with this administration it’s not like that will be particularly accurate or trustworthy.

Funny enough, on the way to the store I had a flashback to the days leading up to the 2024 election when the super basic yard signs were all over the place around here with slogans like “Trump low prices, Kamala high prices”. Of course, I knew it was absurd even back then, but now it just seems all the more ridiculous as I look back through my grocery expenditures and realize that even with all the cutbacks I’ve made this year, I’m still spending more while getting a lot less.

You probably know this, but for others who might not: MS is now allowing some/many/all (???) people to extend the security updates for Win10 for another year free of charge. You have to go into the Windows update area and click a button to accept. At least in the USA, this seems to be a somewhat newly available option, as it was there the last time someone asked me to look at their laptop to see if I could upgrade it to Win11.

An added layer to this shit storm is that the actual deadline for signing up is December 15th because that’s when open enrollment ends. After open enrollment, whatever plan you choose (or if you choose to go without), you’re stuck with until next year (caveat being that there are some qualifying events like divorce or job change where you’re allowed to alter your selection).

So, here we are 3 weeks (actually less than 3 weeks now) out from having to make a final decision, and we’re getting inconsistent as well as contradictory information from the federal government. These decisions take a lot of time for us to make, the rules made by the federal government should have been clear and in place well in advance of open enrollment season.

The monthly payment for my current plan is going up close to 50% (comparing non-subsidized price btw), but also comes with higher out-of-pocket expenses (copay, deductibles) and higher maximum out of pocket (lower is better). So, we’re getting much less while paying substantially higher rates. Keep in mind, I’m only comparing the unsubsidized cost of the plans, but many people on ACA plans are receiving tax credits (i.e. subsidies) that cover all or part of their current plans. So for those folks who won’t get that tax credit anymore, double the cost is probably understating how much more expensive it will be.

This unprecedented rise in expense means a lot of us are looking at the risk versus reward aspect of whether it makes sense to even have health insurance. That’s an extremely difficult decision to have to make, then on top of that, for those that decide to stick with an ACA plan, choosing a plan is itself a monumental task with all the considerations and variables you have to keep track of. It takes a lot of time, research, effort and now in the final days of open enrollment, we’re not even in a position to make these decisions based on a solid foundation of information – the rug could be pulled and a wrench thrown in at any moment.

Maybe I’m being overly negative, but it also won’t surprise me when these systems go down or have technical issues on the final day(s) because of extreme volume of use due to so many of us having to wait last minute.

One of many troubling issues with all this and the way it was handled is that these cuts were made too hastily. My former employer is a federal contractor whose income was some mix of federal, state, and private. Had there been sufficient time to reallocate staff and resources towards state and federal private funding, they/we would have had time to change our strategy and pursue those other lines of funding – likely avoiding the massive monthly layoffs that have been going on in 2025. But that takes time, which was not something anybody had with the sudden, drastic, and unprecedented cancellation of federal contracts that did not leave any room for a smooth transition It was just lost jobs and shattered lives with little to no benefit for working class people.

It may just be my circle, but my friends and colleagues who managed to keep their jobs pretty much all complain about how they’re dealing with burnout now because they have an untenable workload but also the work environment is so stressful because everybody’s still under threat of more layoffs. This is happening both in federal work as well as private industry.

I know many/most of you are aware of how bad this is, but I’m still gonna bitch here.

I lost my job as a result of the Trump administration’s policies. While I had other options for health insurance (ex: COBRA), getting an ACA plan made the most sense to me at the time. It was shittier in comparison to what I had at my job (and what I would have retained access to via COBRA), but mostly comparable in the easy to measure ways (i.e. out of pocket costs and coverage of necessary meds) and cost much less than COBRA even without considering those tax credits / subsidies.

Honestly, it was so much work just to figure out which plan made the most sense, I had no idea I needed to check to see if there was a ticking time bomb ready to go off. The new 2026 rates are so much higher with poorer coverage and higher out of pocket expense – worse in pretty much every way you could think. While I may still opt for one of the low tier plans that’s basically catastrophic only + the minimum required coverage, at that price point and for what it provides, I’m sure a lot of people will go without even if they technically could afford the premiums. I know I’m still weighing my options, but it does feel like they took my job then took my access to health care, what next?

The one I heard enough that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was the scripted official response was along the lines of “I know which one my life was better under.” These are also the same folks who parroted the “How come eggs is so darn expensive?” only to pivot directly into understanding that the president doesn’t control the egg prices, which are controlled by complex market conditions that they’re now fully able to articulate, the moment Trump was sworn in. Weird, huh?

Now they’re struggling to understand why coffee and beef are so expensive and why every time they go to Walmart it’s always out of this and that almost as bad as it was back at the start of the covid epidemic. Gee, who was president then, too? Starting to see a pattern here.

If you pay for sex you’re a sleazeball.

Do you mind giving a little more feedback on why you feel that way?

Taken at face value, as stated, it sounds like you’re 100% against prostitution and making a value judgement against people who hire sex workers.

Keep in mind, I have never paid for sex, and I’m not coming at you because of your opinion. Just curious, is all, since I’m more of the opinion that what consenting adults do in their own privacy is their own business as long as it’s not hurting anybody. And I do understand that a lot of times, sex workers are being exploited. But then I also think about situations like the disabled guy (IIRC it was something terminal) who hired sex workers because he felt he couldn’t/wouldn’t find a willing partner otherwise due to the circumstances of his disability. Plus, I’m a bit biased, as I lived with a sex worker as a roommate for a couple of years, and while nobody’s perfect, he was a much nicer and better person that a lot of random folks I know.

This is why I go out of my way quite a bit to poison the AI with my pointless boomer anecdotes, largely made up or confiscated. Plus, I rarely proof read my comments anymore, so apologies for the grammatical issues and the hard to believe and rarely either one way or the other but twice the times there’s another type of type that you can also quite not, right?